pamp—much. I don’t hold out to be no trotter myself, though I am free
to say I had hopes that way—onct. But I _do_ say, fer I’ve seen ’em
trained, that a trotter don’t trot with his feet: he trots with his
head; an’ he does more work—ef you know what _that_ is—in a week than
you er your sire ever done in all your lives. He’s everlastingly at it,
a trotter is; an’ when he isn’t, he’s studyin’ haow. You seen ’em trot?
Much you hev! You was hitched to a rail, back o’ the stand, in a
buckboard with a soap-box nailed on the slats, an’ a frowzy buff’lo
atop, while your man peddled rum fer lemonade to little boys as thought
they was actin’ manly, till you was both run off the track an’
jailed—you intoed, shufflin’, sway-backed, wind-suckin’ skate, you!”
“Don’t get het up, Deacon,” said Tweezy, quietly. “Now, suh, would you
consider a fox-trot, an’ single-foot, an’ rack, an’ pace, _an_’ amble,
distinctions not worth distinguishin’? I assuah you, gentlemen, there
was a time befo’ I was afflicted in my hip, if you’ll pardon me, Miss
Tuck, when I was quite celebrated in Paduky for _all_ those gaits; an’
in my opinion the Deacon’s co’rect when he says that a ho’se of any
position in society gets his gaits by his haid, an’ not by—his, ah,
limbs, Miss Tuck. I reckon I’m very little good now, but I’m
rememberin’ the things I used to do befo’ I took to transpo’tin’ real
estate with the help an’ assistance of this gentleman here.” He looked
at Muldoon.
“Invijjus arterficial hind legs!” said the ex-car-horse, with a grunt
of contempt. “On de Belt Line we don’t reckon no horse wuth his keep
’less he kin switch de car off de track, run her round on de cobbles,
an’ dump her in ag’in ahead o’ de truck what’s blockin’ him. Dere is a
way o’ swingin’ yer quarters when de driver says,‘Yank her out, boys!’
dat takes a year to learn. Onct yer git onter it, youse kin yank a
cable-car outer a manhole. I don’t advertise myself for no
circus-horse, but I knew dat trick better than most, an’ dey was good
to me in de stables, fer I saved time on de Belt—an’ time’s what dey
hunt in N’ York.”
“But the simple child o’ nature—” the yellow horse began.
“Oh, go an’ unscrew yer splints! You’re talkin’ through yer bandages,”
said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh. “Dere ain’t no loose-box for de
simple child o’ nature on de Belt Line, wid de _Paris_ comin’ in an’ de
_Teutonic_ goin’ out, an’ de trucks an’ de coupé’s sayin’ things, an’
de heavy freight movin’ down fer de Boston boat ’bout t’ree o’clock of
an August afternoon, in de middle of a hot wave when de fat Kanucks an’
Western horses drops dead on de block. De simple child o’ nature had
better chase himself inter de water. Every man at de end of his lines
is mad or loaded or silly, an’ de cop’s madder an’ loadeder an’ sillier
than de rest. Dey all take it outer de horses. Dere’s no wavin’ brooks
ner ripplin’ grass on de Belt Line. Run her out on de cobbles wid de
sparks flyin’, an’ stop when de cop slugs you on de bone o’ yer nose.
Dat’s N’York; see?
“I was always told s’ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined an’
high-toned,” said Tuck. “We’re lookin’ to go there one o’ these days,
Nip an’ me.”
“Oh, _you_ won’t see no Belt business where you’ll go, miss. De man dat
wants you’ll want you bad, an’ he’ll summer you on Long Island er at
Newport, wid a winky-pinky silver harness an’ an English coachman.
You’ll make a star-hitch, you an’ yer brother, miss. But I guess you
won’t have no nice smooth bar bit. Dey checks ’em, an’ dey bangs deir
tails, an’ dey bits ’em, de city folk, an’ dey says it’s English, ye
know, an’ dey darsen’t cut a horse loose ’ca’se o’ de cops. N’ York’s
no place fer a horse, ’less he’s on de Belt, an’ can go round wid de
boys. Wisht _I_ was in de Fire Department!”
“But did you never stop to consider the degradin’ servitood of it all?”
said the yellow horse.
“You don’t stop on de Belt, cully. You’re stopped. An’ we was all in de
servitood business, man an’ horse, an’ Jimmy dat sold de papers. Guess
de passengers weren’t out to grass neither, by de way dey acted. I done
my turn, an’ I’m none o’ Barnum’s crowd; but any horse dat’s worked on
de Belt four years don’t train wid no simple child o’ nature—not by de
whole length o’ N’ York.”
“But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your time of
life, you do not believe that all horses are free and equal?” said the
yellow horse.
“Not till they’re dead,” Muldoon answered quietly. “An’ den it depends
on de gross total o’ buttons an’ mucilage dey gits outer youse at
Barren Island.”
“They tell me you’re a prominent philosopher.” The yellow horse turned
to Marcus. “Can _you_ deny a basic and pivotal statement such as this?”
“I don’t deny anythin’,” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, cautiously;
“but ef you _ast_ me, I should say ’twuz more different sorts o’
clipped oats of a lie than anythin’ I’ve had my teeth into sence I wuz
foaled.”
“Are you a horse?” said the yellow horse.
“Them that knows me best ’low I am.”
“Ain’t _I_ a horse?”
“Yep; one kind of.”
“Then ain’t you an’ me equal?”
“How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin’ five hundred
pounds?” Marcus asked carelessly.
“That has nothing to do with the case,” the yellow horse answered
excitedly.
“There’s nothing I know hez more to do with the case,” Marcus replied.
“Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de mornin’?” said
Muldoon.
“Kin ye go to Keene—forty-two mile in an afternoon—with a mate,” said
Rick; “an’ turn out bright an’ early next mornin’?”
“Was there evah any time in your careah, suh—I am not referrin’ to the
present circumstances, but our mutual glorious past—when you could
carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an’ let her knit all the way on
account o’ the smoothness o’ the motion?” said Tweezy.
“Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
narrer-gage comin’ in on one side, an’ the Montreal flyer the other,
an’ the old bridge teeterin’ between?” said the Deacon. “Kin you put
your nose down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive when you’re waitin’
at the depot an’ let ’em play ‘Curfew shall not ring to-night’ with the
big brass bell?”
“Kin you hold back when the brichin’ breaks? Kin you stop fer orders
when your nigh hind leg’s over your trace an’ ye feel good of a frosty
mornin’?” said Nip, who had only learned that trick last winter, and
thought it was the crown of horsely knowledge.
“What’s the use o’ talkin’?” said Tedda Gabler, scornfully. “What kin
ye do?”
“I rely on my simple rights—the inalienable rights o’ my unfettered
horsehood. An’ I am proud to say I have never, since my first shoes,
lowered myself to obeyin’ the will o’ man.”
“Must ha’ had a heap o’ whips broke over yer yaller back,” said Tedda.
“Hev ye found it paid any?”
“Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled. Blows an’ boots
an’ whips an’ insults—injury, outrage, an’ oppression. I would not
endoor the degradin’ badges o’ servitood that connect us with the buggy
an’ the farm-wagon.”
“It’s amazin’ difficult to draw a buggy ’thout traces er collar er
breast-strap er somefin’,” said Marcus. “A Power-machine for sawin’
wood is most the only thing there’s no straps to. I’ve helped saw ’s
much as three cord in an afternoon in a Power-machine. Slep’, too, most
o’ the time, I did; but ’tain’t half as inte_res_tin’ ez goin’
daown-taown in the Concord.”
