Soldiers Three

‘The lights av the thraps people comin’ from the Gaff was showin’ across the parade ground, an’, by this an’ that, the way thim two women worked at the bundles an’ thrunks was a caution! I was dyin’ to help, but, seein’ I didn’t want to be known, I sat wid the blanket roun’ me an’ coughed an’ thanked the Saints there was no moon that night.

‘Whin all was in the house again, I niver asked for bukshish but dhruv tremenjus in the opp’site way from the other carr’ge an’ put out my lights. Presintly, I saw a naygur man wallowin’ in the road. I slipped down before I got to him, for I suspicioned Providence was wid me all through that night. ‘Twas Jungi, his nose smashed in flat, all dumb sick as you please. Dennis’s man must have tilted him out av the thrap. Whin he came to, “Hutt!” sez I, but he began to howl.

‘“You black lump av dirt,” I sez, “is this the way you dhrive your gharri? That tikka has been owin’’ an’ fere-owin’’ all over the bloomin’ country this whole bloomin’ night, an’ you as mut-walla as Davey’s sow. Get up, you hog!” sez I, louder, for I heard the wheels av a thrap in the dark; “get up an’ light your lamps, or you’ll be run into!” This was on the road to the Railway Station.

‘“Fwhat the divil’s this?” sez the Capt’n’s voice in the dhark, an’ I could judge he was in a lather av rage.

‘“Gharri dhriver here, dhrunk, Sorr,” sez I; “I’ve found his gharri sthrayin’ about cantonmints, an’ now I’ve found him.”

‘“Oh!” sez the Capt’n; “fwhat’s his name?” I stooped down an’ pretended to listen.

‘“He sez his name’s Jungi, Sorr,” sez I.

‘“Hould my harse,” sez the Capt’n to his man, an’ wid that he gets down wid the whip an’ lays into Jungi, just mad wid rage an’ swearin’ like the scutt he was.

‘I thought, afther a while, he wud kill the man, so I sez: – “Stop, Sorr, or you’ll, murdher him!” That dhrew all his fire on me, an’ he cursed me into Blazes, an’ out again. I stud to attenshin an’ saluted: – “Sorr,” sez I, “av ivry man in this wurruld had his rights, I’m thinkin’ that more than wan wud be beaten to a jelly for this night’s work – that niver came off at all, Sorr, as you see?” “Now,” thinks I to myself, “Terence Mulvaney, you’ve cut your own throat, for he’ll sthrike, an’ you’ll knock him down for the good av his sowl an’ your own iverlastin’ dishgrace!”

‘But the Capt’n niver said a single wurrd. He choked where he stud, an’ thin he went into his thrap widout sayin’ good-night, an’ I wint back to barricks.’

‘And then?’ said Ortheris and I together.

‘That was all,’ said Mulvaney; ‘niver another word did I hear av the whole thing. All I know was that there was no e-vasion, an’ that was fwhat I wanted. Now, I put ut to you, Sorr, is ten days’ C. B. a fit an’ a proper tratement for a man who has behaved as me?’

‘Well, any’ow,’ said Ortheris, ’tweren’t this ‘ere Colonel’s daughter, an’ you was blazin’ copped when you tried to wash in the Fort Ditch.’

‘That,’ said Mulvaney, finishing the champagne, ‘is a shuparfluous an’ impert’nint observation.’

OF THOSE CALLED

[Footnote: 1895]

We were wallowing through the China Seas in a dense fog, the horn blowing every two minutes for the benefit of the fishery craft that crowded the waterways. From the bridge the fo’c’sle was invisible; from the hand-wheel at the stern the captain’s cabin. The fog held possession of everything – the pearly white fog. Once or twice when it tried to lift, we saw a glimpse of the oily sea, the flitting vision of a junk’s sail spread in the vain hope of catching the breeze, or the buoys of a line of nets. Somewhere close to us lay the land, but it might have been the Kurile Islands for aught we knew. Very early in the morning there passed us, not a cable’s-length away, but as unseen as the spirits of the dead, a steamer of the same line as ours. She howled melodiously in answer to our bellowing, and passed on.

‘Suppose she had hit us,’ said a man from Saigon. ‘Then we should have gone down,’ answered the chief officer sweetly. ‘Beastly thing to go down in a fog,’ said a young gentleman who was travelling for pleasure. ‘Chokes a man both ways, y’ know.’ We were comfortably gathered in the smoking-room, the weather being too cold to venture on the deck. Conversation naturally turned upon accidents of fog, the horn tooting significantly in the pauses between the tales. I heard of the wreck of the Eric, the cutting down of the Strathnairn within half a mile of harbour, and the carrying away of the bow plates of the Sigismund outside Sandy Hook.

