yet something to learn, thy devils, for they stand one behind the
other, so that two shots would kill the three.’
‘Ah, but they know they will be thy servants as soon as I am a
forest-guard.’
‘Guard or no guard, Mowgli, thou hast done a great shame to Abdul
Gafur. Thou hast dishonoured his house and blackened his face.’
‘For that, it was blackened when he took thy money, and made blacker
still when he whispered in thy ear a little while since to kill a
naked man. I myself will talk to Abdul Gafur, for I am a man of the
Government service, with a pension. He shall make the marriage by
whatsoever rite he will, or he shall run once more. I will speak to him
in the dawn. For the rest, the Sahib has his house and this is mine. It
is time to sleep again, Sahib.’
Mowgli turned on his heel and disappeared into the grass, leaving
Gisborne alone. The hint of the wood-god was not to be mistaken; and
Gisborne went back to the bungalow, where Abdul Gafur, torn by rage and
fear, was raving in the verandah.
‘Peace, peace,’ said Gisborne, shaking him, for he looked as though
he were going to have a fit. ‘Muller Sahib has made the man a
forest-guard, and as thou knowest there is a pension at the end of that
business, and it is Government service.’
‘He is an outcaste--a _mlech_--a dog among dogs; an eater of carrion!
What pension can pay for that?’
‘Allah knows; and thou hast heard that the mischief is done. Wouldst
thou blaze it to all the other servants? Make the _shadi_ swiftly,
and the girl will make him a Mussalman. He is very comely. Canst thou
wonder that after thy beatings she went to him?’
‘Did he say that he would chase me with his beasts?’
‘So it seemed to me. If he be a wizard, he is at least a very strong
one.’
Abdul Gafur thought awhile, and then broke down and howled, forgetting
that he was a Mussalman:--
‘Thou art a Brahmin. I am thy cow. Make thou the matter plain, and save
my honour if it can be saved!’
A second time then Gisborne plunged into the _rukh_ and called Mowgli.
The answer came from high overhead, and in no submissive tones.
‘Speak softly,’ said Gisborne, looking up. ‘There is yet time to strip
thee of thy place and hunt thee with thy wolves. The girl must go back
to her father’s house to-night. To-morrow there will be the _shadi_,
by the Mussalman law, and then thou canst take her away. Bring her to
Abdul Gafur.’
‘I hear.’ There was a murmur of two voices conferring among the leaves.
‘Also, we will obey--for the last time.’
* * * * *
A year later Muller and Gisborne were riding through the _rukh_
together, talking of their business. They came out among the rocks near
the Kanye stream; Muller riding a little in advance. Under the shade
of a thorn thicket sprawled a naked brown baby, and from the brake
immediately behind him peered the head of a gray wolf. Gisborne had
just time to strike up Muller’s rifle, and the bullet tore spattering
through the branches above.
‘Are you mad?’ thundered Muller. ‘Look!’
‘I see,’ said Gisborne quietly. ‘The mother’s somewhere near. You’ll
wake the whole pack, by Jove!’
The bushes parted once more, and a woman unveiled snatched up the child.
‘Who fired, Sahib?’ she cried to Gisborne.
‘This Sahib. He had not remembered thy man’s people.’
‘Not remembered? But indeed it may be so, for we who live with them
forget that they are strangers at all. Mowgli is down the stream
catching fish. Does the Sahib wish to see him? Come out, ye lacking
manners. Come out of the bushes, and make your service to the Sahibs.’
Muller’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. He swung himself off the
plunging mare and dismounted, while the jungle gave up four wolves who
fawned round Gisborne. The mother stood nursing her child and spurning
them aside as they brushed against her bare feet.
‘You were quite right about Mowgli,’ said Gisborne. ‘I meant to have
told you, but I’ve got so used to these fellows in the last twelve
months that it slipped my mind.’
‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ said Muller. ‘It’s nothing. Gott in Himmel! “Und
I work miracles--und dey come off too!”’
‘BRUGGLESMITH.’
