Shahbash, Bhaiyan, Shahbash!
The words, signifying "Bravo, boys, bravo!" came in a despondent drawl
from the coolie leaning against the ladder--one of those crazy bamboo
ladders with its rungs tied on with grass twine at varying slants and
distances, whereon the Indian house-decorator loves to spend long days
in company with a pot of colour-wash and a grass brush made from the
leavings of the twine.
There were two such ladders in the bare, oblong, lofty room, set round
with open doors and windows, and on each was balanced a man, a pot,
and a brush--all doing nothing. So was the coolie below.
He was a small, slight man, with a dejected expression. Stark naked,
save for two yards or so of coarse muslin wisped about his short hair
and a similar length knotted about his middle. What colour either had
been originally could not be guessed, since both were completely
covered with splashes of colour-wash--blue, green, yellow, and pink.
So was his thin body, which, as he stood immovable at the bottom of
the ladder, looked as if it was carved out of some rare scagiola.
For they were doing up the hospital in Fort Lawrence, and
Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, of the 10th Sikh Pioneers--then
engaged in making military roads over the Beloochistan frontier--had
an eye for colour. Not so, however, Surgeon-Major Pringle, who that
very morning had marched in with the detachment of young English
recruits which had been sent to take possession of the newly enlarged
fort. It was a queer mud building, looking as if it were a part of the
mud promontory which blocked a sharp turn in the sun-dried, heat-baked
mud valley, through which the dry bed of a watercourse twisted like
the dry skin of a snake. Everything dry, everything mud, baked to
hardness by the fierce sun. It was an ugly country in one way,
picturesque in another, with its yawning fissures cracking the mud
hills into miniature peaks and passes, its almost leafless flowering
shrubs, aromatic, honeyful, and its clouds of painted butterflies. A
country in which colour was lost in sheer excess of sunshine.
That, however, was not the reason why Surgeon-Captain O'Brien had
painted his wards to match Joseph's coat. As he explained to
Surgeon-Major Pringle, who, as senior officer, took over charge, it
was wiser, in his opinion--especially with youngsters about--to call
wards by the colour of their walls rather than by the diseases to be
treated in them; since if a patient "wance found out what was really
wrong with his insoide, he was sure to get it insthanter."
The Surgeon-Major, fresh from England and professional
precisions--fresh also to India and its appeals to the
imagination--had felt it impossible to combat such statements
seriously. Besides, there was no use in doing so. The walls were past
remedy for that year, and even the _post-mortem_ house--that last
refuge of all diseases--was being washed bright pink; a colour which,
according to Terence O'Brien, was "a nice, cheerful tint, that could
not give annyone, not even a corpse, the blues."
In the course of which piece of work the small man at the foot of the
ladder was becoming more and more like a statue in _rosso antico_, as
he repeated: "_Shahbash, bhaiyan, shahbash!_" at regular intervals.
His voice had no resonance, and not an atom of enthusiasm about it;
but, like a breeze among rain-soaked trees, it always provoked a
pitter-patter of falling drops--a patter of pink splashes like huge
tears--upon the concrete floor and the scagiola figure. For the words
set the brushes above moving slowly for a while; then the spasm of
energy passed, all was still again, until a fresh "Bravo, boys,
bravo!" was followed by a fresh shower of pink tears.
"Lazy brutes!" came a boy's voice from the group of young recruits who
were enjoying a well-earned rest after having marched in fifteen
miles, carrying their kits as if they had been born with them, and
settling down into quarters as if they were veterans. For they were
smart boys, belonging to a smart regiment, whose recruiting ground lay
far from slums and scums; one whose officers were smart also, and kept
up the tone of their men by teaching them a superior tolerance for the
rest of the world. "Jest look at that feller--like an alley taw. He
ain't done a blessed 'and's turn since I began to watch 'im." They
were seated on some shady mud steps right over against the hospital
compound, and the _post-mortem_ house being separate from the wards,
and having all its many windows and doors set wide, the inside of it
was as plainly visible as the out.
"Rum lot," assented another voice with the same ring of wholesome
self-complacency in it. "I arst one of the Sickees, as seems a decent
chap for a nigger and knows a little decent lingo, wot the spotted pig
was at with his everlastin' _shabbashes_, an' 'e says it's to put
courage to the Johnnies up top. Not that I don't say I shouldn't
cotton myself much to them ladders, that's more like caterpillars than
a decent pair o' 'ouse-steps. A poor lot--that's wot they are, as
doesn't know the differ in holt between a nail and a bit o' twine."
