_Baking_
When Bertram was awakened by Ali at four o’clock the next morning, he
feared he would be unable to get up. Had he been at home, he would have
remained in bed and sent for the doctor. His head felt like lead, every
bone in his body ached, and he had that horrible sense of internal
_malaise_, than which few feelings are more discouraging, distressing and
enervating.
The morning smelt horrible, and, by the light of the candle-lamp, the
floor was seen to have resigned in favour of the flood. Another problem:
Could a fair-sized man dress himself on a tiny camp-bed beneath a small
mosquito curtain? If not, he must get out of bed into the water, and
paddle around in that slimy ooze which it hid from the eye but not from
the nose. Subsidiary problem: Could a man step straight into a pair of
wet boots, so as to avoid putting bare feet into the mud, and then
withdraw alternate feet from them, for the removal of pyjamas and the
putting-on of shorts and socks, while the booted foot remained firmly
planted in the slush for his support?
Or again: Sitting precariously on the edge of a canvas bed, could an
agile person, with bare feet coyly withdrawn from contact with the
foulness beneath, garb his nether limbs to the extent that permitted the
pulling-on of boots? . . .
He could try anyhow. . . . After much groping and fumbling, Bertram
pulled on his socks and shorts, and then, still lying on his bed, reached
for his boots. These he had left standing on a dry patch beneath his
bed, and now saw standing, with the rest of his kit, in a couple of
inches of filthy water. Balancing himself on the sagging edge of the
strip of canvas that served as bed-laths, palliasse and mattress, he
struggled into the resisting and reluctant boots, and then boldly entered
the water, pleased with the tactics that had saved him from touching it
before he was shod. . . . It was not until he had retrieved his sodden
puttees and commenced to put them on, that he realised that he was still
wearing the trousers of his pyjamas!
And then it was that Bertram, for the first time in his life, furiously
swore—long and loud and heartily. Let those who say in defence of War
that it rouses man’s nobler instincts and brings out all that is best in
him, note this deplorable fact.
Could he keep them on, or must he remove those clinging, squelching boots
and partially undress again?
Striped blue and green pyjamas, showing for six inches between his shorts
and his puttees, would add a distinctly novel touch to the uniform of a
British officer. . . . No. It could not be done. Ill as he felt, and
deeply as he loathed the idea of wrestling with the knots in the sodden
boot-laces of those awful boots, he must do it—in spite of trembling
hands, swimming head, and an almost unconquerable desire to lie down
again.
And then—alas! for the moral maxims of the copy-books, the wise saws and
modern instances of the didactic virtuous—sheer bad temper came to his
assistance. With ferocious condemnations of everything, he cut his
boot-laces, flung his boots into the water, splashed about violently in
his socks, as he tore off the offending garments and hurled them after
the boots, and then completed his dressing with as little regard to
water, mud, slime, filth, and clay as though he were standing on the
carpet of his dressing-room in England.
“_I’m fed up_!” quoth he, and barged out of the _banda_ in a frame of
mind that put the Fear of God and Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene into
all who crossed his path. . . . (_Cupid_ forsooth!)
The first was Ali Suleiman, who stood waiting in the rain, until he could
go in and pack his master’s kit.
“Here—you—pack my kit sharp, and don’t stand there gaping like a fish in
a frying-pan. Stir yourself before I stir _you_,” he shouted.
The faithful Ali dived into the _banda_ like a rabbit into its hole.
Excellent! This was the sort of _bwana_ he could reverence. Almost had
he been persuaded that this new master was not a real gentleman—he was so
gentle. . . .
Bertram turned back again, but not to apologise for his harsh words, as
his better nature prompted him to do.
“Where’s my breakfast, you lazy rascal?” he shouted.
“On the table in Mess _banda_, please God, thank you, sah,” replied Ali
Suleiman humbly, as one who prays that his grievous trespasses may be
forgotten.
“Then why couldn’t you say so, you—you—you—” and here memories of the
Naval Officer stole across his subconsciousness, “you blundering burden,
you posthumous porridge-punter, you myopic megalomaniac, you pernicious,
piebald pacifist. . . .”
Ali Suleiman rolled his eyes and nodded his head with every epithet.
