occasions, and so I used to put my signaller under arrest to prevent
him reading the helio-orders. Then I’d go out and leave a message
to be sent an hour after I got clear of the camp, something like
this: “Received important information; start in an hour unless
countermanded.” If I was ordered back, it didn’t much matter. I swore
the C. O.’s watch was wrong, or something, when I came back. The
Tommies enjoyed the fun, and--Oh, yes, there was one Tommy who was the
bard of the detachment. He used to make up verses on everything that
happened.’
‘What sort of verses?’ said Cleever.
‘Lovely verses; and the Tommies used to sing ’em. There was one song
with a chorus, and it said something like this.’ The Infant dropped
into the true barrack-room twang:
‘Theebaw, the Burma king, did a very foolish thing,
When ’e mustered ’ostile forces in ar-rai,
’E little thought that _we_, from far across the sea,
Would send our armies up to Mandalai!’
‘O gorgeous!’ said Cleever. ‘And how magnificently direct! The notion
of a regimental bard is new to me, but of course it must be so.’
‘He was awf’ly popular with the men,’ said The Infant. ‘He had them
all down in rhyme as soon as ever they had done anything. He was a
great bard. He was always ready with an elegy when we picked up a
Boh--that’s a leader of dacoits.’
‘How did you pick him up?’ said Cleever.
‘Oh! shot him if he wouldn’t surrender.’
‘You! Have you shot a man?’
There was a subdued chuckle from all three boys, and it dawned on the
questioner that one experience in life which was denied to himself, and
he weighed the souls of men in a balance, had been shared by three very
young gentlemen of engaging appearance. He turned round on Nevin, who
had climbed to the top of the bookcase, and was sitting cross-legged as
before.
‘And have _you_, too?’
‘’Think so,’ said Nevin sweetly. ‘In the Black Mountain. He was rolling
cliffs on to my half-company, and spoiling our formation. I took a
rifle from a man, and brought him down at the second shot.’
‘Good heavens! And how did you feel afterwards?’
‘Thirsty. I wanted a smoke, too.’
Cleever looked at Boileau--the youngest. Surely his hands were
guiltless of blood.
Boileau shook his head and laughed. ‘Go on, Infant,’ said he.
‘And you too?’ said Cleever.
‘Fancy so. It was a case of cut, cut or be cut, with me; so I
cut--One. I couldn’t do any more, sir.’
Cleever looked as though he would like to ask many questions, but The
Infant swept on, in the full tide of his tale.
‘Well, we were called insubordinate young whelps at last, and strictly
forbidden to take the Tommies out any more without orders. I wasn’t
sorry, because Tommy is such an exacting sort of creature. He wants
to live as though he were in barracks all the time. I was grubbing on
fowls and boiled corn, but my Tommies wanted their pound of fresh meat,
and their half ounce of this, and their two ounces of t’other thing,
and they used to come to me and badger me for plug-tobacco when we were
four days in jungle. I said: “I can get you Burma tobacco, but I don’t
keep a canteen up my sleeve.” They couldn’t see it. They wanted all the
luxuries of the season, confound ’em.’
‘You were alone when you were dealing with these men?’ said Cleever,
watching The Infant’s face under the palm of his hand. He was getting
new ideas, and they seemed to trouble him.
‘Of course, unless you count the mosquitoes. They were nearly as big as
the men. After I had to lie doggo I began to look for something to do;
and I was great pals with a man called Hicksey in the Police, the best
man that ever stepped on earth; a first-class man.’
Cleever nodded applause. He knew how to appreciate enthusiasm.
