Traffics and Discoveries

"Why?" said Copper. "I'm smokin' baccy stole by a renegid. Why wouldn't I know?"

If it came to a flogging on that hillside there might be a chance of reprisals. Of course, he might be marched to the Boer camp in the next valley and there operated upon; but Army life teaches no man to cross bridges unnecessarily.

"Yes, after eight years, my father, cheated by your bitch of a country, he found out who was the upper dog in South Africa."

"That's me," said Copper valiantly. "If it takes another 'alf century, it's me an' the likes of me."

"You? Heaven help you! You'll be screaming at a wagon-wheel in an hour… Then it struck my father that he'd like to shoot the people who'd betrayed him. You – you —you! He told his son all about it. He told him never to trust the English. He told him to do them all the harm he could. Mann, I tell you, I don't want much telling. I was born in the Transvaal – I'm a burgher. If my father didn't love the English, by the Lord, mann, I tell you, I hate them from the bottom of my soul."

The voice quavered and ran high. Once more, for no conceivable reason, Private Copper found his inward eye turned upon Umballa cantonments of a dry dusty afternoon, when the saddle-coloured son of a local hotel-keeper came to the barracks to complain of a theft of fowls. He saw the dark face, the plover's-egg-tinted eyeballs, and the thin excited hands. Above all, he remembered the passionate, queerly-strung words. Slowly he returned to South Africa, using the very sentence his sergeant had used to the poultry man.

"Go on with your complaint. I'm listenin'."

"Complaint! Complaint about you, you ox! We strip and kick your sort by thousands."

The young man rocked to and fro above the rifle, whose muzzle thus deflected itself from the pit of Private Copper's stomach. His face was dusky with rage.

"Yess, I'm a Transvaal burgher. It took us about twenty years to find out how rotten you were. We know and you know it now. Your army – it is the laughing-stock of the Continent." He tapped the newspaper in his pocket, "You think you're going to win, you poor fools. Your people – your own people – your silly rotten fools of people will crawl out of it as they did after Majuba. They are beginning now. Look what your own working classes, the diseased, lying, drinking white stuff that you come out of, are saying." He thrust the English weekly, doubled at the leading article, on Copper's knee. "See what dirty dogs your masters are. They do not even back you in your dirty work. We cleared the country down to Ladysmith – to Estcourt. We cleared the country down to Colesberg."

"Yes, we 'ad to clean up be'ind you. Messy, I call it."

"You've had to stop farm-burning because your people daren't do it. They were afraid. You daren't kill a spy. You daren't shoot a spy when you catch him in your own uniform. You daren't touch our loyall people in Cape Town! Your masters wont let you. You will feed our women and children till we are quite ready to take them back. You can't put your cowardly noses out of the towns you say you've occupied. You daren't move a convoy twenty miles. You think you've done something? You've done nothing, and you've taken a quarter of a million of men to do it! There isn't a nigger in South Africa that doesn't obey us if we lift our finger. You pay the stuff four pounds a month and they lie to you. We flog 'em, as I shall flog you."

He clasped his hands together and leaned forward his out-thrust chin within two feet of Copper's left, or pipe hand.

"Yuss," said Copper, "it's a fair knock-out." The fist landed to a hair on the chin-point, the neck snicked like a gun-lock, and the back of the head crashed on the boulder behind.

Copper grabbed up both rifles, unshipped the cross-bandoliers, drew forth the English weekly, and picking up the lax hands, looked long and intently at the fingernails.

"No! Not a sign of it there," he said. "'Is nails are as clean as mine – but he talks just like 'em, though. And he's a landlord too! A landed proprietor! Shockin', I call it."

The arms began to flap with returning consciousness. Private Copper rose up and whispered: "If you open your head, I'll bash it." There was no suggestion of sprain in the flung-back left boot. "Now walk in front of me, both arms perpendicularly elevated. I'm only a third-class shot, so, if you don't object, I'll rest the muzzle of my rifle lightly but firmly on your collar-button – coverin' the serviceable vertebree. If your friends see us thus engaged, you pray – 'ard."

Private and prisoner staggered downhill. No shots broke the peace of the afternoon, but once the young man checked and was sick.

"There's a lot of things I could say to you," Copper observed, at the close of the paroxysm, "but it doesn't matter. Look 'ere, you call me 'pore Tommy' again."

The prisoner hesitated.

"Oh, I ain't goin' to do anythin' to you. I'm recon-noiterin' in my own.

Say 'pore Tommy' 'alf-a-dozen times."

The prisoner obeyed.

"That's what's been puzzlin' me since I 'ad the pleasure o' meetin' you," said Copper. "You ain't 'alf-caste, but you talk chee-chee– pukka bazar chee-chee. Proceed."

"Hullo," said the Sergeant of the picket, twenty minutes later, "where did you round him up?"