“Oh, my God, sah,” said he, as Bertram paused for breath, “I am a dam man
mos’ blasted sinful”—and, so ridiculous a thing is temper, that Bertram
neither laughed nor saw cause for laughter.
Splashing across to the Mess _banda_, he discovered a battered metal
teapot, an enamelled tumbler, an almost empty tin of condensed milk, and
a tin plate of very sad-looking porridge. By the light of a lamp that
appealed more to the olfactory and auditory senses than to the optic, he
removed from the stodgy mess the well-developed leg of some insect
unknown, and then tasted it—(the porridge, not the leg).
“_Filthy muck_,” he remarked aloud.
“Sahib calling me, sir?” said a voice that made him jump, and the Cook’s
Understudy, a Goanese youth, stepped into the circle of light—or of
lesser gloom.
“Very natural you should have thought so,” answered Bertram. “I said
_Filthy Muck_.”
“Yessir,” replied the acting deputy assistant adjutant cooklet, proudly,
“I am cooking breakfast for the Sahib.”
“_You_ cooked this?” growled Bertram, and half rose, with so menacing an
expression and wild an eye that the guilty fled, making a note that this
was a Sahib to be properly served in future, and not, as he had foolishly
thought him, a poor polite soul for whom anything was good enough. . . .
Pushing the burnt and nauseating horror from him, Bertram essayed to pour
out tea, only to find that the fluid was readily procurable from anywhere
but the spout. A teapot that will not “pour out” freely is an annoyance
at the best of times, and to the most placid of souls. (The fact that
tea through the lid is as good as tea through the spout is more than
counter-balanced by the fact that tea in the cup is better than tea on
the table-cloth. And it is a very difficult art, only to be acquired by
patient practice, to pour tea into the cup and the cup alone, from the
top of a spout-bunged teapot. Try it.)
Bertram’s had temper waxed and deepened.
“_Curse the thing_!” he swore, and banged the offending pot on the table,
and, forgetting his nice table-manners, blew violently down the spout.
This sent a wave of tea over his head and scalded him, and there the
didactic virtuous, and the copy-book maxims, scored.
Sorely tempted to call to the cooklet in honeyed tones, decoy him near
with fair-seeming smiles, with friendly gestures, and then to fling the
thing at his head, he essayed to pour again.
A trickle, a gurgle, a spurt, a round gush of tea—and the pale wan
skeletal remnants of a once lusty cockroach, sodden and soft, leapt into
the cup. Swirling round and round, it seemed giddily to explore its new
unresting-place, triumphant, as though chanting, with the Ancient
Mariner, some such pæan as
“I was the first that ever burst
Into this silent tea. . . .”
Heaven alone knew to how many cups of tea that disintegrating corpse had
contributed of its best before the gusts of Bertram’s temper had
contributed to its dislodgment.
(Temper seems to have scored a point here, it must be reluctantly
confessed.)
Bertram arose and plunged forth into the darkness, not daring to trust
himself to call the cook.
Raising his clenched hands in speechless wrath, he drew in his breath
through his clenched teeth—and then slipped with catastrophic suddenness
on a patch of slimy clay and sat down heavily in very cold water.
He arose a distinctly dangerous person. . . .
Near the ration-dump squatted a solid square of naked black men, not
precisely savages, raw _shenzis_ of the jungle, but something between
these and the Swahilis who work as personal servants, gun-bearers, and
the better class of _safari_ porters. They were big men and looked
strong. They smelt stronger. It was a perfectly indescribable odour,
like nothing on earth, and to be encountered nowhere else on earth—save
in the vicinity of another mass of negroes.
In the light of a big fire and several lanterns, Bertram saw that the men
were in rough lines, and that each line appeared to be in charge of a
headman, distinguished by some badge of rank, such as a bowler hat, a
tobacco tin worn as an ear-ring, a pair of pink socks, or a frock coat.
These men walked up and down their respective lines and occasionally
smote one of their squatting followers, hitting the chosen one without
fear or favour, without rhyme or reason, and apparently without doing
much damage. For the smitten one, without change of expression or
position, emitted an incredibly thin piping squeal, as though in
acknowledgment of an attention, rather than as if giving natural vent to
anguish. . . .
Every porter had a red blanket, and practically every one wore a _panga_.