This day the ship went down, and all hands was drowned but me.
CLARK RUSSELL.
The first officer of the _Breslau_ asked me to dinner on board,
before the ship went round to Southampton to pick up her passengers.
The _Breslau_ was lying below London Bridge, her fore-hatches opened
for cargo, and her deck littered with nuts and bolts, and screws and
chains. The Black M‘Phee had been putting some finishing touches to his
adored engines, and M‘Phee is the most tidy of chief engineers. If the
leg of a cockroach gets into one of his slide-valves the whole ship
knows it, and half the ship has to clean up the mess.
After dinner, which the first officer, M‘Phee, and I ate in one little
corner of the empty saloon, M‘Phee returned to the engine-room to
attend to some brass-fitters. The first officer and I smoked on the
bridge and watched the lights of the crowded shipping till it was time
for me to go home. It seemed, in the pauses of our conversation, that I
could catch an echo of fearful bellowings from the engine-room, and the
voice of M‘Phee singing of home and the domestic affections.
‘M‘Phee has a friend aboard to-night--a man who was a boiler-maker at
Greenock when M‘Phee was a ’prentice,’ said the first officer. ‘I
didn’t ask him to dine with us because----’
‘I see--I mean I hear,’ I answered. We talked on for a few minutes
longer, and M‘Phee came up from the engine-room with his friend on his
arm.
‘Let me present ye to this gentleman,’ said M‘Phee. ‘He’s a great
admirer o’ your wor-rks. He has just hearrd o’ them.’
M‘Phee could never pay a compliment prettily. The friend sat down
suddenly on a bollard, saying that M‘Phee had under-stated the truth.
Personally, he on the bollard considered that Shakespeare was trembling
in the balance solely on my account, and if the first officer wished
to dispute this he was prepared to fight the first officer then or
later, ‘as per invoice.’ ‘Man, if ye only knew,’ said he, wagging his
head, ‘the times I’ve lain in my lonely bunk reading _Vanity Fair_ an’
sobbin’--ay, weepin’ bitterly, at the pure fascination of it.’
He shed a few tears for guarantee of good faith, and the first officer
laughed. M‘Phee resettled the man’s hat, that had tilted over one
eyebrow.
‘That’ll wear off in a little. It’s just the smell o’ the engine-room,’
said M‘Phee.
‘I think I’ll wear off myself,’ I whispered to the first officer. ‘Is
the dinghy ready?’
The dinghy was at the gangway, which was down, and the first officer
went forward to find a man to row me to the bank. He returned with a
very sleepy Lascar, who knew the river.
‘Are you going?’ said the man on the bollard. ‘Well, I’ll just see
ye home. M‘Phee, help me down the gangway. It has as many ends as a
cat-o’-nine-tails, and--losh!--how innumerable are the dinghys!’
‘You’d better let him come with you,’ said the first officer. ‘Muhammad
Jan, put the drunk sahib ashore first. Take the sober sahib to the next
stairs.’
I had my foot in the bow of the dinghy, the tide was making up-stream,
when the man cannoned against me, pushed the Lascar back on the
gangway, cast loose the painter, and the dinghy began to saw,
stern-first, along the side of the _Breslau_.
‘We’ll have no exter-r-raneous races here,’ said the man. ‘I’ve known
the Thames for thirty years----’
There was no time for argument. We were drifting under the _Breslau’s_
stern, and I knew that her propeller was half out of water, in the
middle of an inky tangle of buoys, low-lying hawsers, and moored ships,
with the tide ripping through them.
‘What shall I do?’ I shouted to the first officer.
‘Find the Police Boat as soon as you can, and for God’s sake get some
way on the dinghy. Steer with the oar. The rudder’s unshipped and----’
I could hear no more. The dinghy slid away, bumped on a mooring-buoy,
swung round and jigged off irresponsibly as I hunted for the oar. The
man sat in the bow, his chin on his hands, smiling.
