_Reflections_
That night Bertram was again unable to sleep. Lying awake on his hard
and narrow bed, faint for want of food, and sick with the horrible stench
of the swamp, his mind revolved continually round the problem of how to
“personally conduct” a convoy of a thousand porters through twenty miles
of enemy country in such a way that it might have a chance if attacked.
After tossing and turning for hours and vainly wooing sleep, he lay
considering the details of a scheme by which the armed escort should, as
it were, circulate round and round from head to tail of the convoy by a
process which left ten of the advance-guard to occupy every tributary
turning that joined the path and to wait at the junction of the two paths
until the whole convoy had passed and the rear-guard had arrived. The
ten would then join the rear-guard and march on with them. By the time
this had been repeated sufficiently often to deplete the advance-guard,
the convoy should halt while the bulk of the rear-guard marched up to the
head of the column again and so _da capo_. It would want a lot of
explaining to whoever was in command of the rear-guard, for it would be
impossible for him, himself, to struggle up and down a line miles long—a
line to which anything might happen, at any point, at any moment. . . .
He could make it clear that at any turning he would detail ten men from
the advance-guard, and then, when fifty had been withdrawn for this
flanking work, he would halt the column so that the officer commanding
the rear-guard could send fifty back. . . . Ten to one the fool would
bungle it, and he might sit and await the return of the fifty until the
crack of doom, or until he went back and fetched them up himself. And as
soon as he had quitted the head of the column there would be an attack on
it! . . . Yes—or perhaps the ass in command of the ten placed to guard
the side-turnings would omit to join the rear-guard as it passed—and he’d
roll up at his destination, with a few score men short. . . . What would
be done to him if he—
_Bang_! . . .
Bertram’s heart seemed to leap out of his body and then to stand still.
His bones seemed to turn to water, and his tongue to leather. Had a
shell burst beneath his bed? . . . Was he soaring in the air? . . . Had
a great mine exploded beneath the Camp, and was the M’paga Field Force
annihilated? . . . Captain Hall sat up, yawned, put his hand out from
beneath the mosquito curtain of his camp-bed and flashed his electric
torch at a small alarm-clock that stood on a box within reach.
“What was that explosion?” said Bertram as soon as he could speak.
“Three-thirty,” yawned Hall. “Might as well get up, I s’pose. . . .
Wha’? . . . ’Splosion? . . . Some fool popped his rifle off at nothing,
I sh’d say. . . . Blast him! Woke me up. . .”
“It’s not an attack, then?” said Bertram, mightily relieved. “It sounded
as though it were right close outside the hut. . . .”
“Well—you don’t attack with _one_ rifle shot—nor beat off an attack with
_none_. I don’t, at least,” replied Hall. . . “Just outside, was it?”
he added as he arose. “Funny! There’s no picket or sentry there. You
must have been dreaming, my lad.”
“I was wide awake before it happened,” said Bertram. “I’ve been awake
all night. . . . It was so close, I—I thought I was blown to bits. . . .”
“’Oo wouldn’ sell ’is liddle farm an’ go ter War,” remarked Hall in Tommy
vein. “It’s a wearin’ life, being blowed outer yer bed at ar’ pars free
of a mornin’, ain’t it, guv’nor?”
A deep and hollow groan, apparently from beneath Bertram’s bed, almost
froze that young gentleman’s blood.
Pulling on his slippers and turning on his electric torch, Hall dashed
out of the hut. Bertram heard him exclaim, swear, and ask questions in
Hindustani. He was joined by others, and the group moved away. . . .
“Bright lad nearly blown his hand off,” said Hall, re-entering the hut
and lighting a candle-lamp. “Says he was cleaning his rifle. . . .”
“Do you clean a rifle while it is loaded, and also put one hand over the
muzzle and the other on the trigger while you do it?” asked Bertram.
“_I_ don’t, personally,” replied Captain Hall, shortly. He was loath to
admit that this disgrace to the regiment had intentionally incapacitated
himself from active service, though it was fairly obvious.
“I wish he’d gone somewhere else to clean his rifle,” said Bertram. “I
believe the thing was pointed straight at my ear. I tell you—I felt as
though a shell had burst in the hut.”
