INTELLIGENCE

I was staying with an Intelligence Officer on a certain island.

Our people had but just succeeded in occupying it with a force of

occupation. It was a very green and richly tropical island with

the faults of its qualities, I should say. Most of its German

tenants were prisoners now, a few had escaped in canoes. Their

sergeant of askaris, a stout fellow, had passed the word of 'no

surrender.' But for all that very few native soldiers seemed to

be in the bush now. Most seemed to have surrendered, or to have

transformed themselves into civilians.

I had reached my host's lodging just before sundown on Saturday

night. We dined simply, as far as courses went, but our

conversation came easily and took many turns. There seemed to be

something in the air that night. There were three of us at the

table, my host and Hunter and I. Hunter was a naval man who had

walked up with me, and was staying the night. He was very fresh

and pleasant to look at; he seemed old for his years, which were

few; he had a range of interests as well as powers of expression.

Did he seem just a little conscious of his tender age? Was he not

a bit too anxious to profess disillusion? Yes, he was cynical

about Belgians, also about France, also about the Foreign Office.

I suffered him thus far with a certain guilty gladness. But the

Intelligence Officer demurred grimly. He was a patriot and a

fighting man. They had switched a maxim on to him years before,

but he was still going hardily, albeit he limped. He had fought

in an irregular white corps in the present campaign; he had

raised an irregular black corps; our adversaries were said to

have priced his head. He had charming manners; he had befriended

me nobly not once nor twice. He was a man surely of extraordinary

dash and resource. I had no sort of reason to doubt the great

stories I had heard of him, of his coolness under fire and in

tight places. I had seen every reason to believe them. For all

that, my affection for him was mixed with another feeling. He was

very tall. His face wore a sort of perennial fever-flush. He was

very dark. His eyes were fine and fierce, too; he wore a strange

he-goat-tuft on his chin. I found myself chuckling privately that

evening over a bizarre fancy of mine. I had remembered a certain

mediaeval print of a famous character. Yes, there certainly was a

likeness.

We discussed Intelligence Work a branch of War Service as to

which I am apt to be prejudiced. To my indefensible delight.

Hunter excelled himself at giving my own views voice over the

pudding. Never did I hear an indictment more sweeping. He spoke

of the reading of people's letters, the bluffing of unhappy

natives. He hinted darkly at dark methods of persuasion. He

hammered in the debasing futility of the whole spy system, our

own and the other side's. He ended with schoolboy personalities

about people he had met, some of our host's own agents. His

remarks about them were unworthy of the eloquence that had gone

before. Our host took it all in very kindly part. He was a man of

deeds rather than of words.

'I never thought I'd come so low as I did to-day,' he admitted.

'You heard of the German who got away with his wife and kids in

canoes. I was turning over one of the kids' money-boxes. Just

five rupees or so in it. But I'll try to get it back to the

youngster. I never thought to come quite so low.'

I tackled him about a horrid practice he had admitted having

recourse to. 'Torture, or torture-witchcraft possibly! It seems a

hopeful way of eliciting true intelligence, not to speak of

playing the game in any sort of British sense.' He hung his head

penitently. He pleaded that this expedient had saved an execution

only the other day. There had been none after all. Had there

been, as had looked likely at one time, an innocent man would

have died.

'Oh, why not be without reproach as well as without fear?' I

pleaded.

'How am I to get truth from them? It's a usage of their own.' He

was pleading back.

'Not that way.' I was inflexible in my scorn and horror, for I

knew that I was right.

By this time we had about finished dinner. Soon we were outside

Hunter in a deck-chair, I on a box, my host on a looted camp-stool.

We smoked on under the stars.

We spoke of looting. The naval man scintillated about the conduct

of the army at a raid on a neighboring town. I was with him most

of the way.

'So they cleared away with their swags for fear of enemy

reinforcements. And they had a report printed that the natives

had looted the place. That put the lid on it,' he said. But then

came purgatory for me. The Native Question cropped up. Our host

was away just then, conferring about chits that his spies had

brought in. Hunter fairly coruscated with cynicism, when it came

to the Native Question. He had expressed very different views

upon it the last time that I had met him (the day before at

lunchtime). Now he expressed himself cured of any sneaking wish

to treat natives with kindness rather than kiboko. His boy, to

whom he had granted leave of absence, had not come back to his

day, and the whole fabric of Native sympathies, so far as he was

concerned, had crashed to the ground. Henceforth he would know

how to treat natives, the way to have no trouble with them. Any

other way was not worth while. I objected, but my objections were

as little rocks over which his periods broke in foam.

They enhanced the effect. Our host came back and laughed a

little, till he saw how little I was enjoying it. Then he rotted

the orator on his lordly oblivion of one fact. Were there not

limits to his experience of Africa? He himself avowed his

sympathies with the African. If he had a hobby, it was natives.

He wanted to win their trust for a great many reasons. It was

worth while having it. He told a certain story and the talk

diverged. It was quite sympathetic talk, from my point of view

thenceforward, up till bed-time. We slept in that big room

within, all three of us. I had brought next to no kit, and

I had noted with some awe my naval friend's scorn of the

ill-provided in the course of the evening. He had described how

a Belgian he had shared a room with, lacked certain accessories

of civilization. So I was in the mood now to feel my own

deficiency. But the censor was not so very observant, and he

seemed sleepy. Soon he was sleeping.

