in his desire to ruin only neighbours' property, Tiglath fell back
literally, upon his own--my carriage. He tried the verandah step
trick till he bent the springs, and wheeled round till the turning
action grew red-hot; he scraped stealthily by walls; he performed
between heavy-laden bullock-trains, but his chief delight was a _pas
de fantasie_ on a dark night and a high, level road. Yet what he did
he did staidly and without heat, as without remorse. He was vetted
thrice, and his eyes were pronounced sound. After this information
I laid my bones to the battle, and acquired a desperate facility of
leaping from the carriage and kicking Tiglath on the stomach as soon as
he wheeled around; leaping back at the risk of my life when he set off
at full speed. I pressed the lighted end of a cheroot just behind the
collar-buckle; I applied fusees to those flaccid nostrils, and I beat
him about the head with a stick continually. It was necessary, but it
was also demoralising. A year of Tiglath would have converted me into
a cold-blooded vivisectionist, or a native bullock-driver. Each day I
took stock of the injuries to my carriage. I had long since given up
all hope of keeping it in decent repair; and each day I devised fresh
torments for Tiglath.
He never meant to injure himself, I am certain, and no one was more
astonished than he when he backed on the Balumon road, and dropped the
carriage into a nullah on the night of the Jamabundi Moguls' dance. I
did not go to the dance. I was bent considerably, and one side of the
coachwan's face was flayed. When he had pieced the wreck together, he
only said, "Sahib!" and I said only "Bohat acha." But we each knew
what the other meant. Next morn Tiglath was stiff and strained. I gave
him time to recover and to enjoy life. When I heard him squealing to
the grass-cutter's ponies I knew that the hour had come. I ordered
the carriage, and myself superintended the funeral toilet of Tiglath.
His harness brasses shone like gold, his coat like a bottle, and he
lifted his feet daintily. Had he even then, at the eleventh hour, given
promise of amendment, I should have held my hand. But as I entered
the carriage I saw the hunching of his quarters that presaged trouble.
"Go forward, Tiglath, my love, my pride, my delight," I murmured. "For
a surety it is a matter of life and death this day." The sais ran to
his head with a fragment of chupatti, saved from his all too scanty
rations; the man loved him. And Tiglath swung round to the left in the
portico; round and round swung he, till the near ear touched the muzzle
of the shot-gun that waited its coming. He never flinched; he pressed
his fate. The coachwan threw down the reins as, with four ounces of
No. 5 shot behind the hollow of the root of the ear, Tiglath fell. In
his death he accomplished the desire of his life, for he fell upon the
shaft and broke it into three pieces. I looked on him as he lay, and of
a sudden the reason of the horror in his eyes was made clear. Tiglath,
the breaker of carriages, the strong, the rebellious, had passed into
the shadowy spirit land, where there was nought to destroy and no power
to destroy it with. The ghastly fore-knowledge of the flitting soul
was written on the glazing eyeball.
I repented me, then, that I had slain Tiglath, for I had no intention
of punishing him in the hereafter.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: "Turnovers," Vol. IV.]
THE LIKES O' US[14]
It was the General Officer Commanding, riding down the Mall, on the
Arab with the perky tail, and he condescended to explain some of the
mysteries of his profession. But the point on which he dwelt most
pompously was the ease with which the Private Thomas Atkins could be
"handled," as he called it. "Only feed him and give him a little work
to do, and you can do anything with him," said the General Officer
Commanding. "There's no refinement about Tommy, you know; and one
is very like another. They've all the same ideas and traditions and
prejudices. They're all big children. Fancy any man in his senses
shooting about these hills." There was the report of a shot-gun in the
valley. "I suppose they've hit a dog. Happy as the day is long when
they're out shooting dogs. Just like a big child is Tommy." He touched
up his horse and cantered away. There was a sound of angry voices down
the hillside.
"All right, you _soor_--I won't never forget this--mind you, not as
long as I live, and s' 'elp me--I'll----" The sentence finished in what
could be represented by a blaze of asterisks.
A deeper voice cut it short: "Oh, no, you won't, neither! Look a-here,
you young smitcher. If I was to take yer up now, and knock off your
'ead again' that tree, could ye say anythin'? No, nor yet do anythin'.