“Bullet probably came through here,” observed Hall nonchalantly as he
laced his boots. (Later Bertram discovered that it had actually cut one
of the four sticks that supported his mosquito curtain, and had torn the
muslin thereof.)
Sleep being out of the question, Bertram decided that he might as well
arise and watch the setting-forth of the little expedition.
“Going to get up and see you off the premises,” said he.
“Stout fella,” replied Hall. “I love enthusiasm—but it’ll wear off. . . .
The day’ll come, and before long, when you wouldn’t get out of bed to
see your father shot at dawn. . . . Not unless you were in orders to
command the firing-party, of course,” he added. . .
Bertram dressed, feeling weak, ill and unhappy. . . .
“Am I coming in, sah, thank you?” said a well-known voice at the doorless
doorway of the hut.
“Hope so,” replied Bertram, “if that’s tea you’ve got.”
It was. In a large enamel “tumbler” was a pint of glorious hot tea,
strong, sweet and scalding.
“Useful bird, that,” observed Hall, after declining to share the tea, as
he was having breakfast at four o’clock over in the Mess. “I s’pose you
hadn’t ordered tea at three forty-five, had you?”
Bertram admitted that he had not, and concealed the horrid doubt that
arose in his mind—born of memories of Sergeant Jones’s tea at
Kilindini—as to whether he was not drinking, under Hall’s very nose, the
tea that should have graced Hall’s breakfast, due to be on the table in
the Mess at that moment. . . .
If Captain Hall found his tea unduly dilute he did not mention the fact
when Bertram came over to the Mess _banda_, and sat yawning and watching
him—the man who could nonchalantly sit and shovel horrid-looking porridge
into his mouth at four a.m., and talk idly on indifferent subjects, a few
minutes before setting out to make a march in the darkness to an attack
at dawn. . . .
Ill and miserable as he felt, Bertram forgot everything in the thrilling
interest of watching the assembly and departure of the little force. Out
of the black darkness little detachments appeared, sometimes silhouetted
against the red background of cooking fires, and marched along the main
thoroughfare of the Camp to the place of assembly at the quarter-guard.
Punctual to the minute, the column was ready to march off, as Captain
Hall strolled up, apparently as unconcerned as if he were in some boring
peace manœuvres, or about to ride to a meet, instead of to make a
cross-country night march, by compass, through an African jungle-swamp to
an attack at dawn, with the responsibility of the lives of a couple of
hundred men upon his shoulders, as well as that of making a successful
move on the chess-board of the campaign. . . .
At the head of the column were a hundred Sepoys of the Hundred and
Ninety-Eighth, under Stanner. In the light of the candle-lantern which
he had brought from the _banda_, Bertram scrutinised their faces. They
were Mussulmans, and looked determined, hardy men and fine soldiers.
Some few looked happily excited, some ferocious, but the prevailing
expression was one of weary depression and patient misery. Very many
looked ill, and here and there he saw a sullen and resentful face. On
the whole, he gathered the impression of a force that would march where
it was led and would fight bravely, venting on the foe its anger and
resentment at his being the cause of their sojourning in a stinking swamp
to rot of malaria and dysentery.
How was Stanner feeling, Bertram wondered. He was evidently feeling
extremely nervous, and made no secret of it when Bertram approached and
addressed him. He was anything but afraid, but he was highly excited.
His teeth chattered as he spoke, and his hand shook when he lit a
cigarette.
“Gad! I should hate to get one of their beastly expanding bullets in my
stomach,” said he. “They fire a brute of a big-bore slug with a flat
nose. Bad as an explosive bullet, the swine,” and he shuddered
violently. “Stomach’s the only part I worry about, and I don’t give a
damn for bayonets. . . . But a bullet through your stomach! You live
for weeks. . . .”
Bertram felt distinctly glad to discover that a trained regular officer,
like Stanner, could entertain these sensations of nervous excitement, and
that he himself had no monopoly of them. He even thought, with a thrill
of hope and confidence, that when his turn came he would be less nervous
than Stanner. He knew that Stanner was not frightened, and that he did
not wish he was snug in bed as his brother-officers were, but he also
knew that Bertram Greene would not be frightened, and hoped and believed
he would not be so palpably excited and nervous. . . .