‘Row, you ruffian,’ I said. ‘Get her out into the middle of the
river----’
‘It’s a preevilege to gaze on the face o’ genius. Let me go on
thinking. There was “Little Bar-rnaby Dorrit” and “The Mystery o’ the
Bleak Druid.” I sailed in a ship called the _Druid_ once--badly found
she was. It all comes back to me so sweet. It all comes back to me.
Man, ye steer like a genius.’
We bumped round another mooring-buoy and drifted on to the bows of a
Norwegian timber-ship--I could see the great square holes on either
side of the cutwater. Then we dived into a string of barges and scraped
through them by the paint on our planks. It was a consolation to think
that the dinghy was being reduced in value at every bump, but the
question before me was when she would begin to leak. The man looked
ahead into the pitchy darkness and whistled.
‘Yon’s a Castle liner; her ties are black. She’s swinging across
stream. Keep her port light on our starboard bow, and go large,’ he
said.
‘How can I keep anything anywhere? You’re sitting on the oars. Row,
man, if you don’t want to drown.’
He took the sculls, saying sweetly: ‘No harm comes to a drunken man.
That’s why I wished to come wi’ _you_. Man, ye’re not fit to be alone
in a boat.’
He flirted the dinghy round the big ship, and for the next ten minutes
I enjoyed--positively enjoyed--an exhibition of first-class steering.
We threaded in and out of the mercantile marine of Great Britain as a
ferret threads a rabbit-hole, and we, he that is to say, sang joyously
to each ship till men looked over bulwarks and cursed us. When we came
to some moderately clear water he gave the sculls to me, and said:
‘If ye could row as ye write, I’d respect you for all your vices. Yon’s
London Bridge. Take her through.’
We shot under the dark ringing arch, and came out the other side,
going up swiftly with the tide chanting songs of victory. Except that
I wished to get home before morning, I was growing reconciled to the
jaunt. There were one or two stars visible, and by keeping into the
centre of the stream, we could not come to any very serious danger.
The man began to sing loudly:--
‘The smartest clipper that you could find,
Yo ho! Oho!
Was the _Marg’ret Evans_ of the Black X Line,
A hundred years ago!
Incorporate that in your next book, which is marvellous.’ Here he stood
up in the bows and declaimed:--
‘Ye Towers o’ Julia, London’s lasting wrong,
By mony a foul an’ midnight murder fed--
Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song--
And yon’s the grave as little as my bed.
I’m a poet mysel an’ I can feel for others.’
‘Sit down,’ said I. ‘You’ll have the boat over.’
‘Ay, I’m settin’--settin’ like a hen.’ He plumped down heavily, and
added, shaking his forefinger at me:--
‘Lear-rn, prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom’s root.
How did a man o’ your parts come to be so drunk? Oh, it’s a sinfu’
thing, an’ ye may thank God on all fours that I’m with you. What’s yon
boat?’
We had drifted far up the river, and a boat manned by four men, who
rowed with a soothingly regular stroke, was overhauling us.
‘It’s the River Police,’ I said, at the top of my voice.
‘Oh ay! If your sin do not find you out on dry land, it will find you
out in the deep waters. Is it like they’ll give us drink?’
‘Exceedingly likely. I’ll hail them.’ I hailed.
‘What are you doing?’ was the answer from the boat.
‘It’s the _Breslau’s_ dinghy broken loose,’ I began.
‘It’s a vara drunken man broke loose,’ roared my companion, ‘and I’m
taking him home by water, for he cannot stand on dry land.’ Here he
shouted my name twenty times running, and I could feel the blushes
racing over my body three deep.
‘You’ll be locked up in ten minutes, my friend,’ I said, ‘and I don’t
think you’ll be bailed either.’
‘H’sh, man, h’sh. They think I’m your uncle.’ He caught up a scull and
began splashing the boat as it ranged alongside.
‘You’re a nice pair,’ said the sergeant at last.
‘I am anything you please so long as you take this fiend away. Tow us
in to the nearest station, and I’ll make it worth your while,’ I said.
