He had excuses, or rather explanations, which had appeared quite

satisfactory an hour or so ago. It was true that a general order had

been issued that scouts were not to venture far out of touch with the

outposts; but in the circumstances, the order had seemed inapplicable—a

few hours ago.

The reason for the order was that recently no fewer than four officers

employed on reconnaissance duty among the hills had failed to return

to headquarters at Fuente Aguenaldo. The French knew nothing of them,

and the French were honourable adversaries. On the other hand, the

inhabitants of the Sierra were Spanish irregulars—our allies, guerrillas

who varied the intervals between action and retreat by remunerative

military exploits, flavoured under favourable conditions by torture.

It was not inconceivable that these gentlemen might have failed to

differentiate between the French and English nationalities in the case of

the absentees.

Explanation I.—Duckworth had seen the King’s uniform on a stray

figure—presumably that of one of the missing officers. It was therefore

his duty to ride in search of him.

Explanation II.—The hills in that neighbourhood were innocent of

guerrilla—for a season, at least. Early in the day, Duckworth had

watched a force of French rounding up a large body of his irregular

allies at the point of the bayonet, in a businesslike manner that evoked

his enthusiastic admiration.

Result!—Disobedience to orders and nothing whatever to show for it.

If his thoughts were gloomy, his surroundings were depressing. Every

stream, every runnel, every trickle, was frothing with dirty grey

soapsud-coloured water; the clean white limestone cliffs had taken a

dull, grey, lifeless, unwashed hue; the dripping dank leaves seemed to be

doing their best to turn grey, and over all the mist stretched its grey,

unwholesome canopy.

For some time he had followed the river, the general direction of which

would, he knew, take him towards the British lines; but all at once the

water, after the exasperating habit of mountain streams in limestone

countries, slipped underground, leaving a trackless chaos of stones and

boulders. Disgustedly the Major turned his charger’s head, trusting to

luck to find a way out somehow to somewhere.

Now and again he would halt and give a hail in the hope of attracting the

attention of the wandering brother officer he was seeking.

Unexpectedly his hail was answered—almost at his elbow. The intonation

was not English, and Duckworth swung round, pistol in hand, to find

himself face to face with a Spanish priest.

The stranger’s bearing was refined, his manner courteous, his voice

cultured, his features handsome and prepossessing. Nevertheless,

Duckworth decided out of hand that the man was a scoundrel, and that he

was in that strange place at that strange hour for some sinister purpose.

Not even when, after a few words of salutation, the priest offered his

poor hospitality for the night and his services as guide in the morning,

did he modify his opinion. He hated Spanish priests.

‘’Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil’; and when a

grown man is offered the choice between a desperately certain deep sea

of night, on storm-swept, brigand-haunted hills, and shelter with a

prejudicate devil, the alternative is not difficult of decision. With

fair words on his lips and mistrust in his heart, Duckworth permitted

himself to be guided by the priest.

The way led sharply upwards; then once and again twisted smartly between

colonnades of fantastic spikes of limestone, and so on, through a path,

or rather alley, over-roofed with interlacing boughs of tangled trees.

Emerging from the wood, they found themselves in a towering amphitheatre

of rock, sheer or overhanging, broken by little terraces of vivid green,

and with here and there a yew or birch or mountain ash growing out of the

crevices. It recalled to the Major a place he had once seen in his own

country—a mighty rift in the scarp of the great Craven Fault, Gordale

Scar. For a moment he stood gazing upwards, overawed by the grandeur and

the gloomy majesty of it.

‘We are here!’

It was the priest who spoke, and at the sound of the voice Duckworth

started, then laughed foolishly. Here! This was anchorite hospitality

indeed. He looked round through the increasing darkness in the hope of

finding so much as a cave.

The priest laughed also, and pointed ahead to where a low barrier of

limestone stretched across the gorge.

At first sight it appeared part of the parent cliff, but closer

inspection showed it to be strangely regular in outline. It was in fact

the wall of a considerable building, and a second glance sufficed to

recognise it as such, although an attempt had been made to emphasise

its resemblance to its surroundings by piling broken rock along the top

of the wall and leaving the edges ragged. Again the priest laughed,

and, taking Duckworth by the arm, led him onwards, and so through an

opening—which even scrutiny might have mistaken for the entrance to a

cave—to the interior.

There was shelter here—solid shelter; but the Major could not throw off

the feeling that he would prefer to be out in the storm on the mountains.

The place was uncomfortably like a prison—a low, square, featureless

edifice, enclosed within a quadrangle of massive wall through which he

had just passed.

He had no opportunity for immediate reflection, however, for the priest,

who had hitherto been somewhat taciturn, began to talk with great

volubility. It seemed to Duckworth that he was endeavouring to attract

his interest, or rather to distract it. Still, there was neither sight

nor sound to justify suspicion, so he suffered himself to be led to

a shed, built within the court between the containing walls and the

building, which he was gratified to find was a stable. Here the priest

took his leave for a few minutes, with apologies that he had no servant

and a light observation on the fondness of the English for their horses.

‘The foolish fondness for his horse,’ characteristic of the English

according to Mauvillon, did not deter Duckworth from thinking, and

thinking hard. The place did not look like a monastery, though there was

no reason to suppose it was not. For the matter of that, the man did not

look like a priest.

Ere long, Duckworth began to realise that he was physically as well as

mentally uncomfortable. Before he had finished grooming his steed, the

perspiration was running off him. The atmosphere was something like that

of a vapour bath. Up till then, he had been unpleasantly chilly and only

too glad of the warmth of his great-coat. Neither was it the temperature

only that was oppressive. The place was unnaturally still. Without,

had been clangour and anger of elements; within the gorge, was quiet.

The tumult of the wind passed high overhead and was shut off by the

overhanging cliffs. The only obtrusive sound was a dull, unusual murmur

that seemed, to the Major’s imagination, to come from far below him.

He was wondering what it might mean, when a step on the flags of the

court arrested his attention. A man was coming towards him—a man who was

not a priest. In an instant his pistol was cocked and ready.

The man laughed.

‘Surely, sir,’ he said, ‘yours is a somewhat discourteous way of greeting

your host!’

Duckworth stared. The voice and features were those of the priest, but

the costume was that of a Spanish gentleman, and Duckworth noted that the

hair was untonsured.

‘Come!’ continued the Spaniard, ‘if you have finished with your horse,

you will be glad of some refreshment. I can offer you but little. Still,

it will be more palatable than bread and water.’

He turned as he spoke, and led the way across the court. Duckworth noted

with a thrill that he limped slightly. There were ill tales in the camp

of a bandit with a limp.

They passed into the house, crossed a hall, and entered a small room,

roughly but comfortably furnished. On the hearth a newly lighted fire of

logs was crackling. The window was wide open.

The stranger courteously assisted Duckworth out of his great-coat, which

he threw over an arm-chair in front of the blaze. Then, indicating a

chair at a table on which food and wine were laid out, he seated himself

in his turn and poured out two goblets of wine.

‘I dare say, sir,’ he said, with twinkling eyes, ‘you are wondering—and

perhaps with not a little suspicion—what the meaning of all this is?’

Duckworth flushed, and made a deprecating movement with his hand. The

other laughed again.

‘To begin at the beginning,’ he resumed. ‘Why the disguise of a priest?

Because, sir, I value my skin. You English, I do not fear—except

on a retreat. The French, however, are most inconsiderate to all

Spaniards—even non-combatants—but they leave the clergy alone. Finally,

on these hills, there are countrymen of my own, who, I fear, prey on

all and sundry. Fortunately, they are superstitious or excessively

religious—call it which you will—and so⸺’ he ended with an expressive

gesture.

Duckworth had been studying the man carefully. He was of fine presence

and soldierly bearing.

‘Why not join the army?’ he asked.

‘Because, sir, your British methods of fighting do not appeal to me. I

fought at Albuera. Ah! I know hard things have been said of my nation,

but it is not given to all nations to stand still like a wall and be shot

down. Also, I was unhorsed, ridden over by the cavalry, speared whilst on

the ground by a Polish lancer, and lamed for life. In fact, sir, I have

had enough of war.’

Duckworth began rather to like the man. After all, it was not given to

every nation to breed regiments of Fusiliers and Die-Hards, and the

Spaniard had fought and taken punishment.

‘You have been very frank with me, señor,’ he said, ‘may I ask of your

courtesy one more question?’

‘Who am I, and what am I doing here?’ laughed the Spaniard.

Duckworth nodded.

‘It is easily answered—I am Don Luiz Aguinaldo, once a wealthy hidalgo,

now a poor fugitive. The accursed French have swept my estates like a

flight of locusts: my mines are unworked, my vineyards destroyed. My

cousin was a priest in this monastery: I had visited him here and knew of

it. When war broke out, the Fathers, to a man, left their sanctuary and

went out to serve the sick and the wounded. I made my way here, found

the place deserted, and here I have lived ever since.’

All Duckworth’s mistrust returned in a moment. ‘I don’t believe a word of

it,’ was his unspoken comment. What he said was:

‘I wonder you can stand it. It is the most enervating place I have ever

been in. I should die of exhaustion in a week.’

‘Yes,’ assented Aguinaldo, ‘that fire is not for comfort, but to dry your

coat. Your boots would be none the worse for a toasting either. Wait, I

will get a light.’

As he spoke, he kindled a taper at the fire and proceeded to light a

lamp. This he placed for a moment on a table in the window and then, as

if on second thoughts, set it down by Duckworth. All the time he kept up

an incessant flow of talk.

‘It is the hot springs,’ he explained. ‘This is, in fact, the real Fuente

Aguinaldo. The town—your headquarters—is a by-product, an offshoot. A

strange place it is, and a strange place this old monastery is, too.

It is a quadrangle within a quadrangle, and right in the centre of the

building is a great tank. I suppose it was a natural formation in the

first instance, and was carved into regular shape by the monks. The

waters are always warm, and at one time had a great reputation for

healing rheumatism and such complaints. Cripples used to come on crutches

and go away dancing, so say the monks. I have no doubt the holy men made

a good thing out of it. However, somehow or other, it lost credit, and I

believe I am about the only person who uses it now. I have a bathe every

morning. Not,’ he ended ruefully, ‘that it does my wounded leg any good.’

Duckworth was puzzled. He scented mischief. He was confident that the

Spaniard was deceiving him, yet he was, paradoxically, sure he was

speaking the truth. Nothing, however, was to be gained by conjecture,

so he affected an interest in his surroundings, talked of the waters at

Bath and all kinds of bagatelles. Eventually, almost inevitably, the

conversation came round to the war. Duckworth had missed Albuera, and was

delighted at the prospect of a first-hand account from an eyewitness.

Don Aguinaldo spoke like a soldier. He understood and appreciated the

cleverness of Soult’s manœuvres and was unsparing in his denunciation of

Blake. For Beresford his admiration knew no bounds. His desperate courage

and heroic strength dominated the Spaniard’s imagination. Duckworth

concluded that his host was unacquainted with the Marshal’s exploit of

carrying a runaway Spanish ensign, colours and all, to the front, and

deemed it courteous not to enlighten him.