"On the top o' yonder craggy mounting. There's a mob of 'em sitting round their Bibles seventeen 'undred yards (you said it was seventeen 'undred?) t'other side – an' I want some coffee." He sat down on the smoke-blackened stones by the fire.

"'Ow did you get 'im?" said McBride, professional humorist, quietly filching the English weekly from under Copper's armpit.

"On the chin – while 'e was waggin' it at me."

"What is 'e? 'Nother Colonial rebel to be 'orribly disenfranchised, or a Cape Minister, or only a loyal farmer with dynamite in both boots. Tell us all about it, Burjer!"

"You leave my prisoner alone," said Private Copper. "'E's 'ad losses an' trouble; an' it's in the family too. 'E thought I never read the papers, so 'e kindly lent me his very own Jerrold's Weekly– an' 'e explained it to me as patronisin' as a – as a militia subaltern doin' Railway Staff Officer. 'E's a left-over from Majuba – one of the worst kind, an' 'earin' the evidence as I did, I don't exactly blame 'im. It was this way."

To the picket Private Copper held forth for ten minutes on the life- history of his captive. Allowing for some purple patches, it was an absolute fair rendering.

"But what I dis-liked was this baccy-priggin' beggar, 'oo's people, on 'is own showin', couldn't 'ave been more than thirty or forty years in the coun – on this Gawd-forsaken dust-'eap, comin' the squire over me. They're all parsons – we know that, but parson an' squire is a bit too thick for Alf Copper. Why, I caught 'im in the shameful act of tryin' to start a aristocracy on a gun an' a wagon an' a shambuk! Yes; that's what it was: a bloomin' aristocracy."

"No, it weren't," said McBride, at length, on the dirt, above the purloined weekly. "You're the aristocrat, Alf. Old Jerrold's givin' it you 'ot. You're the uneducated 'ireling of a callous aristocracy which 'as sold itself to the 'Ebrew financier. Meantime, Ducky" – he ran his finger down a column of assorted paragraphs – "you're slakin' your brutal instincks in furious excesses. Shriekin' women an' desolated 'omesteads is what you enjoy, Alf … Halloa! What's a smokin' 'ektacomb?"

"'Ere! Let's look. 'Aven't seen a proper spicy paper for a year. Good old Jerrold's!" Pinewood and Moppet, reservists, flung themselves on McBride's shoulders, pinning him to the ground.

"Lie over your own bloomin' side of the bed, an' we can all look," he protested.

"They're only po-ah Tommies," said Copper, apologetically, to the prisoner. "Po-ah unedicated Khakis. They don't know what they're fightin' for. They're lookin' for what the diseased, lying, drinkin' white stuff that they come from is sayin' about 'em!"

The prisoner set down his tin of coffee and stared helplessly round the circle.

"I – I don't understand them."

The Canadian sergeant, picking his teeth with a thorn, nodded sympathetically:

"If it comes to that, we don't in my country!.. Say, boys, when you're through with your English mail you might's well provide an escort for your prisoner. He's waitin'."

"Arf a mo', Sergeant," said McBride, still reading.

"'Ere's Old Barbarity on the ramp again with some of 'is lady friends, 'oo don't like concentration camps. Wish they'd visit ours. Pinewood's a married man. He'd know how to be'ave!"

"Well, I ain't goin' to amuse my prisoner alone. 'E's gettin' 'omesick," cried Copper. "One of you thieves read out what's vexin' Old Barbarity an' 'is 'arem these days. You'd better listen, Burjer, because, afterwards, I'm goin' to fall out an' perpetrate those nameless barbarities all over you to keep up the reputation of the British Army."

From that English weekly, to bar out which a large and perspiring staff of Press censors toiled seven days of the week at Cape Town, did Pinewood of the Reserve read unctuously excerpts of the speeches of the accredited leaders of His Majesty's Opposition. The night-picket arrived in the middle of it, but stayed entranced without paying any compliments, till Pinewood had entirely finished the leading article, and several occasional notes.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said Alf Copper, hitching up what war had left to him of trousers – "you've 'eard what 'e's been fed up with. Do you blame the beggar? 'Cause I don't! … Leave 'im alone, McBride. He's my first and only cap-ture, an' I'm goin' to walk 'ome with 'im, ain't I, Ducky? … Fall in, Burjer. It's Bermuda, or Umballa, or Ceylon for you – and I'd give a month's pay to be in your little shoes."

As not infrequently happens, the actual moving off the ground broke the prisoner's nerve. He stared at the tinted hills round him, gasped and began to struggle – kicking, swearing, weeping, and fluttering all together.

"Pore beggar – oh pore, pore beggar!" said Alf, leaning in on one side of him, while Pinewood blocked him on the other.

"Let me go! Let me go! Mann, I tell you, let me go – "

"'E screams like a woman!" said McBride. "They'll 'ear 'im five miles off."

"There's one or two ought to 'ear 'im – in England," said Copper, putting aside a wildly waving arm.