Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer them, but what he had was
given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a
little warmed--the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive--he
explained quite casually over the opening of a bottle that it would not
be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the
highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave
fashion.
‘When my decks are cut up’ (there was one groove across four planks),
‘and my plates buckled’ (there were five lead patches on three plates),
‘and I meet such a boat as the _Guadala_, and a mere accident saves me
from being blown out of the water----’
‘Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost,’ said the
captain of the _Guadala_.
‘Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was
saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but
go away--if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the
sea-voyage. It is very sad.’ Judson had compromised on what he knew of
the French tongue as a medium of communication.
‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, waving a generous hand. ‘Judson of
my soul, the coal is yours and you shall be repaired--yes, repaired
all over, of your battle’s wounds. You shall go with all the honours
of all the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall beat. Your,
ah!--jolly-boys shall spoke their bayonets! Is it not so, captain?’
‘As you say, Excellency. But those traders in the town. What of them?’
The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite remember
what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him overnight.
Judson interrupted swiftly: ‘His Excellency has set them to forced
works on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a custom-house. When
that is done they will be released, I hope, Excellency.’
‘Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my heart.’
Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns, while
Mr. Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank and the
shot-marks on the deck and the bow-plates.
‘Oh, this is too bad,’ said Judson when they went on deck. ‘That idiot
has exceeded his instructions, but--but you must let me pay for this!’
Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung over
the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a foreign
tongue. He twisted uneasily, and went on with his work.
‘What is it?’ said the Governor.
‘That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he has
borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good.’ Then in
English, ‘Stand up, Mr. Davies! What the Furnace in Tophet do you mean
by taking their gold-leaf? My ----, are we a set of hairy pirates to
scoff the storeroom out of a painted Levantine bumboat. Look contrite,
you butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a
tinker, you! My Soul alive, can’t I maintain discipline in my own ship
without a hired blacksmith of a boiler-rivetter putting me to shame
before a yellow-nosed picaroon! Get off the staging, Mr. Davies, and
go to the engine-room! Put down that leaf first, though, and leave the
books where they are. I’ll send for you in a minute. Go aft!’
Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies’s round face was above the
bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it rose
inch by inch as the shower continued, blank amazement, bewilderment,
rage, and injured pride chasing each other across it till he saw
his superior officer’s left eyelid flutter on the cheek twice. Then
he fled to the engine-room, and wiping his brow with a handful of
cotton-waste, sat down to overtake circumstances.
‘I am desolated,’ said Judson to his companions, ‘but you see the
material that they give us. This leaves me more in your debt than
before. The stuff I can replace’ [gold-leaf is never carried on
floating gun-platforms], ‘but for the insolence of that man how shall I
apologise?’
Mr. Davies’s mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred the
cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to prevent
laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room plates. ‘Neat!
Oh, damned neat!’ he chuckled. ‘I’ve served with a good few, but there
never was one so neat as him. And I thought he was the new kind that
don’t know how to throw a few words, as it were.’
‘Mr. Davies, you can continue your work,’ said Judson down the
engine-room hatch. ‘These officers have been good enough to speak in
your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it. Slap on
every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?’
‘Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn’t miss it.
There’s enough for two first-rates, and I’ve scoffed the best half of
it.’
‘Look sharp then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon. You’ll
have to cover it all up.’
‘Neat! Oh, damned neat!’ said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he
gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing the
long-deferred wish of Judson’s heart.
* * * * *
It was the _Martin Frobisher_, the flagship, a great war-boat when she
was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as for steam. She
could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was under that that
she stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of silver beneath the
moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given Judson a task beyond his
strength, was coming to look for him, and incidentally to do a little
diplomatic work along the coast. There was hardly wind enough to move
the _Frobisher_ a couple of knots an hour, and the silence of the land
closed about her as she entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little
from time to time, and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The
full moon rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral gazing upon it
thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer to
the very mood of his mind there floated across the silver levels of the
water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant sweetness, the throb of
a mandolin, and the voice of one who called upon a genteel Julia--upon
Julia, and upon Love. The song ceased, and the sighing of the yards was
all that broke the silence of the big ship.
Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the
quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the
signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice of
the singer was the voice of Judson.
‘Last week down our alley came a toff,
Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
Quite in a gentlemanly way’--
and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several
voices, and the signal-midshipman’s foot began to tap the deck
furtively.
‘“What cheer!” all the neighbours cried.
“Oo are you goin’ to meet, Bill?
’Ave you bought the street, Bill?”
Laugh?--I thought I should ha’ died
When I knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road.’
It was the Admiral’s gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst of
that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, with the beribboned
mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he came up the
side of the _Guadala_, and it may or may not have been the Admiral
who stayed till three in the morning and delighted the hearts of the
Captain and the Governor. He had come as an unbidden guest, and he
departed as an honoured one, but strictly unofficial throughout. Judson
told his tale next day in the Admiral’s cabin as well as he could in
the face of the Admiral’s gales of laughter; but the most amazing tale
was that told by Mr. Davies to his friends in the dockyard at Simon’s
Town from the point of view of a second-class engine-room artificer,
all unversed in diplomacy.
And if there be no truth either in my tale, which is Judson’s tale,
or the tales of Mr. Davies, you will _not_ find in harbour at Simon’s
Town to-day a flat-bottomed, twin-screw gunboat, designed solely for
the defence of rivers, about two hundred and seventy tons displacement
and five feet draught, wearing in open defiance of the rules of the
Service a gold line on her gray paint. It follows also that you will
be compelled to credit that version of the fray which, signed by His
Excellency the Governor and despatched in the _Guadala_, satisfied the
self-love of a great and glorious people, and saved a monarchy from the
ill-considered despotism which is called a Republic.
THE CHILDREN OF THE ZODIAC.
Though thou love her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dim the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know
When half Gods go
The Gods arrive. EMERSON.
Thousands of years ago, when men were greater than they are to-day,
the Children of the Zodiac lived in the world. There were six Children
of the Zodiac--the Ram, the Bull, Leo, the Twins, and the Girl; and
they were afraid of the Six Houses which belonged to the Scorpion,
the Balance, the Crab, the Fishes, the Archer, and the Waterman. Even
when they first stepped down upon the earth and knew that they were
immortal Gods, they carried this fear with them; and the fear grew as
they became better acquainted with mankind and heard stories of the Six
Houses. Men treated the Children as Gods and came to them with prayers
and long stories of wrong, while the Children of the Zodiac listened
and could not understand.
A mother would fling herself before the feet of the Twins, or the Bull,
crying: ‘My husband was at work in the fields and the Archer shot him
and he died; and my son will also be killed by the Archer. Help me!’
The Bull would lower his huge head and answer: ‘What is that to me?’
Or the Twins would smile and continue their play, for they could not
understand why the water ran out of people’s eyes. At other times a man
and a woman would come to Leo or the Girl crying: ‘We two are newly
married and we are very happy. Take these flowers.’ As they threw the
flowers they would make mysterious sounds to show that they were happy,
and Leo and the Girl wondered even more than the Twins why people
shouted ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ for no cause.
This continued for thousands of years by human reckoning, till on a
day, Leo met the Girl walking across the hills and saw that she had
changed entirely since he had last seen her. The Girl, looking at Leo,
saw that he too had changed altogether. Then they decided that it would
be well never to separate again, in case even more startling changes
should occur when the one was not at hand to help the other. Leo kissed
the Girl and all Earth felt that kiss, and the Girl sat down on a hill
and the water ran out of her eyes; and this had never happened before
in the memory of the Children of the Zodiac.
As they sat together a man and a woman came by, and the man said to the
woman:
‘What is the use of wasting flowers on those dull Gods? They will never
understand, darling.’
The Girl jumped up and put her arms round the woman, crying, ‘I
understand. Give me the flowers and I will give you a kiss.’
Leo said beneath his breath to the man: ‘What was the new name that I
heard you give to your woman just now?’
The man answered, ‘Darling, of course.’
‘Why “of course”?’ said Leo; ‘and if of course, what does it mean?’
‘It means “very dear,” and you have only to look at your wife to see
why.’
‘I see,’ said Leo; ‘you are quite right’; and when the man and the
woman had gone on he called the Girl ‘darling wife’; and the Girl wept
again from sheer happiness.
