Seldom are we lucky enough to meet in real life a character so strong
and vivid, so full of subtle characteristics, that his appearance in a
novel would make the author's name. Such a character was Hawk.
When you consider, you find that many an author of note has made a
lasting reputation by evolving some such character; and in most cases
this character has been “founded on fact.” For example, Stevenson's
“Long John Silver,” Kipling's “Kim,” and Rider Haggard's “Alan
Quatermain.”
Had Kipling met Hawk he would have worked him into a book of Indian
soldier life; for Hawk was full of jungle adventures and stories of the
Indian Survey Department and the Khyber Pass; while his descriptions of
Kashmir and Secunderabad, with its fakirs and jugglers, monkey temples
and sacred bulls, were superb.
On the other hand, Haggard would have placed him “somewhere in Africa,”
a strong, hard man trekking across the African veldt he knew so well;
for Hawk had been in the Boer War.
Little did I realise when I met him on the barrack-square at Limerick
how fate would throw us together upon the scorching sands and rocky
ridges of Gallipoli, nor could either of us foresee the hairbreadth
escapes and queer corners in which we found ourselves at Suvla Bay and
on the Serbian frontier.
I spotted him in the crowd as the only man on parade with a strong,
clear-cut face. I noted his drooping moustache, and especially his keen
grey eyes, which glittered and looked through and through. Somewhere, I
told myself, there was good blood at the back of beyond on his line of
descent. I was right, for, as he told me later, when I had come to know
him as a trusty friend, he came from a Norseman stock. The jaw was too
square and heavy, but the high-built chiselled nose and the deep-set
clear grey eyes were a “throw-back” on the old Viking trail. Although
dressed in ragged civilian clothes he looked a huge, full-grown,
muscular man; active and well developed, with the arms of a miner and
the chest of a gorilla. On one arm I remember he had a heart with a
dagger through it tattooed in blue and red.
I heard of him first as one to be shunned and feared. For it was said
that “when in drink” he would pick up the barrack-room fender with one
hand and hurl it across the room. I was told that he was a master of the
art of swearing--that he could pour forth a continual flow of oaths for
a full five minutes without repeating one single “cuss.”
My interest was immediately aroused. I smelt adventure, and I was on the
adventure trail. Hawk was not in my barrack-room, and therefore I knew
but little of him while in the old country. I heard that he had been
galloper-dispatch-rider to Lord Kitchener in South Africa, and I tried
to get him to talk about it. As an “artist's model,” for a canvas to
be called “The Buccaneer,” Hawk was perfect. I never saw a man so
splendidly developed.
And Hawk was fifty years old! You would take him for thirty-nine or so.
But “drink and the devil had done for the rest”--Hawk himself
acknowledged it. His vices were the vices of a strong man, and when he
was drunk he was “the very devil.”
He was “the old soldier,” and knew all the ins and outs of army life.
I quickly became entangled in the interest of unravelling his complex
nature. On the one hand he was said to be a desperado and double-dyed
liar. On the other hand, if he respected you, he would always tell you
the naked truth, and would never “let you down.” He knew drink was his
ruin, but he could not and would not stop it. Yet his advice to me
was always good. Indeed, although he had the reputation of a bold, bad
blackguard, he never led any one else on the “wrong trail,” and his
advice to young soldiers in the barrack-rooms was wonderfully clear and
useful.
If he respected you, you could trust your life with him. If he didn't,
you could “look up” for trouble. He was honest and “square”--if he liked
you--but he could make things disappear by “sleight of hand” in a manner
worthy of a West End conjurer.
He was a miner, and had a sound knowledge of mining and practical
geology which many a science-master might have been proud of. He had the
eyes of a trained observer, and I afterwards discovered he was a crack
shot.
Some months later, when the A.S.C. ambulance drivers were exercising
their horses, he showed himself a good rough-rider, and I recalled
his “galloper” days. And again at Lemnos and Suvla he was a splendid
swimmer. He was an all-round man. Unlike the other men in barracks--the
shop assistants and clerks--Hawk never missed noticing small things, and
it was this which first drew my attention to him.
I remember one night hearing a woman's voice wailing a queer Hindoo
chant. It came from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I discovered it
was Hawk sitting on his trestle bed cross-legged, with a bit of sacking
and ashes on his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian woman for
her dead husband.
Hawk knew all the rites and ceremonies of the various Hindoo castes, and
could act the part of a fakir or a bazaar-wullah with wonderful realism.
By turns Hawk was a heavy drinker and a clear-brained man of action,
calm in danger.
In those early days of my “military career” I looked upon him only as an
author looks upon an interesting character.
Months afterwards, on the death-swept peninsula, Hawk and I became fast
friends. The “bad man” of the ambulance became the most useful, most
faithful, in my section. We went everywhere together--like “Horace and
Holly” of Rider Haggard fame: he the great, strong man, and I the young
artist scout.
If Hawk was out of camp, you could bet I was also--and vice-versa.
Of Hawk more anon.