The evening passed pleasantly without word or act that could be construed

into confirmation of Duckworth’s suspicions—save one. He chanced to

mention the encounter between the French and Spaniards he had witnessed

that morning, and he thought that his host for an instant changed

countenance. He could not be sure, for at that moment Aguinaldo chanced

to spill his glass of wine, and the annoyance his face exhibited might

have been attributable to the accident.

At an early hour they retired for the night. Duckworth was weary in head

and body. The day had been a trying one physically, the tepid atmosphere

of the gorge was most exhausting, and finally he could not shake off

the impression that his host was a villain who would cut his throat if

opportunity offered. Suddenly suspicion became conviction.

Aguinaldo was conducting him down a long corridor of the monastery to

his bedroom, when Duckworth recognised an odour that was not incense. It

was quite unmistakably a mixture of rank tobacco and garlic. Now, his

host’s cigars he had found singularly good, and the hidalgo did not reek

of garlic. Moreover, the smell was too strong to be the ‘drag’ of one

individual, however high. A less intelligent man than the Major would

have recognised that the chances were that he was in a brigands’ nest.

Duckworth felt his appreciation of the French he had seen that morning

increase immensely. But for them, he might by that time have died rather

painfully. As it was, he was confident from the admirable manner in which

they had attended to the business in hand, there was nothing to fear

from the Spanish gentlemen of the hills for some time to come. As for

Aguinaldo, he could, and would, wring his neck as soon as look at him,

for the Major was certainly no weaker a man than Marshal Beresford.

Nevertheless, he lay down with his pistols under his pillow and his drawn

sword by his side. The point of his scabbard he had jammed under the

door—a most effective wedge.

Tired as he was, he could not sleep. He could not even rest. That dull,

unusual murmur he had noticed in the courtyard, that never-ceasing,

monotonous, subterranean muttering, was unmistakable. It was closer,

clearer, and more insistent. It seemed to come now actually from beneath

his feet. He tossed impatiently from his couch and leaned out of the open

window.

The murmur was, if anything, less distinct, and there was nothing to

be seen but the unsightly gloom of the pallid limestone cliffs, barely

visible in a drip of sickly moonlight that filtered down through the dank

atmosphere. It was pleasanter to keep the eyes closed than to look on a

scene so sepulchral, and Duckworth was turning away when he noted that

the thin rays trembled below him into broken radiance.

It was water—the surface of the tank of which he had been told, the

innermost of the quadrangles—reflecting the moonbeams. The sinister

murmur was caused no doubt by the overflow or escape of the drainage. And

this was the bogey that had fretted him.

A broad, harsh, yellow glare flashed crudely across the water. Duckworth

instinctively stepped away from the window into the darkness of his room.

The precaution seemed unnecessary. The cause of the light appeared

innocent enough. Through a casement on the opposite side of the

quadrangle could be distinguished the form of Don Aguinaldo, silhouetted

against the light of a lamp he held in his hand. He appeared to be

hanging up some bright-coloured garment beside a row of others on the

wall of the chamber. Duckworth could not distinguish details as the glare

of the light was between him and them.

‘Inspecting his wardrobe!’ grunted he. ‘I dare say the fellow has as many

disguises as a mountebank, and⸺’

A low, hideous laugh poisoned the stillness, and bore on its evil wings

a hideous suggestion that made Duckworth’s scalp creep and his seated

heart knock at his ribs. Those bright garments on the wall—might they not

be—were they not British—the tunics of the missing officers? The light

of the lamp had disappeared, but enough came from the moon to enable him

to locate the casement, the third from the left-hand end. He resolved to

inspect it in the morning at all hazards, and if he found his suspicions

correct, Don Aguinaldo should indeed guide him back to the British camp,

but with a pistol at his ear and a gallows in prospect.

He was worn out in mind and body, and recognised that sleep he must. He

accordingly wheeled his couch parallel to, and immediately below the

window-sill, so that anyone attempting to steal in by that route must

inevitably tread on him, and dropped off in profound slumber.

He awoke feeling thoroughly out of sorts. He had lain down almost fully

dressed in case of emergencies, and the discomfort inseparable from

a night in one’s clothes was aggravated by the clammy warmth of the

atmosphere. His head was aching, his mouth was dry, and he was sticky all

over—skin, clothes, and hair. He felt detestably unclean, and began to

think longingly of the possibilities of a bathe in the tank.

As if in response to his thought, there came a hail from below his

window, and, looking out, he saw Aguinaldo, standing at the water’s edge,

clothed in a towel. The Spaniard’s face darkened as he noted Duckworth’s

attire. Nevertheless, he wished him a fair good morning and courteously

invited him to join him in a swim.

‘He can’t do me any mischief in that kit,’ thought Duckworth. ‘I wonder

if I am wronging the fellow!’

He sent back a cheery reply, and in a few moments had swung himself out

of the window and was by Aguinaldo’s side, similarly attired.

The tank was of considerable size—some forty feet in length by twenty

across. It had obviously been hewn into its present rectangular

formation, but no attempt had been made to polish the sides, which

remained covered with small excrescences and seamed with minute fissures.

Near one corner stood a crude apparatus—a sort of combination between

a ship’s wheel and a lock-sluice, by which, Aguinaldo explained, they

regulated the water which welled in through a crack in the centre and

escaped into the bowels of the earth through an opening in the corner of

the tank immediately below the wheel.

To Duckworth it seemed that the water was lower than it had been during

the night—it was quite four feet below the edge—an impression doubtless

due to the change of light. The fact was, however, vexatious. It had

been his intention during his swim, quite unobtrusively, to get out of

the water under the third casement from the left and take a glance at

the interior. As it was, he perceived there was only one exit from the

bath—by a rope ladder close to where he was standing. Whilst he was

revolving these things in his mind, the Spaniard’s voice broke in.

‘I am wondering,’ he said, ‘whether it would be possible for a man to

cover the entire length of the tank in one plunge. I have tried, and

failed. The breadth is as much as I can do.’

Duckworth measured the distance with his eye. It was a sporting

suggestion. He poised himself for a moment, and then launched his superb

frame out in a magnificent header, neither did he move muscle till his

fingers touched the limestone at the far side. When he had shaken the

water from his eyes and turned, he saw Aguinaldo had drawn up the ladder.

‘Fairly trapped, Major!’ sneered the Spaniard. ‘Bah! what a fool you are!

How you came to the lure of the uniform! It belonged to one Vavasour, of

the 14th Dragoons. My merry men brought him in, but those thrice-accursed

French have driven them away. That uniform hangs in yonder room as a

memorial of an insult to a Spanish hidalgo, and yours shall hang there

too.’

So the vision had not lied. Duckworth felt no fear, only a fierce

remorse. Had he but verified his suspicions—and the Spaniard could not

have prevented him—he would have brought the murderer to execution. As it

was:

‘Fairly trapped!’ came the taunting voice. ‘I had to work by myself, and

here you are, the strongest of them all, helpless to my hand! I am glad

you are strong—that you can swim long. I have much to say. Only please do

not attempt to climb out. I have a brace of pistols on that window-sill,

and am a good shot.’

He paused, hoping against hope for appeal for mercy, but Duckworth made

no reply. He was reckoning up his chances. His silence exasperated

Aguinaldo.

‘Curse you English!’ he shouted. ‘Ah! you are brave now, whilst you are

strong and warm, but wait—wait till you are weak and cold and death is at

hand. Then—then, you will weep for mercy like your comrades⸺’

‘Liar!’ interrupted Duckworth coolly.

‘For that word,’ returned Aguinaldo, stamping, ‘I would have the skin

scourged from your back if my men were here. As it is⸺’ He broke into

blasphemy and imprecations.

Duckworth, paddling easily, watched him, well content. However slight

his chances, they would be immeasurably increased if his enemy lost his

self-command. After a while the Spaniard resumed.

‘I did not tell you how I was unhorsed at Albuera. It was that great

bully, Beresford. He struck me from the saddle with his hand. He called

me—_me_—coward! And I swore, as I lay on the ground, I would have an

English officer’s life for every finger on his hand. Four have I taken.

You are the fifth, and you shall die, die, die!’

Duckworth continued silently swimming. There was just one chance for

him—a desperate chance. Everything depended on swiftness of execution.

Scarcely had he conceived the idea when his tormentor furnished an

opportunity.

‘Have you any idea what will happen to you?’ he cried. ‘See this wheel!

Below, in that corner, is the sluice-gate—a great slab of stone. One turn

of the wheel and the water will sweep you down, down, with irresistible

force, through the sluice, deep into the earth, where you shall lie with

your comrades. No one will ever know your fate. There, in those dreadful

caverns, you shall lie and rot. Ah, I wish I could see you! I wish I

could know whether death came swiftly or slowly!’

Again he broke into curses. At length Duckworth spoke.

‘I am interested in that sluice-gate,’ he said, with studied

carelessness. ‘I will have a look at it.’

As he spoke, he dived easily to the bottom—the water was barely eight

feet deep. Aguinaldo craned over to watch him. It was what Duckworth had

hoped.

Bracing his feet firmly against the bottom, he crouched a moment; then

with a spring and a tremendous down-stroke of the arms, he leaped

upwards, half his height out of the water, and in an instant was gripping

the edge of the tank with both hands.

Aguinaldo might have dislodged his hold. Instead, he dashed to the wheel

and spun it round. For a moment the downward drag of the rushing water on

Duckworth’s legs was sickening. Then the broad edge of the sluice-gate,

heaved upwards by the Spaniard’s mad energy, came against his feet. It

gave him just the required purchase for his toes. The Spanish devil had

saved his life.

With a spring, Duckworth was on the edge. The next moment, Aguinaldo was

swung from the ground and sent hurling through the air into the tank, and

so came the horror of it.

Duckworth had determined that he should die, but in good set fashion,

after trial. It was not to be. The escaping water seized the wretched

man in its merciless grip, and whirled him to his death. Duckworth

frantically tore at the wheel. He could not move it; it was locked by

some device. He flung himself on the edge, if by chance he might catch

the man’s hand. It was too late. There was a dreadful vision of staring

eyes and wildly gripping hands—and the tank was empty.

* * * * *

Very white and shaken was Duckworth as he rode into camp to report

himself, and Sir Edward Pakenham’s face was scarcely less white by the

time the tale was told.

‘Major Duckworth!’ he said, at length. ‘You have disobeyed orders, but

you have been dreadfully punished. On one condition will I overlook your

fault. You will take a hundred men of your regiment, and you will report

to me to-morrow morning that not one stone of that accursed place is left

on another.’

CLAUDE E. BENSON.

WHAT OUR SOLDIERS READ.

BY BEATRICE HARRADEN.

About eighteen months ago Miss Elizabeth Robins and myself entered on our

duties as Honorary Librarians to the Military Hospital, Endell Street,

the only Military Hospital in England officered entirely by women. The

doctor in charge is Dr. Flora Murray and the chief surgeon Dr. L. Garrett

Anderson. There is a staff of fourteen doctors, including a pathological

and an ophthalmic surgeon, a staff of thirty-six nursing sisters and

ninety orderlies—all women. There are eighteen large wards, accommodating

about 550 wounded.

We were asked to collect a number of suitable books and magazines, and by

personal intercourse with the soldiers, to encourage reading amongst the

men, and to do our best to help them through the long hours of illness

and inaction by offering them books which would amuse and interest them.