"Well, mates," said a third voice, "all I can say is that if they
ain't got no more courage than _shahbash_ can put to them, it's no
wonder we licks the blooming lot of them--as we does constant."
There was a faint laugh first, and then the group sucked at their
pipes decisively as they watched the doings in the _post-mortem_.
Though they would have scouted the suggestion, the _shahbash wallah_
had justified his calling; for patriotism brings courage with it.
He did not trouble his head about justification, however. Some one, in
his experience, always did the shouting, and it suited him better than
more active occupation, for he was lame; stiff, too, in his back.
Surgeon-Major Pringle, coming in later to find the _post-mortem_ very
much as it had been hours before, looked at him distastefully, and
began a remark about what two English workmen could have done, which
Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien interrupted with his charming smile:
"Sure, sir, the sun rises a considerable trifle airlier East than
West, an' that's enough energy for wan hemisphere. Besides, ye can't
get on in India without a _shahbash wallah_. Or elsewhere, for that
matter. Ye always require 'the something not ourselves which makes for
righteousness'--"
"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding
aloud, "Who the dickens is the _shahbash wallah_ when he is at home,
and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for
his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning,
imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in
Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--cocksure!
"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality,
moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take
yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with
metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps.
Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out
of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say
ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know
ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says,
the secret that two is wan, is the--"
His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the
subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last
patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the
_post-mortem_ and upon the still figure, which might have been a
corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the
caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash
and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the
_shahbash wallah_ followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute
evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.
His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening
variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow
splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time
Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal,
constantly came across the _shahbash wallah_ bestowing praise where,
in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance,
had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the
refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily
round, their common task?
Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of
punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with
some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed
resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah,
and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out
into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness
of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular,
even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not
only satisfied himself but also the _shahbash wallah_, who, as usual,
was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his
"_Shahbash, jee, shahbash_," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty
return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that
the offender must be sent about his business; for _if_ he was a
camp-follower he _must_ have some business, some regular work.
"Worrk, is it?" echoed Terence with his charming smile of pure
sympathy. "Be jabers! yes. Worrk--plenty, but not regular, as a rule.
The man's a torch-bearer. If it happens to be a dark night, and
annybody wants a _dhooli_, he carries the torch for it."
Dr. Pringle's resentful surprise made him stutter: "Do you mean to say
that--that--that--that--the public money--the ratepayers' money--is
wasted in entertaining a whole man for so trivial a task?"
"Trivial, is it? When he's a pillar of fire by night an' a cloud of
witnesses by day? And then he isn't a whole man, sir, at all at all.
Wan of his legs is shorter than the other. I had to break it twice,
sir, to get it as straight as it is. Thin, I've grave doubts about his
spinal column; and as I trepanned him myself, I know his head isn't
sound. It was two ton of earth fell on him, sir, last rains, when he
was givin' a drink to wan of the Sikhs that got hurt blasting. It's
nasty, shifty stuff, sir, is the mud in these low hills--nasty silted
alluvial stuff, with a bias in it. So, poor divvle! seeing he wasn't
fit for much but the hospital, I put him to the staff of it. And he
kapes things going. Indeed, I wouldn't take it upon myself to say that
he doesn't do the native patients as much good as half the drugs I
exhibit to the unfortunate craythurs, since for sheer mystherious
dispensations of Providence commend me to the British pharmacop[oe]ia."
Once again Surgeon-Major Pringle felt that professional dignity could
best be served by silent contempt, and orders that the offender was,
at least, not to loaf about the verandahs.
But the fates were against the fiat. In the moonless half of May,
driest of all months, a Hindu returning from Hurdwar fell sick, and
half-an-hour after the report, Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, going
out of the ward with his senior, paused in his cheerful whistling of
"Belave me, if all those endearing young charms," to say under his
breath, "Cholera, mild type." Now cholera, no matter of what type, has
an ugly face when seen for the first time, especially when the face
which looks into it, wondering if it means life or death, has youth in
its eyes. So in the dark nights the _dhooli_ came into requisition,
and with it the torch-bearer, until the green and the blue and yellow
wards overflowed into the verandahs, and even the pink _post-mortem_
claimed its final share of boys. Not a large one, however, since, as
Terence O'Brien said, "It was wan of those epidemics when ye couldn't
rightly say a man had cholera till he died of it."