‘It is astonishing,’ said the man from Saigon, ‘how many true stories are put down as sea yarns. It makes a man almost shrink from telling an anecdote.’

‘Oh, please don’t shrink on our account,’ said the smoking-room with one voice.

‘It’s not my own story,’ said the man from Saigon. ‘A fellow on a Massageries boat told it me. He had been third officer of a sort on a Geordie tramp – one of those lumbering, dish-bottomed coal-barges where the machinery is tied up with a string and the plates are rivetted with putty. The way he told his tale was this. The tramp had been creeping along some sea or other with a chart ten years old and the haziest sort of chronometers when she got into a fog – just such a fog as we have now.’

Here the smoking-room turned round as one man, and looked through the windows.

‘In the man’s own words, “just when the fog was thickest, the engines broke down. They had been doing this for some weeks, and we were too weary to care. I went forward of the bridge, and leaned over the side, wondering where I should ever get something that I could call a ship, and whether the old hulk would fall to pieces as she lay. The fog was as thick as any London one, but as white as steam. While they were tinkering at the engines below, I heard a voice in the fog about twenty yards from the ship’s side, calling out, ‘Can you climb on board if we throw you a rope?’ That startled me, because I fancied we were going to be run down the next minute by a ship engaged in rescuing a man overboard. I shouted for the engine-room whistle; and it whistled about five minutes, but never the sound of a ship could we hear. The ship’s boy came forward with some biscuit for me. As he put it into my hand, I heard the voice in the fog, crying out about throwing us a rope. This time it was the boy that yelled, ‘Ship on us!’ and off went the whistle again, while the men in the engine-room – it generally took the ship’s crew to repair the Hespa’s engines – tumbled upon deck to know what we were doing. I told them about the hail, and we listened in the smother of the fog for the sound of a screw. We listened for ten minutes, then we blew the whistle for another ten. Then the crew began to call the ship’s boy a fool, meaning that the third mate was no better. When they were going down below, I heard the hail the third time, so did the ship’s boy. ‘There you are,’ I said, ‘it is not twenty yards from us.’ The engineer sings out, ‘I heard it too! Are you all asleep?’ Then the crew began to swear at the engineer; and what with discussion, argument, and a little swearing, – for there is not much discipline on board a tramp, – we raised such a row that our skipper came aft to enquire. I, the engineer, and the ship’s boy stuck to our tale. ‘Voices or no voices,’ said the captain, ‘you’d better patch the old engines up, and see if you’ve got enough steam to whistle with. I’ve a notion that we’ve got into rather too crowded ways.”

‘“The engineer stayed on deck while the men went down below. The skipper hadn’t got back to the chart-room before I saw thirty feet of bowsprit hanging over the break of the fo’c’sle. Thirty feet of bowsprit, sir, doesn’t belong to anything that sails the seas except a sailing-ship or a man-of-war. I speculated quite a long time, with my hands on the bulwarks, as to whether our friend was soft wood or steel plated. It would not have made much difference to us, anyway; but I felt there was more honour in being rammed, you know. Then I knew all about it. It was a ram. We opened out. I am not exaggerating – we opened out, sir, like a cardboard box. The other ship cut us two-thirds through, a little behind the break of the fo’c’sle. Our decks split up lengthways. The mizzen-mast bounded out of its place, and we heeled over. Then the other ship blew a fog-horn. I remember thinking, as I took water from the port bulwark, that this was rather ostentatious after she had done all the mischief. After that, I was a mile and a half under sea, trying to go to sleep as hard as I could. Some one caught hold of my hair, and waked me up. I was hanging to what was left of one of our boats under the lee of a large English ironclad. There were two men with me; the three of us began to yell. A man on the ship sings out, ‘Can you climb on board if we throw you a rope?’ They weren’t going to let down a fine new man-of-war’s boat to pick up three half-drowned rats. We accepted the invitation. We climbed – I, the engineer, and the ship’s boy. About half an hour later the fog cleared entirely; except for the half of the boat away in the offing, there was neither stick nor string on the sea to show that the Hespa had been cut down.”

‘And what do you think of that now?’ said the man from Saigon.

PRIVATE LEAROYD’S STORY

And he told a tale. —Chronicles of Gautama Buddha

FAR from the haunts of Company Officers who insist upon kit-inspections, far from keen-nosed Sergeants who sniff the pipe stuffed into the bedding-roll, two miles from the tumult of the barracks, lies the Trap. It is an old dry well, shadowed by a twisted pipal tree and fenced with high grass. Here, in the years gone by, did Private Ortheris establish his depot and menagerie for such possessions, dead and living, as could not safely be introduced to the barrack-room. Here were gathered Houdin pullets, and fox-terriers of undoubted pedigree and more than doubtful ownership, for Ortheris was an inveterate poacher and pre-eminent among a regiment of neat-handed dog-stealers.