‘Hicksey and I were as thick as thieves. He had some Burma mounted
police--rummy chaps, armed with sword and snider carbine. They rode
punchy Burma ponies, with string stirrups, red cloth saddles, and red
bell-rope headstalls. Hicksey used to lend me six or eight of them
when I asked him--nippy little devils, keen as mustard. But they told
their wives too much, and all my plans got known, till I learned to
give false marching orders over-night, and take the men to quite a
different village in the morning. Then we used to catch the simple
_daku_ before breakfast, and make him very sick. It’s a ghastly country
on the Hlinedatalone; all bamboo jungle, with paths about four feet
wide winding through it. The _dakus_ knew all the paths, and potted at
us as we came round a corner; but the mounted police knew the paths as
well as the _dakus_, and we used to go stalking ’em in and out. Once
we flushed ’em, the men on the ponies had the advantage of the men on
foot. We held all the country absolutely quiet, for ten miles round, in
about a month. Then we took Boh Na-ghee, Hicksey and I and the Civil
officer. That was a lark!’
‘I think I am beginning to understand a little,’ said Cleever. ‘It was
a pleasure to you to administer and fight?’
‘Rather! There’s nothing nicer than a satisfactory little expedition,
when you find your plans fit together, and your conformation’s
_teek_--correct, you know, and the whole _sub-chiz_--I mean, when
everything works out like formulæ on a blackboard. Hicksey had all the
information about the Boh. He had been burning villages and murdering
people right and left, and cutting up Government convoys and all that.
He was lying doggo in a village about fifteen miles off, waiting to
get a fresh gang together. So we arranged to take thirty mounted
police, and turn him out before he could plunder into our newly-settled
villages. At the last minute, the Civil officer in our part of the
world thought he’d assist at the performance.’
‘Who was he?’ said Nevin.
‘His name was Dennis,’ said The Infant slowly. ‘And we’ll let it stay
so. He’s a better man now than he was then.’
‘But how old was the Civil power?’ said Cleever. ‘The situation is
developing itself.’
‘He was about six-and-twenty, and he was awf’ly clever. He knew a
lot of things, but I don’t think he was quite steady enough for
dacoit-hunting. We started overnight for Boh Na-ghee’s village, and we
got there just before morning, without raising an alarm. Dennis had
turned out armed to his teeth--two revolvers, a carbine, and all sorts
of things. I was talking to Hicksey about posting the men, and Dennis
edged his pony in between us, and said, “What shall I do? What shall I
do? Tell me what to do, you fellows.” We didn’t take much notice; but
his pony tried to bite me in the leg, and I said, “Pull out a bit, old
man, till we’ve settled the attack.” He kept edging in, and fiddling
with his reins and his revolvers, and saying, “Dear me! Dear me! Oh,
dear me! What do you think I’d better do?” The man was in a deadly
funk, and his teeth were chattering.’
‘I sympathise with the Civil power,’ said Cleever. ‘Continue, young
Clive.’
‘The fun of it was, that he was supposed to be our superior officer.
Hicksey took a good look at him, and told him to attach himself to
my party. ’Beastly mean of Hicksey, that. The chap kept on edging in
and bothering, instead of asking for some men and taking up his own
position, till I got angry, and the carbines began popping on the
other side of the village. Then I said, “For God’s sake be quiet, and
sit down where you are! If you see anybody come out of the village,
shoot at him.” I knew he couldn’t hit a hay-rick at a yard. Then I
took my men over the garden wall--over the palisades, y’ know--somehow
or other, and the fun began. Hicksey had found the Boh in bed under a
mosquito-curtain, and he had taken a flying jump on to him.’
‘A flying jump!’ said Cleever. ‘Is _that_ also war?’