Behind the detachment of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth came a machine-gun
team of _askaris_ of the King’s African Rifles, in charge of a gigantic
Sergeant. The dismounted gun and the ammunition-boxes were on the heads
of Swahili porters.
Bertram liked the look of the Sergeant. He was a picture of quiet
competence, reliability and determination. Although a full-blooded
Swahili, his face was not unhandsome in a fierce, bold, and vigorously
purposeful way, and though he had the flattened, wide-nostrilled nose of
the negro, his mouth was Arab, thin-lipped and clear cut as Bertram’s
own. There was nothing bovine, childish nor wandering in his regard, but
a look of frowning thoughtfulness, intentness and concentration.
And Sergeant Simba was what he looked, every inch a soldier, and a fine
honourable fighting-man, brave as the lion he was named after; a
subordinate who would obey and follow his white officer to certain death,
without question or wavering; a leader who would carry his men with him
by force of his personality, courage and leadership, while he could move
and they could follow. . . . Beside Sergeant Simba, the average German
soldier is a cur, a barbarian, and a filthy brute, for never in all the
twenty years of his “savage” warfare has Sergeant Simba butchered a
child, tortured a woman, murdered wounded enemies, abused (nor used) the
white flag, fired on the Red Cross, turned captured dwelling-places into
pig-styes and latrines in demonstration of his _kultur_—nor, when caught
and cornered, has he waggled dirty hands about cunning, cowardly head
with squeal of _Kamerad_! _Kamerad_! . . . Could William the Kultured
but have officered his armies with a hundred thousand of Sergeant Simba,
instead of with his high-well-born Junkers, the Great War might have been
a gentleman’s war, a clean war, and the word _German_ might not have
become an epithet for all time, nor the “noble and knightly” sons of
ancient houses have received commissions as Second Nozzle-Holder in the
Poison-Gas Grenadiers, Sub Tap-Turner in a Fire-Squirting Squadron, or
Ober Left-behind to Poison Wells in the Prussic (Acid) Guard. . . .
As Bertram watched this sturdy-looking Maxim-gun section, with their
imperturbable, inscrutable faces, an officer of the King’s African Rifles
emerged from the circumambient gloom and spoke with Sergeant Simba in
Swahili. As he departed, after giving his orders and a few words of
advice to Sergeant Simba, he raised his lantern to the face of the man in
charge of the porters who carried the gun and ammunition. The man’s face
was instantly wreathed in smiles, and he giggled like a little girl. The
officer dug him affectionately in the ribs, as one smacks a horse on
dismounting after a long run and a clean kill, and the giggle became a
cackle of elfin laughter most incongruous. Evidently the man was the
officer’s pet butt and prize fool.
“_Cartouchie n’gapi_?” asked the officer.
“Hundrem millium, _Bwana_,” replied the man, and as the officer turned
away with a laugh, Bertram correctly surmised that on being asked how
many cartridges he had got, the man had replied that he possessed a
hundred million.
Probably he spoke in round numbers, and used the only English words he
knew. . . . The African does not deal in larger quantities than
ten-at-a-time, and his estimates are vague, and still more vague is his
expression of them. He will tell you that a place is “several nights
distant,” or perhaps that it is “a few rivers away.” It is only just,
however, to state that he will cheerfully accept an equal vagueness in
return, and will go to your tent with the alacrity of clear understanding
and definite purpose, if you say to him: “Run quickly to my tent and
bring me the thing I want. You will easily distinguish it, as it is of
about the colour of a flower, the size of a piece of wood, the shape of
elephant’s breath, and the weight of water. _You_ know—it’s as long as
some string and exactly the height of some stones. You’ll find it about
as heavy as a dead bird or a load on the conscience. That thing that
looks like a smell and feels like a sound. . . .” He may bring your gun,
your tobacco-pouch, your pyjamas, your toothbrush, or one slipper, but he
will bring _something_, and that without hesitation or delay, for he
immediately and clearly grasped that that particular thing, and none
other, was what you wanted. He recognised it from your clear and careful
description. It was not as though you had idly and carelessly said:
“Bring me my hat” (or my knife or the matches or some other article that
he handled daily), and left him to make up his mind, unaided, as to
whether you did not really mean trousers, a book, washhand-stand, or the
pens, ink, and paper of the gardener’s aunt. . . .