If I was to----Ah! you would, would you? There!" Some one had evidently
sat down with a thud, and was swearing nobly. I slid over the edge of
the _khud_, down through the long grass, and fetched up, after the
manner of a sledge, with my feet in the broad of the back of Gunner
Barnabas in the Mountain Battery, my friend, the very strong man. He
was sitting upon a man--a khaki-coloured volcano of blasphemy--and was
preparing to smoke. My sudden arrival threw him off his balance for a
moment. Then, readjusting his chair, he bade me good-day.
"'Im an' me 'ave bin 'avin' an arg'ment," said Gunner Barnabas
placidly. "I was going for to half kill him an' 'eave 'im into the
bushes 'ere, but, seein' that you 'ave come, sir, and very welcome when
you _do_ come, we will 'ave a court-martial instead. Shacklock, are you
willin'?" The volcano, who had been swearing uninterruptedly through
this oration, expressed a desire, in general and particular terms, to
see Gunner Barnabas in Torment and the "civilian" on the next gridiron.
Private Shacklock was a tow-haired, scrofulous boy of about
two-and-twenty. His nose was bleeding profusely, and the live air
attested that he had been drinking quite as much as was good for him.
He lay, stomach-down, on a little level spot on the hillside; for
Gunner Barnabas was sitting between his shoulder-blades, and his was
not a weight to wriggle under. Private Shacklock could barely draw
breath to swear, but he did the best that in him lay. "Amen," said
Gunner Barnabas piously, when an unusually brilliant string of oaths
came to an end. "Seein' that this gentleman 'ere has never seen the
inside o' the orsepitals you've gotten in, and the clinks you've been
chucked into like a hay-bundle, _per_-haps, Privite Shacklock, you will
stop. You are a-makin' of 'im sick." Private Shacklock said that he was
pleased to hear it, and would have continued his speech, but his breath
suddenly went from him, and the unfinished curse died out in a gasp.
Gunner Barnabas had put up one of his huge feet. "There's just enough
room now for you to breathe, Shacklock," said he, "an' not enough
for you to try to interrupt the conversashin I'm a-havin' with this
gentleman. _Choop!_" Turning to me, Gunner Barnabas pulled at his pipe,
but showed no hurry to open the "conversashin." I felt embarrassed,
for, after all, the thus strangely unearthed difference between the
Gunner and the Line man was no affair of mine. "Don't you go," said
Gunner Barnabas. He had evidently been deeply moved by something. He
dropped his head between his fists and looked steadily at me.
"I met this child 'ere," said he, "at Deelally--a fish-back recruity
as ever was. I knowed 'im at Deelally, and I give 'im a latherin'
at Deelally all for to keep 'im straight, 'e bein' such as wants
a latherin' an' knowin' nuthin' o' the ways o' this country. Then
I meets 'im up here, a butterfly-huntin' as innercent as you
please--convalessin'. I goes out with 'im butterfly-huntin', and, as
you see 'ere, a-shootin'. The gun betwixt us." I saw then, what I had
overlooked before, a Company fowling-piece lying among some boulders
far down the hill. Gunner Barnabas continued: "I should ha' seen where
he had a-bin to get that drink inside o' 'im. Presently, 'e misses
summat. 'You're a bloomin' fool,' sez I. 'If that had been a Pathan,
now!' I sez. 'Damn your Pathans, an' you, too,' sez 'e. 'I strook it.'
'You did not,' I sez, 'I saw the bark fly.' 'Stick to your bloomin'
pop-guns,' sez 'e, 'an' don't talk to a better man than you.' I laughed
there, knowin' what I was an' what 'e was. 'You laugh?' sez he. 'I
laugh,' I sez, 'Shacklock, an' for what should I not laugh?' sez I.
'Then go an' laugh in Hell,' sez 'e, 'for I'll 'ave none of your
laughin'.' With that 'e brings up the gun yonder and looses off, and I
stretches 'im there, and guv him a little to keep 'im quiet, and puts
'im under, an' while I was thinkin' what nex', you comes down the 'ill,
an' finds us as we was."