‘Yes,’ said The Infant, now thoroughly warmed. ‘Don’t you know how you
take a flying jump on to a fellow’s head at school, when he snores in
the dormitory? The Boh was sleeping in a bedful of swords and pistols,
and Hicksey came down like Zazel through the netting, and the net got
mixed up with the pistols and the Boh and Hicksey, and they all rolled
on the floor together. I laughed till I couldn’t stand, and Hicksey
was cursing me for not helping him; so I left him to fight it out and
went into the village. Our men were slashing about and firing, and so
were the dacoits, and in the thick of the mess, some ass set fire to a
house, and we all had to clear out. I froze on to the nearest _daku_
and ran to the palisade, shoving him in front of me. He wriggled loose,
and bounded over the other side. I came after him; but when I had one
leg one side and one leg the other of the palisade, I saw that the
_daku_ had fallen flat on Dennis’s head. That man had never moved from
where I left him. They rolled on the ground together, and Dennis’s
carbine went off and nearly shot me. The _daku_ picked himself up and
ran, and Dennis buzzed his carbine after him, and it caught him on the
back of his head, and knocked him silly. You never saw anything so
funny in your life. I doubled up on the top of the palisade and hung
there, yelling with laughter. But Dennis began to weep like anything.
“Oh, I’ve killed a man,” he said. “I’ve killed a man, and I shall never
know another peaceful hour in my life! Is he dead? Oh, _is_ he dead?
Good Lord, I’ve killed a man!” I came down and said, “Don’t be a fool;”
but he kept on shouting, “Is he dead?” till I could have kicked him.
The _daku_ was only knocked out of time with the carbine. He came to
after a bit, and I said, “Are you hurt much?” He groaned and said “No.”
His chest was all cut with scrambling over the palisade. “The white
man’s gun didn’t do that,” he said, “I did that, and _I_ knocked the
white man over.” Just like a Burman, wasn’t it? But Dennis wouldn’t be
happy at any price. He said: “Tie up his wounds. He’ll bleed to death.
Oh, he’ll bleed to death!” “Tie ’em up yourself,” I said, “if you’re so
anxious.” “I can’t touch him,” said Dennis, “but here’s my shirt.” He
took off his shirt, and fixed the braces again over his bare shoulders.
I ripped the shirt up, and bandaged the dacoit quite professionally. He
was grinning at Dennis all the time; and Dennis’s haversack was lying
on the ground, bursting full of sandwiches. Greedy hog! I took some,
and offered some to Dennis. “How can I eat?” he said. “How can you ask
me to eat? His very blood is on your hands now, and you’re eating _my_
sandwiches!” “All right,” I said; “I’ll give ’em to the _daku_.” So I
did, and the little chap was quite pleased, and wolfed ’em down like
one o’clock.’
Cleever brought his hand down on the table with a thump that made the
empty glasses dance. ‘That’s Art!’ he said. ‘Flat, flagrant mechanism!
Don’t tell me that happened on the spot!’
The pupils of The Infant’s eyes contracted to two pin-points. ‘I beg
your pardon,’ he said, slowly and stiffly, ‘but I am telling this thing
_as_ it happened.’
Cleever looked at him a moment. ‘My fault entirely,’ said he; ‘I should
have known. Please go on.’
‘Hicksey came out of what was left of the village with his prisoners
and captives, all neatly tied up. Boh Na-ghee was first, and one of the
villagers, as soon as he found the old ruffian helpless, began kicking
him quietly. The Boh stood it as long as he could, and then groaned,
and we saw what was going on. Hicksey tied the villager up, and gave
him a half-a-dozen, good, with a bamboo, to remind him to leave a
prisoner alone. You should have seen the old Boh grin. Oh! but Hicksey
was in a furious rage with everybody. He’d got a wipe over the elbow
that had tickled up his funny-bone, and he was rabid with me for not
having helped him with the Boh and the mosquito-net. I had to explain
that I couldn’t do anything. If you’d seen ’em both tangled up together
on the floor in one kicking cocoon, you’d have laughed for a week.
Hicksey swore that the only decent man of his acquaintance was the Boh,
and all the way to camp Hicksey was talking to the Boh, and the Boh
was complaining about the soreness of his bones. When we got back, and
had had a bath, the Boh wanted to know when he was going to be hanged.