“Concord don’t hender _you_ goin’ to sleep any,” said Nip. “My
throat-lash! D’you remember when you lay down in the sharves last week,
waitin’ at the piazza?”
“Pshaw! That didn’t hurt the sharves. They wuz good an’ wide, an’ I lay
down keerful. The folks kep’ me hitched up nigh an hour ’fore they
started; an’ larfed—why, they all but lay down themselves with larfin’.
Say, Boney, if you’ve got to be hitched _to_ anything that goes on
wheels, you’ve got to be hitched _with_ somefin’.”
“Go an’ jine a circus,” said Muldoon, “an’ walk on your hind legs. All
de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it ‘woik,’ New York
fashion] jine de circus.”
“I am not sayin’ anythin’ again’ work,” said the yellow horse; “work is
the finest thing in the world.”
“Seems too fine fer some of us,” Tedda snorted.
“I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an’ enjoy the
profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an’ not as a
machine.”
“There ain’t no horse that works like a machine,” Marcus began.
“There’s no way o’ workin’ that doesn’t mean goin’ to pole er
single—they never put me in the Power-machine—er under saddle,” said
Rick.
“Oh, shucks! We’re talkin’ same ez we graze,” said Nip, “raound an’
raound in circles. Rod, we hain’t heard from you yet, an’ you’ve more
know-how than any span here.”
Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted,
like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the
haw across his eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention
to the argument. He thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when
he pulls, and changed his leg. His voice was hard and heavy, and his
ears were close to his big, plain Hambletonian head.
“How old are you?” he said to the yellow horse.
“Nigh thirteen, I guess.”
“Mean age; ugly age; I’m gettin’ that way myself. How long hev ye been
pawin’ this firefanged stable-litter?”
“If you mean my principles, I’ve held ’em sence I was three.”
“Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o’ trouble then. Set a colt to
actin’ crazy fer a while. _You_’ve kep’ it up, seemin’ly. D’ye talk
much to your neighbours fer a steady thing?”
“I uphold the principles o’ the Cause wherever I am pastured.”
“Done a heap o’ good, I guess?”
“I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the principles
o’ freedom an’ liberty.”
“Meanin’ they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?”
“I was talkin’ in the abstrac’, an’ not in the concrete. My teachin’s
educated them.”
“What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac’, he’s
liable to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I presoom.”
“Four, risin’ five.”
“That’s where the trouble began. Driv’ by a woman, like ez not—eh?”
“Not fer long,” said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.
“Spilled her?”
“I heerd she never drove again.”
“Any childern?”
“Buckboards full of ’em.”
“Men too?”
“I have shed conside’ble men in my time.”
“By kickin’?”
“Any way that come along. Fallin’ back over the dash is as handy as
most.”
“They must be turr’ble afraid o’ you daown taown?”
“They’ve sent me here to get rid o’ me. I guess they spend their time
talkin’ over my campaigns.”
“_I_ wanter know!”
“Yes, _sir_. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do. I’ll
just show you. See them two fellers lyin’ down by the buggy?”
“Yep; one of ’em owns me. T’other broke me,” said Rod.
“Get ’em out here in the open, an’ I’ll show you something. Lemme hide
back o’ you peoples, so’s they won’t see what I’m at.”
“Meanin’ ter kill ’em?” Rod drawled. There was a shudder of horror
through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.
“I’ll catch ’em by the back o’ the neck, an’ pile-drive ’em a piece.
They can suit ’emselves about livin’ when I’m through with ’em.”
“Shouldn’t wonder ef they did,” said Rod.
The yellow horse had hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as
they stood in a group, and was swaying his head close to the ground
with a curious scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked
eyes. You can never mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock a man
down. We had had one to pasture the year before.
“See that?” said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles. “Nice
for a woman walking ’cross lots, wouldn’t it be?”
“Bring ’em out!” said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back.
“There’s no chance among them tall trees. Bring out the—oh! Ouch!”
It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon. I had no idea that the old
car-horse could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the yellow horse
full and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath out of him.
“What’s that for?” he said angrily, when he recovered himself; but I
noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was necessary.
Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining grunt
that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy load. We
call it singing; but I think it’s something much worse, really. The
yellow horse blustered and squealed a little, and at last said that, if
it was a horse-fly that had stung Muldoon, he would accept an apology.
“You’ll get it,” said Muldoon, “in de sweet by-and-bye—all de apology
you’ve any use for. Excuse me interruptin’ you, Mr. Rod, but I’m like
Tweezy—I’ve a Southern drawback in me hind legs.”
“Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an’ you’ll learn something,”
Rod went on. “This yaller-backed skate comes to our pastur’-”
“Not havin’ paid his board,” put in Tedda.
“Not havin’ earned his board, an’ talks smooth to us abaout ripplin’
brooks an’ wavin’ grass, an’ his high-toned, pure-souled horsehood,
which don’t hender him sheddin’ women an’ childern, an’ fallin’ over
the dash onter men. You heard his talk, an’ you thought it mighty fine,
some o’ you.”
Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.
“Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard.”
“I was talkin’ in the abstrac’,” said the yellow horse, in an altered
voice.
“Abstrac’ be switched! Ez I’ve said, it’s this yer blamed abstrac’
business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord; an’ abstrac’
or no abstrac’, he crep’ on an’ on till he come to killin’ plain an’
straight—killin’ them as never done him no harm, jest beca’se they
owned horses.”
“An’ knowed how to manage ’em,” said Tedda. “That makes it worse.”
“Waal, he didn’t kill ’em, anyway,” said Marcus. “He’d ha’ been half
killed ef he had tried.”
“Makes no differ,” Rod answered. “He meant to; an’ ef he hadn’t—s’pose
we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin’-ground on our only day
er rest? ’S’pose _we_ want _our_ men walkin’ round with bits er lead
pipe an’ a twitch, an’ their hands full o’ stones to throw at us,
same’s if we wuz hogs er hooky keows? More’n that, leavin’ out Tedda
here—an’ I guess it’s more her maouth than her manners stands in her
light—there ain’t a horse on this farm that ain’t a woman’s horse, an’
proud of it. An’ this yer bogspavined Kansas sunflower goes up an’
daown the length o’ the country, traded off an’ traded on, boastin’ as
he’s shed women—an’ childern. I don’t say as a woman in a buggy ain’t a
fool. I don’t say as she ain’t the lastin’est kind er fool, ner I don’t
say a child ain’t worse—spattin’ the lines an’ standin’ up an’
hollerin’—but I _do_ say, ’tain’t none of our business to shed ’em
daown the road.”
“We don’t,” said the Deacon. “The baby tried to git some o’ my tail for
a sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse, an’ I didn’t kick.
Boney’s talk ain’t goin’ to hurt us any. We ain’t colts.”
“Thet’s what you _think_. Bimeby you git into a tight corner, ’Lection
day er Valley Fair, like’s not, daown-taown, when you’re all het an’
lathery, an’ pestered with flies, an’ thirsty, an’ sick o’ bein’ worked
in an aout ’tween buggies. _Then_ somethin’ whispers inside o’ your
winkers, bringin’ up all that talk abaout servitood an’ inalienable
truck an’ sech like, an’ jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your
wheels hit, an’—waal, you’re only another horse ez can’t be trusted.