‘I think,’ she said at last, wiping her eyes, ‘I think that we two have
neglected men and women too much. What did you do with the sacrifices
they made to you, Leo?’
‘I let them burn,’ said Leo; ‘I could not eat them. What did you do
with the flowers?’
‘I let them wither. I could not wear them, I had so many of my own,’
said the Girl, ‘and now I am sorry.’
‘There is nothing to grieve for,’ said Leo; ‘we belong to each other.’
As they were talking the years of men’s life slipped by unnoticed, and
presently the man and the woman came back, both white-headed, the man
carrying the woman.
‘We have come to the end of things,’ said the man quietly. ‘This that
was my wife--’
‘As I am Leo’s wife,’ said the Girl quickly, her eyes staring.
‘--was my wife, has been killed by one of your Houses.’ The man set
down his burden, and laughed.
‘Which House?’ said Leo angrily, for he hated all the Houses equally.
‘You are Gods, you should know,’ said the man. ‘We have lived together
and loved one another, and I have left a good farm for my son. What
have I to complain of except that I still live?’
As he was bending over his wife’s body there came a whistling through
the air, and he started and tried to run away, crying, ‘It is the arrow
of the Archer. Let me live a little longer--only a little longer!’ The
arrow struck him and he died. Leo looked at the Girl and she looked at
him, and both were puzzled.
‘He wished to die,’ said Leo. ‘He said that he wished to die, and when
Death came he tried to run away. He is a coward.’
‘No, he is not,’ said the Girl; ‘I think I feel what he felt. Leo, we
must learn more about this for their sakes.’
‘For _their_ sakes,’ said Leo, very loudly.
‘Because _we_ are never going to die,’ said the Girl and Leo together,
still more loudly.
‘Now sit you still here, darling wife,’ said Leo, ‘while I go to the
Houses whom we hate, and learn how to make these men and women live as
we do.’
‘And love as we do,’ said the Girl.
‘I do not think they need to be taught that,’ said Leo, and he strode
away very angry, with his lion-skin swinging from his shoulder, till he
came to the House where the Scorpion lives in the darkness, brandishing
his tail over his back.
‘Why do you trouble the children of men?’ said Leo, with his heart
between his teeth.
‘Are you so sure that I trouble the children of men alone?’ said the
Scorpion. ‘Speak to your brother the Bull, and see what he says.’
‘I come on behalf of the children of men,’ said Leo. ‘I have learned to
love as they do, and I wish them to live as I--as we do.’
‘Your wish was granted long ago. Speak to the Bull. He is under my
special care,’ said the Scorpion.
Leo dropped back to the earth again, and saw the great star Aldebaran,
that is set in the forehead of the Bull, blazing very near to the
earth. When he came up to it he saw that his brother the Bull, yoked to
a countryman’s plough, was toiling through a wet rice-field with his
head bent down, and the sweat streaming from his flanks. The countryman
was urging him forward with a goad.
‘Gore that insolent to death,’ cried Leo, ‘and for the sake of our
honour come out of the mire.’
‘I cannot,’ said the Bull, ‘the Scorpion has told me that some day, of
which I cannot be sure, he will sting me where my neck is set on my
shoulders, and that I shall die bellowing.’
‘What has that to do with this disgraceful work?’ said Leo, standing on
the dyke that bounded the wet field.
‘Everything. This man could not plough without my help. He thinks that
I am a stray beast.’
‘But he is a mud-crusted cottar with matted hair,’ insisted Leo. ‘We
are not meant for his use.’
‘You may not be; I am. I cannot tell when the Scorpion may choose to
sting me to death--perhaps before I have turned this furrow.’ The Bull
flung his bulk into the yoke, and the plough tore through the wet
ground behind him, and the countryman goaded him till his flanks were
red.
‘Do you like this?’ Leo called down the dripping furrows.
‘No,’ said the Bull over his shoulder as he lifted his hind legs from
the clinging mud and cleared his nostrils.
Leo left him scornfully and passed to another country, where he found
his brother the Ram in the centre of a crowd of country-people who were
hanging wreaths round his neck and feeding him on freshly-plucked green
corn.