Hicksey said he couldn’t oblige him on the spot, but had to send him
to Rangoon. The Boh went down on his knees, and reeled off a catalogue
of his crimes--he ought to have been hanged seventeen times over, by
his own confession--and implored Hicksey to settle the business out of
hand. “If I’m sent to Rangoon,” said he, “they’ll keep me in jail all
my life, and that is a death every time the sun gets up or the wind
blows.” But we had to send him to Rangoon, and, of course, he was let
off down there, and given penal servitude for life. When I came to
Rangoon I went over the jail--I had helped to fill it, y’ know--and the
old Boh was there, and he spotted me at once. He begged for some opium
first, and I tried to get him some, but that was against the rules.
Then he asked me to have his sentence changed to death, because he was
afraid of being sent to the Andamans. I couldn’t do that either, but I
tried to cheer him, and told him how things were going up-country, and
the last thing he said was--“Give my compliments to the fat white man
who jumped on me. If I’d been awake I’d have killed him.” I wrote that
to Hicksey next mail, and--and that’s all. I’m ’fraid I’ve been gassing
awf’ly, sir.’
Cleever said nothing for a long time. The Infant looked uncomfortable.
He feared that, misled by enthusiasm, he had filled up the novelist’s
time with unprofitable recital of trivial anecdotes.
Then said Cleever, ‘I can’t understand. Why should you have seen and
done all these things before you have cut your wisdom-teeth?’
‘Don’t know,’ said The Infant apologetically. ‘I haven’t seen
much--only Burmese jungle.’
‘And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility,’ said Cleever,
under his breath. ‘You won’t have any sensations left at thirty, if you
go on as you have done. But I want to hear more tales--more tales!’ He
seemed to forget that even subalterns might have engagements of their
own.
‘We’re thinking of dining out somewhere--the lot of us--and going on to
the Empire afterwards,’ said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to
ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously
near to ‘cheek.’ And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden
among boys at large, said nothing on his side.
Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: ‘Won’t you come
too, sir?’
Cleever almost shouted ‘Yes,’ and while he was being helped into his
coat, continued to murmur ‘Good heavens!’ at intervals in a way that
the boys could not understand.
‘I don’t think I’ve been to the Empire in my life,’ said he; ‘but--what
_is_ my life after all? Let us go.’
They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they
had come to see me but had gone over to the better man; which was
humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was
he not the author of _As it was in the Beginning_, and a person in
whose company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later,
he had taken less interest in the performance before him than in their
conversations, and they protested with emphasis that he was ‘as good a
man as they make. ’Knew what a man was driving at almost before he said
it; and yet he’s so damned simple about things any man knows.’ That was
one of many comments.
At midnight they returned, announcing that they were ‘highly
respectable gondoliers,’ and that oysters and stout were what they
chiefly needed. The eminent novelist was still with them, and I think
he was calling them by their shorter names. I am certain that he said
he had been moving in worlds not realised, and that they had shown him
the Empire in a new light.
Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, ‘Thank heaven we have
within the land ten thousand as good as they,’ and when he departed,
asked him what he thought of things generally.
He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though singing
was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure that few lips
would be moved to song if they could find a sufficiency of kissing.
Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in
words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this in the
morning.
MY LORD THE ELEPHANT.
’Less you want your toes trod off you’d better get back at once,
For the bullocks are walkin’ two by two,
The _byles_ are walkin’ two by two,
The bullocks are walkin’ two by two,
An’ the elephants bring the guns!
Ho! Yuss!
Great--big--long--black forty-pounder guns:
Jiggery-jolty to and fro,
Each as big as a launch in tow--
Blind--dumb--broad-breeched beggars o’ batterin’ guns!