Never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein Ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well; when Learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel on the management of ‘tykes,’ and Mulvaney, from the crook of the overhanging pipal, waved his enormous boots in benediction above our heads, delighting us with tales of Love and War, and strange experiences of cities and men.

Ortheris – landed at last in the ‘little stuff bird-shop’ for which your soul longed; Learoyd – back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed North, amid the clang of the Bradford looms; Mulvaney – grizzled, tender, and very wise Ulysses, sweltering on the earthwork of a Central India line – judge if I have forgotten old days in the Trap!

Orth’ris, as allus thinks he knaws more than other foaks, said she wasn’t a real laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. I don’t gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. But she was a laady. Why, she rode iv a carriage, an’ good ‘osses, too, an’ her ‘air was that oiled as you could see your faice in it, an’ she wore dimond rings an’ a goold chain, an’ silk an’ satin dresses as mun ‘a’ cost a deal, for it isn’t a cheap shop as keeps enough o’ one pattern to fit a figure like hers. Her name was Mrs. DeSussa, an’t’ waay I coom to be acquainted wi’ her was along of our Colonel’s Laady’s dog Rip.

I’ve seen a vast o’ dogs, but Rip was t’ prettiest picter of a cliver fox-tarrier ‘at iver I set eyes on. He could do owt you like but speeak, an’ t’ Colonel’s Laady set more store by him than if he hed been a Christian. She hed bairns of her awn, but they was i’ England, and Rip seemed to get all t’ coodlin’ and pettin’ as belonged to a bairn by good right.

But Rip were a bit on a rover, an’ hed a habit o’ breakin’ out o’ barricks like, and trottin’ round t’ plaice as if he were t’ Cantonment Magistrate coom round inspectin’. The Colonel leathers him once or twice, but Rip didn’t care an’ kept on gooin’ his rounds, wi’ his taail a-waggin’ as if he were flag-signallin’ to t’ world at large ‘at he was ‘gettin’ on nicely, thank yo’, and how’s yo’sen?’ An’ then t’ Colonel, as was noa sort of a hand wi’ a dog, tees him oop. A real clipper of a dog, an’ it’s noa wonder yon laady. Mrs. DeSussa, should tek a fancy tiv him. Theer’s one o’ t’ Ten Commandments says yo’ maun’t cuwet your neebor’s ox nor his jackass, but it doesn’t say nowt about his tarrier dogs, an’ happen thot’s t’ reason why Mrs. DeSussa cuvveted Rip, tho’ she went to church reg’lar along wi’ her husband who was so mich darker ‘at if he hedn’t such a good coaat tiv his back yo’ might ha’ called him a black man and nut tell a lee nawther. They said he addled his brass i’ jute, an’ he’d a rare lot on it.

Well, you seen, when they teed Rip up, t’ poor awd lad didn’t enjoy very good ‘elth. So t’ Colonel’s Laady sends for me as ‘ad a naame for bein’ knowledgeable about a dog, an’ axes what’s ailin’ wi’ him.

‘Why,’ says I, ‘he’s getten t’ mopes, an’ what he wants is his libbaty an’ coompany like t’ rest on us, wal happen a rat or two ‘ud liven him oop. It’s low, mum,’ says I, ‘is rats, but it’s t’ nature of a dog; an’ soa’s cuttin’ round an’ meetin’ another dog or two an’ passin’ t’ time o’ day, an’ hevvin’ a bit of a turn-up wi’ him like a Christian.’

So she says her dog maunt niver fight an’ noa Christians iver fought.

‘Then what’s a soldier for?’ says I; an’ I explains to her t’ contrairy qualities of a dog, ‘at, when yo’ coom to think on’t, is one o’t’ curusest things as is. For they larn to behave theirsens like gentlemen born, fit for t’ fost o’ coompany – they tell me t’ Widdy herself is fond of a good dog and knaws one when she sees it as well as onny body: then on t’ other hand a-tewin’ round after cats an’ gettin’ mixed oop i’ all manners o’ blackguardly street-rows, an’ killin’ rats, an’ fightin’ like divils.

T’ Colonel’s Laady says: – ‘Well, Learoyd, I doan’t agree wi’ you, but you’re right in a way o’ speeakin’, an’ I should like yo’ to tek Rip out a-walkin’ wi’ you sometimes; but yo’ maun’t let him fight, nor chase cats, nor do nowt ‘orrid’: an them was her very wods.