I’ve been there time an’ again. Boys—fer I’ve seen you all bought er
broke—on my solemn repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain’t givin’
you no bran-mash o’ my own fixin’. I’m tellin’ you my experiences, an’
I’ve had ez heavy a load an’ ez high a check’s any horse here. I wuz
born with a splint on my near fore ez big’s a walnut, an’ the cussed,
three-cornered Hambletonian temper that sours up an’ curdles daown ez
you git older. I’ve favoured my splint; even little Rick he don’t know
what it’s cost me to keep my end up sometimes; an’ I’ve fit my temper
in stall an’ harness, hitched up an’ at pasture, till the sweat
trickled off my hooves, an’ they thought I wuz off condition, an’
drenched me.”
“When my affliction came,” said Tweezy, gently, “I was very near to
losin’ my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy, suh.”
Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a
sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don’t think he quite
understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.
“I’ve been there too, Rod,” said Tedda. “Open confession’s good for the
soul, an’ all Monroe County knows I’ve had my experriences.”
“But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson”—Tweezy looked unspeakable
things at the yellow horse—“that pusson who has insulted our
intelligences comes from Kansas. An’ what a ho’se of his position, an’
Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the halter, concern
gentlemen of _our_ position. There’s no shadow of equal’ty, suh, not
even for one kick. He’s beneath our contempt.”
“Let him talk,” said Marcus. “It’s always inte_res_tin’ to know what
another horse thinks. It don’t tech us.”
“An’ he talks so, too,” said Tuck. “I’ve never heard anythin’ so smart
for a long time.”
Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he
were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:
“I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain’t no Kansas, ner no
Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in _our_ business. There’s jest two kind
o’ horse in the United States—them ez can an’ will do their work after
bein’ properly broke an’ handled, an’ them as won’t. I’m sick an’ tired
o’ this everlastin’ tail-switchin’ an’ wickerin’ abaout one State er
another. A horse kin be proud o’ his State, an’ swap lies abaout it in
stall or when he’s hitched to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time
that way; but he hain’t no right to let that pride o’ hisn interfere
with his work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin’ he’s different.
That’s colts’ talk, an’ don’t you fergit it, Tweezy. An’, Marcus, you
remember that bein’ a philosopher, an’ anxious to save trouble,—fer you
_are_,—don’t excuse you from jumpin’ with all your feet on a
slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like Boney here. It’s leavin’ ’em alone
that gives ’em their chance to ruin colts an’ kill folks. An’, Tuck,
waal, you’re a mare anyways—but when a horse comes along an’ covers up
all his talk o’ killin’ with ripplin’ brooks, an wavin grass, an’ eight
quarts of oats a day free, _after_ killin’ his man, don’t you be run
away with by his yap. You’re too young an’ too nervous.”
“I’ll—I’ll have nervous prostration sure ef there’s a fight here,” said
Tuck, who saw what was in Rod’s eye; “I’m—I’m that sympathetic I’d run
away clear to next caounty.”
“Yep; I know that kind o’ sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to start a
fuss, an’ then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain’t been ten years
in harness fer nuthin’. Naow, we’re goin’ to keep school with Boney fer
a spell.”
“Say, look a-here, you ain’t goin’ to hurt me, are you? Remember, I
belong to a man in town,” cried the yellow horse, uneasily. Muldoon
kept behind him so that he could not run away.
“I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State hez a
right to the loose end o’ your hitchin’-strap. I’m blame sorry fer him,
but he shall hev his rights when we’re through with you,” said Rod.
“If it’s all the same, gentlemen, I’d ruther change pasture. Guess I’ll
do it now.”
“Can’t always have your ’druthers. Guess you won’t,” said Rod.
“But look a-here. All of you ain’t so blame unfriendly to a stranger.
S’pose we count noses.”
“What in Vermont fer?” said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The idea of
settling a question by counting noses is the very last thing that ever
enters the head of a well-broken horse.
“To see how many’s on my side. Here’s Miss Tuck, anyway; an’ Colonel
Tweezy yonder’s neutral; an’ Judge Marcus, an’ I guess the Reverend
[the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that I had my rights.
He’s the likeliest-lookin’ Trotter I’ve ever set eyes on. Pshaw. Boys.
You ain’t goin’ to pound _me_, be you? Why, we’ve gone round in
pasture, all colts together, this month o’ Sundays, hain’t we, as
friendly as could be. There ain’t a horse alive I don’t care who he
is—has a higher opinion o’ you, Mr. Rod, than I have. Let’s do it fair
an’ true an’ above the exe. Let’s count noses same’s they do in
Kansas.” Here he dropped his voice a little and turned to Marcus: “Say,
Judge, there’s some green food I know, back o’ the brook, no one hain’t
touched yet. After this little _fraças_ is fixed up, you an’ me’ll make
up a party an’ ’tend to it.”
Marcus did not answer for a long time, then he said: “There’s a pup up
to the haouse ’bout eight weeks old. He’ll yap till he gits a lickin’,
an’ when he sees it comin’ he lies on his back, an’ yowls. But he don’t
go through no cir_kit_uous nose-countin’ first. I’ve seen a noo light
sence Rod spoke. You’ll better stand up to what’s served. I’m goin’ to
philosophise all over your carcass.”
“_I_’m goin’ to do yer up in brown paper,” said Muldoon. “I can fit you
on apologies.”
“Hold on. Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you’ve been so dead
anxious to kill ’u’d call us off. Guess we’ll wait till they go back to
the haouse, an’ you’ll have time to think cool an’ quiet,” said Rod.
“Have you no respec’ whatever fer the dignity o’ our common horsehood?”
the yellow horse squealed.
“Nary respec’ onless the horse kin do something. America’s paved with
the kind er horse you are—jist plain yaller-dog horse—waitin’ ter be
whipped inter shape. We call ’em yearlings an’ colts when they’re
young. When they’re aged we pound ’em—in this pastur’. Horse, sonny, is
what you start from. We know all about horse here, an’ he ain’t any
high-toned, pure souled child o’ nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez
you, is chock-full o’ tricks, an’ meannesses, an’ cussednesses, an’
shirkin’s, an’ monkey-shines, which he’s took over from his sire an’
his dam, an’ thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o’
goin’ crooked. Thet’s _horse,_ an’ thet’s about his dignity an’ the
size of his soul ’fore he’s been broke an’ rawhided a piece. Now we
ain’t goin’ to give ornery unswitched _horse_, that hain’t done
nawthin’ wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet names that would
be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum, who _hev_. Don’t
you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait where you are! Ef I let my
Hambletonian temper git the better o’ me I’d frazzle you out finer than
rye-straw inside o’ three minutes, you woman-scarin’, kid-killin’,
dash-breakin’, unbroke, unshod, ungaited, pastur’-hoggin’, saw-backed,
shark-mouthed, hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an’ a
sewin’-machine!”
“I think we’d better get home,” I said to my companion, when Rod had
finished; and we climbed into the coupé, Tedda whinnying, as we bumped
over the ledges: “Well, I’m dreffle sorry I can’t stay fer the
sociable; but I hope an’ trust my friends’ll take a ticket fer me.”
“Bet your natchul!” said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses scattered
before us, trotting into the ravine.
Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the
yellow horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.
THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of
twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the
outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in framework and
machinery; and her designers and owner thought as much of her as though
she had been the _Lucania_. Any one can make a floating hotel that will
pay expenses, if he puts enough money into the saloon, and charges for
private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; but in these days of
competition and low freights every square inch of a cargo-boat must be
built for cheapness, great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed.
This boat was, perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two
feet wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her
main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory
was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her holds. Her
owners—they were a very well known Scotch firm—came round with her from
the north, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to
Liverpool, where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner’s
daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring
the new paint and the brass work, and the patent winches, and
particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a
bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the _Dimbula_. It was a
beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness—she was
painted lead-colour with a red funnel—looked very fine indeed. Her
house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged
the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the High and
Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.
“And now,” said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, “she’s a
real ship, isn’t she? It seems only the other day father gave the order
for her, and now—and now—isn’t she a beauty!” The girl was proud of the
firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner.
“Oh, she’s no so bad,” the skipper replied cautiously. “But I’m sayin’
that it takes more than christenin’ to mak’ a ship. In the nature o’
things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she’s just irons and rivets and
plates put into the form of a ship. She has to find herself yet.”
“I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.”
“So she is,” said the skipper, with a laugh. “But it’s this way wi’
ships, Miss Frazier. She’s all here, but the parrts of her have not
learned to work together yet. They’ve had no chance.”
“The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them.”
“Yes, indeed. But there’s more than engines to a ship. Every inch of
her, ye’ll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi’ its
neighbour—sweetenin’ her, we call it, technically.”
“And how will you do it?” the girl asked.
“We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have
rough weather this trip—it’s likely—she’ll learn the rest by heart! For
a ship, ye’ll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid body
closed at both ends. She’s a highly complex structure o’ various an’
conflictin’ strains, wi’ tissues that must give an’ tak’ accordin’ to
her personal modulus of elasteecity.” Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer,
was coming towards them. “I’m sayin’ to Miss Frazier, here, that our
little _Dimbula_ has to be sweetened yet, and nothin’ but a gale will
do it. How’s all wi’ your engines, Buck?”
“Well enough—true by plumb an’ rule, o’ course; but there’s no
spontaneeity yet.” He turned to the girl. “Take my word, Miss Frazier,
and maybe ye’ll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl’s christened
a ship it does not follow that there’s such a thing as a ship under the
men that work her.”
“I was sayin’ the very same, Mr. Buchanan,” the skipper interrupted.
“That’s more metaphysical than I can follow,” said Miss Frazier,
laughing.
“Why so? Ye’re good Scotch, an’—I knew your mother’s father, he was
fra’ Dumfries—ye’ve a vested right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just
as ye have in the _Dimbula_,” the engineer said.
“Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an’ earn Miss Frazier
her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?” said the
skipper. “We’ll be in dock the night, and when you’re goin’ back to
Glasgie ye can think of us loadin’ her down an’ drivin’ her forth—all
for your sake.”
In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight
into the _Dimbula_, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met
the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay
your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer,
you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling
and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and
squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden ships
shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through
all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The _Dimbula_ was
very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or a number,
or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged,
or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of
the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate
voice, in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it.
Cast-iron, as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and
wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded
and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of course, is not
half as wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do
not know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where
they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake
them next.
As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old
wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat
down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the
capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and
green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked.
“Don’t you do that again,” the capstan sputtered through the teeth of
his cogs. “Hi! Where’s the fellow gone?”
The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but “Plenty
more where he came from,” said a brother-wave, and went through and
over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron
deck-beams below.
“Can’t you keep still up there?” said the deckbeams. “What’s the matter
with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the
next you don’t!”
“It isn’t my fault,” said the capstan. “There’s a green brute outside
that comes and hits me on the head.”
“Tell that to the shipwrights. You’ve been in position for months and
you’ve never wriggled like this before. If you aren’t careful you’ll
strain _us_.”
“Talking of strain,” said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, “are any of
you fellows—you deck-beams, we mean—aware that those exceedingly ugly
knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure—_ours?_”
“Who might you be?” the deck-beams inquired.
“Oh, nobody in particular,” was the answer. “We’re only the port and
starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and
hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps.”
Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that
run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are
called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends
of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers
always consider themselves most important, because they are so long.
“You will take steps—will you?” This was a long echoing rumble. It came
from the frames—scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen
inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four
places. “We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in _that_”;
and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything
together whispered: “You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet.
Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What’s that?”
Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did
their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow,
and she shook like a rat in a terrier’s mouth.
An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big
throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a
kind of soda-water—half sea and half air—going much faster than was
proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank
again, the engines—and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a
row—snorted through all their three pistons. “Was that a joke, you
fellow outside? It’s an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work
if you fly off the handle that way?”
“I didn’t fly off the handle,” said the screw, twirling huskily at the
end of the screw-shaft. “If I had, you’d have been scrap-iron by this
time. The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to catch on
to. That’s all.”
“That’s all, d’you call it?” said the thrust-block, whose business it
is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold it
back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding back
of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) “I know I do my
work deep down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I
ask for is bare justice. Why can’t you push steadily and evenly,
instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my
collars?” The thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and
he did not wish to get them heated.
All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it ran
to the stern whispered: “Justice—give us justice.”
“I can only give you what I can get,” the screw answered. “Look out!
It’s coming again!”
He rose with a roar as the _Dimbula_ plunged, and
“whack—flack—whack—whack” went the engines, furiously, for they had
little to check them.
“I’m the noblest outcome of human ingenuity—Mr. Buchanan says so,”
squealed the high-pressure cylinder. “This is simply ridiculous!” The
piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was
mixed with dirty water. “Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I’m
choking,” it gasped. “Never in the history of maritime invention has
such a calamity over-taken one so young and strong. And if I go, who’s
to drive the ship?”
“Hush! oh, hush!” whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to sea
many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a
gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where
water was needed. “That’s only a little priming, a little
carrying-over, as they call it. It’ll happen all night, on and off. I
don’t say it’s nice, but it’s the best we can do under the
circumstances.”
“What difference can circumstances make? I’m here to do my work—on
clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!” the cylinder roared.
“The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I’ve worked on the North
Atlantic run a good many times—it’s going to be rough before morning.”
“It isn’t distressingly calm now,” said the extra strong frames—they
were called web-frames—in the engine-room. “There’s an upward thrust
that we don’t understand, and there’s a twist that is very bad for our
brackets and diamond-plates, and there’s a sort of west-northwesterly
pull, that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention
this because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel sure
that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous
way.”
“I’m afraid the matter is out of owner’s hands for the present,” said
the Steam, slipping into the condenser. “You’re left to your own
devices till the weather betters.”
“I wouldn’t mind the weather,” said a flat bass voice below; “it’s this
confounded cargo that’s breaking my heart. I’m the garboard-strake, and
I’m twice as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know
something.”
The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship, and
the _Dimbula’s_ garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an inch
mild steel.
“The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected,” the
strake grunted, “and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the two, I
don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“When in doubt, hold on,” rumbled the Steam, making head in the
boilers.
“Yes; but there’s only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and how do
I know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those
bulwark-plates up above, I’ve heard, ain’t more than five-sixteenths of
an inch thick—scandalous, I call it.”
“I agree with you,” said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch. He
was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across
the ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where
deck-beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. “I
work entirely unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of
this vessel, so far as my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure
you, is enormous. I believe the money-value of the cargo is over one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think of that!”