From the very onset it seemed an interesting project, but nothing like

so stimulating and gratifying as it has proved itself to be. And it has

struck me that a short record of our work may perhaps be acceptable to

the reading public, and also useful in indicating what can be done in

hospitals by the help of an organised Library Department.

We began by writing to our publisher friends, who, in generous response

to our requests, sent us splendid consignments of volumes of fiction,

travel, and biography and hundreds of magazines. Authors likewise rallied

willingly to our aid. We were presented by a lady with an enormous

bookcase, a dignified and imposing structure, which we planted in the

Recreation Room, and regarded as a proud outward and visible sign of our

official existence. Other bookcases followed and were soon filled, and we

were still engaged in the heavy task of sorting and rejecting literally

shoals of all sorts and conditions of books, when suddenly the hospital

was opened and the men arrived from the front. It was remarkable what

private people did send—and do still send. It was as if they had said to

themselves: ‘_Here is a grand opportunity of getting rid of all our old,

dirty, heavy book encumbrances._’ I never in my life remember being so

dirty, nor so indignant. However, in due time we emerged triumphantly

from this period of trial—a trial mitigated for us by the generosity and

understanding of other people who sent new books or money with which we

were to buy books of our own choice. And we instituted at a very early

date a system of sacks, in which we despatched all our good surplus

matter either to one of the war libraries to be sent to the troops abroad

or elsewhere, or to the Salvation Army, which was glad to collect old

books and papers to be used for pulp.

We determined to have no red tape, and to leave all the bookcases

unlocked at all times, so that the men who were able to move about could

come and pick out what they liked. And we arranged to go into the wards

and take books ourselves to the men who were confined to their beds. Our

view was that we should give them what _they_ wanted, not necessarily

what _we_ wanted for them. They were there for rest and recuperation,

and we felt that we had no right to impose on them in their enfeebled

condition books which would tax them unduly or depress their spirits.

We had to remember that many of them at best have very little power of

concentration, and of course still less in the suffering and shattered

condition in which they arrive home. So our point was to take note of

their different temperaments, and see what we could do for each separate

individual.

We soon learnt that we had to invest in a large number of detective

books, and any amount of Nat Gould’s sporting stories. In fact, a certain

type of man would read nothing except Nat Gould. However ill he was,

however suffering and broken, the name of Nat Gould would always bring a

smile to his face. Often and often I’ve heard the whispered words: ‘_A

Nat Gould—ready for when I’m better._’

We also had to get Garvice’s books, and also Oppenheim’s. But even at

the beginning of our venture, we were by no means limited in opportunity

to authors of any particular class. It was quite possible that one man

in a ward would be reading, say, Nat Gould’s ‘Jockey Jack’—a great

favourite—and the man in the next bed would be reading Shakespeare,

or ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ or Shelley, or Meredith, Conrad, or the

Encyclopædia. We found, in fact, so many different kinds of minds and

upbringings, that we could never have remembered without the aid of a

note-book what each man wanted.

So after various experiments, this became our system. We divided the

wards between us, and went round with our note-book to each bedside,

found out if our soldier cared to read, and, if he had no suggestion to

make, found out in a vague sort of way, without worrying him, of course,

what he would be _likely_ to want—if, indeed, he wanted anything at all.

For in some cases the very thought of a book was apparently worse than a

bomb. In instances like this, matches and cigarettes or tobacco served

as a substitute for literature, and generally speaking as a natural

concomitant too! Now and again we have had men who have never learnt to

read at all. With one exception, these have invariably been miners.

One day our work took on a new phase, the development of which has been

the source of great satisfaction, both to readers and librarians. We were

asked for a book on high explosives. We made inquiries about the one in

question, and found it cost eighteen shillings. That seemed a good deal

to spend on one book for one person, but on mentioning this matter to our

doctor in charge, we were told to go ahead and buy it, and also anything

else that seemed to be wanted. This one incident fired us with the idea

to find out what subjects the men were interested in, what had been their

occupation before the war, or their plans for the future. And from that

moment the work of the librarians became tenfold more interesting, and in

some degree constructive.

We were asked for books on paper-making, printing, cabinet-making,

engineering, marine engineering, veterinary work, Sheffield plate, old

furniture, organic and inorganic chemistry, fish-curing, coal-mining,

counterpoint, languages, meteorology, electricity, submarines,

aeroplanes, flowers, trees, gardening, forestry, the Stone Age, painting

and drawing, violin making, architecture, and so on. The fish-curing

instance was particularly interesting. The soldier in question was from

Nova Scotia, and his father’s business was fish-curing. He was anxious to

learn the English methods, and gain all the information he could during

his sojourn in England, before he was invalided out of the army and

returned to his home.

We have therefore made it our business to supply these various needs,

and also to provide any weekly papers bearing on the different subjects

in which the men are interested. Our Department could not, of course,

be always buying costly books, but with the aid of our subscription to

Mudie’s, and by the help of friends who have come to the rescue and lent

their valuable books to us for the special purpose which we have unfolded

to them, we have been able so far to meet all demands; and this part of

our work is increasing all the time. The Sheffield plate book lent us by

a generous antiquary was a perfect godsend to one of our crippled men.

His business was that of a second-hand dealer, and he said it was a rare

chance to get hold of that book and make copious notes from it which

would be invaluable to him afterwards.

Turning aside from technical subjects to literature in general, I would

like to say that although we have not ever attempted to force good books

on our soldiers, we have of course taken great care to place them within

their reach. And it is not an illusion to say that when the men once

begin on a better class of book, they do not as a rule return to the

old stuff which formerly constituted their whole range of reading. My

own impression is that they read rubbish because they have had no one

to tell them what to read. Stevenson, for instance, has lifted many a

young soldier in our hospital on to a higher plane of reading whence he

has looked down with something like scorn—which is really very funny—on

his former favourites. For that group of readers, ‘Treasure Island’ has

been a discovery in more senses than one, and to the librarians a boon

unspeakable.

We have had, however, a large number of men who in any case care for good

literature, and indeed would read nothing else. Needless to say, we have

had special pleasure in trying to find them some book which they would be

sure to like and which was already in our collection, or else in buying

it, and thus adding to our stock. The publishers, too, have been most

generous in sending us any current book which has aroused public interest

and on which we have set our hearts. For we have tried to acquire not

only standard works, but books of the moment bearing on the war, and

other subjects too.

The following are items from two or three of our order books. The order

books have been chosen at random, but the items are consecutive; and

the list will give some idea of the nature of our pilgrimages from one

bedside to another bedside, and from one ward to another.

One of Nat Gould’s novels; Regiments at the Front; Burns’s Poems; A book

on bird life; ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’; _Strand Magazine_; _Strand

Magazine_; _Wide World Magazine_; _The Spectator_; A scientific book;

_Review of Reviews_; ‘By the Wish of a Woman’ (Marchmont); one of Rider

Haggard’s; Marie Corelli; Nat Gould; Rider Haggard; Nat Gould; Nat Gould;

Nat Gould; Good detective story; Something to make you laugh; _Strand

Magazine_; Adventure story; ‘Tale of Two Cities’; ‘Gil Blas’; Browning’s

Poems; Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’; Sexton Blake; ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’; Nat

Gould; _Wide World Magazine_; _Pearson’s Magazine_; ‘Arabian Nights’;

Jack London; Shakespeare; Nat Gould; ‘The Encyclopædia’; Rex Beach;

Wm. Le Queux; _Strand Magazine_; Nat Gould; Something in the murder

line; _Country Life_; _The Story Teller Magazine_; one of Oppenheim’s

novels; ‘The Crown of Wild Olive’; ‘Kidnapped’; Nat Gould; Shakespeare;

Nat Gould; Silas Hocking; Oppenheim; Le Queux; Nat Gould; Nat Gould;

Jack London; ‘Handy Andy’; ‘Kidnapped’; ‘Treasure Island’; Book about

rose growing; ‘Montezuma’s Daughter’ (Rider Haggard); ‘Prisoner of

Zenda’; Macaulay’s Essays; ‘The Magnetic North’ (Elizabeth Robins); Nat

Gould; Sexton Blake; Modern High Explosives; ‘Dawn’ (Rider Haggard);

‘Wild Animals’; Book on horse-breaking; ‘Radiography’; ‘Freckles’ (by

Gene Stratton-Porter); ‘The Blue Lagoon’; ‘Caged Birds’; ‘The Corsican

Brothers’; ‘Sherlock Holmes’; French Dictionary; Kipling; ‘Mysticism’;

Nat Gould; ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’; ‘Mystery of Cloomber’ (Conan Doyle); and

so on.

These are, of course, only a few items. I should say that on the whole,

and leaving out entirely books on technical and special subjects, the

authors most frequently asked for by the average soldier are: Nat Gould,

Charles Garvice, Wm. Le Queux, Rider Haggard, Guy Boothby, Oppenheim, Rex

Beach, Conan Doyle, Marie Corelli, Joseph and Silas Hocking, Jack London,

Dickens, Mrs. Henry Wood, Kipling (whose ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ they

learnt by heart), Dumas, Ian Hay, Baroness Orczy, and Hornung’s ‘Raffles.’

And very favourite books are those dealing with wild animals and their

habits, with ferrets, rats, and birds, and all stories of adventure and

travel, and of course detective stories.

The New Zealanders and Australians have always asked for books on

England, and also for Bushranger stories, also for their own poets. And

even before we began to pay special attention to technical subjects, all

books on aeroplanes, submarines, electricity, and wireless telegraphy

were much in request. An Encyclopædia was so much asked for that we

wrote to Mr. Dent, who most kindly sent us the twelve volumes of the

‘Everyman’s Encyclopædia.’ And they are always ‘out.’ Shakespeare holds

his own surprisingly and encouragingly well.

The Society novel is never read, and we weeded it out to make room for

another class of book which would be in demand. We have been sometimes

astonished by the kind of book asked for by some man who seemed to us

a most unpromising reader. The puzzle has been solved when we learnt

that he had seen it on the cinematograph. ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ was

one of the books asked for in these circumstances, and our soldier was

literally riveted to it until he had finished it, when he passed it on

to his neighbour as a sort of ‘real find.’ Similarly, ‘Much Ado about

Nothing’ was asked for, and after that several volumes of Shakespeare

were taken to that bedside. This experience certainly shows that the

cinema has a great possibility of doing good as well as harm.

The magazines most in demand are _The Strand_, _The Windsor_,

_Pearson’s_, _The Wide World_, _The Red_, and a few others. But some

of our readers have refused to be interested in any magazines except

their own pet ones. One man, for instance, confined himself entirely to

_Blackwood’s_. He proudly preferred an old number of _Maga_ to a current

number of any other magazine on earth. A second man remained loyal to

the _Review of Reviews_, and a third to _Land and Water_. Another was

never satisfied with anything except _The Nineteenth Century_. Others

have asked only for wretched little rags which one would wish to see

perish off the face of the earth. But as time has gone on, these have

been less and less asked for, and their place has been gradually taken by

the _Sphere_, the _Graphic_, the _Tatler_, the _Illustrated London News_,

and the _Sketch_—another instance of a better class of literature being

welcomed and accepted if put within easy reach. In our case this has been

made continuously possible by friends who have given subscriptions for

both monthly and weekly numbers, and by others who send in their back

numbers in batches, and by the publishers, who never fail us.