It was bad enough, however, to make the Surgeon-Major, who had never
seen one before, set to work when it passed, suddenly as it had come,
to cipher out averages, and tabulate treatments, with a view to what
is called future guidance. And so, as he confided to his assistant
with great complacency, it became clear as daylight that the largest
percentage of recoveries, their rapidity, and as a natural corollary
the incidence of mildness in the attack itself, seemed in connection
with the position of the cots. Those close to the doors, or actually
on the verandahs, were the most fortunate, and so he was inclined to
believe in the value of currents of fresh air.
"Fresh air, is it?" echoed Terence, with an encouraging smile. "Maybe;
maybe not. God knows, it may be anything in the wide wurrld, since
there's but wan thing you can bet your bottom dollar on in cholera,
sir, and that is that ye can't tell anything about it for certain, and
that your experience of wan epidemic won't be that of the next."
"Neither does your experience, Mr. O'Brien," retorted his senior,
sarcastically, "militate against mine being more fortunate. I mean to
leave no stone unturned to arrive at reliable _data_ on points which
appear to me to have been overlooked. For instance, I shall begin by
asking those cases of recovery if they remember anything which seemed
at the time to bring them relief, to stimulate in them that vitality
which it is so essential to preserve."
In pursuance of which plan he went out then and there to the verandah,
where a dozen or more lank boys were lounging about listlessly, just
beginning to feel that life might soon mean more than a grey duffle
dressing-gown and a long chair.
"No, sir," said the first, firmly. "I disremember anythin' that
done me good. I jest lay with a sickenin' pain in my inside, an' a
don't-care-if-I-do feelin' outside." He paused, and another boy took
up the tale sympathetically.
"So it was. A reg'lar, don't-care except w'en that little 'eathen--'im
that's always saying _shahbash_, sir, come along; an' that seem
to me most times. 'E made me feel a blamed sight--beggin' pardon,
sir--worse. For I kep' thinkin' of where I see 'im first, like a alley
taw in the dead 'ouse; and the dead 'ouse isn't a cheerful sorter
think w'en you ain't sure but wot you're going there. It made me--" he
paused in his turn.
"Made you what?" asked Terence O'Brien, who had followed to listen.
"Give me the 'orrors, sir, till I'd 'ave swopped all I knew to kick
'im quiet; but not bein' able, I jest lay and kep' it for 'im against
I could, till it seemed like as I must; an' so I will."
"In cases of extreme nervous depression, sir," began the junior,
mischievously, "a counter irritant--"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Dr. Pringle, angrily, and walked back with great
dignity to the office.
But the conversation thus started lingered among the grey
dressing-gowns, the result of comparing notes being a general verdict
that "Alley taw" deserved that kicking. He did not actually get it,
however; the boys were too big, and he too small for that. But he sank
into still greater disrepute, becoming, in truth, that most unenviable
of all things not made nor created, but begotten of idle wit--a
garrison butt. Not that he seemed to care much. He grew more furtive
in his lounging, but nothing seemed to disturb the divine calm of his
commendation for the world which he had created for himself with his
"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Behold, all things in it were very good! That,
at least, was Terence O'Brien's fanciful way of looking at the
position. As he went about his work whistling "Belave me, if all those
endearing young charms"--a tune which, he said, cheered the boys--he
would often pause to smile at the _shahbash wallah_. After a time,
however, the smile would change to a quick narrowing of the eyes, as
if something in the bearing of the man was puzzling. Finally, one day,
coming upon the man sidling along a bit of brick wall, which had been
built to strengthen a crack in the mud one overhanging the dry
watercourse, he pulled up, asked a few rapid questions, and then
lifted the man's eyelids and peered into the soft brown eyes, as if he
wanted to see through them to a crack he knew of in the back of the
man's skull.
"And you are sure you see as well as ever?" he asked again.
"Quite as well, _Huzoor_," came the answer, with a faint tremor in it.
"I can see to carry the torch on the darkest of nights if it is
wanted, _Huzoor!_"
"Hm!" said Dr. O'Brien, doubtfully, promising himself to test the
truth of this statement. But the fates again decreed otherwise. The
next day's mail brought orders for him to go and act elsewhere for a
senior on two months' leave.
Dr. Pringle was not sorry. How could you collaborate properly with a
man who calmly admitted that at a pinch he had used a bullet-mould to
extract a tooth?
The monsoon had long since broken in the plains ere the young doctor
returned; but in the arid tract in which Fort Lawrence lay rain came
seldom at any time. And that was a year of abnormal drought. The
fissures in the mud seemed to widen with the heat, and the fringe of
green oleanders which followed every turn of the dry watercourse,
mutely witnessing to unseen moisture below, wilted and drooped. In the
new-built fort itself a crack or two showed in the level platform
jutting out across the low valley on which the building stood, and in
more than one place portions of the low mud-cliffs crumbled and broke
away. The whole earth, indeed, seemed agape with thirst.