“And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions.” Here
spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside,
and was seated not very far from the garboard-strake. “I rejoice to
think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings.
Five patents cover me—I mention this without pride—five separate and
several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed
fast. Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. This is
incontrovertible!”
Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is a trick that
they pick up from their inventors.
“That’s news,” said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. “I had an idea that
you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I’ve used
you for that more than once. I forget the precise number, in thousands,
of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you,
my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am
capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. By my Biggest
Deliveries, we pitched then!”
The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly
gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all
sides by fat, grey clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted
the spray into lacework on the flanks of the waves.
“I tell you what it is,” the foremast telephoned down its wire-stays.
“I’m up here, and I can take a dispassionate view of things. There’s an
organised conspiracy against us. I’m sure of it, because every single
one of these waves is heading directly for our bows. The whole sea is
concerned in it—and so’s the wind. It’s awful!”
“What’s awful?” said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth
time.
“This organised conspiracy on your part,” the capstan gurgled, taking
his cue from the mast. “Organised bubbles and spindrift! There has been
a depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!” He leaped overside; but
his friends took up the tale one after another.
“Which has advanced—” That wave hove green water over the funnel.
“As far as Cape Hatteras—” He drenched the bridge.
“And is now going out to sea—to sea—to sea!” The third went out in
three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up
and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls
whipped the davits.
“That’s all there is to it,” seethed the white water roaring through
the scuppers. “There’s no animus in our proceedings. We’re only
meteorological corollaries.”
“Is it going to get any worse?” said the bow-anchor chained down to the
deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.
“Not knowing, can’t say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks
awfully. Good-bye.”
The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and
found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck
sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was hung
on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the
water back to the sea again with a clean smack.
“Evidently that’s what I’m made for,” said the plate, closing again
with a sputter of pride. “Oh, no, you don’t, my friend!” The top of a
wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not
open in that direction, the defeated water spurted back.
“Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch,” said the bulwark-plate. “My
work, I see, is laid down for the night”; and it began opening and
shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.
“We are not what you might call idle,” groaned all the frames together,
as the _Dimbula_ climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and
shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed
up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with
nothing to support them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow,
and another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from
under her just to see how she would like it; so she was held up at her
two ends only, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on
the groaning iron keels and bilge-stringers.
“Ease off! Ease off, there!” roared the garboard-strake. “I want
one-eighth of an inch fair play. D’ you hear me, you rivets!”
“Ease off! Ease off!” cried the bilge-stringers. “Don’t hold us so
tight to the frames!”
“Ease off!” grunted the deck-beams, as the _Dimbula_ rolled fearfully.
“You’ve cramped our knees into the stringers, and we can’t move. Ease
off, you flat-headed little nuisances.”
Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away
in torrents of streaming thunder.
“Ease off!” shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. “I want to crumple
up, but I’m stiffened in every direction. Ease off, you dirty little
forge-filings. Let me breathe!”
All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the
outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted
to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position,
complained against the rivets.
“We can’t help it! _We_ can’t help it!” they murmured in reply. “We’re
put here to hold you, and we’re going to do it; you never pull us twice
in the same direction. If you’d say what you were going to do next,
we’d try to meet your views.
“As far as I could feel,” said the upper-deck planking, and that was
four inches thick, “every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in
opposite directions. Now, what’s the sense of that? My friends, let us
all pull together.”
“Pull any way you please,” roared the funnel, “so long as you don’t try
your experiments on _me_. I need fourteen wire-ropes, all pulling in
different directions, to hold me steady. Isn’t that so?”
“We believe you, my boy!” whistled the funnel-stays through their
clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel
to the deck.
“Nonsense! We must all pull together,” the decks repeated. “Pull
lengthways.”
“Very good,” said the stringers; “then stop pushing sideways when you
get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the
ends as we do.”
“No—no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side to
side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on,” said
the deck-beams.
“Fiddle!” cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. “Who ever
heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and
carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!” A big sea smashed on
the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.
“Straight up and down is not bad,” said the frames, who ran that way in
the sides of the ship, “but you must also expand yourselves sideways.
Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! open out!”
“Come back!” said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of the
sea made the frames try to open. “Come back to your bearings, you
slack-jawed irons!”
“Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!” thumped the engines. “Absolute,
unvarying rigidity—rigidity!”
“You see!” whined the rivets, in chorus. “No two of you will ever pull
alike, and—and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go through a
plate and bite down on both sides so that it can’t, and mustn’t, and
sha’n’t move.”
“I’ve got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate,” said the
garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of the
ship felt the easier for it.
“Then we’re no good,” sobbed the bottom rivets. “We were ordered—we
were ordered—never to give; and we’ve given, and the sea will come in,
and we’ll all go to the bottom together! First we’re blamed for
everything unpleasant, and now we haven’t the consolation of having
done our work.”
“Don’t say I told you,” whispered the Steam, consolingly; “but, between
you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound to happen
sooner or later. You _had_ to give a fraction, and you’ve given without
knowing it. Now, hold on, as before.”
“What’s the use?” a few hundred rivets chattered. “We’ve given—we’ve
given; and the sooner we confess that we can’t keep the ship together,
and go off our little heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged can
stand this strain.”
“No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you,” the Steam
answered.
“The others can have my share. I’m going to pull out,” said a rivet in
one of the forward plates.
“If you go, others will follow,” hissed the Steam. “There’s nothing so
contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a little chap like
you—he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though—on a steamer—to be sure,
she was only twelve hundred tons, now I come to think of it—in exactly
the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea,
not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same
butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and I had to
climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down.”
“Now that’s peculiarly disgraceful,” said the rivet. “Fatter than me,
was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I
blush for the family, sir.” He settled himself more firmly than ever in
his place, and the Steam chuckled.
“You see,” he went on, quite gravely, “a rivet, and especially a rivet
in your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship.”
The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to
every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too
much.
And all that while the little _Dimbula_ pitched and chopped, and swung
and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as
though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in
circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its
worst. It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the
waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so
that you could not see your hand before your face. This did not make
much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a
good deal.
“Now it’s all finished,” he said dismally. “The conspiracy is too
strong for us. There is nothing left but to—”
“_Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!_” roared the Steam through the
fog-horn, till the decks quivered. “Don’t be frightened, below. It’s
only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one happens to be
rolling round to-night.”
“You don’t mean to say there’s any one except us on the sea in such
weather?” said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.
“Scores of ’em,” said the Steam, clearing its throat. “_Rrrrrraaa!
Brraaaaa! Prrrrp!_ It’s a trifle windy up here; and, Great Boilers! how
it rains!”
“We’re drowning,” said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else
all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed to be the
end of the world.
“That’s all right. We’ll be easier in an hour or two. First the wind
and then the rain. Soon you may make sail again! _Grrraaaaaah!
Drrrraaaa! Drrrp!_ I have a notion that the sea is going down already.
If it does you’ll learn something about rolling. We’ve only pitched
till now. By the way, aren’t you chaps in the hold a little easier than
you were?”
There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not
so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar
stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little
waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club.
“We have made a most amazing discovery,” said the stringers, one after
another. “A discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have
found, for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the
inward pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames
locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to
endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of
marine architecture.”
The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn. “What
massive intellects you great stringers have,” he said softly, when he
had finished.
“We also,” began the deck-beams, “are discoverers and geniuses. We are
of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us. We
find that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and
singular weight of sea above.”