_Barrack-room Ballad._
Touching the truth of this tale there need be no doubt at all, for
it was told to me by Mulvaney at the back of the elephant-lines, one
warm evening when we were taking the dogs out for exercise. The twelve
Government elephants rocked at their pickets outside the big mud-walled
stables (one arch, as wide as a bridge-arch, to each restless beast),
and the _mahouts_ were preparing the evening meal. Now and again some
impatient youngster would smell the cooking flour-cakes and squeal; and
the naked little children of the elephant-lines would strut down the
row shouting and commanding silence, or, reaching up, would slap at the
eager trunks. Then the elephants feigned to be deeply interested in
pouring dust upon their heads, but, so soon as the children passed, the
rocking, fidgeting, and muttering broke out again.
The sunset was dying, and the elephants heaved and swayed dead black
against the one sheet of rose-red low down in the dusty gray sky. It
was at the beginning of the hot weather, just after the troops had
changed into their white clothes, so Mulvaney and Ortheris looked
like ghosts walking through the dusk. Learoyd had gone off to another
barrack to buy sulphur ointment for his last dog under suspicion of
mange, and with delicacy had put his kennel into quarantine at the back
of the furnace where they cremate the anthrax cases.
‘_You_ wouldn’t like mange, little woman?’ said Ortheris, turning
my terrier over on her fat white back with his foot. ‘You’re no end
bloomin’ partic’lar, you are. ’Oo wouldn’t take no notice o’ me t’other
day ’cause she was goin’ ’ome all alone in ’er dorg-cart, eh? Settin’
on the box-seat like a bloomin’ little tart, you was, Vicy. Now you run
along an’ make them ’uttees ’oller. Sick ’em, Vicy, loo!’
Elephants loathe little dogs. Vixen barked herself down the pickets,
and in a minute all the elephants were kicking and squealing and
clucking together.
‘Oh, you soldier-men,’ said a mahout angrily, ‘call off your she-dog.
She is frightening our elephant-folk.’
‘Rummy beggars!’ said Ortheris meditatively. ‘’Call ’em people, same as
if they was. An’ they are too. Not so bloomin’ rummy when you come to
think of it, neither.’
Vixen returned yapping to show that she could do it again if she liked,
and established herself between Ortheris’s knees, smiling a large smile
at his lawful dogs who dared not fly at her.
‘’Seed the battery this mornin’?’ said Ortheris. He meant the
newly-arrived elephant-battery; otherwise he would have said simply
‘guns.’ Three elephants harnessed tandem go to each gun, and those
who have not seen the big forty-pounders of position trundling along
in the wake of their gigantic team have yet something to behold. The
lead-elephant had behaved very badly on parade; had been cut loose,
sent back to the lines in disgrace, and was at that hour squealing and
lashing out with his trunk at the end of the line; a picture of blind,
bound, bad temper. His mahout, standing clear of the flail-like blows,
was trying to soothe him.
‘That’s the beggar that cut up on p’rade. ’E’s _must_,’ said Ortheris
pointing. ‘There’ll be murder in the lines soon, and then, per’aps,
’e’ll get loose an’ we’ll ’ave to be turned out to shoot ’im, same as
when one o’ they native king’s elephants _musted_ last June. ’Ope ’e
will.’
‘_Must_ be sugared!’ said Mulvaney contemptuously from his
resting-place on a pile of dried bedding. ‘He’s no more than in a
powerful bad timper wid bein’ put upon. I’d lay my kit he’s new to the
gun-team, an’ by natur’ he hates haulin’. Ask the mahout, sorr.’
I hailed the old white-bearded mahout who was lavishing pet words on
his sulky red-eyed charge.
‘He is not _musth_,’ the man replied indignantly; ‘only his honour has
been touched. Is an elephant an ox or a mule that he should tug at
a trace? His strength is in his head--Peace, peace, my Lord! It was
not _my_ fault that they yoked thee this morning!--Only a low-caste
elephant will pull a gun, and _he_ is a Kumeria of the Doon. It cost
a year and the life of a man to break him to burden. They of the
Artillery put him in the gun-team because one of their base-born brutes
had gone lame. No wonder that he was, and is wrath.’
‘Rummy! Most unusual rum,’ said Ortheris. ‘Gawd, ’e is in a temper,
though! S’pose ’e got loose!’