But water in plenty came at last. On the very day, in fact, when
Terence O'Brien returned to the fort, which he reached on foot, having
had to leave his _dhooli_ behind, owing to a small slip on the road;
nevertheless, as he crossed over from the mess to his quarters close
to the hospital that evening, he told himself that he had the devil's
own luck to be there at all. For the rain was then hitting the hard
ground with a distinct thud, and spurting up from it in spray, showing
white against the black mirk of the night. And the rush of the stream
filling up the dry bed of the watercourse, and playing marbles with
the boulders, was like a lion's roar.
It did not keep him awake, however, for he was dead tired. So he slept
the sleep of the just. For how long he did not know. It was darker
than ever when he woke suddenly--why he knew not, and with the same
blind instinct was out into the open, quick as he could grope his way.
Not an instant too soon, either. A deafening crash told him that,
though he could not see his own hand. The rain had ceased, but the
rush of the river dulled hearing to all lesser sounds. As he stood
dazed, he staggered, slipped, almost fell. Was that an earthquake, or
was the solid ground parting somewhere close at hand? And if his house
was down, how about the hospital and the sick folk?
He turned at the thought and ran till, in the dark and the silence of
that overwhelming roar, he came full tilt upon some one else running
in the dark also. It was the Surgeon-Major.
"The hospital's down. Have you a light--anything--a match?" panted Dr.
Pringle. "We must have a light to see--"
"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_" (Oh, the torch! Oh, the torch-bearer!)
shouted Terence at the top of his voice as he ran on till stopped by
something blocking the way. Ruins! And that was the sound of voices.
"What's up?" he cried.
"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's
down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack
right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!"
"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_" The doctor's voice rang out again
towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in
the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels
slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had
happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed.
"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_--thank God! there's a light at last."
There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a
torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with
a bedroom candle. Still it was a light!
"Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed,
paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry
through the roar.
But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle.
"It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It
goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first."
It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital
compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the
river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the
glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a
matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept
away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now;
more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others
behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the
first-comers, at the unpassable gulf; for the more it could be seen,
the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by,
perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence
O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge
almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for
a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to
strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the
fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its
intrusion. It hung there half seen, on God knows what slender
foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it
would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No!
Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther
side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see
how to help themselves and other men!
"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee-an!_" The cry went out with all the force
of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.
One was, at any rate; for, surrounded by a halo from the faggot of
blazing pitch-pine it carried, a figure showed upon the path worn,
close to the mud walls of the native quarters, by the foot-tracks of
those whose duty took them to the hospital. It was the _shahbash
wallah_, coming slowly, almost indifferently, in answer to the call;
coming as if to his ordinary duty towards the growing fringe of
ineffectual candles and eager men bordering the impossible. That was
better! Given half-a-dozen more such haloes--and there were plenty if
they would only come--and eager men on the other side would see how to
help themselves and their comrades!
But no other halo appeared behind the one which followed the
foot-track of others so closely; and so once again the call was
given--
"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee-an! Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_"
"_Hazr, Huzoor!_" (Present, sir).
The nearness of the voice made Terence O'Brien look up, for it was
the first voice he had heard clearly from the other side against that
roar of the river. But as he looked another voice beside him said
hurriedly--
"My God! he's coming across!"
He was. Surrounded by the halo of his own light, and keeping
religiously to the beaten path, the _shahbash wallah_, leaving the mud
wall of the quarters, had struck the outer brick one as it stood,
supported for a few yards by a spit of earth upon which the foot-track
showed as the light passed. A spit narrowing to nothing--no! not to
nothing, but to a mere ledge of earth and mortar clinging like a
swallow's nest to the brick--wider here, narrower there, yet still
able to give faint foothold upon the traces of those feet which had
passed and repassed so often to their trivial round, their common
task. Foothold! Ay! But what of the brain guiding the feet? What of
the courage guiding the brain?
And even then, what of the foundation?
A sort of murmur rose above the roar. "He can't do
it--impossible--tell him. Call to him, O'Brien. Tell him not to try."
The doctor stood for one second watching the figure centring its
circle of light against the background of wall; then, even though
there was no need for it, his voice fell to a whisper. "Hush!" he
said. "Don't hustle him. By the Lord who made me, he doesn't know;
he's feeling his way every inch by the wall! He's blind, and by God!
if anybody can do it, he will."
He did. Step by step, slowly, confidently, in the footsteps of others.