Here the _Dimbula_ shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side;
righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.
“In these cases—are you aware of this, Steam?—the plating at the bows,
and particularly at the stern—we would also mention the floors beneath
us—help us to resist any tendency to spring.” The frames spoke, in the
solemn awed voice which people use when they have just come across
something entirely new for the very first time.
“I’m only a poor puffy little flutterer,” said the Steam, “but I have
to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It’s all tremendously
interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so strong.”
“Watch us and you’ll see,” said the bow-plates, proudly. “Ready, behind
there! Here’s the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets
all!” A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and
confusion the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as
the various strains took them—cries like these: “Easy, now—easy! _Now_
push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull
in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip, now! Bite
tight! Let the water get away from under—and there she goes!”
The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, “Not bad, that, if it’s
your first run!” and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat
of the engines inside her. All three cylinders were white with the salt
spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white
fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep
below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make
the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along
cheerfully.
“How’s the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?” said the
Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room.
“Nothing for nothing in this world of woe,” the cylinders answered, as
though they had been working for centuries, “and precious little for
seventy-five pounds head. We’ve made two knots this last hour and a
quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem rather
less—how shall I put it—stiff in the back than you were.”
“If you’d been hammered as we’ve been this night, you wouldn’t be
stiff—iff—iff; either. Theoreti—retti—retti—cally, of course, rigidity
is the thing. Purrr—purr—practically, there has to be a little give and
take. _We_ found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a
stretch—chch—chh. How’s the weather?”
“Sea’s going down fast,” said the Steam.
“Good business,” said the high-pressure cylinder. “Whack her up, boys.
They’ve given us five pounds more steam”; and he began humming the
first bars of “Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,” which, as
you may have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not built for high
speed. Racing-liners with twin-screws sing “The Turkish Patrol” and the
overture to the “Bronze Horse,” and “Madame Angot,” till something goes
wrong, and then they render Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,”
with variations.
“You’ll learn a song of your own some fine day,” said the Steam, as he
flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.
Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the
_Dimbula_ began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in
her was sick and giddy. But luckily they did not all feel ill at the
same time: otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box.
The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is in
this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of
the accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the worst is over
and goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till the beams and
frames and floors and stringers and things had learned how to lock down
and lock up on one another, and endure this new kind of strain.
They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at sea,
and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New York. The
_Dimbula_ picked up her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red
rust. Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom; two boats had been
carried away; three copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight
with the police; the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house
that covered the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there
was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room almost as long as the
screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they
raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly
wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was “a pretty
general average.”
“But she’s soupled,” he said to Mr. Buchanan. “For all her dead-weight
she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the Banks—I am proud
of her, Buck.”
“It’s vera good,” said the chief engineer, looking along the
dishevelled decks. “Now, a man judgin’ superfeecially would say we were
a wreck, but we know otherwise—by experience.”
Naturally everything in the _Dimbula_ fairly stiffened with pride, and
the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are pushing
creatures, begged the Steam to warn the Port of New York of their
arrival. “Tell those big boats all about us,” they said. “They seem to
take us quite as a matter of course.”
It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with
less than half a mile between each, their bands playing and their
tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the _Majestic_, the
_Paris_, the _Touraine_, the _Servia_, the _Kaiser Wilhelm II._, and
the _Werkendam_, all statelily going out to sea. As the _Dimbula_
shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the Steam (who
knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and
then) shouted:
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye
by these presents, we are the _Dimbula_, fifteen days nine hours from
Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo
for the first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are here.
’_Eer! ’Eer!_ We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly
unparalleled in the annals of ship-building! Our decks were swept! We
pitched; we rolled! We thought we were going to die! _Hi! Hi!_ But we
didn’t. We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the
way across the Atlantic, through the worst weather in the world; and we
are the _Dimbula!_ We are—arr—ha—ha—ha-r-r-r!”
The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of
the Seasons. The _Dimbula_ heard the _Majestic_ say, “Hmph!” and the
_Paris_ grunted, “How!” and the _Touraine_ said, “Oui!” with a little
coquettish flicker of steam; and the _Servia_ said, “Haw!” and the
_Kaiser_ and the _Werkendam_ said, “Hoch!” Dutch fashion—and that was
absolutely all.
“I did my best,” said the Steam, gravely, “but I don’t think they were
much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?”
“It’s simply disgusting,” said the bow-plates. “They might have seen
what we’ve been through. There isn’t a ship on the sea that has
suffered as we have—is there, now?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as that,” said the Steam, “because I’ve
worked on some of those boats, and sent them through weather quite as
bad as the fortnight that we’ve had, in six days; and some of them are
a little over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I’ve seen the
_Majestic_, for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel; and I’ve
helped the _Arizona_, I think she was, to back off an iceberg she met
with one dark night; and I had to run out of the _Paris’s_ engine-room,
one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I
don’t deny—” The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a
political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York
Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was
a long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the
propeller-blades of the _Dimbula_.
Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had
just waked up: “It’s my conviction that I have made a fool of myself.”
The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself
all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice,
which is the soul of the ship.
“Who are you?” he said, with a laugh. “I am the _Dimbula_, of course.
I’ve never been anything else except that—and a fool!”
The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away
just in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but
impolite air:
In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
In the days of old Rameses,
That story had paresis,
Are you on—are you on—are you on?
“Well, I’m glad you’ve found yourself,” said the Steam. “To tell the
truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers.
Here’s Quarantine. After that we’ll go to our wharf and clean up a
little, and—next month we’ll do it all over again.”
THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread
in all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the
Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of
saying that certain families serve India generation after generation,
as dolphins follow in line across the open sea.
Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one
representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since
the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay
European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799.
Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey’s younger brother, commanded a regiment of
Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed fighting;
and in 1834 John Chinn of the same family—we will call him John Chinn
the First—came to light as a level-headed administrator in time of
trouble at a place called Mundesur. He died young, but left his mark on
the new country, and the Honourable the Board of Directors of the
Honourable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a stately
resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among the Satpura
hills.
He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old
Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He
spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn’s
grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men,
most of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small
thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty
miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish
country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years and retired. In the
Canal his steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship, carrying his son
eastward to the family duty.
The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what
they must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and
gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad to see him. A dull
Chinn enters the Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner
or later he, too, appears in Central India, and that is what gave rise
to the saying, “Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns,
all very much alike.” The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and
the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather
clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn
tradition. His duty was to abide in his father’s regiment for the term
of his natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have
paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish,
clothed in rifle-green with black-leather trimmings; and friends called
them the “Wuddars,” which means a race of low-caste people who dig up
rats to eat. But the Wuddars did not resent it. They were the only
Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:
Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment.
Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the
general rule, but walked at the head of their men. A man who can hold
his own with the Wuddars at their quickstep must be sound in wind and
limb. Thirdly, they were the most _pukka shikarries_ (out-and-out
hunters) in all India. Fourthly-up to one-hundredthly—they were the
Wuddars—Chinn’s Irregular Bhil Levies of the old days, but now,
henceforward and for ever, the Wuddars.
No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family
usage. The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two
hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their
children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of
the many strange races in India. They were, and at heart are, wild men,
furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions. The races whom we call
natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of the land when
they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago.