Behind the Swahili was a half-company of Gurkhas of the Kashmir Imperial
Service Troops. As they stood at ease and chatted to each other, they
reminded Bertram of a class of schoolboys waiting to be taken upon some
highly pleasurable outing. There was an air of cheerful excitement and
joyous expectancy.
“_Salaam_, _Subedar Sahib_,” said Bertram, as the fierce hard face of his
little friend came within the radius of the beams of his lantern.
“_Salaam_, _Sahib_,” replied the Gurkha officer, “_Sahib ata hai_?” he
asked.
“_Nahin_,” replied Bertram. “_Hamara Colonel Sahib hamko hookum dea ki_
‘_Mut jao_,’” and the Subedar gathered that Bertram’s Colonel had
forbidden him to go. He commiserated with the young Sahib, said it was
bad luck, but doubtless the Colonel Sahib in his wisdom had reserved him
for far greater things.
As he strolled along their flank, Bertram received many a cheery grin of
recognition and many a “Salaam, Sahib,” from the friendly and lovable
little hill-men.
In their rear, Bertram saw, with a momentary feeling that was something
like the touch of a chill hand upon his heart, a party of Swahili
stretcher-bearers, under an Indian of the Subordinate Medical Department,
who bore, slung by a crossbelt across his body, a large satchel of
dressings and simple surgical appliances. . . . Would these
stretcher-bearers come back laden—sodden and dripping with the life-blood
of men now standing near them in full health and strength and vigour of
lusty life? Perhaps this fine Sergeant, perhaps the Subedar-Major of the
Gurkhas? Stanner? Hall? . . .
Suddenly the column was in motion and passing through the entrance by
which Bertram had come into the Camp—was it a month ago or only
yesterday?
Without disobeying the Colonel, he might perhaps go with the column as
far as the river? There was a water-picket there permanently. If he did
not go beyond the picket-line, it could not be held that he had “gone
out” with the force in face of the C.O.’s prohibition.
Along the narrow lane or tunnel which wound through the impenetrable
jungle of elephant-grass, acacia scrub, live oak, baobab, palm, thorn,
creeper, and undergrowth, the column marched to the torrential little
river, thirty or forty yards wide, that swirled brown, oily, and ugly,
between its reed-beds of sucking mud. Here the column halted while Hall
and Stanner, lantern in hand, felt their slow and stumbling way from log
to log of the rough and unrailed bridge that spanned the stream. On the
far side Hall waited with raised lantern, and in the middle stayed
Stanner and bade the men cross in single file, the while he vainly
endeavoured to illuminate each log and the treacherous gap beside it.
Before long the little force had crossed without loss—(and to fall
through into that deep, swift stream in the darkness with accoutrements
and a hundred rounds of ammunition was to be lost for ever)—and in a
minute had disappeared into the darkness, swallowed up and lost to sight
and hearing, as though it had never passed that way. . . .
Bertram turned back to Camp and came face to face with Major Manton.
“Morning, Greene,” said he. “Been to see ’em off? Stout fella.” And
Bertram felt as pleased and proud as if he had won a decoration. . . .
The day dawned grey, cheerless and threatening over a landscape as grey,
cheerless and threatening as the day. The silent, menacing jungle, the
loathsome stench of the surrounding swamp, the heavy, louring sky, the
moist, suffocating heat; the sense of lurking, threatening danger from
savage man, beast and reptile, insect and microbe; the feeling of utter
homelessness and rough discomfort, combined to oppress, discourage and
disturb. . . .
Breakfast, eaten in silence in the Mess _banda_, consisted of porridge
that required long and careful mastication by any who valued his
digestion; pieces of meat of dull black surface and bright pink interior,
also requiring long and careful mastication by all who were not too
wearied by the porridge drill; and bread.