_John Bull_ deserves a paragraph all to himself. The popularity of his

paper is truly remarkable. The average soldier looks upon it as a sort

of gospel; and new arrivals from the trenches are cheered up at once by

the very sight of the well-known cover. Even if they are too ill to read

it, they like to have it near them ready for the moment when returning

strength gives them the incentive to take even a glance at some of its

pages.

We have found that men who have not naturally been readers have acquired

the habit of reading in our Hospital, and there have been many instances

of men who have become out-patients asking for permission to continue

to use the library. It has been one of our great pleasures to see old

friends strolling into the recreation room and picking out for themselves

some book by an author whom they have learnt to know and appreciate.

Another gratifying feature of the work has been the anxiety of many of

our readers to have a book waiting for them after an operation, so that

as soon as possible they may begin to read it and forget some of their

pains and sufferings. In many instances the author or the subject has

been deliberately chosen beforehand.

Our experiences, in fact, have tended to show that a library department

organised and run by people who have some knowledge of books might prove

to be a useful asset in any hospital, both military and civil, and be the

means of affording not only amusement and distraction, but even definite

education, induced of course, not insisted on. To obtain satisfactory

results it would seem, however, that even a good and carefully chosen

collection of books of all kinds does not suffice. In addition, an

official librarian is needed who will supply the initiative, which in

the circumstances is of necessity lacking, and whose duty it is to visit

the wards, study the temperaments, inclinations, and possibilities of

the patients, and thus find out by direct personal intercourse what will

amuse, help, stimulate, lift—and heal.

_LOST HORSES._

A month or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flamboyant

proclamation in German South-West Africa, a small body of mounted Union

troops was operating in a district which may be described as ‘somewhere

near Upington.’ Probably such secrecy of places and names is not at all

necessary, but it lends an appropriate military flavour to the small

events I describe. I may go so far as to say that the setting I have

provided is fictitious, though similar events did, no doubt, occur in

the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their heroes. The characters

of the roan horse and of the boy Frikkie are true to life, and the small

adventures did occur much as described, but in another country in South

Africa and upon a different occasion. Accept the story as fiction, not

as history; it will at any rate serve to throw a light upon one of the

aspects of the fighting in that dry land, and it illustrates the close

relationship between horse and man in that country of long distances and

sparse population and infrequent water-holes. The conditions are the

absolute antithesis of those in Flanders and the trenches.

The risk of losing his riding or pack animals is constantly present to

the veld traveller. Fortunately it is seldom the cause of anything more

troublesome than a temporary inconvenience, but there are occasions when

serious hardships result, the loss of valuable time or of your animals,

or risk to your own life. In most cases the loss of your beasts is due

merely to the fact that they have strayed. They have, as a rule, either

followed the lead of some restless animal who is making back for his

stable, or else they have wandered away in search of grass or water.

A horse is less hardy than his hybrid half-brother, and more the slave

of his belly. Thirst and hunger pinch him at once, and he is quick in

search of comfort; he is therefore more likely to stop and suffer capture

at the first patch of good grass he comes to. His superficial character,

moreover, generally affords some indication both of the reason he has

strayed and the direction he has taken. There are, however, a few horses

who are inveterate and troublesome wanderers; they are generally old

animals whose accumulated experience has developed a cunning foreign

to their normal character. Such animals often possess an irritating

facility for choosing the most inconvenient time to stray and the most

unlikely direction to go.

If horses are the most frequent offenders, their sins in this respect

are seldom serious. In my own experience mules are more liable to travel

back along the road they have come than horses; they are more creatures

of habit, their memory is more retentive, and they have greater natural

intelligence. When a mule has acquired the habit of absenting himself

from duty he is a perpetual trouble. The most malignant form of this

disease occurs when the beast has developed an insatiable longing for one

particular place, a definite goal from which nothing will turn him. This

haven of his constant desire is generally the place where he was born, or

where he passed the pleasant days of his absurd youth.

There are traits in most horses which, in conjunction with this

foundation of congenital simplicity, go to make ‘character.’ Men who have

dealt with horses in the less frequented parts of the earth know this

well. They will remember one animal who had in a highly developed degree

that instinctive correctness of demeanour which can best be described as

good manners; a second had a heart like a lion and checked at nothing;

another was a prey to an incurable nervousness; while yet another was

just simply mean. These mean horses are a perpetual menace; you never

know when they will let you down. Sometimes they are clearly actuated by

malice; sometimes, however, there is a subtle quality and timeliness in

their apparent stupidity which gives you a horrid suspicion that you’ve

been had, and that your horse is more of a rogue than a fool. Such an

animal is always an old horse, never a young one.

I am not quite clear as to what a scout should look like. The typical

scout of the North American Indian days, as exemplified in the person

of Natty Bumpo, wore fringed buckskin and moccasins and coon-skin cap,

while Texas Bill and his vivid companions had a more picturesque costume

still, in which great silver-studded saddles and jingling spurs and

monstrous revolvers bore a conspicuous part. I must confess that my own

nine sportsmen were scrubby-looking fellows compared to their picturesque

predecessors at the game. (The khaki trousers issued by an administration

which was always more practical than picturesque do not lend themselves,

in this generation at any rate, to romance.) But they were a hard and

useful lot, much sunburnt, and with gnarled, scarred hands. Deerslayer

himself probably could not have taught them much about their own veld

craft. Every one was South African born; three of them were younger sons

of loyal Boer farmers. One was a coloured boy, a quiet, capable fellow.

He was with us nominally as a sort of groom, but his civil manners and

extraordinary capacity soon won him an accepted place in the scouts;

though he rode and ate with us, he always sat a little apart in camp. He

had spent three or four years up country, where I had first come across

him in fact, and had shot some amount of big game; he was excellent on

spoor and had a wonderful eye for country, and I really think he was the

quickest man on and off a horse, and the quickest and most brilliant shot

I ever saw. He stood on the roster as Frederick Collins, but was never

known by any other name than Frikkie.

The commandant of the rather nondescript commando, which was officially

described, I believe, as a composite regiment, had a sound idea of the

value of a few competent and well-mounted scouts, and had done us very

well in the matter of horse. We had been ‘on commando’ now for nearly

five weeks, and had got to know our animals pretty well. During the

confusion and changes of the first fortnight I had got rid of a dozen

horses I saw would be of no use for our work, though suitable, no doubt,

for slower troop duty, and by a cunning process of selection had got

together a very serviceable lot, with four spare animals to carry kit and

water on the longer trips away from the main body. Your spirited young

things, though well enough to go courting on, are apt to get leg-weary

and drop condition too soon on steady work, and all my mob were aged and

as hard as nails. I will describe one or two of them presently.

Things were getting a little exciting about that time. Three rebel

commandos, or rather bands, were known to be in the neighbourhood, and it

was essential to find out what their strength was and who their leaders

were. There was not much reason to fear attack, for they were not well

found in either guns or ammunition, and their ragamuffin cavalry were

concerned to avoid and not invite a stand-up engagement. Rapidity of

action was essential to the loyal troops, for the longer the rebellion

dragged on the more risk there was of it spreading. It was necessary to

find out at once the actual movements of these bands, and the best way

of doing so was to keep tally of the water-holes. Men can, if necessary,

carry water for themselves, but horses, especially those from the

moist high veld of the Transvaal, must have water regularly or they

go to pieces very quickly in that dry, hot land. And so the remote and

forgotten pit at Ramib had suddenly become of importance, and I had been

told to send two men to examine it at once.

It lay within the rocky belt which came down south of the Orange River

somewhat to our right; it was supposed to be twenty miles away, but it

might prove five miles less or ten miles more. It was known to have held

water fifteen months before, and our business was to find out if it still

held water, how long that water would be likely to last, and if any of

the rebels had been to it recently. No one in the column was aware of

its exact location, but I myself knew enough of those parts to guess

roughly where it must lie. I decided to take one man and a pack-horse,

and to take the patrol myself. No native guide was available, and the

Colonel did not, for obvious reasons, care to make use of any of the few

local Boers who carried on a wretched existence as farmers in that barren

country.

My own horse was a big bay, an uncomfortable beast, but capable of

covering much ground; like many big men, he had little mental elasticity

and no vices. Frikkie had an unassuming bay of ordinary manners and

capacity, and with a natural aptitude for routine and a military life.

The third horse was a king of his class. He did not belong to the scouts,

but I had borrowed him to carry the pack on that patrol. He was mean

all through; in colour a sort of skewbald roan, and in character an

irreclaimable criminal. He had a narrow chest, weedy white legs, and

a pale shifty eye; he was very free with his heels, and an inveterate

malingerer. He had never carried a pack before and we were prepared for

trouble, for his malevolent spirit had already acquired a wide reputation.

The patrol left the column a little before sunset, after a windless,

baking day. The horses were in excellent fettle. The roan had given some

trouble with the pack, but before he could throw himself down or buck

through the lines he was hustled out of camp to an accompaniment of oaths

and cheers in two languages. Once away and alone he went quietly, but

doubtless with hate in his heart, for his beastly eye was full of gall.

Dawn found us hidden on the top of a low stony kopje, the horses tied

together among the brown boulders below. It was bitter cold as the light

grew, and the sun came up into an empty world. I waited there for half

an hour, partly to find any signs of white men, and partly to work out

the lay of the land and the probable direction of the pit. Nothing was

moving in the whole world. It was clear where the water must be. On the

right was the usual barren desert country we had come through during the

night, low ridges of stone and shale, and a thin low scrub of milk bush

and cactus. On the left the land grew much rougher towards the river; the

rocky valleys stretched for miles in that direction. Presently we led the

horses down off the kopje, and an hour later saw us looking down at the

chain of small holes, still full of good water. I stayed with the hidden

horses while Frikkie cut a circle round the pools. There was no sign of

life, he reported, only the old sandal spoor of some natives; no horse

had been down to the water for weeks, probably for months. We off-saddled

in a hidden corner some way from the water, and got a small fire going of

thin dry sticks. The horses were given a drink and turned loose. It was

criminal foolishness not to have hobbled or knee-haltered the roan, for

ten minutes after they were let go Frikkie called out that the horses had

completely disappeared.

One realised at once that there was no time to be lost. It was probable

that the roan had led them away, and that he meant business. The saddles

and pack were hurriedly hidden among some rocks with the billy of

half-cooked rice, the fire was put out, and we took up the spoor.

It was soon evident that the animals were travelling, and were not

straying aimlessly in search of feed. The spoor of the discoloured

strawberry beast was always in front—his footprints were like his

character, narrow and close. Above his tracks came those of Ruby, the

police horse, round ordinary hoof-marks, and well shod; my own horse’s

immense prints were always last, solid and unmistakable. Mile after

mile the tracks led into a rockier and more barren country. What little

stunted and thorny scrub there was had not yet come into leaf, and there

was no shade and no sign of green anywhere. Ridges of sharp gravel and

small kopjes of brown stone alternated with narrow valleys without sign

of green or water. In the softer ground of these valleys the spoor was

plain and could be followed without any trouble, but on the rocky ridges

the tracks became difficult to hold where the horses had separated and

wandered about. The trail led eastwards, into a rocky, waterless, and

uninhabited country. There was no reason for the roan’s choice but just

native malice, for he had come from the west the previous day. Doubtless

the main camp would be his ultimate destination, but it seemed apparent

that he intended to inflict as deep an injury as he could before he set

his sour face again to the west.