And the great cry of "Bravo, brother, bravo!" which went up from both
sides of the gap as he and his torch stepped on to firm ground,
brought him as much surprise as a voice from heaven might have done.
* * * * *
"Pressure on the brain!" said Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, about
three weeks after this, when he and Dr. Pringle had had a consultation
over the _shahbash wallah_. He was not only blind now, but there was a
drag in the good leg as he limped about, over which both doctors shook
their heads. "And there's nothing to be done that I can see. The bhoys
will miss him!"
That was true. Alley Taw had come into favour since the night when, as
Terence phrased it, "he had done a brave deed without doing it," and
by failing to see the evil, had enabled other men to do good. For the
torch had not disclosed irretrievable disaster, and by timely rescue
not a life had been lost.
Surgeon-Major Pringle frowned. He was beginning to understand his
India a little, but the idea of the _shahbash wallah_ being a useful
member of society was still as a red rag to a bull. And so, out of
sheer contrariety, he began to talk doctor's talk as to the
possibility of this or that.
"It's life or death, annyhow," said the junior, shaking his head, "but
I don't see it. I wouldn't thry it myself--not now at any rate."
Perhaps not then. But after a month or two more he said, "It's your
suggestion; I don't belave it can be done; but you may as well thry."
For the _shahbash wallah_, half paralysed, had even given up his cry.
So, part of the hospital being still under repair, they took him to
the pink _post-mortem_ house and set all the doors and windows wide
for more light. He was quite unconscious by that time, so Terence
O'Brien only had the chloroform handy, and kept his finger on the
pulse. Half-a-dozen or more of the boys were on the mud steps over
against the hospital compound waiting to hear the _shahbash wallah's_
fate. But you might have heard a pin drop in the _post-mortem_,
save for the occasional quick request for this or that as the
Surgeon-Major, with the Surgeon-Captain's eyes watching him, set his
whole soul and heart and brain on doing something that had never been
done before.
So the minutes passed. Was it to be failure or success? The
Surgeon-Major's fingers were deft--none defter.
The minutes passed to hours. That which had to be done had to be done
with one touch light as a feather, steady as a rock, perfect in its
performance, or not at all.
And still the minutes passed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some
of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for
clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard.
Only the _shahbash wallah_ cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.
It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a
pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve
was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of
bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance
gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success?
Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain,
bringing unsteadiness to both.
"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there
was a quiver in the man's eyelids.
But ere the deadening drug did its work, the _shahbash wallah's_
brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that
splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--
"_Shahbash, bhaiyan, shahbash!_"
In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he
cannot.
But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all
details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.
And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the
_shahbash wallah's_ verdict put courage into him.
THE MOST NAILING BAD SHOT IN
CREATION
This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me
when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting
sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years
later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of
something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way.
It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the
King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in
one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged
by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at
Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall.
And with him, as the catch phrase runs, "lay" Joe Banks, the
Yorkshireman; tall, stolid, silent. Good-looking also, with a thick
close crop of curly brown hair and hard, honest blue eyes. He was not
stupid by any means; only phenomenally silent, except when the talk
turned on women, and then, as Craddock put it tersely, he "damned
free"; perhaps because, as the latter worthy used to add with a
suspicion of sympathy in his drink-blurred face, he had "cared a sight
deal too much for one woman to 'ave much likin' left for the lot."
To one side of the breastwork lay a dry ravine where every day the
vipers used to sun themselves on the hot red rocks. Just across it,
within range, rose a small Mahomedan shrine amid sparse brushwood,
which thickened a bit till it was barred by the ruined wall of a
garden where the slow oxen circled round the well, sending runnels of
slippery-looking water to the scented shade of citrons, roses, and
mangoes, heedless of the great cannon-balls which sometimes came
trundling, like playthings, down the wide walks. Not often, though,
for the stress of strife lay at the other angle of the breastwork
which faced the city wall.