My host and I exchanged a few undertones. Tomorrow was

Whitsunday. I wanted to have Service very early. 'That'll be all

right,' he said. Soon he put our hurricane lamp out, but I was

not to win sleep for quite a long while. In the early morning,

moreover, something happened. Some red-ant skirmishers were

about, and I had a hot time in my bed on the floor. I' might well

have felt more grateful than I did feel. Yes, had I only known

what battalions would have engaged me, had they decided to attack

before dawn! At dawn I was to see for myself what were the

numbers of their host. Meanwhile, their scouts gave me trouble,

if only a moderate amount. A cock crowed close by. Then another

and another. The dawn was not so very far then surely. The

thunder that had boomed when I first awoke, boomed louder. A

rushing mighty wind seized upon the shanty where we slept, a very

airy shanty. The fact that the Day that came was Pentecost,

recurred to me. Then the storm broke in fury. The rain smashed

down, and the lightning forked and flickered. The roar and tumult

raged and swelled and thudded overhead. My host awakened.

'It's near,' he said. 'Too near for me,' I murmured, as I ducked

involuntarily when a perfervid flash came.

'Look at the Navy!' he said. I looked.

The cynic slept like a child. His face was very calm and

intensely optimistic. 'He told me he had slept through big guns'

fire on his ship,' I said admiringly. 'He has great powers.'

A curious lingering flash came. It played round the sleeper's

head. A huge peal seemed to come almost with it, the last huge

peal ere that brief passionate storm withdrew.

Then the sleeper began to talk.

He talked too well too well for me to mix his actual phrases up

with this secular story.

The Intelligence man began to laugh. The thing struck him as

funny. But suddenly I caught familiar words, and I put my finger

on my lips. My host's black eyes looked into mine, and I saw, as

I had never seen before, how much there was in them. First they

kindled, and then they grew soft, and he turned his head away.

The sleeper had been repeating the end of the fifth chapter of S.

Matthew the bit about the God (whose sons we Christians are) that

makes His sun to shine, and His rain to fall so impartially.

He said the words very clearly, as articulately as if he were a

child saying repetition. What made our host's eyes melt so

curiously was what came after.

The sleeper said a sort of child's prayer about sun and rain, and

just and unjust, and good and evil, praying quite simply to God

to bless everybody and to do the best for them English and

Germans, black men and white.

'Yes, and my boy,' he said, as if that petition furnished a sort

of limit to the mercy he invoked. 'And the mtoto,' he added a

minute after.

'What's his name?' he asked innocently. He had forgotten the name

of his boy's apprentice, and his forgetfulness was on his mind.

The strain was a bit too much for us when it came to that

question.

We laughed rather hysterically. Then we pulled ourselves

together, but we had not disturbed him. He spoke no more save for

two or three detached words proper names I think. But he breathed

long breaths peacefully.

The dawn was quite near on its way now. A dove called from the

wood to its mate. Surely it desired to tell it that morning came.

'We've got some fresh Intelligence,' my host said gravely.

'Pentecostal Illumination, rather,' I said.

'Did you happen to remember what the Day was?'

He nodded. 'We'd better not sit up talking,' he told me. 'It

might seem to spoil it somehow. We'd better try to get a little

sleep. Come over here out of the ants.'

So we shifted my mattress.

After our Pentecostal Service, and our breakfast, we compared

notes, we two alone.

Once more Hunter had talked a lot at table. It was somehow a

little hard completely to identify the Hunter of breakfast time

with the Hunter of cock-crow. 'Our friend was rather angelical,

only rather,' my host said.

'He was cynical about your cynical business,' I said. He laughed.

'Have you forgotten what he said about missionaries?' he asked.

I smiled ruefully. 'It certainly wasn't up to his level,' I said,

'his cock-crow level.'

'I've got a theory,' said my chin-tufted friend (I have made up

my mind to recall Don Quixote in future when I think of him

rather than that mediaeval print). 'The subliminal self of the

Navy was revealed by that Pentecostal flash. Pentecost was in the

air. We saw the real lieutenant in his sleeping sub-consciousness.

It's a pity the real self isn't top-dog in ordinary life; it's under-dog

for the present, worse luck!'

'But in sleep he's a child still, and a good child at that,' I

said.

'Yes, or he couldn't have responded to that Pentecostal

suggestion. You or I wouldn't have responded; anyhow, not so

readily.'

He sighed. 'It's a wicked world,' he said smiling, 'and we learn

many tricks of our respective trades.'

'Speak for yourself and your own trade,' I said sternly. Then I

begged him to give up that unmentionable way of obtaining

intelligence.

'Let's try to live up to the cock-crow level,' I said. 'We two

have seen what we have seen, and heard what we have heard. We

have received unexpected Intelligence. We have got some hints as

to self and soul, truth and falsehood.'

'Yes, I'll allow that,' he admitted.