The Private was the Gunner's prey--I knew that the affair had fallen
as the Gunner had said, for my friend is constitutionally incapable of
lying--and I recognised that in his hands lay the boy's fate.
"What do _you_ think?" said Gunner Barnabas, after a silence broken
only by the convulsive breathing of the boy he was sitting on. "I
think nothing," I said. "He didn't go at me. He's your property." Then
an idea occurred to me. "Hand him over to his own Company. They'll
school him half dead." "Got no Comp'ny," said Gunner Barnabas. "'E's
a conv'lessint draft--all sixes an' sevens. Don't matter to them what
he did." "Thrash him yourself, then," I said. Gunner Barnabas looked
at the man and smiled; then caught up an arm, as a mother takes up the
dimpled arm of a child, and ran the sleeve and shirt up to the elbow.
"Look at that!" he said. It was a pitiful arm, lean and muscleless.
"Can you mill a man with an arm like that--such as I would like to mill
him, an' such as he deserves? I tell you, sir, an' I am not smokin'
(swaggering), as you see--I could take that man--Sodger 'e is, Lord
'elp 'im!--an' twis' off 'is arms an' 'is legs as if 'e was a naked
crab. See here!"
Before I could realise what was going to happen, Gunner Barnabas rose
up, stooped, and taking the wretched Private Shacklock by two points of
grasp, heaved him up above his head. The boy kicked once or twice, and
then was still. He was very white. "I could now," said Gunner Barnabas,
"I could now chuck this man where I like. Chuck him like a lump o'
beef, an' it would not be too much for him if I chucked. Can I thrash
such a man with both 'ands? No, nor yet with my right 'and tied behind
my back, an' my lef' in a sling."
He dropped Private Shacklock on the ground and sat upon him as before.
The boy groaned as the weight settled, but there was a look in his
white-lashed, red eyes that was not pleasant.
"I do not know _what_ I will do," said Gunner Barnabas, rocking himself
to and fro. "I know 'is breed, an' the way o' the likes o' them. If I
was in 'is Comp'ny, an' this 'ad 'appened, an' I 'ad struck 'im, as I
_would_ ha' struck him, 'twould ha' all passed off an' bin forgot till
the drink was in 'im again--a month, maybe, or six, maybe. An' when the
drink was frizzin' in 'is 'ead he would up and loose off in the night
or the day or the evenin'. _All acause of that millin' that 'e would ha
forgotten in betweens._ That I would be dead--killed by the likes o'
'im, an' me the next strongest man but three in the British Army!"
Private Shacklock, not so hardly pressed as he had been, found breath
to say that if he could only get hold of the fowling-piece again the
strongest man but three in the British Army would be seriously crippled
for the rest of his days. "Hear that!" said Gunner Barnabas, sitting
heavily to silence his chair. "Hear that, you that think things is
funny to put into the papers! He would shoot me, 'e would, now; an' so
long as he's drunk, or comin' out o' the drink, 'e will want to shoot
me. Look a-here!"
He turned the boy's head sideways, his hand round the nape of the
neck, his thumb touching the angle of the jaw. "What do you call those
marks?" They were the white scars of scrofula, with which Shacklock
was eaten up. I told Gunner Barnabas this. "I don't know what that
means. I call 'em murder-marks an' signs. If a man 'as these things on
'im, an' drinks, so long as 'e's drunk, 'e's mad--a looney. _But_ that
doesn't 'elp if 'e kills you. Look a-here, an' here!" The marks were
thick on the jaw and neck. "Stubbs 'ad 'em," said Gunner Barnabas to
himself, "an' Lancy 'ad 'em, an' Duggard 'ad 'em, an' wot's come to
_them_? _You've_ got 'em," he said, addressing himself to the man he
was handling like a roped calf, "an' sooner or later you'll go with the
rest of 'em. But this time I will not do anything--exceptin' keep you
here till the drink's dead in you."
Gunner Barnabas resettled himself and continued: "Twice this afternoon,
Shacklock, you 'ave been so near dyin' that I know no man more so. Once
was when I stretched you, an' might ha' wiped off your face with my
boot as you was lyin'; an' once was when I lifted you up in my fists.