It was within half an hour of sundown before I came up with the horses,

and then only the two bays; the roan’s spoor showed that he had gone on

about an hour before. They were standing under a bunch of thorn trees,

the only shade they had passed since they were let go that morning. For

the last mile or two the tracks, which had become more aimless as the hot

afternoon wore on, had turned a little to the north. Probably, as the

allegiance of his small following had weakened, the leader’s thoughts

had turned to the companionship of the camp, and when they had finally

refused to follow him any further he had abandoned the rest of his

revenge and had turned frankly for home.

We rounded up the two horses and thought of our camp, probably eight

miles away in a direct line. Though they were tired and empty they would

not be caught, and it was soon evident that they would not be driven

either. I will not ask you to follow the dreadful hour which ensued. This

crowning flicker of rebellion at the end of a disastrous day nearly broke

our hearts. It was well after dark when we finally abandoned the horses

in an area of steep rocky ridges and narrow valleys covered with cactus;

it was quite impossible to cope with them in the dark in such a country.

We reached camp about ten, but were too tired and disappointed to make a

fire. A tin of bully-beef, and the mass of opaque jelly which had once

been good Patna rice, were the first pleasant incidents of a baking,

hungry day.

The second day began before dawn with as large a breakfast as we could

compass: black coffee, the little bread that was left, and a large

quantity of rice. I have seldom eaten a more cheerless meal. Three or

four pounds of rice, some coffee, a tin or two of bully, and a little

sugar were all that remained to us, and there was no chance of getting

more. I must confess that at this stage a tactical error was committed

which cost us the long day’s work for nothing. A golden rule where lost

animals are concerned is to stick to the spoor, but as I thought it very

probable that the horses would turn north and west again during the night

and make for their last place of sojourn, I tried to save half a dozen

hours by cutting the spoor ahead. It was nearly noon, and a mile or two

beyond where the roan had left the others, before it became a certainty

that the horses had done the unlikely thing, and had gone either south or

further east into the broken country. At that moment they were probably

ten miles away. I then did what one should have done at first, and went

to the point where we had last seen them. That afternoon was hotter

and emptier than the last, and sunset found us on a cold spoor going

north. We had wisely brought rice and coffee and water-bags with us that

morning, and Frikkie had shot a klipspringer—baboons and klipspringer

were the only animals we had seen the last two days. If you suppose that

we had used any of the water for washing you are making a mistake, though

Heaven knows that we both would have been the better for a bath. We slept

on the spoor, and bitter cold it was without blankets; there was not

scrub enough for a decent fire.

Matters were getting serious. We were then twelve miles from the saddlery

and, so far as we knew, the nearest water, and twenty more from the camp.

If the horses were not found and caught that day they would have to be

abandoned, and we would have to pad the hoof home _via_ the disastrous

pools at Ramib.

But fortune does not frown for ever; it is a long worm that has no

turning. Within an hour of sunrise we came into the quite fresh tracks of

the horses crossing their own spoor. Frikkie exclaimed that there were

three horses, and an examination showed the narrow tracks of the red

horse with the other two; they had not found water and were evidently

on their way back to Ramib. We came on to the animals a few minutes

afterwards. Except that they were hollow from want of water they were

none the worse, and apparently they were not sorry to see us. By the time

the sun was in the north they had had a good drink and were finishing the

little grain in the pack. Midnight saw us riding into the main camp—only

to find it deserted, for the column had marched. The camp was apparently

completely empty, and it felt very desolate under a small moon. I

expected I would discover a message of some sort for me at sunrise; in

the meantime the obvious thing was to keep out of the way, so I went half

a mile off into the veld, and the boy and I kept watch by turn until dawn.

Nothing moved in or round the camp till near sunrise, when three men rode

out of some shale ridges about a mile away on the opposite side, and came

down to the water. By the white bands round the left arm—the sign of

loyal troops—I knew them for our own men; indeed we had recognised the

horse one of them was riding. They gave me the message they had stayed

behind to deliver. We were to stay and watch the camp site for three or

four days, and to patrol daily some distance to the south-east. The water

was important, for it was quite probable that one or other of the rebel

commandos would come to it. The men had hidden provisions for us and some

grain for the horses; they themselves were to hurry on to the column

with our report of the Ramib pits. We rode a few miles along the column

spoor with them, and then turned off on some gravelly ground and fetched

a compass round back to the place in the shale ridges where the men had

slept and where the provisions were. We took no more chances with the

strawberry horse; he was closely hobbled.

The loss of the animals had been a serious thing, and we were extremely

fortunate to have got out of it so easily. It did not lessen the

annoyance to realise that it was my own fault for not hobbling the

roan, but only a rogue by constitution and habit would have carried his

hostility to so dangerous a length. But within a week he was to provide

another taste of his quality. This time nothing more serious was involved

than the risk of his own loss, for we were never led far from water in so

menacing and barren a country as that beyond Ramib.

Most of that day was spent in the stony krantz, from which a view could

be obtained over the whole dry, grey landscape, and the pools a mile

away. In normal times the laagte was frequently used for sheep grazing,

but in these days of mobile and ever-hungry commandos the few farmers in

the vicinity were grazing their meagre flocks nearer their homesteads.

Except for a few wandering Griquas, and possibly a band of ragged rebels

on tired horses, it was not likely that our watch would be interrupted. A

rough shelter made of the stunted spiny scrub served as a sentry box; the

saddles were hidden in a narrow cleft on the lee side of the ridge, and

the horses were kept down in the valleys.

In the afternoon we saddled up and rode south and east, keeping for the

most part to the rough ridges, and overlooking the level country along

which our column had come, and which was the natural approach from that

side for any body of men having wheeled transport with them. We did not

ride for more than an hour, but my glasses showed an empty, treeless

world for miles beyond. If the commandos did come our way they would

probably trek by night; we should hear them arrive and laager about dawn,

and sunrise would have seen us well on our way to our own men.

Just at dusk that evening we rode along the lee of the ridge upon which

our poor home was. Frikkie was riding the roan. He was leading his

own animal, for a single horse could not be left grazing alone, to be

picked up, perhaps, by any wandering rebel, or to stray off in search

of companionship. When we passed under the highest point of the ridge I

stopped and sent Frikkie to the top, for he could spy in both directions

from there. I took the led horse from him, and he threw the roan’s

reins over the neck to trail on the ground—the accepted instruction

to every trained veld horse to stand still. I watched the boy’s slim

figure against the sunset sky in the west as he turned about, searching

the veld through his binoculars, though it was really getting too dark

for prism glasses. He called out that nothing was moving, and presently

came lightly down the steep slope in the gathering dusk. As he reached

his horse the beast turned his quarters to him and walked away; the boy

walked round, but again the horse turned away; and when I put my horse

across to check him he lifted his head and trotted off. We knew that we

couldn’t catch the beast if his views on the matter did not coincide with

ours, so we walked on the half-mile to where the skerm was, thinking the

horse would follow up his mates at his leisure.

This was a new, but not unexpected, trait in an already depraved

character. Some horses, though they are inveterate strayers, are easy

to catch when you do come up with them; others are very difficult to

catch, though they seldom go more than a mile from the camp; this hectic

degenerate apparently combined both these bad habits.

An hour after dark the horse had not turned up, though our own reliable

animals were knee-haltered and turned loose for a time with their

nosebags on as decoys. At dawn he was not visible in any of the shallow

valleys we could see to the east of the ridge; and to our surprise and

concern he was not in the valley where the water was and where the camp

had been.

Our own horses were knee-haltered short and let go, and we spent a

careful hour examining the margin of the pool, but there was no narrow

spoor to show that the roan had been down to drink during the night. I

spent the morning with our horses and on the look-out, while the boy cut

a wide semicircle round to the south and west of the water. He came in at

mid-day, certain that the truant had not gone out in those directions.

Then Frikkie took over the sentry work, and I set out to cover the

remainder of the circle. I worked methodically along the soft ground of

the valleys outside the range of the area already fouled by the spoor of

our own animals, and where I would find the roan’s tracks at once. From

time to time I climbed one of the low ridges, for the boy was to spread

a light-coloured saddle blanket over a prominent rock on the side away

from the water as a signal if he saw either the lost horse or anyone

approaching from the south, or in case of other danger. Nothing occurred

during the long, hot afternoon.

That evening, when I got back to camp, I found two Griquas sitting over

the coals with Frikkie. They said they were shepherds, and they may have

done a little of that congenial work recently, but they looked to me more

like sheep-stealers. They were wild people from the Orange River, and I

was sure they had never been any sort of farm labourers. However, they

were friendly enough and promised help in the morning. The horse had

then been without water since the morning of the previous day. He had

not strayed away, for at sunset he must have been still within four or

five miles of the camp; if he had intended business we would have cut his

outgoing spoor during the day. Horses were too valuable in that country

and at that time for the loss of even such a three-cornered abomination

as the pink horse to be taken lightly.

Morning showed that the horse had not been to the water during the night.

He had then been forty-eight hours without water. The only thing was to

take up the spoor where the animal had last been seen, and so stick to it

till he was found. The Kalahari bushmen have the reputation of being the

finest trackers in South Africa, but these two cross-bred Griqua bushmen

gave us an incomparable exhibition of skill. I have had some experience

of that game, and Frikkie was a master, but these savages astonished us.

Inch by inch the spoor was picked out from that of the other animals. No

proved mark was abandoned until the next was certified, often only an

inch or two away. The only slight help they had was the rare and very

faint mark where the trailing reins had touched the ground. The first

hundred yards took probably an hour to cover, but when the spoor reached

comparatively clean ground the work was easier. At this point Frikkie got

the water-bags and some food and joined the bushmen, for it was possible

that the horse, driven by thirst, had taken it into his head to travel

far during the previous night.

Late that evening the trackers returned with the horse. He was emaciated

and weak, but otherwise quite well, though for some days his back was

tender from the continual ‘sweating’ of the saddle blanket. His spoor

showed that he had spent the first night and day wandering about the

low ridges and hollows not far from our camp, and that the night before

he had commenced to journey away into the empty country to the east.

Somewhere about dawn of that third day his trailing reins had hooked up

on one of the few bushes in that country strong enough to hold him, and

there he was found by the bushmen, the picture of a natural misery, and

too dejected to take much notice of his rescuers. Nothing but his own

gloomy thoughts had prevented him from going down to the water at any

time, or to the companionship of our camp.

Thirty-six hours after this we were back with the main column. It is not

necessary to add that we were glad to get a bath and a generous meal,

and that I took the first opportunity of handing over the parti-coloured

strawberry to troop duty.