The bread was of interest—equally to the geologist, the zoologist, the
physiologist, the chemist, and the merely curious. To the dispassionate
eye, viewing it without prejudice or partiality, the loaf looked like an
oblate spheroid of sandstone—say the Old Red Sandstone in which the
curious may pick up a mammoth, aurochs, sabre-toothed tiger, or similar
ornament of their little world and fleeting day—and to the passionate
hand hacking _with_ prejudice and partiality (for crumb, perhaps), it
also felt like it. It was Army Bread, and quite probably made since the
outbreak of the war. The geologist, wise in Eras—_Paleolithic_,
_Pliocene_, _Eocene_, _May-have-been_—felt its challenge at once. To the
zoologist there was immediate appeal when, by means of some sharp or
heavy tool, the outer crust had been broken. For that interior was
honey-combed with large, shiny-walled cells, and every cell was filled
with a strange web-like kind of cocoon of finest filaments, now grey, now
green, to which adhered tiny black specks. Were these, asked the
zoologist, the eggs of insects, and, if so, of what insects? Were they
laid before the loaf petrified, or after? If before, had the burning
process in the kiln affected them? If after, how did the insect get
inside? Or were they possibly of vegetable origin—something of a fungoid
nature—or even on that strange borderland ’twixt animal and vegetable
where roam the yeasty microbe and boisterous bacillus? Perhaps, after
all, it was neither animal nor vegetable, but mineral? . . . So ponders
the geologist who incurs Army Bread in the wilds of the earth.
The physiologist merely wonders once again at the marvels of the human
organism, that man can swallow such things and live; while the chemist
secretes a splinter or two, that he may make a qualitative and
quantitative analysis of this new, compound, if haply he survive to
return to his laboratory.
To the merely curious it is merely curious—until he essays to eat it—and
then his utterance may not be merely precious. . . .
After this merry meal, Bertram approached the Colonel, saluted, and said:
“Colonel Frost, of the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth, ordered me to be sure to
request you to return his nine cooking-pots at your very earliest
convenience, sir, if you please.”
Colonel Rock smiled brightly upon Bertram.
“He always was a man who liked his little joke,” said he. . . . “Remind
me to send him—”
“Yes, sir,” interrupted Bertram, involuntarily, so pleased was he to
think that the Pots of Contention were to be returned after all.
“. . . A Christmas-card—will you?” finished Colonel Rock.
Bertram’s face fell. He thought he could hear, afar off, the ominous
sound of the grinding of the mill-stones, between the upper and the
nether of which he would be ground exceeding small. . . . Would Colonel
Frost send him a telegram? What would Colonel Rock say if he took it to
him? Could he pretend that he had never received it. Base thought! If
he received one every day? . . .
Suppose he were wounded. Could he pretend that his mind and memory were
affected—loss of memory, loss of identity, loss of cooking-pots? . . .
“By the way,” said the Colonel, as Bertram saluted to depart, “you’ll
leave here to-morrow morning with a thousand porters, taking rations and
ammunition to Butindi. You will take the draft from the Hundred and
Ninety-Ninth as escort, and report to Major Mallery there. Don’t go and
get scuppered, or it’ll be bad for them up at Butindi. . . . Start about
five. Lieutenant Bridges, of the Coolie Corps, will give you a guide.
He’s been up there. . . . Better see Captain Brent about it to-night.
He’ll hand over the thousand porters in good condition in the morning. . . .
The A.S.C. people will make a separate dump of the stuff you are to
take. . . . Make sure about it, so that you don’t pinch the wrong stuff,
and turn up at Butindi with ten tons of Number Nine pills and other
medical comforts. . . .”
Bertram’s heart sank within him, but he strove to achieve a look that
blent pleasure, firmness, comprehension, and wide experience of
convoy-work into one attractive whole. Wending his way to his _banda_,
Bertram found Ali Suleiman making work for himself and doing it.
“I am going to Butindi at five to-morrow morning,” he announced. “Have
you ever been that way?”
“Oh, yes, sah, please God, thank you,” replied Ali. “I was gun-bearer to
a _bwana_, one ’Mericani gentlyman wanting to shoot sable antelope—very
rare inseck—but a lion running up and bite him instead, and shocking
climate cause him great loss of life.”
“Then you could be guide,” interrupted Bertram, “and show me the way to
Butindi?”
“Yes, sah,” replied Ali, “can show _Bwana_ everythings. . . . _Bwana_
taking much quinine and other _n’dawa_ {133a} there though. Shocking
climate causing _Bwana_ bad _homa_, bad fever, and perhaps great loss of
life also. . . .”
“D’you get fever ever?” asked Bertram.