‘Corruption--corruption,’ roared the man, throwing himself flat in the
bottom of the boat. ‘Like unto the worms that perish, so is man! And
all for the sake of a filthy half-crown to be arrested by the river
police at my time o’ life!’
‘For pity’s sake, row,’ I shouted. ‘The man’s drunk.’
They rowed us to a flat--a fire or a police-station; it was too dark to
see which. I could feel that they regarded me in no better light than
the other man. I could not explain, for I was holding the far end of
the painter, and feeling cut off from all respectability.
We got out of the boat, my companion falling flat on his wicked face,
and the sergeant asked us rude questions about the dinghy. My companion
washed his hands of all responsibility. He was an old man; he had been
lured into a stolen boat by a young man--probably a thief--he had saved
the boat from wreck (this was absolutely true), and now he expected
salvage in the shape of hot whisky and water. The sergeant turned to
me. Fortunately I was in evening dress, and had a card to show. More
fortunately still, the sergeant happened to know the _Breslau_ and
M‘Phee. He promised to send the dinghy down next tide, and was not
beyond accepting my thanks, in silver.
As this was satisfactorily arranged, I heard my companion say angrily
to a constable, ‘If you will not give it to a dry man, ye maun to a
drookit.’ Then he walked deliberately off the edge of the flat into the
water. Somebody stuck a boat-hook into his clothes and hauled him out.
‘Now,’ said he triumphantly, ‘under the rules o’ the R-royal Humane
Society, ye must give me hot whisky and water. Do not put temptation
before the laddie. He’s my nephew an’ a good boy i’ the main. Tho’ why
he should masquerade as Mister Thackeray on the high seas is beyond my
comprehension. Oh the vanity o’ youth! M‘Phee told me ye were as vain
as a peacock. I mind that now.’
‘You had better give him something to drink and wrap him up for the
night. I don’t know who he is,’ I said desperately, and when the man
had settled down to a drink supplied on my representations, I escaped
and found that I was near a bridge.
I went towards Fleet Street, intending to take a hansom and go home.
After the first feeling of indignation died out, the absurdity of the
experience struck me fully and I began to laugh aloud in the empty
streets, to the scandal of a policeman. The more I reflected the
more heartily I laughed, till my mirth was quenched by a hand on my
shoulder, and turning I saw him who should have been in bed at the
river police-station. He was damp all over; his wet silk hat rode far
at the back of his head, and round his shoulders hung a striped yellow
blanket, evidently the property of the State.
‘The crackling o’ thorns under a pot,’ said he, solemnly. ‘Laddie, have
ye not thought o’ the sin of idle laughter? My heart misgave me that
ever ye’d get home, an’ I’ve just come to convoy you a piece. They’re
sore uneducate down there by the river. They wouldna listen to me when
I talked o’ your worrks, so I e’en left them. Cast the blanket about
you, laddie. It’s fine and cold.’
I groaned inwardly. Providence evidently intended that I should frolic
through eternity with M‘Phee’s infamous acquaintance.
‘Go away,’ I said; ‘go home, or I’ll give you in charge!’
He leaned against a lamp-post and laid his finger to his nose--his
dishonourable, carnelian neb.
‘I mind now that M‘Phee told me ye were vainer than a peacock, an’
your castin’ me adrift in a boat shows ye were drunker than an owl. A
good name is as a savoury bakemeat. I ha’ nane.’ He smacked his lips
joyously.
‘Well, I know that,’ I said.
‘Ay, but _ye_ have. I mind now that M‘Phee spoke o’ your reputation
that you’re so proud of. Laddie, if ye gie me in charge--I’m old enough
to be your father--I’ll bla-ast your reputation as far as my voice
can carry; for I’ll call you by name till the cows come hame. It’s no
jestin’ matter to be a friend to me. If you discard my friendship, ye
must come to Vine Street wi’ me for stealin’ the _Breslau’s_ dinghy.’
Then he sang at the top of his voice:--
‘In the morrnin’
I’ the morrnin’ by the black van--
We’ll toodle up to Vine Street i’ the morrnin’!