In the first of these two offences it is clear that the white-legged

roan was animated by spite. Such malevolence is rare enough, but his

second performance is much more remarkable. I offer three alternative

explanations. The first is that it was just stupidity. I have the poorest

opinion of the intelligence of the horse, as distinct from instinct. It

is Professor Lloyd Morgan, I think, who defines instinct as ‘the sum

of inherited habits,’ and this may be accepted as a sound definition.

Elementary necessity, to say nothing of instinct or intelligence, should

have driven him to the water soon after he had obtained his freedom.

He could not have forgotten where the water was. If his normal mental

process was so dislocated by the fact of the saddle on his back without

the presence of the masterful human in it, then he was a fool of the

first class.

The second solution I offer is that his action was prompted by roguery;

for even a very limited intelligence would have warned him that he would

be captured if he ventured near either the water or the camp. It may be

that when his reins hooked up he was on his way to the free water at

Ramib. The third explanation is that he was a little daft. In a long and

varied experience of horses I cannot really remember one so afflicted,

though I had a pack-mule once that I am certain was a harmless lunatic.

You may take your choice of these alternatives; for my part I incline to

the second.

John Ridd’s rustic wisdom led him to express the opinion, upon the

memorable occasion when John Fry was bringing him home from Blundell’s

School at Tiverton, that ‘a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better

without, self-reliance.’

R. T. CORYNDON.

‘_THE PROGRESS OF PICKERSDYKE._’

Second Lieutenant William Pickersdyke, sometime quarter-master-sergeant

of the ⸺th Battery and now adjutant of a divisional ammunition column,

stared out of the window of his billet and surveyed the muddy and

uninteresting village street with eyes of gloom. His habitual optimism

had for once failed him, and his confidence in the gospel of efficiency

had been shaken. For Fate, in the portly guise of his fatuous old

colonel, had intervened to balk the fulfilment of his most cherished

desire. Pickersdyke had that morning applied for permission to be

transferred to his old battery if a vacancy occurred, and the colonel had

flatly declined to forward the application.

Now one of the few military axioms which have not so far been disproved

in the course of this war is the one which lays down that second

lieutenants must not argue with colonels. Pickersdyke had left his

commanding officer without betraying the resentment which he felt, but in

the privacy of his own room, however, he allowed himself the luxury of

vituperation.

‘Blooming old woman!’ he said aloud. ‘Incompetent, rusty old dug-out!

Thinks he’s going to keep me here running his bally column for ever, I

suppose. Selfish, that’s what ’e is—and lazy too.’

In spite of the colonel’s pompous reference to ‘the exigencies of

the service,’ that useful phrase which covers a multitude of minor

injustices, Pickersdyke had legitimate cause for grievance. Nine months

previously, when he had been offered a commission, he had had to choose

between Sentiment, which bade him refuse and stay with the battery to

whose well-being he had devoted seven of the best years of his life, and

Ambition, which urged him, as a man of energy and brains, to accept his

just reward with a view to further advancement. Ambition, backed by his

major’s promise to have him as a subaltern later on, had vanquished.

Suppressing the inevitable feeling of nostalgia which rose in him, he had

joined the divisional ammunition column, prepared to do his best in a

position wholly distasteful to him.

In an army every unit depends for its efficiency upon the system of

discipline inculcated by its commander, aided by the spirit of individual

enthusiasm which pervades its members; the less the enthusiasm the

sterner must the discipline be. Now a D.A.C., as it is familiarly called,

is not, in the inner meaning of the phrase, a cohesive unit. In peace it

exists only on paper; it is formed during mobilisation by the haphazard

collection of a certain number of officers, mostly ‘dug-outs’; close

upon 500 men, nearly all reservists; and about 700 horses, many of which

are rejections from other and, in a sense, more important units. Its

business, as its name indicates, is to supply a division with ammunition,

and its duties in this connection are relatively simple. Its wagons

transport shells, cartridges, and bullets to the brigade ammunition

columns, whence they return empty and begin again. It is obvious that

the men engaged upon this work need not, in ordinary circumstances, be

heroes; it is also obvious that their rôle, though fundamentally an

important one, does not tend to foster an intense _esprit de corps_. A

man can be thrilled at the idea of a charge or of saving guns under a

hurricane of fire, but not with the monotonous job of loading wagons and

then driving them a set number of miles daily along the same straight

road. A stevedore or a carter has as much incentive to enthusiasm for his

work.

The commander of a D.A.C., therefore, to ensure efficiency in his

unit, must be a zealous disciplinarian with a strong personality. But

Pickersdyke’s new colonel was neither. The war had dragged him from a

life of slothful ease to one of bustle and discomfort. Being elderly,

stout, and constitutionally idle, he had quickly allowed his early zeal

to cool off, and now, after six months of the campaign, the state of his

command was lamentable. To Pickersdyke, coming from a battery with proud

traditions and a high reputation, whose members regarded its good name

in the way that a son does that of his mother, it seemed little short of

criminal that such laxity should be permitted. On taking over a section

he ‘got down to it,’ as he said, at once, and became forthwith a most

unpopular officer. But that, though he knew it well, did not deter him.

He made the lives of various sergeants and junior N.C.O.s unbearable

until they began to see that it was wiser ‘to smarten themselves up a

bit’ after his suggestion. In a month the difference between his section

and the others was obvious. The horses were properly groomed and had

begun to improve in their condition—before, they had been poor to a

degree; the sergeant-major no longer grew a weekly beard nor smoked a

pipe during stable hour; the number of the defaulters, which under the

new régime was at first large, had dwindled to a negligible quantity. In

two months that section was for all practical purposes a model one, and

Pickersdyke was able to regard the results of his unstinted efforts with

satisfaction.

The colonel, who was not blind where his own interests were concerned,

sent for Pickersdyke one day and said:

‘You’ve done very well with your section; it’s quite the best in the

column now.’

Pickersdyke was pleased; he was as modest as most men, but he appreciated

recognition of his merits. Moreover, for his own ends, he was anxious

to impress his commanding officer. He was less pleased when the latter

continued:

‘I’m going to post you to No. 3 Section now, and I hope you’ll do the

same with that.’

No. 3 Section was notorious. Pickersdyke, if he had been a man of

Biblical knowledge (which he was not), would have compared himself to

Jacob, who waited seven years for Rachel and then was tricked into taking

Leah. The vision of his four days’ leave—long overdue—faded away. He

foresaw a further and still more difficult period of uncongenial work in

front of him. But, having no choice, he was obliged to acquiesce.

Once again he began at the beginning, instilling into unruly minds the

elementary notions that orders are given to be obeyed, that the first

duty of a mounted man is to his horses, and that personal cleanliness

and smartness in appearance are military virtues not beneath notice.

This time the drudgery was even worse, and he was considerably hampered

by the touchiness and jealousy of the real section commander, who was a

dug-out captain of conspicuous inability. There was much unpleasantness,

there was at one time very nearly a mutiny, and there were not a few

courts-martial. It was three months and a half before that section found,

so to speak, its military soul.

And then the colonel, satisfied that the two remaining sections were

well enough commanded to shift for themselves if properly guided,

seized his chance and made Pickersdyke his adjutant. Here was a man,

he felt, endowed with an astonishing energy and considerable powers of

organisation, the very person, in fact, to save his commanding officer

trouble and to relieve him of all real responsibility.

This occurred about the middle of July. From then until well on into

September, Pickersdyke remained a fixture in a small French village on

the lines of communication, miles from the front, out of all touch with

his old comrades, with no distractions and no outlet for his energies

except work of a purely routine character.

‘It might be peace-time and me a bloomin’ clerk’ was how he expressed

his disgust. But he still hoped, for he believed that to the efficient

the rewards of efficiency come in due course and are never long

delayed. Without being conceited, he was perhaps more aware of his own

possibilities than of his limitations. In the old days in his battery

he had been the major’s right-hand man and the familiar (but always

respectful) friend of the subalterns. In the early days of the war he had

succeeded amazingly where others in his position had certainly failed.

His management of affairs ‘behind the scenes’ had been unsurpassed. Never

once, from the moment when his unit left Havre till a month later it

arrived upon the Aisne, had its men been short of food or its horses of

forage. He had replaced deficiencies from some apparently inexhaustible

store of ‘spares’; he had provided the best billets, the safest wagon

lines, the freshest bread with a consistency that was almost uncanny. In

the darkest days of the retreat he had remained unperturbed, ‘pinching’

freely when blandishments failed, distributing the comforts as well as

the necessities of life with a lavish hand and an optimistic smile. His

wits and his resource had been tested to the utmost. He had enjoyed

the contest (it was his nature to do that), and he had come through

triumphant and still smiling.

During the stationary period on the Aisne, and later in Flanders, he had

managed the wagon line—that other half of a battery which consists of

almost everything except the guns and their complement of officers and

men—practically unaided. On more than one occasion he had brought up

ammunition along a very dangerous route at critical moments.

He received his commission late in December, at a time when his battery

was out of action, ‘resting.’ He dined in the officers’ mess, receiving

their congratulations with becoming modesty and their drink without

unnecessary reserve. It was on this occasion that he had induced his

major to promise to get him back. Then he departed, sorrowful in spite

of all his pride in being an officer, to join the column. There, in the

seclusion of his billet, he studied army lists and watched the name of

the senior subaltern of the battery creep towards the head of the roll.

When that officer was promoted captain there would be a vacancy, and that

vacancy would be Pickersdyke’s chance. Meanwhile, to fit himself for

what he hoped to become, he spent whole evenings poring over manuals of

telephony and gun-drill; he learnt by heart abstruse passages of Field

Artillery Training; he ordered the latest treatises on gunnery, both

practical and theoretical, to be sent out to him from England; and he

even battled valiantly with logarithms and a slide-rule....

From all the foregoing it will be understood how bitter was his

disappointment when his application to be transferred was refused. His

colonel’s attitude astonished him. He had expected recognition of that

industry and usefulness of which he had given unchallengeable proof. But

the colonel, instead of saying:

‘You have done well; I will not stand in your way, much as I should like

to keep you,’ merely observed,

‘I’m sorry, but you cannot be spared.’

And he made it unmistakably plain that what he meant was:

‘Do you think I’m such a fool as to let you go? I’ll see you damned

first!’

Thus it was that Pickersdyke, a disillusioned and a baffled man, stared

out of the window with wrath and bitterness in his heart. For he wanted

to go back to ‘the old troop’; he was obsessed with the idea almost to

the exclusion of everything else. He craved for the old faces and the

old familiar atmosphere as a drug-maniac craves for morphia. It was his

right, he had earned it by nine months of drudgery—and who the devil,

anyway, he felt, was this old fool to thwart him?

Extravagant plans for vengeance flitted through his mind. Supposing he

were to lose half a dozen wagons or thousands of rounds of howitzer

ammunition, would his colonel get sent home? Not he—he’d blame his

adjutant, and the latter would quite possibly be court-martialled. Should

he hide all the colonel’s clothes and only reveal their whereabouts when

the application had been forwarded? Should he steal his whisky (without

which it was doubtful if he could exist), put poison in his tea, or

write an anonymous letter to headquarters accusing him of espionage? He

sighed—ingenuity, his valuable ally on many a doubtful occasion, failed

him now. Then it occurred to him to appeal to one Lorrison, who was the

captain of his old battery, and whom he had known for years as one of his

subalterns.