Still, those who came to smoke a hard-earned pipe in what was the
safest spot in the outpost, soon found that the pious-looking shrine,
the peaceful garden, were not always so innocent as they looked. In
the dusk of dark or dawn they were tenanted by what, after a time, the
men agreed to call the "most nailin' bad shot in creation." "The
direction wasn't, so to speak, so bad, sir," Craddock used to explain
to me. "'E'd about 'ave 'it the sea-serpent for length; it was the
elevation which, as Bull's-eyes said, savin' your presence, sir, was
d----ficient. The top o' the Monument was about in it, sir, an' that
was why the only feller as really use langwidge was Joe Banks; for 'e
was a 'ead and shoulders higher than the lot o' us." So when, in the
dark, a flash used to glimmer for a second among the brushwood like a
firefly, the men learnt to sing out, "That's for you, Joey," "Duck, my
darlin', duck," and other witticisms of that kind, until the big
Yorkshireman's face darkened beyond jesting-point: for he had the
devil's own temper when roused. It was this, joined to his extreme
good looks and a somewhat hazy recollection of the Bible and the
classics among the volunteers, which earned him the nickname of
Apollyon. So to soothe him, some of the wilder spirits would organise
a charge over the ravine, scattering, perhaps, a few drowsy adders
which had forgotten to go to bed; but nothing else. The blind old
fakeer in the shrine was always fast asleep, the bullocks in the
garden circling slowly, driven by a drowsy lad curled up behind them.
So the days passed; and, despite practice, the Most Nailin' Bad Shot
shot badly as ever. The odds, however, as the men pointed out gravely
to Apollyon, kept on improving; so that sooner or later there must be
a "casualty" in the garrison of Number One outpost. Joey, too, would
get careless; he wouldn't smart enough, etc., etc. And, sure enough,
one evening just as the moonlight was mixing with the daylight, and
Joey Banks had risen to his full height in a huff because Craddock for
once had sided against him in the perennial argument as to whether it
was worth while fighting for women who didn't know what they would be
at, and hadn't the pluck of a mouse, one of these firefly flashes was
followed by a sudden clapping of the giant's hands to the very crown
of his head.
"We looked, sir," Craddock used to say gravely, with that reminiscent
biblical knowledge of his which had doubtless supplied Apollyon, "for
'im to fall dead; as 'e deserve rich; for 'e'd been damnin' uncommon
free, sir. But 'e only use it worse. And then, savin' your presence,
sir, we see that 'e'd 'ad, so ter speak, a narrer-gauge line laid down
thro' 'is jungle--right through 'is curls, sir. Lordy! 'ow we laughed.
It was a lady, we told 'im, as wanted some locks an' no mistake. It
sorter made 'im mad, for 'e just stooped and gathered the lot--bein'
fair, you could see it shinin' in the dust--together.
"'She shall 'ave 'em, never fear,' 'e says, quiet like. 'Yes! the
person who fired that shot shall 'ave more o' my 'air than he reckons
for.'"
Just at that moment, however, one of those sudden alarms which for
three months kept the men and officers before Delhi on the alert by
day and night broke up the company, and so Joe Banks' loss passed out
of most minds. Except his own, of course. It lingered there, aided by
that narrow gauge over his brain on which the cool night wind blew
pleasantly.
So when the alarm passed, instead of coming back to rest, he crept out
surreptitiously by the back of the breastwork, for such sorties were
strictly out of order, and so by a slant downwards across the ravine.
It was a brilliant moonlight night, and he caught the sparkle of many
a deadly pair of eyes among the rocks. But he was in no mood to step
aside from any danger, and once beyond fear of recall he strode along
straight as if the whole place belonged to him; it might have, for all
the opposition he met. The fakeer was asleep as usual, the oxen
circling round the well, and in the scented shade of the roses and
citrons he could find nothing save some drowsy birds who fluttered and
twittered helplessly as his tall head forced a way through the
thickets.
Feeling ill-used, he set his face back towards the breastwork, until
the extraordinary peace of the moonlit scene, which, as Craddock
asserted, used in the interval of onslaught to make the beleaguered
city look like the New Jerusalem, brought him to a standstill; first
to look, then to take out his pipe; finally to sit on a rock and think
vaguely of the Yorkshire wolds and of some one, no doubt, who had not
had the courage of her convictions, for after a bit he murmured, "She
were a raight down coward, that's where it is, aw'm thinkin'."
He had not much time for reflection, however, for at that moment there
was a flash, a crack, and something whizzed past his left ear. The
Most Nailin' Bad Shot was better at close quarters. His blood was up
in a second, and without pausing to pick up his musket, which he had
laid aside, he was off to the spot whence the flash had come. And
there! _whoop forward! gone away!_ was his quarry for sure, running
like a hare for some hiding-place, no doubt, among the rocks. It might
have been reached, for romance tells of many secret passages between
palaces inside the city and gardens without, but for a true lover's
knot of viper which refused to budge from the path; which made the
flying figure give a screech, and the flying feet, in their effort to
overleap it, miss footing and fall.
The next instant Joe Banks was on it as it lay, and conscious even in
his hurry that what he gripped was something young and soft--a boy, no
doubt--devil's spawn.