Yon’s my own composeetion, but _I’m_ not vain. We’ll go home together,
laddie, we’ll go home together.’ And he sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to show
that he meant it.
A policeman suggested that we had better move on, and we moved on to
the Law Courts near St. Clement Danes. My companion was quieter now,
and his speech, which up till that time had been distinct--it was a
marvel to hear how in his condition he could talk dialect--began to
slur and slide and slummock. He bade me observe the architecture of
the Law Courts and linked himself lovingly to my arm. Then he saw a
policeman, and before I could shake him off, whirled me up to the man
singing:--
‘Every member of the Force,
Has a watch and chain of course--’
and threw his dripping blanket over the helmet of the Law. In any
other country in the world we should have run an exceedingly good
chance of being shot, or dirked, or clubbed--and clubbing is worse
than being shot. But I reflected in that wet-cloth tangle that this
was England, where the police are made to be banged and battered and
bruised, that they may the better endure a police-court reprimand next
morning. We three fell in a festoon, he calling on me by name--that was
the tingling horror of it--to sit on the policeman’s head and cut the
traces. I wriggled clear first and shouted to the policeman to kill the
blanket-man.
Naturally the policeman answered: ‘You’re as bad as ’im,’ and chased
me, as the smaller man, round St. Clement Danes into Holywell Street,
where I ran into the arms of another policeman. That flight could not
have lasted more than a minute and a half, but it seemed to me as
long and as wearisome as the foot-bound flight of a nightmare. I had
leisure to think of a thousand things as I ran; but most I thought of
the great and god-like man who held a sitting in the north gallery of
St. Clement Danes a hundred years ago. I know that he at least would
have felt for me. So occupied was I with these considerations, that
when the other policeman hugged me to his bosom and said: ‘What are you
tryin’ to do?’ I answered with exquisite politeness: ‘Sir, let us take
a walk down Fleet Street.’ ‘Bow Street’ll do _your_ business, I think,’
was the answer, and for a moment I thought so too, till it seemed I
might scuffle out of it. Then there was a hideous scene, and it was
complicated by my companion hurrying up with the blanket and telling
me--always by name--that he would rescue me or perish in the attempt.
‘Knock him down,’ I pleaded. ‘Club his head open first and I’ll explain
afterwards.’
The first policeman, the one who had been outraged, drew his truncheon
and cut at my companion’s head. The high silk hat crackled and the
owner dropped like a log.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ I said. ‘You’ve probably killed him.’
Holywell Street never goes to bed. A small crowd gathered on the spot,
and some one of German extraction shrieked: ‘You haf killed the man.’
Another cried: ‘Take his bloomin’ number. I saw him strook cruel ’ard.
Yah!’
Now the street was empty when the trouble began, and, saving the two
policemen and myself, no one had seen the blow. I said, therefore, in a
loud and cheerful voice:--
‘The man’s a friend of mine. He’s fallen down in a fit. Bobby, will you
bring the ambulance?’ Under my breath I added: ‘It’s five shillings
apiece, and the man didn’t hit you.’
‘No, but ’im and you tried to scrob me,’ said the policeman.
This was not a thing to argue about.
‘Is Dempsey on duty at Charing Cross?’ I said.
‘Wot d’you know of Dempsey, you bloomin’ garrotter?’ said the policeman.
‘If Dempsey’s there, he knows me. Get the ambulance quick, and I’ll
take him to Charing Cross.’
‘You’re coming to Bow Street, _you_ are,’ said the policeman crisply.
‘The man’s dying’--he lay groaning on the pavement--‘get the
ambulance,’ said I.
There is an ambulance at the back of St. Clement Danes, whereof I know
more than most people. The policeman seemed to possess the keys of the
box in which it lived. We trundled it out--it was a three-wheeled
affair with a hood--and we bundled the body of the man upon it.
A body in an ambulance looks very extremely dead. The policemen
softened at the sight of the stiff boot-heels.
‘Now then,’ said they, and I fancied that they still meant Bow Street.
‘Let me see Dempsey for three minutes if he’s on duty,’ I answered.