“Sometimes, sah, but have never had loss of life,” was the reassuring
answer. . . .
That morning and afternoon Bertram spent in watching the work of the
Camp, as he had no duties of his own, and towards evening learnt of the
approach of the expedition of the morning. . . .
The column marched along with a swing, evidently pleased with itself,
particularly the Swahili detachment, who chanted a song consisting of one
verse which contained but one line. “_Macouba Simba na piga mazungo_,”
{133b} they sang with wearying but unwearied regularity and monotony. At
their head marched Sergeant Simba, looking as fresh as when he started,
and more like a blackened European than a negro.
The Subedar and his Gurkhas had been left to garrison the outpost, but a
few had returned on the stretchers of the medical detachment.
Bertram, with sinking heart and sick feelings of horror, watched these
blood-stained biers, with their apparently lifeless burdens, file over
the bridge, and held his breath whenever a stretcher-bearer stumbled on
the greasy logs.
As the last couple safely crossed the bridge and laid their dripping
stretcher down for a moment, the occupant, a Gurkha rifleman, suddenly
sat up and looked round. His face was corpse-like, and his uniform
looked as though it had just been dipped in a bath of blood. Painfully
he rose to his feet, while the Swahili bearers gaped in amazement, and
tottered slowly forward. Reeling like a drunken man, he followed in the
wake of the disappearing procession, until he fell. Picking up the empty
stretcher, the bearers hurried to where he lay—only to be waved away by
the wounded man, who again arose and reeled, staggering, along the path.
Bertram met him and caught his arm as he collapsed once more.
“_Subr karo_,” said Bertram, summoning up some Hindustani of a sort.
“_Stretcher men baitho_.” {134a}
“_Nahin_, _Sahib_,” whispered the Gurkha; “_kuch nahin hai_.” {134b} He
evidently understood and spoke a little of the same kind. No. It was
nothing. Only seven holes from Maxim-gun fire, that had riddled him as
the German N.C.O. sprayed the charging line until a _kukri_ halved his
skull. . . . It was nothing. . . . No—it would take more than a
_Germani_ and his woolly-haired _askaris_ to put Rifleman Thappa Sannu on
a stretcher. . . .
Bertram’s hand seemed as though it were holding a wet sponge. He felt
sick, and dreaded the moment when he must look at it and see it reeking
red.
“_Mirhbani_, _Sahib_,” whispered the man again. “_Kuch nahin hai_.
_Hamko mut pukkaro_.” {134c}
He lurched free, stumbled forward a dozen yards, and fell again.
There was no difficulty about placing him upon the stretcher this time,
and he made no remonstrance, as he was dead.
Bertram went to his _banda_, sat on the edge of his bed, and wrestled
manfully with himself.
By the time Hall had made his report to the Colonel and come to the hut
for a wash and rest, Bertram had conquered his desire to be very sick,
swallowed the lump in his throat, relieved the stinging in his eyes, and
contrived to look and behave as though he had not just had one of the
most poignant and disturbing experiences of his life. . . .
“Ripping little show,” said Captain Hall, as he prepared for a bath and
change. “The Gurkhas did in their pickets without a sound. Gad! They
can handle those _kukris_ of theirs to some purpose. Sentry on a mound
in the outpost pooped off for some reason. They must just have been
doing their morning Stand-to. . . . All four sides of the post opened
fire, and we were only attacking on one. . . . They’d got a Maxim at
each corner. . . . Too late, though. One hurroosh of a rush before they
knew anything, and we were in the _boma_ with the bayonet. Most of them
bunked over the other side. . . . Got three white men, though. A Gurkha
laid one out—on the Maxim, he was—and the Sergeant of the Swahilis fairly
spitted another with his bayonet. . . . Third one got in the way of my
revolver. . . I don’t s’pose the whole thing lasted five minutes from
the time their sentry fired. . . . The Hundred and Ninety-Eighth were
fine. Lost our best Havildar, though. He’d have been Jemadar if he’d
lived. He was leading a rush of his section in fine style, when he
‘copped a packet.’ Stopped one badly. Clean through the neck. One o’
those beastly soft-nosed slugs the swine give their _askaris_ for
‘savage’ warfare. . . . As if a German knew of any other kind. . . .”