Soa Rip an’ me goes out a-walkin’ o’ evenin’s, he bein’ a dog as did credit tiv a man, an’ I catches a lot o’ rats an we hed a bit of a match on in an awd dry swimmin’-bath at back o’t’ cantonments, an’ it was none so long afore he was as bright as a button again. He hed a way o’ flyin’ at them big yaller pariah dogs as if he was a harrow offan a bow, an’ though his weight were nowt, he tuk ‘em so suddint-like they rolled over like skittles in a halley, an’ when they coot he stretched after ‘em as if he were rabbit-runnin’. Saame with cats when he cud get t’ cat agaate o’ runnin’.

One evenin’, him an’ me was trespassin’ ovver a compound wall after one of them mongooses ‘at he’d started, an’ we was busy grubbin’ round a prickle-bush, an’ when we looks up there was Mrs. DeSussa wi’ a parasel ovver her shoulder, a-watchin’ us. ‘Oh my!’ she sings out; ‘there’s that lovelee dog! Would he let me stroke him, Mister Soldier?’

‘Ay, he would, mum,’ sez I, ‘for he’s fond o’ laady’s coompany. Coom here, Rip, an’ speeak to this kind laady.’ An’Rip, seein’ ‘at t’mongoose hed getten clean awaay, cooms up like t’ gentleman he was, nivver a hauporth shy or okkord.

‘Oh, you beautiful – you prettee dog!’ she says, clippin’ an’ chantin’ her speech in a way them sooart has o’ their awn; ‘I would like a dog like you. You are so verree lovelee – so awfullee prettee,’ an’ all thot sort o’ talk, ‘at a dog o’ sense mebbe thinks nowt on, tho’ he bides it by reason o’ his breedin’.

An’ then I meks him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an’ shek hands, an’ beg, an’ lie dead, an’ a lot o’ them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan’t haud with it mysen, for it’s makin’ a fool o’ a good dog to do such like.

An’ at lung length it cooms out ‘at she’d been thrawin’ sheep’s eyes, as t’ sayin’ is, at Rip for many a day. Yo’ see, her childer was grown up, an’ she’d nowt mich to do, an’ were allus fond of a dog. Soa she axes me if I’d tek somethin’ to dhrink. An’ we goes into t’ drawn-room wheer her husband was a-settin’. They meks a gurt fuss ower t’ dog an’ I has a bottle o’ aale, an’ he gave me a handful o’ cigars.

Soa I coomed away, but t’ awd lass sings out – ‘Oh, Mister Soldier, please coom again and bring that prettee dog.’

I didn’t let on to t’ Colonel’s Laady about Mrs. DeSussa, and Rip, he says nowt nawther; an’ I gooes again, an’ ivry time there was a good dhrink an’ a handful o’ good smooaks. An’ I telled t’ awd lass a heeap more about Rip than I’d ever heeared; how he tuk t’ fost prize at Lunnon dog-show and cost thotty-three pounds fower shillin’ from t’ man as bred him; ‘at his own brother was t’ propputty o’ t’ Prince o’ Wailes, an’ ‘at he had a pedigree as long as a Dook’s. An’ she lapped it all oop an’ were niver tired o’ admirin’ him. But when t’ awed lass took to givin’ me money an’ I seed ‘at she were gettin’ fair fond about t’ dog, I began to suspicion summat. Onny body may give a soldier t’ price of a pint in a friendly way an’ theer’s no ‘arm done, but when it cooms to five rupees slipt into your hand, sly like, why, it’s what t’ ‘lectioneerin’ fellows calls bribery an’ corruption. Specially when Mrs. DeSussa threwed hints how t’ cold weather would soon be ower an’ she was goin’ to Munsooree Pahar an’ we was goin’ to Rawalpindi, an’ she would niver see Rip any more onless somebody she knowed on would be kind tiv her.

Soa I tells Mulvaney an’ Ortheris all t’ taale thro’, beginnin’ to end.

‘’Tis larceny that wicked ould laady manes,’ says t’ Irishman, ‘’tis felony she is sejuicin’ ye into, my frind Learoyd, but I’ll purtect your innocince. I’ll save ye from the wicked wiles av that wealthy ould woman, an’ I’ll go wid ye this evenin’ and spake to her the wurrds av truth an’ honesty. But Jock,’ says he, waggin’ his heead, ‘’twas not like ye to kape all that good dhrink an’ thim fine cigars to yerself, while Orth’ris here an’ me have been prowlin’ round wid throats as dry as lime-kilns, and nothin’ to smoke but Canteen plug. ‘Twas a dhirty thrick to play on a comrade, for why should you, Learoyd, be balancin’ yourself on the butt av a satin chair, as if Terence Mulvaney was not the aquil av anybody who thrades in jute!’

‘Let alone me sticks in Orth’ris, ‘but that’s like life. Them wot’s really fitted to decorate society get no show while a blunderin’ Yorkshireman like you – ’

‘Nay,’ says I, ‘it’s none o’ t’ blunderin’ Yorkshireman she wants; it’s Rip. He’s the gentleman this journey.’