The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal, Dravidian, and so forth;
and, in other words, that is what the Bhils call themselves. When a
Rajput chief whose bards can sing his pedigree backwards for twelve
hundred years is set on the throne, his investiture is not complete
till he has been marked on the forehead with blood from the veins of a
Bhil. The Rajputs say the ceremony has no meaning, but the Bhil knows
that it is the last, last shadow of his old rights as the long-ago
owner of the soil.
Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and
half-crazy thief and cattle-stealer, and when the English came he
seemed to be almost as open to civilisation as the tigers of his own
jungles. But John Chinn the First, father of Lionel, grandfather of our
John, went into his country, lived with him, learned his language, shot
the deer that stole his poor crops, and won his confidence, so that
some Bhils learned to plough and sow, while others were coaxed into the
Company’s service to police their friends.
When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant
execution, they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind of
sport, and were zealous to keep the wild Bhils under control. That was
the thin edge of the wedge. John Chinn the First gave them written
promises that, if they were good from a certain date, the Government
would overlook previous offences; and since John Chinn was never known
to break his word—he promised once to hang a Bhil locally esteemed
invulnerable, and hanged him in front of his tribe for seven proved
murders—the Bhils settled down as steadily as they knew how. It was
slow, unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India
to-day; and though John Chinn’s only reward came, as I have said, in
the shape of a grave at Government expense, the little people of the
hills never forgot him.
Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very
fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of them
could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers; but in the
south, where John Chinn the First was buried, the wildest still clung
to the Satpura ranges, cherishing a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as
they called him, would return to his own. In the mean time they
mistrusted the white man and his ways. The least excitement would
stampede them, plundering, at random, and now and then killing; but if
they were handled discreetly they grieved like children, and promised
never to do it again.
The Bhils of the regiment—the uniformed men—were virtuous in many ways,
but they needed humouring. They felt bored and homesick unless taken
after tiger as beaters; and their cold-blooded daring—all Wuddars shoot
tigers on foot: it is their caste-mark—made even the officers wonder.
They would follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were
a sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of caves
and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen men at his
mercy. Now and then some little man was brought to barracks with his
head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his companions never learned
caution; they contented themselves with settling the tiger.
Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars’ lonely
mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his gun-cases
cascading all round him. The slender little, hookey-nosed boy looked
forlorn as a strayed goat when he slapped the white dust off his knees,
and the cart jolted down the glaring road. But in his heart he was
contented. After all, this was the place where he had been born, and
things were not much changed since he had been sent to England, a
child, fifteen years ago.
There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the
sunshine were the same; and the little green men who crossed the
parade-ground looked very familiar. Three weeks ago John Chinn would
have said he did not remember a word of the Bhil tongue, but at the
mess door he found his lips moving in sentences that he did not
understand—bits of old nursery rhymes, and tail-ends of such orders as
his father used to give the men.
The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.
“Look!” he said to the Major. “No need to ask the young un’s breed.
He’s a _pukka_ Chinn. Might be his father in the Fifties over again.”
“Hope he’ll shoot as straight,” said the Major. “He’s brought enough
ironmongery with him.”
“Wouldn’t be a Chinn if he didn’t. Watch him blowin’ his nose. Regular
Chinn beak. Flourishes his handkerchief like his father. It’s the
second edition—line for line.”
“Fairy tale, by Jove!” said the Major, peering through the slats of the
jalousies. “If he’s the lawful heir, he’ll.... Now old Chinn could no
more pass that chick without fiddling with it than....”
“His son!” said the Colonel, jumping up.
“Well, I be blowed!” said the Major. The boy’s eye had been caught by a
split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the veranda pillars, and,
mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to set it level. Old Chinn had
sworn three times a day at that screen for many years; he could never
get it to his satisfaction.
His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence. They
made him welcome for his father’s sake and, as they took stock of him,
for his own. He was ridiculously like the portrait of the Colonel on
the wall, and when he had washed a little of the dust from his throat
he went to his quarters with the old man’s short, noiseless
jungle-step.
“So much for heredity,” said the Major. “That comes of four generations
among the Bhils.”
“And the men know it,” said a Wing officer. “They’ve been waiting for
this youth with their tongues hanging out. I am persuaded that, unless
he absolutely beats ’em over the head, they’ll lie down by companies
and worship him.”
“Nothin’ like havin’ a father before you,” said the Major. “I’m a
parvenu with my chaps. I’ve only been twenty years in the regiment, and
my revered parent he was a simple squire. There’s no getting at the
bottom of a Bhil’s mind. Now, _why_ is the superior bearer that young
Chinn brought with him fleeing across country with his bundle?” He
stepped into the verandah, and shouted after the man—a typical
new-joined subaltern’s servant who speaks English and cheats in
proportion.
“What is it?” he called.
“Plenty bad man here. I going, sar,” was the reply. “Have taken Sahib’s
keys, and say will shoot.”
“Doocid lucid—doocid convincin’. How those up-country thieves can leg
it! He has been badly frightened by some one.” The Major strolled to
his quarters to dress for mess.
Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass round
the entire cantonment before going to his own tiny cottage. The
captain’s quarters, in which he had been born, delayed him for a
little; then he looked at the well on the parade-ground, where he had
sat of evenings with his nurse, and at the ten-by-fourteen church,
where the officers went to service if a chaplain of any official creed
happened to come along. It seemed very small as compared with the
gigantic buildings he used to stare up at, but it was the same place.
From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted.
They might have been the very men who had carried him on their backs
when he was in his first knickerbockers. A faint light burned in his
room, and, as he entered, hands clasped his feet, and a voice murmured
from the floor.
“Who is it?” said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil tongue.
“I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you were a
small one—crying, crying, crying! I am your servant, as I was your
father’s before you. We are all your servants.”
Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went on:
“I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him away; and
the studs are in the shirt for mess. Who should know, if I do not know?
And so the baby has become a man, and forgets his nurse; but my nephew
shall make a good servant, or I will beat him twice a day.”
Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a
little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his
tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry
Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn’s mess-boots.
Chinn’s eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys.
“Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again. We are all
servants of your father’s son. Has the Sahib forgotten who took him to
see the trapped tiger in the village across the river, when his mother
was so frightened and he was so brave?”
The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes. “Bukta!”
he cried; and all in a breath: “You promised nothing should hurt me.
_Is_ it Bukta?”
The man was at his feet a second time. “He has not forgotten. He
remembers his own people as his father remembered. Now can I die. But
first I will live and show the Sahib how to kill tigers. That _that_
yonder is my nephew. If he is not a good servant, beat him and send him
to me, and I will surely kill him, for now the Sahib is with his own
people. Ai, Jan _baba_—Jan _baba!_ My Jan _baba!_ I will stay here and
see that this does his work well. Take off his boots, fool. Sit down
upon the bed, Sahib, and let me look. It _is_ Jan _baba_.”
He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service, which is
an honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals, or to little
children whom one loves dearly. Chinn touched the hilt mechanically
with three fingers, muttering he knew not what. It happened to be the
old answer of his childhood, when Bukta in jest called him the little
General Sahib.
The Major’s quarters were opposite Chinn’s, and when he heard his
servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room. Then the Major
sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native
commissioned officer of the regiment, an “unmixed” Bhil, a Companion of
the Order of British India, with thirty-five years’ spotless service in
the army, and a rank among his own people superior to that of many
Bengal princelings, valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little
too much for his nerves.
The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend behind it.