‘DEAR LORRISON,’ he wrote, ‘I’ve just had an interview with

my old man and he won’t agree to my transfer. I’m afraid it’s

a wash-out unless something can be done quickly, as I suppose

Jordan will be promoted very soon.’ (Jordan was the senior

subaltern.) ‘You know how much I want to get back in time for

the big show. Can you do anything? Sorry to trouble you, and

now I must close.

‘Yours,

‘W. PICKERSDYKE.’

Then he summoned his servant. Gunner Scupham was an elderly individual

with grey hair, a dignified deportment, and a countenance which suggested

extreme honesty of soul but no intelligence whatsoever. Which fact was

of great assistance to him in the perpetration of his more complicated

villainies. He had not been Pickersdyke’s storeman for many years for

nothing. His devotion was a by-word, but his familiarity was sometimes a

little startling.

‘’E won’t let us go,’ announced Pickersdyke.

‘Strafe the blighter!’ replied Scupham feelingly. ‘I’m proper fed up with

this ’ere column job.’

‘Get the office bike, take this note to Captain Lorrison, and bring back

an answer. Here’s a pass.’

Scupham departed, grumbling audibly. It meant a fifteen-mile ride, the

day was warm, and he disliked physical exertion. He returned late that

evening with the answer, which was as follows:

‘DEAR PICKERS,—Curse your fool colonel. Jordan may go any day,

and if we don’t get you we’ll probably be stuck with some

child who knows nothing. Besides, we want you to come. The

preliminary bombardment is well under way, so there’s not much

time. Meet me at the B.A.C.[7] headquarters to-morrow evening

at 8 and we’ll fix up something. In haste,

‘Yours ever,

‘T. LORRISON.’

There are people who do not believe in luck. But if it was not luck which

assisted Pickersdyke by producing the events which followed his receipt

of that note, then it was Providence in a genial and most considerate

mood. He spent a long time trying to think of a reasonable excuse for

going to see Lorrison, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Some

light-hearted fool had sent up shrapnel instead of high explosive to the

very B.A.C. that Pickersdyke wanted to visit. Angry telephone messages

were coming through, and the colonel at once sent his adjutant up to

offer plausible explanations.

Pickersdyke covered a lot of ground that afternoon. It was necessary

to find an infuriated artillery brigadier and persuade him that the

error was not likely to occur again, and was in any case not really the

fault of the D.A.C. section commander. It was then necessary to find

this latter and make it clear to him that he was without doubt the most

incompetent officer in the allied forces, and that the error was entirely

due to his carelessness. And it was essential to arrange for forwarding

what was required.

Lorrison arrived punctually and evidently rather excited.

‘What price the news?’ he said at once.

Pickersdyke had heard none. He had been far too busy.

‘We’re for it at last—going to bombard all night till 4.30 A.M.—every

bally gun in the army as far as I can see. And we’ve got orders to be

ready to move in close support of the infantry if they get through. _To

move!_ Just think of that after all these months.’

Pickersdyke swore as he had not done since he was a rough-riding

bombardier.

‘And that’s boxed _my_ chances,’ he ended up.

‘Wait a bit,’ said Lorrison. ‘There’s a vacancy waiting for you if you’ll

take it. We got pretty badly “crumped”[8] last night. The Bosches put

some big “hows” and a couple of “pip-squeak” batteries on to us just when

we were replenishing. They smashed up several wagons and did a lot of

damage. Poor old Jordan got the devil of a shaking—he was thrown about

ten yards. Lucky not to be blown to bits, though. Anyway, he’s been sent

to hospital.’

He looked inquiringly at Pickersdyke. The latter’s face portrayed an

unholy joy.

‘Will I take his place?’ he cried. ‘Lummy! I should think I would. Don’t

care what the colonel says afterwards. When can I join? Now?’

‘As soon as I’ve seen about getting some more wagons from the B.A.C.

we’ll go up together,’ answered Lorrison.

Pickersdyke, who had no conscience whatever on occasions such as this,

sent a message to his colonel to say that he was staying up for the

night (he omitted to say precisely where!), as there would be much to

arrange in the morning. To Scupham he wrote:

‘Collect all the kit you can and come up to the battery at

once. _Say nothing._’

He was perfectly aware that he was doing a wildly illegal thing. He felt

like an escaped convict breathing the air of freedom and making for his

home and family. Forty colonels would not have stopped him at that moment.

II.

The major commanding the ⸺th Battery sat in his dug-out examining a

large-scale trench map. His watch, carefully synchronised with those

of the staff, lay on the table in front of him. Outside, his six guns

were firing steadily, each concussion (and there were twelve a minute)

shaking everything that was not a fixture in the little room. Hundreds

of guns along miles of front and miles of depth were taking part in the

most stupendous bombardment yet attempted by the army. From ‘Granny,’ the

enormous howitzer that fired six times an hour at a range of seventeen

thousand yards, to machine guns in the front line trenches, every

available piece of ordnance was adding its quota to what constituted a

veritable hell of noise.

The major had been ordered to cut the wire entanglements between two

given points and to stop firing at 4.30 A.M. precisely. He had no certain

means of knowing whether he had completed his task or not. He only

knew that his ‘lines of fire,’ his range, and his ‘height of burst’ as

previously registered in daylight were correct, that his layers could be

depended upon, and that he had put about a thousand rounds of shrapnel

into a hundred and fifty yards of front. At 4.29 he rose and stood, watch

in hand, in the doorway of his dug-out. A man with a megaphone waited at

his elbow. The major, war-worn though he was, was still young enough in

spirit to be thrilled by the mechanical regularity of his battery’s fire.

This perfection of drill was his work, the result of months and months of

practice, of loving care, and of minute attention to detail.

Dawn was beginning to creep into the sky, and he could just distinguish

the silhouettes of the two right-hand guns. The flash as one of them

fired revealed momentarily the figures of the gunners grouped round the

breech like demons round some spectral engine of destruction. Precisely

five seconds afterwards a second flash denoted that the next gun had

fired—and so on in sequence from right to left until it was the turn of

Number One again.

‘Stop,’ said the major when the minute hand of his watch was exactly over

the half-hour.

‘Stop!’ roared the man with the megaphone.

It was as if the order had been heard all along the entire front. The

bombardment ceased almost abruptly, and rifle and machine-gun fire became

audible again. On a colossal scale the effect was that of the throttling

down of a powerful motor-car whose engine had been allowed to race. Then,

not many moments afterwards, from far away to the eastward there came

faint, confused sounds of shouts and cheering. It was the infantry, the

long-suffering, tenacious, wonderful infantry charging valiantly into the

cold grey dawn along the avenues prepared by the guns....

For Pickersdyke it had been a night of pure joy, unspoilt by any qualms

of conscience. He had been welcomed at the battery as a kind of returned

wanderer and given a section of guns at once. The major—who feared no

man’s wrath, least of all that of a dug-out D.A.C. commander—had promised

to back him up if awkward questions were asked. Pickersdyke had only

one cause for disappointment—the whole thing had gone too smoothly. He

was bursting with technical knowledge, he could have repaired almost

any breakdown, and had kept a keen look-out for all ordinary mistakes.

But nothing went wrong and no mistakes were made. In this battery the

liability of human error had been reduced to a negligible minimum.

Pickersdyke had had nothing further to do than to pass orders and see

that they were duly received. Nevertheless he had loved every moment of

it, for he had come into his own—he was back in the old troop, taking

part in a ‘big show.’ As he observed to the major whilst they were

drinking hot coffee in the dug-out afterwards:

‘Even if I do get court-martialled for desertion, sir, that last little

lot was worth it!’

And he grinned as does a man well pleased with the success of his

schemes. To complete his satisfaction, Scupham appeared soon afterwards

bringing up a large bundle of kit and a few luxuries in the way of food.

It transpired that he had presented himself to the last-joined subaltern

of the D.A.C. and had bluffed that perplexed and inexperienced officer

into turning out a cart to drive him as far as the battery wagon line,

whence he had come up on an ammunition wagon.

It was almost daylight when the battery opened fire again, taking its

orders by telephone now from the F.O.O.,[9] who was in close touch with

the infantry and could see what was happening. The rate of fire was slow

at first; then it suddenly quickened, and the range was increased by a

hundred yards. Some thirty shells went shrieking on their mission and

then another fifty yards were added. The infantry was advancing steadily,

and just as steadily, sixty or seventy yards in front of their line,

the curtain of protecting shrapnel crept forward after the retiring

enemy. At one point the attack was evidently held up for a while; the

battery changed to high explosive and worked up to its maximum speed,

causing Lorrison to telephone imploring messages for more and still more

ammunition....

The long-expected order to advance, when at last it came, nearly broke

the major’s heart.

‘Send forward one section,’ it said, ‘in close support of the 2nd

Battalion ⸺shire Regiment, to the advanced position previously prepared

in J. 12.’

One section was only a third of his battery; he would have to stay

behind, and he had been dreaming nightly of this dash forward with the

infantry into the middle of things; he had had visions of that promised

land, the open country beyond the German lines, of an end to siege

warfare and a return to the varying excitement of a running fight. But

orders were orders, so he sent for Pickersdyke.

‘I’m going to send you,’ he said after showing him the order, ‘although

you haven’t seen the position before. But the other lad is too young for

this job. Look here.’

He pointed out the exact route to be followed, showed him where bridges

for crossing the trenches had been prepared, and explained everything in

his usual lucid manner. Then he held out his hand.

‘Good-bye and good luck,’ he said. Their eyes met for a moment in a

steady gaze of mutual esteem and affection. For they knew each other

well, these two men—the gentleman born to lead and to inspire, and his

ranker subordinate (a gentleman too in all that matters) highly trained,

thoroughly efficient, utterly devoted....

There was not a prouder man in the army than Pickersdyke at the moment

when he led his section out from the battery position amid the cheers of

those left behind. His luck, so he felt, was indeed amazing. He had about

a mile to go along a road that was congested with troops and vehicles

of all sorts. He blasphemed his way through (there is no other adequate

means of expressing his progress) with his two guns and four wagons

until he reached the point where he had to turn off to make for his new

position. This latter had been carefully prepared beforehand by fatigue

parties sent out from the battery at night. Gun-pits had been dug, access

made easy, ranges and angles noted down in daylight by an officer left

behind expressly for the purpose; and the whole had been neatly screened

from aerial observation. It lay a few hundred yards behind what had been

the advanced British trenches. But it was not a good place for guns;

it was only one in which they might be put if, as now, circumstances

demanded the taking of heavy risks.

Pickersdyke halted his little command behind the remains of a spinney

and went forward to reconnoitre. He was still half a mile from his goal,

which lay on a gentle rise on the opposite side of a little valley.

Allowing for rough ground and deviations from the direct route owing

to the network of trenches which ran in all directions, he calculated

that it would take him at least ten minutes to get across. Incidentally

he noticed that quite a number of shells were falling in the area he

was about to enter. For the first time he began to appreciate the exact

nature of his task. He returned to the section and addressed his men thus:

‘Now, you chaps, it’s good driving what’s wanted here. We must get the

guns there whatever happens—we’ll let down the infantry else. Follow me

and take it steady, ... Terr-ot.’