The verbs are selected. They _had_ blankets and they _wore_ pangas. The
blankets they either sat upon or folded into pads for insertion beneath
the loads they were to carry upon their heads. The _pangas_ were
attached to strings worn over the shoulder. This useful implement serves
the African as toothpick, spade, axe, knife, club, toasting-fork, hammer,
weapon, hoe, cleaver, spoon, skinning-knife, and every other kind of
tool, as well as being correct jungle wear for men for all occasions, and
in all weathers. He builds a house with it; slays, skins and dismembers
a bullock; fells a tree, makes a boat, digs a pit; fashions a club,
spear, bow or arrow; hews his way through jungle, enheartens his wife,
disheartens his enemy, mows his lawn, and makes his bed. . . .
Not far away, a double company of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth “stood
easy.” The fact that they were soaked to the skin did nothing to give
them an air of devil-may-care gaiety.
The Jemadar in command approached and saluted Bertram, who recognised the
features of Hassan Ali.
“It’s _you_, is it!” he grunted, and proceeded to explain that the
Jemadar would command the rear-guard of one hundred men, and that by the
time it was augmented to a hundred and fifty by the process of picking up
flankers left to guard side-turnings, the column would be halted while
fifty men made their way up to the advance-guard again, and so on.
“D’you understand?” concluded Bertram.
“_Nahin_, _Sahib_,” replied the Jemadar.
“_Then fall out_,” snapped Bertram. “I’ll put an intelligent private in
command, and you can watch him until you do,” and then he broke into
English: “I’ve had about enough of you, my lad, and if you give me any of
your damned nonsense, I’ll twist your tail till you howl. Call yourself
an _officer_! . . .” and here the Jemadar, saluting repeatedly, like an
automaton, declared that light had just dawned upon his mind and that he
clearly understood.
“And so you’d better,” answered Bertram harshly, staring with a hard
scowl into the Jemadar’s eyes until they wavered and sank. “So you’d
_better_, if you want to keep your rank. . . . March one hundred men
down the path past the Officers’ Mess, and halt them a thousand yards
from here. . . . The coolies will follow. You will return and fall in
behind the coolies with the other hundred as rear-guard. See that the
coolies do not straggle. March behind your men—so that you are the very
last man of the whole convoy. D’you understand?”
Jemadar Hassan Ali did understand, and he also understood that he’d made
a bad mistake about Second-Lieutenant Greene. He was evidently one of
those subtle and clever people who give the impression that they are not
_hushyar_, {142} that they are foolish and incompetent, and then suddenly
destroy you when they see you have thoroughly gained that impression.
Respect and fear awoke in the breast of the worthy Jemadar, for he
admired cunning, subtlety and cleverness beyond all things. . . . He
marched a half of his little force off into the darkness, halted them
some half-mile down the path (or rivulet) that led into the jungle, put
them in charge of the senior Havildar and returned.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Bridges, in a cloak and pyjamas, had arrived,
yawning and shivering, to superintend the loading up of the porters. At
an order, given in Swahili, the first line of squatting Kavirondo arose
and rushed to the dump.
“Extraordinary zeal!” remarked Bertram to Bridges.
“Yes—to collar the lightest loads,” was the illuminating reply.
The zeal faded as rapidly as it had glowed when he coldly pointed with
the _kiboko_, which was his badge of office and constant companion, to
the heavy ammunition-boxes.
“I should keep that near the advance-guard and under a special guard of
its own,” said he.
“I’m going to—naturally,” replied Bertram shortly, and added: “Hurry them
along, please. I want to get off to-day.”
Bridges stared. This was a much more assured and autocratic person than
the mild youth he had met at the water’s edge a day or two ago.
“Well—if you like to push off with the advance-guard, I’ll see that a
constant stream of porters files off from here, and that your rear-guard
follows them,” said he.
“Thanks—I’ll not start till I’ve seen the whole convoy ready,” replied
Bertram.
Yesterday he’d have been glad of advice from anybody. Now he’d take it
from no one. Orders he would obey, of course—but “a poor thing but mine
own” should be his motto with regard to his method of carrying out
whatever he was left to do. They’d told him to take their beastly
convoy; they’d left him to do it; and he’d do it as he thought fit. . . .