First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of beaters in a far-away
cover, and next, large, full, and smooth, the refrain of the wild song:
“And oh, and oh, the green pulse of Mundore—Mundore!”
“All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call last,”
said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call brought back
memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his mother’s kiss, and
the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his
men. So he hooked the dark collar of his new mess-jacket, and went to
dinner like a prince who has newly inherited his father’s crown.
Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own value,
and no money and no rank within the gift of the Government would have
induced him to put studs in young officers’ shirts, or to hand them
clean ties. Yet, when he took off his uniform that night, and squatted
among his fellows for a quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and
they said that he was entirely right. Thereat Bukta propounded a theory
which to a white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the
whispering, level-headed little men of war considered it from every
point of view, and thought that there might be a great deal in it.
At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing
subject of _shikar_—big game-shooting of every kind and under all sorts
of conditions. Young Chinn opened his eyes when he understood that each
one of his companions had shot several tigers in the Wuddar style—on
foot, that is—making no more of the business than if the brute had been
a dog.
“In nine cases out of ten,” said the Major, “a tiger is almost as
dangerous as a porcupine. But the tenth time you come home feet first.”
That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn’s brain was in a
whirl with stories of tigers—man-eaters and cattle-killers each
pursuing his own business as methodically as clerks in an office; new
tigers that had lately come into such-and-such a district; and old,
friendly beasts of great cunning, known by nicknames in the mess—such
as “Puggy,” who was lazy, with huge paws, and “Mrs. Malaprop,” who
turned up when you never expected her, and made female noises. Then
they spoke of Bhil superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till
young Chinn hinted that they must be pulling his leg.
“’Deed, we aren’t,” said a man on his left. “We know all about you.
You’re a Chinn and all that, and you’ve a sort of vested right here;
but if you don’t believe what we’re telling you, what will you do when
old Bukta begins his stories? He knows about ghost-tigers, and tigers
that go to a hell of their own; and tigers that walk on their hind
feet; and your grandpapa’s riding-tiger, as well. Odd he hasn’t spoken
of that yet.”
“You know you’ve an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don’t you?” said
the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
“Of course I do,” said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of
Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer
table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are
allowed to look at it on Sundays.
“Well, I wasn’t sure. Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to the
Bhils, has a tiger of his own—a saddle-tiger that he rides round the
country whenever he feels inclined. _I_ don’t call it decent in an
ex-Collector’s ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even
our men, who might be called moderately cool, don’t care to beat that
country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It
is supposed to be a clouded animal—not stripy, but blotchy, like a
tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of
war or pestilence or—or something. There’s a nice family legend for
you.”
“What’s the origin of it, d’ you suppose?” said Chinn.
“Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the
Lord. Perhaps it was the tiger’s revenge, or perhaps he’s huntin’ ’em
still. You must go to his tomb one of these days and inquire. Bukta
will probably attend to that. He was asking me before you came whether
by any ill-luck you had already bagged your tiger. If not, he is going
to enter you under his own wing. Of course, for you of all men it’s
imperative. You’ll have a first-class time with Bukta.”
The Major was not wrong. Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn at
drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted
up his voice in an order the whole line quivered. Even the Colonel was
taken aback, for it might have been Lionel Chinn returned from
Devonshire with a new lease of life. Bukta had continued to develop his
peculiar theory among his intimates, and it was accepted as a matter of
faith in the lines, since every word and gesture on young Chinn’s part
so confirmed it.
The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the
reproach of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to take the
first or any beast that happened to arrive. In his own villages he
dispensed the high, low, and middle justice, and when his people—naked
and fluttered—came to him with word of a beast marked down, he bade
them send spies to the kills and the watering-places, that he might be
sure the quarry was such an one as suited the dignity of such a man.
Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully
saying that the beast was mangy, undersized—a tigress worn with
nursing, or a broken-toothed old male—and Bukta would curb young
Chinn’s impatience.
At last, a noble animal was marked down—a ten-foot cattle-killer with a
huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided, full-frilled
about the neck, whiskered, frisky, and young. He had slain a man in
pure sport, they said.
“Let him be fed,” quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove out a
cow to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great moneys
for the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this of Bukta’s.
“It is not good,” said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
shooting-leave, “that my Colonel’s son who may be—that my Colonel’s son
should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle beast. That may come
after. I have waited long for this which is a tiger. He has come in
from the Mair country. In seven days we will return with the skin.”
The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen, might
have invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn, two days in a
shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to a rocky, glary
valley with a pool of good water in it. It was a parching day, and the
boy very naturally stripped and went in for a bathe, leaving Bukta by
the clothes. A white skin shows far against brown jungle, and what
Bukta beheld on Chinn’s back and right shoulder dragged him forward
step by step with staring eyeballs.
“I’d forgotten it isn’t decent to strip before a man of his position,”
said Chinn, flouncing in the water. “How the little devil stares! What
is it, Bukta?” “The Mark!” was the whispered answer.
“It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!” Chinn was annoyed.
The dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like a
conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he would not
have bathed. It occurred, so they said at home, in alternate
generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine years after
birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn inheritance, would not
be considered pretty. He hurried ashore, dressed again, and went on
till they met two or three Bhils, who promptly fell on their faces. “My
people,” grunted Bukta, not condescending to notice them. “And so your
people, Sahib. When I was a young man we were fewer, but not so weak.
Now we are many, but poor stock. As may be remembered. How will you
shoot him, Sahib? From a tree; from a shelter which my people shall
build; by day or by night?”
“On foot and in the daytime,” said young Chinn.
“That was your custom, as I have heard,” said Bukta to himself. “I will
get news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will carry one gun.
You have yours. There is no need of more. What tiger shall stand
against _thee?_”
He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine,
full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like
a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no
motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the
shattering roar of the charge with a single shot—it seemed to him hours
as he sighted—which tore through the throat, smashing the backbone
below the neck and between the shoulders. The brute couched, choked,
and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened Bukta bade him
stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing
jaws.
“Fifteen,” said Bukta. “Short paces. No need for a second shot, Sahib.
He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I said
there would be no need of these, but they came—in case.”
Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta’s
people—a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had
Chinn’s shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as
interested beaters, some five or six waiting the word to skin. Bukta
watched the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned
on his heel.
“No need to show that _we_ care,” said he. “Now, after this, we can
kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.”
Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. “That also was
your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to
cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and,
perhaps, forget that I am his officer?”
“But those men—the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps—”
“Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In
the lines I am one thing. Here I am another.”
This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the
fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill
in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects,
he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely
written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but
the meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed
about his knees with offerings. He gave his flask to the elders of the
village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts
and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music
rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the
ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are
very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless
the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to
waken late the next day—half a march from the village?
“The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep,”
Bukta explained. “My people carried him here, and now it is time we
should go back to cantonments.”
The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it
hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and
capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.
“My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget.
When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and
they will give him as many men as we need.”
Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and
Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was
certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of
many. When Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took
care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and
desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings, by talks at
twilight or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed man could have come
at in a lifetime.
Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their
relatives—mostly in trouble—and to lay cases of tribal custom before
him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the
easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor
had run away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how
many cows would Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written
order came from the Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled
city of the plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to
disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the
rash voyager return alive?
“But what have I to do with these things?” Chinn demanded of Bukta,
impatiently. “I am a soldier. I do not know the law.”
“Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order,
and they will abide by it. Thou art their law.”
“But wherefore?”