We live in a fortress on the crest of a hill overlooking a little
Irish town, a centre of the pig and potheen industries. The fortress
was, according to tradition, built by BRIAN BORU, renovated by Sir
WALTER RALEIGH (the tobacconist, not the professor) and brought up
to date by OLIVER CROMWELL. It has dungeons (for keeping the butter
cool), loop-holes (through which to pour hot porridge on invaders),
an oubliette (for bores) and a portcullis.
In spite of these conveniences our fortress is past its prime and a
modern burglar would treat it as a joke. It is so weak in its joints
that when the wind blows it shakes like a jelly, and we have to shave
with safety-razors.
In a small villa opposite lives Freddy, our married subaltern, and
Mrs. Freddy.
On a patch of turf up a neighbouring lane Oswald and Co. took up their
residence this summer.
The troopers called him Oswald for some unknown reason, but I doubt if
that was his baptismal name, and I doubt if he was ever baptized.
Oswald was a tall bony grizzled child of the Open.
Years ago he would have been dismissed briefly as a tramp, but we know
better now; we have read our Georgian poets and we know that such folk
do not perambulate the country stealing fowls and firing ricks from
any dislike of settled labour, but because they have heard the call of
far horizons, _belles étoiles_ and great spaces.
The Co. consisted of a woolly donkey which carried Oswald's
portmanteau when he trekked, and a hairy dog which provided him with
company and conversation.
The donkey browsed, unfettered, about the roadside, taking the weather
as it came; but Oswald and the dog, degenerates, sheltered under a
wigwam of saplings and old sacks.
The wigwam being four feet long and Oswald six, he had to telescope
like a tortoise to get fully under cover; sometimes he forgot his feet
and left them outside all night in the dew, but, as he had no boots to
spoil, this didn't matter much.
Not having any business to attend to he lay abed very late. Our
troopers, riding at ease _en route_ to the drill grounds, would toss
their lighted cigarette-ends at the protruding bare feet. A grizzled
head telescoping out of the other end of the wigwam and a husky voice
calling down celestial fury upon them, would signalise a hit.
The Adjutant was for having Oswald moved on; we should be missing
things presently, he warned--saddle-blankets, rifles, horses, perhaps
the portcullis. However, the O.C. would have none of it; he maintained
that this constant menace at our gates kept the sentries on the _qui
vive_ and accustomed them to practically Active Service conditions.
So all the summer the wigwam remained on the turf-patch and the
sentries on the _qui vive_.
How Oswald existed is a mystery--probably on manna, for he toiled not
neither span, and if he stole for a living it was not from us.
He spent his mornings in bed, his afternoons reclining on the bank
behind his residence, puffing at his dudheen and watching our recruits
going through the hoops with the amused contempt that a gentleman of
leisure naturally feels for the working classes.
At the end of September, Freddy, the Benedick, finding himself in the
orderly-room and forgetting what had brought him there, applied for
leave as a matter of habit, and, walking out again, promptly forgot
all about it. Freddy is given that way. Apparently the Orderly Room
was finding time heavy on their hands that morning, for machinery was
set in motion, and in due course the astonished Freddy discovered
himself with permission to go to blazes for seven days and a warrant
to London in his pocket.
He capered whooping home to his villa, told Mrs. Freddy to pack her
toothbrush and come along, and the mail bore them hence. Next day the
weather broke, the sky turned upside down and emptied itself upon us,
the parade ground squelched if you trod on it, the gutters failed to
cope with the rush of business, and the roads ran in spate.
The post-orderly, splashing back to barracks, reported the
disappearance of Oswald and Co.
We determined that they must have been washed out to sea and pictured
them astride the wigwam in a beam-roll off Kinsale, keeping a watchful
eye for U-boats.
We had seven days of unrelieved downpour. On the morning of the
eighth, Freddy and wife returned from leave, and, opening the front
door of the villa--which they discovered they had forgotten to lock in
the delirium of their departure--stepped within. At the same moment,
Oswald, the hairy dog and the woolly donkey heard the call of the
great spaces, and, opening the back door of the villa, stepped without
and departed for haunts unknown.
Freddy in a high state of excitement came over to the Mess and told us
all about it.
He himself had been all for slaying Oswald on the spot, he said, but
Mrs. Freddy wouldn't hear of it.
"She says he hasn't stolen anything," Freddy explained. "She says he
was only _staying_ with us, in a manner of speaking, and was quite
right to take his poor old dog and donkey under cover during that
rotten weather, she says--so that's the end of it."
But it wasn't the end of it; Freddy had reckoned without his other
O.C. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity of training the men under
practically Active Service conditions, scouring the country after real
game--Ho! toot the clarion, belt the drum! Boot and saddle! Hark away!
So now we are out scouring the country for Oswald and Co., one hundred
men and horses, caparisoned like Christmas-trees, soaked to the skin,
fed to the teeth. And Oswald and Co.--where are they? We cannot guess,
and we are very very tired of practically Active Service conditions.
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! Anyone finding three children of the Open answering
to the description of our friends the enemy, and returning them, dead
or alive, to our little fortress, will he handsomely and gratefully
rewarded.