“Many casualties?” asked Bertram, trying to speak lightly.
“No—very few. Only eleven killed and seven wounded. Wasn’t time for
more. Shouldn’t have had that much, only the blighter with the Maxim was
nippy enough to get going with it while we charged over about forty yards
from cover. The Gurkhas jumped the ditch like greyhounds and over the
parapet of the inner trench like birds. . . . You _should_ ha’ been
there. . . . They never had a chance. . . .”
“Yes,” said Bertram, and tried to visualise that rush at the belching
Maxim.
“Didn’t think much of their _bundobust_,” continued Hall. “Their pickets
were pretty well asleep and the place hadn’t got a yard of barbed wire
nor even a row of stakes. They hadn’t a field of fire of more than fifty
yards anywhere. . . . Bit provincial, what? . . .”
While Hall bathed, Bertram went in search of Captain Brent of the Coolie
Corps.
Dinner that night was a vain repetition of yesterday’s, save that there
was more soup and cold bully-beef gravy available, owing to the rain.
The roof of the _banda_ consisting of lightly thatched grass, reeds,
twigs, and leaves, was as a sieve beneath the tropical downpour. There
was nothing to do but to bear it, with or without grinning. Heavy drops
in rapid succession pattered on bare heads, resounded on the tin plates,
splashed into food, and, by constant dropping, wore away tempers. By
comparison with the great heat of the weather, the rain seemed cold, and
the little streams that cascaded down from pendent twig or reed were
unwelcome as they invaded the back of the neck of some depressed diner
below.
A most unpleasant looking snake, dislodged or disturbed by the rain, fell
with sudden thud upon the table from his lodging in the roof. Barely had
it done so when it was skewered to the boards by the fork of Captain
Tollward. “Good man,” said Major Manton, and decapitated the reptile
with his knife.
“Just as well to put him out of pain,” said he coolly; “it’s a _mamba_.
Beastly poisonous,” and the still-writhing snake was removed with the
knife and fork that had carved him. “Lucky I got him in the neck,”
observed Tollward, and the matter dropped.
Bertram wondered what he would have done had a small and highly poisonous
serpent suddenly flopped down with a thump in front of his plate.
Squealed like a girl perhaps?
Before long he was sitting huddled up beneath a perfect shower-bath of
cold drops, with his feet in an oozy bog which soon became a pool and
then a stream, and by the end of “dinner” was a torrent that gurgled in
at one end of the Mess _banda_, and foamed out at the other. In this
filthy water the Mess servants paddled to and fro, becoming more and more
suggestive of drowned birds, while the yellowish khaki-drill of their
masters turned almost black as it grew more sodden. One by one the lamps
used by the cook and servants went out. That in the _banda_ went out
too, and the Colonel, who owned a tent, followed its example. Those
officers who had only huts saw no advantage in retiring to them, and sat
on in stolid misery, endeavouring to keep cigarettes alight by holding
them under the table between hasty puffs.
Having sat—as usual—eagerly listening to the conversation of his
seniors—until the damp and depressed party broke up, Bertram splashed
across to his _banda_ to find that the excellent Ali had completely
covered his bed with his water-proof ground-sheet, had put his pyjamas
and a change of underclothing into the bed and the rest of his kit under
it. He had also dug a small trench and drain round the hut, so that the
interior was merely a bog instead of a pool. . . .
Bertram then faced the problem of how to undress while standing in mud
beneath a shower-bath, in such a manner as to be able to get into bed
reasonably dry and with the minimum of mud upon the feet. . . .
As he lay sick and hungry, cold and miserable, with apparently high
promise of fever and colic, listening to the pattering of heavy drops of
water within the hut, and the beating of rain upon the sea of mud and
water without, and realised that on the morrow he was to undertake his
first really dangerous and responsible military duty, his heart sank. . . .
Who was _he_ to be in sole charge of a convoy upon whose safe arrival
the existence of an outpost depended? What a _fool_ he had been to come!
Why should _he_ be lying there half starving in that bestial swamp,
shivering with fever, and feeling as though he had a very dead cat and a
very live one in his stomach? . . . Raising his head from the pillow,
he said aloud: “I would not be elsewhere for anything in the world. . . .”