‘This is terrible,’ said Leo. ‘Break up that crowd and come away, my
brother. Their hands are spoiling your fleece.’
‘I cannot,’ said the Ram. ‘The Archer told me that on some day of which
I had no knowledge, he would send a dart through me, and that I should
die in very great pain.’
‘What has that to do with this disgraceful show?’ said Leo, but he did
not speak as confidently as before.
‘Everything in the world,’ said the Ram. ‘These people never saw a
perfect sheep before. They think that I am a stray, and they will carry
me from place to place as a model to all their flocks.’
‘But they are greasy shepherds; we are not intended to amuse them,’
said Leo.
‘You may not be, I am,’ said the Ram. ‘I cannot tell when the Archer
may choose to send his arrow at me--perhaps before the people a mile
down the road have seen me.’ The Ram lowered his head that a yokel
newly arrived might throw a wreath of wild garlic-leaves over it, and
waited patiently while the farmers tugged his fleece.
‘Do you like this?’ cried Leo over the shoulders of the crowd.
‘No,’ said the Ram, as the dust of the trampling feet made him sneeze,
and he snuffed at the fodder piled before him.
Leo turned back intending to retrace his steps to the Houses, but as
he was passing down a street he saw two small children, very dusty,
rolling outside a cottage door, and playing with a cat. They were the
Twins.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Leo, indignant.
‘Playing,’ said the Twins calmly.
‘Cannot you play on the banks of the Milky Way?’ said Leo.
‘We did,’ said they, ‘till the Fishes swam down and told us that some
day they would come for us and not hurt us at all and carry us away. So
now we are playing at being babies down here. The people like it.’
‘Do you like it?’ said Leo.
‘No,’ said the Twins, ‘but there are no cats in the Milky Way,’ and
they pulled the cat’s tail thoughtfully. A woman came out of the
doorway and stood behind them, and Leo saw in her face a look that he
had sometimes seen in the Girl’s.
‘She thinks that we are foundlings,’ said the Twins, and they trotted
indoors to the evening meal.
Then Leo hurried as swiftly as possible to all the Houses one after
another; for he could not understand the new trouble that had come
to his brethren. He spoke to the Archer, and the Archer assured him
that so far as that House was concerned Leo had nothing to fear. The
Waterman, the Fishes, and the Scorpion gave the same answer. They knew
nothing of Leo, and cared less. They were the Houses, and they were
busied in killing men.
At last he came to that very dark House where Cancer the Crab lies
so still that you might think he was asleep if you did not see the
ceaseless play and winnowing motion of the feathery branches round his
mouth. That movement never ceases. It is like the eating of a smothered
fire into rotten timber in that it is noiseless and without haste.
Leo stood in front of the Crab, and the half darkness allowed him a
glimpse of that vast blue-black back, and the motionless eyes. Now and
again he thought that he heard some one sobbing, but the noise was very
faint.
‘Why do you trouble the children of men?’ said Leo. There was no
answer, and against his will Leo cried, ‘Why do you trouble us? What
have we done that you should trouble us?’
This time Cancer replied, ‘What do I know or care? You were born into
my House, and at the appointed time I shall come for you.’
‘When is the appointed time?’ said Leo, stepping back from the restless
movement of the mouth.
‘When the full moon fails to call the full tide,’ said the Crab, ‘I
shall come for the one. When the other has taken the earth by the
shoulders, I shall take that other by the throat.’
Leo lifted his hand to the apple of his throat, moistened his lips, and
recovering himself, said:
‘Must I be afraid for two, then?’
‘For two,’ said the Crab, ‘and as many more as may come after.’
‘My brother, the Bull, had a better fate,’ said Leo, sullenly; ‘he is
alone.’
A hand covered his mouth before he could finish the sentence, and he
found the Girl in his arms. Womanlike, she had not stayed where Leo had
left her, but had hastened off at once to know the worst, and passing
all the other Houses, had come straight to Cancer.
‘That is foolish,’ said the Girl, whispering. ‘I have been waiting in
the dark for long and long before you came. _Then_ I was afraid. But
now----’ She put her head down on his shoulder and sighed a sigh of
contentment.