Curse the rain, the mud, the stench, the hunger, sickness and the beastly
pain that nearly doubled him up and made him feel faint. . . .
Grayne strolled over.
“Time you bunged off, my lad,” quoth he, loftily.
“If you’ll mind your own business, I shall have the better chance to mind
mine,” replied Bertram, eyeing him coldly—and wondering at himself.
Grayne stared open-mouthed, and before he could speak Bertram was
hounding on a lingering knot of porters who had not hurried off to the
line as soon as their boxes of biscuit were balanced on their heads, but
stood shrilly wrangling about something or nothing.
“_Kalele_! _Kalele_!” shouted Bertram, and sprang at them with raised
fist and furious countenance, whereat they emitted shrill squeals and
fled to their places in the long column.
He had no idea what “_Kalele_!” meant, but had heard Bridges and the
headman say it. Later he learnt that it meant “Silence!” and was a very
useful word. . . .
Ali Suleiman approached, seized three men, and herded them before him to
fetch Bertram’s kit. Having loaded them with it, he drove them to the
head of the column and stationed them in rear of the advance-guard.
Returning, he presented Bertram with a good, useful-looking cane.
“_Bwana_ wanting a _kiboko_,” said he. “_Shenzis_ not knowing anything
without _kiboko_ and not feeling happy in mind. Not thinking _Bwana_ is
a real master.”
Yesterday Bertram would have chidden Ali gently, and explained that kind
hearts are more than coronets and gentle words than cruel whips. To-day
he took the cane, gave it a vicious swish, and wished that it were indeed
a _kiboko_, one of those terrible instruments of hippopotamus hide, four
feet in length, as thick as a man’s wrist at one end, tapering until it
was of the thinness of his little finger at the other. . . .
A big Kavirondo seized a rum jar. His bigger neighbour dropped a heavy
box and tried to snatch it from him. He who had the lighter jar clung to
it, bounded away, and put it on his head. The box-wallah, following,
gave him a sudden violent blow in the back, jerking the jar from his
head.
Raising his cane, Bertram brought it down with all his strength on the
starboard quarter of the box-wallah as he stooped to grab the jar. With
a wild yelp, he leapt for his box and galloped to his place in the
column.
“Excellent!” said Bridges, “you’ll have no trouble with the _safari_
people, at any rate.”
“I’ll have no trouble with anybody,” replied Bertram with a quiet
truculence that surprised himself, “not even with a _Balliol_ negro.”
Bridges decided that he had formed his estimate of Lieutenant Greene too
hastily and quite wrongly. He was evidently a bit of a tough lad when he
got down to it. Hot stuff. . . .
At last the dump had disappeared completely, and its original components
now swayed and turned upon the heads of a thousand human beasts of
burden—human in that they walked erect and used fire for cooking food;
beasts in that they were beastly and beast-like in all other ways. Among
them, and distinguished by being feebler of physique, and, if possible,
feebler of mind, was a party of those despised savages, the Kikuyu,
rendered interesting as providing the great question that shook the
Church of England to its foundations, and caused Lord Bishops to forget
the wise councils of good Doctor Watts’ hymn. (It is to be feared that
among the even mightier problems of the Great War, the problem of the
spiritual position and ecclesiastical condition of the Communicating
Kikuyu has been temporarily lost sight of. Those who know the gentleman,
with his blubber-lipped, foreheadless face, his teeth filed to sharp
points, his skin a mass of scar patterns, done with a knife, and his
soulless, brainless animalism and bestiality, would hate to think he was
one short on the Thirty-Nine Articles or anything of that sort.)
Bertram gave a last injunction to Jemadar Hassan Ali, said farewell to
Bridges, and strode to the head of the column. Thence he sent out a
“point” of a Havildar and three men, and waited to give the word to
advance, and plunge into the jungle, the one white man among some fifteen
hundred people, all of whom looked to him, as to a Superior Being, for
guidance and that competent command which should be their safeguard.
As the point disappeared he turned and looked along the apparently
endless line, cried “_Quick March_,” and set off at a smart pace, the
first man of the column.
He was too proud and excited to realise how very ill he felt, or to be
ashamed of the naughty temper that he had so clearly and freely
exhibited.