‘Very good. He is.’
Then I knew that all would be well, but before we started I put my
head under the ambulance-hood to see if the man were alive. A guarded
whisper came to my ear.
‘Laddie, you maun pay me for a new hat. They’ve broken it. Dinna desert
me now, laddie. I’m o’er old to go to Bow Street in my gray hairs for a
fault of yours. Laddie, dinna desert me.’
‘You’ll be lucky if you get off under seven years,’ I said to the
policeman.
Moved by a very lively fear of having exceeded their duty, the two
policemen left their beats, and the mournful procession wound down the
empty Strand. Once west of the Adelphi, I knew I should be in my own
country; and the policemen had reason to know that too, for as I was
pacing proudly a little ahead of the catafalque, another policeman said
‘Good-night, sir,’ to me as he passed.
‘Now, you see,’ I said, with condescension. ‘I wouldn’t be in your
shoes for something. On my word, I’ve a great mind to march you two
down to Scotland Yard.’
‘If the gentleman’s a friend o’ yours, per’aps--’ said the policeman
who had given the blow, and was reflecting on the consequences.
‘Perhaps you’d like me to go away and say nothing about it,’ I said.
Then there hove into view the figure of Constable Dempsey, glittering
in his oil-skins, and an angel of light to me. I had known him for
months; he was an esteemed friend of mine, and we used to talk together
in the early mornings. The fool seeks to ingratiate himself with
Princes and Ministers; and courts and cabinets leave him to--perish
miserably. The wise man makes allies among the police and the hansoms,
so that his friends spring up from the round-house and the cab-rank,
and even his offences become triumphal processions.
‘Dempsey,’ said I, ‘have the police been on strike again? They’ve put
some things on duty at St. Clement Danes that want to take me to Bow
Street for garrotting.’
‘Lor, sir!’ said Dempsey indignantly.
‘Tell them I’m not a garrotter, nor a thief. It’s simply disgraceful
that a gentleman can’t walk down the Strand without being man-handled
by these roughs. One of them has done his best to kill my friend here;
and I’m taking the body home. Speak for me, Dempsey.’
There was no time for the much misrepresented policemen to say a word.
Dempsey spoke to them in language calculated to frighten. They tried to
explain, but Dempsey launched into a glowing catalogue of my virtues,
as noted by gas in the early hours. ‘And,’ he concluded vehemently, ‘’e
writes for the papers, too. How’d _you_ like to be written for in the
papers--in verse, too, which is ’is ’abit. You leave ’im alone. ’Im
an’ me have been friends for months.’
‘What about the dead man?’ said the policeman who had not given the
blow.
‘I’ll tell you,’ I said relenting, and to the three policemen under
the lights of Charing Cross assembled, I recounted faithfully and at
length the adventures of the night, beginning with the _Breslau_ and
ending at St. Clement Danes. I described the sinful old ruffian in the
ambulance in words that made him wriggle where he lay, and never since
the Metropolitan Police was founded did three policemen laugh as those
three laughed. The Strand echoed to it, and the unclean birds of the
night stood and wondered.
‘Oh lor’!’ said Dempsey, wiping his eyes, ‘I’d ha’ given anything to
see that old man runnin’ about with a wet blanket an’ all! Excuse me,
sir, but you ought to get took up every night for to make us ’appy.’ He
dissolved into fresh guffaws.
There was a clinking of silver and the two policemen of St. Clement
Danes hurried back to their beats, laughing as they ran.
‘Take ’im to Charing Cross,’ said Dempsey between shouts. ‘They’ll send
the ambulance back in the morning.’
‘Laddie, ye’ve misca’ed me shameful names, but I’m o’er old to go to a
hospital. Dinna desert me, laddie. Tak me home to my wife,’ said the
voice in the ambulance.
‘He’s none so bad. ’Is wife’ll comb ’is hair for ’im proper,’ said
Dempsey, who was a married man.
‘Where d’you live?’ I demanded.
‘Brugglesmith,’ was the answer.