Mulvaney began to speak but checked himself, and I asked the mahout
what would happen if the heel-chains broke.
‘God knows, who made elephants,’ he said simply. ‘In his now state
peradventure he might kill you three, or run at large till his rage
abated. He would not kill me, except he were _musth_. _Then_ would he
kill me before any one in the world, because he loves me. Such is the
custom of the elephant-folk; and the custom of us mahout-people matches
it for foolishness. We trust each our own elephant, till our own
elephant kills us. Other castes trust women, but we the elephant-folk.
I have seen men deal with enraged elephants and live; but never was
man yet born of woman that met my lord the elephant in his _musth_ and
lived to tell of the taming. They are enough bold who meet him angry.’
I translated. Then said Terence: ‘Ask the heathen if he iver saw a man
tame an elephint,--anyways--a white man.’
‘Once,’ said the mahout, ‘I saw a man astride of such a beast in the
town of Cawnpore; a bare-headed man, a white man, beating it upon the
head with a gun. It was said he was possessed of devils or drunk.’
‘Is ut like, think you, he’d be doin’ it sober?’ said Mulvaney after
interpretation, and the chained elephant roared.
‘There’s only one man top of earth that would be the partic’lar kind
o’ sorter bloomin’ fool to do it!’ said Ortheris. ‘When was that,
Mulvaney?’
‘As the naygur sez, in Cawnpore; an’ I was that fool--in the days av my
youth. But it came about as naturil as wan thing leads to another,--me
an’ the elephint, and the elephint and me; an’ the fight betune us was
the most naturil av all.’
‘That’s just wot it would ha’ been,’ said Ortheris. ‘Only you must ha’
been more than usual full. You done one queer trick with an elephant
that I know of, why didn’t you never tell us the other one?’
‘Bekase, onless you had heard the naygur here say what he has said
spontaneous, you’d ha’ called me for a liar, Stanley, my son, an’ it
would ha’ bin my duty an’ my delight to give you the father an’ mother
av a beltin’! There’s only wan fault about you, little man, an’ that’s
thinking you know all there is in the world, an’ a little more. ’Tis a
fault that has made away wid a few orf’cers I’ve served undher, not to
spake av ivry man but two that I iver thried to make into a privit.’
‘Ho!’ said Ortheris with ruffled plumes, ‘an’ ’oo was your two bloomin’
little Sir Garnets, eh?’
‘Wan was mesilf,’ said Mulvaney with a grin that darkness could not
hide; ‘an’--seein’ that he’s not here there’s no harm speakin’ av
him--t’other was Jock.’
‘Jock’s no more than a ’ayrick in trousies. ’E be’aves _like_ one; an’
’e can’t _’it_ one at a ’undred; ’e was born _on_ one, an’ s’welp
me ’e’ll die _under_ one for not bein’ able to say wot ’e wants in a
Christian lingo,’ said Ortheris, jumping up from the piled fodder only
to be swept off his legs. Vixen leaped upon his stomach, and the other
dogs followed and sat down there.
‘I know what Jock is like,’ I said. ‘I want to hear about the elephant,
though.’
‘It’s another o’ Mulvaney’s bloomin’ panoramas,’ said Ortheris, gasping
under the dogs. ‘’Im an’ Jock for the ’ole bloomin’ British Army!
You’ll be sayin’ you won Waterloo next,--you an’ Jock. Garn!’
Neither of us thought it worth while to notice Ortheris. The big
gun-elephant threshed and muttered in his chains, giving tongue now
and again in crashing trumpet-peals, and to this accompaniment Terence
went on: ‘In the beginnin’,’ said he, ‘me bein’ what I was, there was a
misunderstandin’ wid my sergeant that was then. He put his spite on me
for various reasons,’--
The deep-set eyes twinkled above the glow of the pipe-bowl, and
Ortheris grunted, ‘Another petticoat!’