"Aw'm go[=a]n ter choak ye on t' hair," he said grimly. "Open yer
domed mouth, d'ye hear?"
It was almost as if the prostrate figure understood; but the next
instant a set of gleaming white teeth had closed like a squirrel's
round Joe Banks' first finger. He let off an echoing yell to the
previous screech, and an oddly satisfied smile came to the fierce
little face he could scarcely see for his big hand. It was an oval
face, smooth as a girl's.
"That's nowt to Joey Banks, lad, he can kill anoother waay," he
growled savagely, as he shifted a knee to press his prisoner down,
loosened his left hand, his right being detained, and deliberately
drew out one of the many knives stuck in his enemy's waistband. "Aw'll
lay t' hair abun tha' heaart, tha' wrigglin' worm, and driv it
ho[=a]m--that aw wull."
In pursuance of which plan, he undid an embroidered satin waistcoat,
and began to push aside an inner muslin vest. A whiff of musk and
roses mingled with the moonlight.
"Stinks and bites like a foumart," he muttered. "Soa lie thee still,
will tha? an' tak' that to thissen ma--gor amoighty!"
Joe Banks was on his feet; so was his enemy. Both dazed, uncertain.
Flight seemed to come uppermost to the latter's thought, when the big
man suddenly laughed a low chuckle of sheer amusement.
"An' t' coom like a wild cat at Joey Banks--that caps owt!"
The next instant he was grappling with a whirlwind of knives and
nails, anything.
"Woa! woa! ma lass! Hands off, tha little vixen, till a' git a look at
tha!" he said soothingly, as he prisoned two small hands in one huge
fist, and with the other held his adversary almost tenderly at arm's
length. What he saw, as he afterwards described it to Craddock, was
just a "moit o' pistols an' pouches."
"Well! well! _Aw'm,--aw'm_ jiggered!" he exclaimed at last; adding
argumentatively, "Whatten iver mad tha' go fur t' do it, tha foolish
lass?"
Something in his broad, not unkindly rebuke seemed to take the starch
out of the Most Nailin' Bad Shot. It seemed to cower in on itself and
become smaller; though, as Joe Banks told himself perplexedly, it had
been small enough to begin with.
"Well, aw _am_ jiggered," he repeated more softly. "Whatten iver mad
tha' do it, ma lass?"
The answer was feminine and disconcerting; a sudden storm of tears. So
they stood, the quaintest couple in the world. She bristling with cold
steel of sorts; he bareheaded in the moonlight, with nothing but his
hands for weapons.
"Dunnot," he said soothingly, not without a certain trepidation. "Aw'm
no[=a]n go[=a]n t' hurt thee, ma gell. We'm not thaat soort t'
womenkind; an' tha's a main pratty gell." Here he laughed softly; a
laugh that was lost in a third--
"Wall, aw'm _jiggered_."
He appeared to be so, for he ceased thrusting her from him--she being,
indeed, too much engaged with tears to make it dangerous--and passed
his hand over his forehead as if to clear his brain.
"Aw'm no[=a]n go[=a]n t' hurt tha, ma lass," he repeated suddenly, as
if for his own information. "Aw'm nobbut go[=a]n t' shame tha' fur
tha' badness."
And with that he lifted her right up like a baby, sate down on a
neighbouring rock, and set her on his knee.
"Thou'rt as light as a feather," he said almost admiringly. "An' t'
coom at Jooey Banks like a wild cat; for sure it caps owt; but thou'rt
a bad gell, an' mun be shamed. So set tha still an' be doon wi' it."
Once more he might have claimed comprehension, for the Most Nailin'
Bad Shot sate still; with the half-wicked, half-frightened look of a
curious squirrel, as one by one he transferred knives and pistols to
his own person. It was rather a lengthy business by reason of his
right hand--the one that had been bitten--being still occupied in
prisoning hers. Not that she struggled; on the contrary, she sate
curiously still, checking even her sobs.
"Now for t' hair," he went on methodically, pulling off the large
green turban wound around the small head. He sate half perturbed and
breathless after this was done, and the half-wicked, half-frightened
dark eyes watching him, seemed to admit a faint smile.
"Whew-w-w," he said under his breath, "it's long, for sartin sure." It
was, and a faint scent of orange-blossom assailed him as he loosed the
plaits. His hand trembled among them a little, and lingered.
"Aw mun be as good's ma word," he muttered, "as Joey Banks' word. See
tha here--sit tha still, there's a good lass, an' let me hurry up;
wilt thee?" There was almost an appeal in his voice, and both hands
shook a little as the long black tresses twined themselves about the
big fingers like snakes.