‘I am afraid now,’ said Leo.
‘That is on my account,’ said the Girl. ‘I know it is, because I am
afraid for your sake. Let us go, husband.’
They went out of the darkness together and came back to the Earth, Leo
very silent, and the Girl striving to cheer him. ‘My brother’s fate is
the better one,’ Leo would repeat from time to time, and at last he
said: ‘Let us each go our own way and live alone till we die. We were
born into the House of Cancer, and he will come for us.’
‘I know; I know. But where shall I go? And where will you sleep in the
evening? But let us try. I will stay here. Do you go on?’
Leo took six steps forward very slowly, and three long steps backward
very quickly, and the third step set him again at the Girl’s side. This
time it was she who was begging him to go away and leave her, and he
was forced to comfort her all through the night. That night decided
them both never to leave each other for an instant, and when they had
come to this decision they looked back at the darkness of the House of
Cancer high above their heads, and with their arms round each other’s
necks laughed, ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ exactly as the children of men laughed.
And that was the first time in their lives that they had ever laughed.
Next morning they returned to their proper home, and saw the flowers
and the sacrifices that had been laid before their doors by the
villagers of the hills. Leo stamped down the fire with his heel and
the Girl flung the flower-wreaths out of sight, shuddering as she did
so. When the villagers returned, as of custom, to see what had become
of their offerings, they found neither roses nor burned flesh on the
altars, but only a man and a woman, with frightened white faces,
sitting hand-in-hand on the altar-steps.
‘Are you not Virgo?’ said a woman to the Girl. ‘I sent you flowers
yesterday.’
‘Little sister,’ said the Girl, flushing to her forehead, ‘do not send
any more flowers, for I am only a woman like yourself.’ The man and the
woman went away doubtfully.
‘Now, what shall we do?’ said Leo.
‘We must try to be cheerful, I think,’ said the Girl. ‘We know the very
worst that can happen to us, but we do not know the best that love can
bring us. We have a great deal to be glad of.’
‘The certainty of death,’ said Leo.
‘All the children of men have that certainty also; yet they laughed
long before we ever knew how to laugh. We must learn to laugh, Leo. We
have laughed once already.’
People who consider themselves Gods, as the Children of the Zodiac
did, find it hard to laugh, because the Immortals know nothing worth
laughter or tears. Leo rose up with a very heavy heart, and he and the
girl together went to and fro among men; their new fear of death behind
them. First they laughed at a naked baby attempting to thrust its fat
toes into its foolish pink mouth; next they laughed at a kitten chasing
her own tail; and then they laughed at a boy trying to steal a kiss
from a girl, and getting his ears boxed. Lastly, they laughed because
the wind blew in their faces as they ran down a hill-side together, and
broke panting and breathless into a knot of villagers at the bottom.
The villagers laughed too at their flying clothes and wind-reddened
faces; and in the evening gave them food and invited them to a dance on
the grass, where everybody laughed through the mere joy of being able
to dance.
That night Leo jumped up from the Girl’s side crying: ‘Every one of
those people we met just now will die----’
‘So shall we,’ said the Girl sleepily. ‘Lie down again, dear.’ Leo
could not see that her face was wet with tears.
But Leo was up and far across the fields, driven forward by the fear of
death for himself and for the Girl, who was dearer to him than himself.
Presently he came across the Bull drowsing in the moonlight after a
hard day’s work, and looking through half-shut eyes at the beautiful
straight furrows that he had made.
‘Ho!’ said the Bull, ‘so you have been told these things too. Which of
the Houses holds your death?’
Leo pointed upwards to the dark House of the Crab and groaned. ‘And he
will come for the Girl too,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said the Bull, ‘what will you do?’
Leo sat down on the dyke and said that he did not know.
‘You cannot pull a plough,’ said the Bull, with a little touch of
contempt. ‘I can, and that prevents me from thinking of the Scorpion.’
Leo was angry and said nothing till the dawn broke, and the cultivator
came to yoke the Bull to his work.
‘Sing,’ said the Bull, as the stiff muddy ox-bow creaked and strained.
‘My shoulder is galled. Sing one of the songs that we sang when we
thought we were all Gods together.’