The teams and carriages jingled and rattled along behind him as he led

them forward. Smooth going, the signal to gallop, and a dash for it

would have been his choice, but that was impossible. Constantly he was

forced to slow down to a walk and dismount the detachments to haul on the

drag-ropes. The manœuvre developed into a kind of obstacle race, with

death on every side. But his luck stood by him. He reached the position

with the loss only of a gunner, two drivers, and a pair of lead horses.

As soon as he had got his guns into action and his teams away (all of

which was done quietly, quickly, and without confusion—‘as per book’

as he expressed it) Pickersdyke crawled up a communication trench,

followed by a telephonist laying a wire, until he reached a place where

he could see. It was the first time that he had been so close up to the

firing line, and he experienced the sensations of a man who looks down

into the crater of a live volcano. Somewhere in the midst of the awful

chaos in front of him was, if it still existed at all, the infantry

battalion he was supposed to have been sent to support. But how to know

where or when to shoot was altogether beyond him. He poked his glasses

cautiously through a loophole and peered into the smoke in the vain hope

of distinguishing friend from foe.

‘What the hell shall I do now?’ he muttered. ‘Can’t see no bloomin’

target in this lot.... Crikey! yes, I can, though,’ he added. ‘Both guns

two degrees more left, fuze two, eight hundred....’ He rattled off his

orders as if to the manner born. The telephonist, a man who had spent

months in the society of forward observing officers, repeated word for

word into his instrument, speaking as carefully as the operator in the

public call office at Piccadilly Circus.

The guns behind blazed and roared. A second afterwards two fleecy balls

of white smoke, out of which there darted a tongue of flame, appeared in

front of the solid grey wall of men which Pickersdyke had seen rise as if

from the earth itself and surge forward. A strong enemy counter-attack

was being launched, and he, with the luck of the tyro, had got his guns

right on to it. Methodically he switched his fire up and down the line.

Great gaps appeared in it, only to be quickly filled. It wavered, sagged,

and then came on again. Back at the guns the detachments worked till the

sweat streamed from them; their drill was perfect, their rate of fire the

maximum. But the task was beyond their powers. Two guns were not enough.

Nevertheless the rush, though not definitely stopped, had lost its full

driving force. It reached the captured trenches (which the infantry had

had no time to consolidate), it got to close quarters, but it did not

break through. The wall of shrapnel had acted like a breakwater—the

strength of the wave was spent ere it reached its mark—and like a wave

it began to ebb back again. In pursuit, cheering, yelling, stabbing, mad

with the terrible lust to kill and kill and kill, came crowds of khaki

figures.

Pickersdyke, who had stopped his fire to avoid hitting his own side and

was watching the fight with an excitement such as he had never hoped to

know, saw that the critical moment was past; the issue was decided,

and his infantry were gaining ground again. He opened fire once more,

lengthening his range so as to clear the _mêlée_ and yet hinder the

arrival of hostile reserves, which was a principle he had learnt from a

constant study of ‘the book.’

Suddenly there were four ear-splitting cracks over his head, and a shower

of earth and stones rattled down off the parapet a few yards from him.

‘We’re for it now,’ he exclaimed.

He was. This first salvo was the prelude to a storm of shrapnel from

some concealed German battery which had at last picked up the section’s

position. But Pickersdyke continued to support his advancing infantry....

‘Wire’s cut, sir,’ said the telephonist suddenly.

It was fatal. It was the one thing Pickersdyke had prayed would not

happen, for it meant the temporary silencing of his guns.

‘Mend it and let me know when you’re through again,’ he ordered. ‘I’m

going down to the section.’ And, stooping low, he raced back along the

trench.

At the guns it had been an unequal contest, and they had suffered

heavily. The detachments were reduced to half their strength, and one

wagon, which had received a direct hit, had been blown to pieces.

‘Stick it, boys,’ said Pickersdyke after a quick look round. He saw

that if he was to continue shooting it would be necessary to stand on

the top of the remaining wagon in order to observe his fire. And he was

determined to continue. He climbed up and found that the additional four

feet or so which he gained in height just enabled him to see the burst of

his shells. But he had no protection whatever.

‘Add a hundred, two rounds gun-fire,’ he shouted—and the guns flashed

and banged in answer to his call. But it was a question of time only.

Miraculously, for almost five minutes he remained where he was,

untouched. Then, just as the telephonist reported ‘through’ again the

inevitable happened. An invisible hand, so it seemed to Pickersdyke,

endowed with the strength of twenty blacksmiths, hit him a smashing

blow with a red-hot sledge-hammer on the left shoulder. He collapsed on

to the ground behind his wagon with the one word ‘_Hell!_’ And then he

fainted....

At 8 P.M. that night the ⸺th Battery received orders to join up with its

advanced section and occupy the position permanently. It was after nine

when Lorrison, stumbling along a communication trench and beginning to

think that he was lost, came upon the remnants of Pickersdyke’s command.

They were crouching in one of the gun-pits—a bombardier and three

gunners, very cold and very miserable. Two of them were wounded. Lorrison

questioned them hastily and learnt that Pickersdyke was at his observing

station, that Scupham and the telephonist were with him, and that there

were two more wounded men in the next pit.

‘The battery will be here soon,’ said Lorrison cheerily, ‘and you’ll all

get fixed up. Meanwhile here’s my flask and some sandwiches.’

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said the bombardier, ‘but Mr. Pickersdyke ’ll need

that flask. ’E’s pretty bad, sir, I believe.’

Lorrison found Pickersdyke lying wrapped in some blankets which Scupham

had fetched from the wagon, twisting from side to side and muttering a

confused string of delirious phrases. ‘Fuze two—more _right_ I said—damn

them, they’re still advancing—what price the old ⸺th now?...’ and then a

groan and he began again.

Scupham, in a husky whisper, was trying to soothe him. ‘Lie still for

Gawd’s sake and don’t worry yourself,’ he implored.

By the time Lorrison had examined the bandages on Pickersdyke’s shoulder

and administered morphia (without a supply of which he now never moved)

the battery arrived, and with it some stretcher-bearers. Pickersdyke,

just before he was carried off, recovered consciousness and recognised

Lorrison, who was close beside him.

‘Hullo!’ he said in a weak voice. ‘Nice box-up here, isn’t it? But I

reckon we got a bit of our own back ’fore we was knocked out. Tell the

major the men were just grand. Oh! and before I forget, amongst my kit

there’s a few “spares” I’ve collected; they might come in handy for the

battery. I shan’t be away long, I hope.... Wonder what the old colonel

will say....’ His voice trailed off into a drowsy murmur—the morphia had

begun to take effect....

Lorrison detained Scupham in order to glean more information.

‘After ’e got ’it, sir,’ said Scupham, ‘’e lay still for a bit, ’arf

an hour pr’aps, and ’ardly seemed to know what was ’appening. Then ’e

suddenly calls out: “Is that there telephone workin’ yet?” “Yes, sir,”

I says—and with that ’e made for to stand up, but ’e couldn’t. So wot

does ’e do then but makes me bloomin’ well carry ’im up the trench to

the observin’ station. “Now then, Scupham,” ’e says, “prop me up by that

loophole so I can see wot’s comin’ off.” And I ’ad to ’old ’im there

pretty near all the afternoon while ’e kep’ sending orders down the

telephone and firing away like ’ell. We finished our ammunition about

five o’clock, and then ’e lay down where ’e was to rest for a bit. ’Ow

’e’d stuck it all that time with a wound like that Gawd only knows. ’E

went queer in ’is ’ead soon after and we thought ’e was a goner—and then

nothin’ much ’appened till you came up, sir, ’cept that we was gettin’ a

tidy few shells round about. D’you reckon ’e’ll get orl right, sir?’

It was evident that the unemotional Scupham was consumed with anxiety.

‘Oh! he _must_!’ cried Lorrison. ‘It would be too cruel if he didn’t pull

through after all he’s done. He’s a _man_ if ever there was one.’

‘And that’s a fact,’ said Scupham, preparing to follow his idol to the

dressing station. As he moved away Lorrison heard him mutter,

‘There ain’t no one on Gawd’s earth like old Pickers—fancy ’im

rememberin’ them there “spares.” ‘Strewth! ’e _is_ a one!’ Which was a

very high compliment indeed....

* * * * *

Official correspondence, even when it is marked ‘Pressing and

Confidential’ in red ink and enclosed in a sealed envelope, takes

a considerable time to pass through the official channels and come

back again. It was some days before the colonel commanding a certain

divisional ammunition column received an answer to his report upon the

inexplicable absence of his adjutant. He was a vindictive man who felt

that he had been left in the lurch, and he had taken pains to draft a

letter which would emphasise the shortcomings of his subordinate. The

answer, when it did come, positively shocked him. It was as follows:

‘With reference to your report upon the absence without leave

of Second Lieutenant Pickersdyke, the Major-General Commanding

directs me to say that as this officer was severely wounded on

September 25 whilst commanding a section of the ⸺th Battery

R.F.A. with conspicuous courage and ability, for which he has

been specially recommended for distinction by the G.O.C.R.A.,

and as he is now in hospital in England, no further action will

be taken in the matter.’

To be snubbed by the Staff because he had reported upon the scandalous

conduct of a mere ‘ranker’ was not at all the colonel’s idea of the

fitness of things. His fury, which vented itself chiefly upon his office

clerk, would have been greater still if he could have seen his late

adjutant comfortably ensconced in a cosy ward in one of the largest

houses of fashionable London, waited upon by ladies of title, and showing

an admiring circle of relations the jagged piece of steel which a very

famous surgeon had extracted from his shoulder free of charge!

For, in spite of his colonel, the progress of Pickersdyke on the chosen

path of his ambition was now quite definitely assured.

JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.

FOOTNOTES

[7] Brigade Ammunition Column.

[8] Shelled.

[9] Forward Observing Officer.

_BALLIOL MEMORIES._

A NOTE BY THE HON. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY.

My article in the October number has brought me many kind letters from

old Balliol friends for which I am grateful, and one or two errors

have been called to my attention, which I should like to correct. Sir

Courtenay Ilbert points out that I am mistaken in claiming the present

Speaker as a member of Balliol College, ‘he was of Trinity, Cambridge.’

Francis Le Marchant points out that ‘Dick Webster,’ the late Lord

Alverstone, and not Lawes as stated, beat Jersey in the mile race in the

first Inter-University Sports held at Cambridge; ‘believe an eyewitness.’

Sneyd Kynnersley contributes an amusing anecdote about the latter’s

trophies. Count Karolyi was admiring his display of racing cups, and

noticing one in particular, asked what horse won it. ‘Oh,’ answered his

host, ‘I won that one myself in a three-mile race.’ ‘Do you mean to say,

Lord Jersey,’ said the Count, ‘that you ran three miles without sitting

down!’

I should like also to correct a careless error in my quotation of

Tennyson’s metrical compliment to Katherine Bradshaw. The first two lines

should read:

Because she bore the iron name

Of him who doomed ‘_his_’ King to die,

instead of, as printed, ‘_the_’ King. I am sure the exquisite ear of the

author would attach importance to the correction; he would never have

allowed the cadence and stress to fall on such an insignificant word and

sound as ‘the.’