"Aw'm no[=a]n go[=a]n t' hurt," he reiterated blandly; when, perhaps
fortunately, the whole bewildering face before him relapsed into a
mischievous smile, and one small finger pointed derisively to the
crown of his head. He flushed up scarlet.
"Thee'm nobbut a wicked, bad gell," he said fiercely, "an' Joey
Banks'll shame tha--a bold hussy." So he set her on her feet, and
attacked her last bit of masculinity. This was a long, green waistband
wound about her middle, and which had carried a score or so of
pistols, yataghans, and Heaven knows what murderous weapons. Of this
portion of the toilette Craddock said it was hard to get Joey Banks to
speak at all, and when he did, his voice dropped to a whisper, and he
looked positively scared. She was so main slender, he said, that he
thought he would never have done unwinding, though after a bit she
helped cheerfully by twiddling like a teetotum. At last, however, she
stood there, slim, girlish, her long hair shimmering, her dark eyes
shining, half with tears, half with smiles.
"'An' then, Joey?' I arst 'im, sir, when 'e sate mumchance," Craddock
interpolated.
"Aw out wi' 'Fower angels rouand ma bed,' man, an' a' up wi' her in ma
arms, an' a' kissed her fair an' oft, man, fair an' oft, just t' shame
her, an' a' runned awaay. That's what a' did--aw runned awaay."
Half-way across the ravine, however, he paused to pick up his musket
and look back. The Most Nailin' Bad Shot in creation was standing
where he had left her, her face hidden in her hands. For an instant
something tore at his heart, bidding him go back; then he set his
teeth with an oath, and ran on. Five minutes afterwards he had slipped
into a favourite cranny of rock beside Craddock and was puffing away
at his pipe as if nothing had happened, absolutely silent, till,
according to the latter's report, he "give a silly sort of laugh," and
in the moonlight his eyes could be seen shining like stars as he
turned and said softly--
"Well, lad--a' ha' dune it this toime."
"Done what, Apollyon?" asked Craddock.
"A' dunnot roightly kna', but a' ha' dune it, for sartin sure,"
replied Joe Banks, succinctly; and then he told the story.
"One of them _gazes_[1] as they call 'em," interrupted Craddock, when
the big man told of his discovery in a sort of hushed voice. "They
makes 'em male an' female--the latter most wicious. Bad lots out o'
the bazaar, needin' a passport to the skies--or the devil."
---------------------
[Footnote 1: _Ghazie_--religious fanatic.]
---------------------
Joey Banks' big fist came down like a sledgehammer on Craddock's knee.
"Hush, mon!" he said peremptorily. "She woan't none that sort. When a'
kissed her--" he stopped short, and blushed furiously.
"Apollyon!" remarked Craddock, after a pause, with great severity. "It
ain't wholesome to keep sech things comfortable in yer own buzzum.
It's better to 'ave up an' done with it an' begin agin. When you kiss
her--w'ot then?"
But Joe Banks' shining eyes were looking out into the soft darkness,
soft and dark for all their shininess. "A' meant to 'a' keppen
coont--but a' didn't somehow." His voice was quite dreamy, and
Craddock rose in wrath.
"It's my belief, same as I was in the catechising, Joey Banks,
that you bin an' fallen in love with a female _gaze_; but mark my
word--there ain't no gratitoode to speak of in _gazes_, and she'll
nick you yet, sure as my name's Nathaniel James. She'll nick you yet,
I du assure you."
But Craddock was wrong. Whatever else she did, the Most Nailin' Bad
Shot shot no more. Not that it mattered much to Joey Banks whether she
did or not, since but a few days after there was a "casoolty" in
Number One outpost, Volunteer Joseph Banks, sometime canal overseer,
was reported missing after a sortie; but as he had been last seen
mortally wounded close to the city wall, his comrades mourned Apollyon
from the first as dead. So as Craddock said feelingly, "there weren't
even a lock o' 'is 'air for 'is old mother, an' she was a widder."
Not that there was much time for mourning in the outpost, since the
long months of the siege were drawing to a close. Then came the final
assault, the ten days of struggle within the city, until even the
Palace was ours, and the army which had taken it prepared to move on
elsewhere. It was the evening before the start, and Craddock, who, as
a volunteer, had more liberty to go and come as he chose, went down to
the now deserted outpost to smoke a last pipe, and think over the past
with the pleasing melancholy which goes so admirably with tobacco.
"Poor Joey Banks!" he thought, as memory came round to that episode,
"'im an' 'is female _gaze_. I shan't never forget 'em."