Was you afraid, Shacklock?"
"I were," murmured the half-stifled soldier.
"An' once more I will show you how near you can go to Kingdom Come in
my 'ands." He knelt by Shacklock's side, the boy lying still as death.
"If I was to hit you here," said he, "I would break your chest, an'
you would die. If I was to put my 'and here, an' my other 'and here,
I would twis' your neck, an' you would die, Privite Shacklock. If I
was to put my knees here an' put your 'ead _so_, I would pull off your
'ead, Privite Shacklock, an' you would die. If you think as how I am a
liar, say so, an' I'll show you. _Do_ you think so?"
"No," whispered Private Shacklock, not daring to move a muscle, for
Barnabas's hand was on his neck.
"Now, remember," went on Barnabas, "neither you will say nothing nor I
will say nothing o' what has happened. I ha' put you to shame before
me an' this gentleman here, an' that is enough. But I tell you, an'
you give 'eed now, it would be better for you to desert than to go on
a-servin' where you are now. If I meets you again--if my Batt'ry lays
with your Reg'ment, an' Privite Shacklock is on the rolls, I will first
mill you myself till you can't see, and then I will say why I strook
you. You must go, an' look bloomin' slippy about it, for if you stay,
so sure as God made Paythans an' we've got to wipe 'em out, you'll be
loosing off o' unauthorised amminition--in or out o' barricks, an'
you'll be 'anged for it. I know your breed, an' I know what these 'ere
white marks mean. You're mad, Shacklock, that's all--and here you
stay, under me. An' now _choop_, an' lie still."
I waited and smoked, and Gunner Barnabas smoked till the shadows
lengthened on the hillside, and a chilly wind began to blow. At dusk
Gunner Barnabas rose and looked at his captive. "Drink's out o' 'im
now," he said.
"I can't move," whimpered Shacklock. "I've got the fever back again."
"I'll carry you," said Gunner Barnabas, swinging him up and preparing
to climb the hill. "Good-night, sir," he said to me. "It looks pretty,
doesn't it? But never you forget, an' I won't forget neither, that this
'ere shiverin', shakin', convalescent a-hangin' on to my neck is a
ragin', tearin' devil when 'e's lushy--an' 'e a boy!"
He strode up to the hill with his burden, but just before he
disappeared he turned round and shouted: "It's the likes o' 'im
brings shame on the likes o' us. 'Tain't we ourselves, s'elp me Gawd,
'tain't!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: "Week's News," Feb. 4, 1888.]
HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER[15]
"Whist?"
"Can't make up a four?"
"Poker, then?"
"Never again with you, Robin. 'Tisn't good enough, old man."
"Seeking what he may devour," murmured a third voice from behind a
newspaper. "Stop the punkah, and make him go away."
"Don't talk of it on a night like this. It's enough to give a man fits.
You've no enterprise. Here I've taken the trouble to come over after
dinner----"
"On the off-chance of skinning some one. I don't believe you ever
crossed a horse for pleasure."
"That's true, I never did--and there are only two Johnnies in the Club."
"They've all gone off to the Gaff."
"_Wah! Wah!_ They must be pretty hard up for amusement. Help me to a
split."
"Split in this weather! Hi, bearer, _do burra--burra_ whiskey-peg
_lao_, and just put all the _barf_ into them that you can find."
The newspaper came down with a rustle, as the reader said:
"How the deuce d'you expect a man to improve his mind when you two are
_bukking_ about drinks? _Qui hai! Mera wasti bhi._"
"Oh! you're alive, are you? I thought pegs would fetch you out of that.
Game for a little poker?"
"Poker--poker--_red-hot_ poker! Saveloy, you're too generous. Can't you
let a man die in peace?"
"Who's going to die?"
"I am, please the pigs, if it gets much hotter and that bearer doesn't
bring the peg quickly."
"All right. Die away, _mon ami_. Only don't do it in the Club, that's
all. Can't have it littered up with dead members. Houligan would
object."
"By Jove! I think I can imagine old Houligan doing it. 'Member dead
in the ante-room? Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club
this way. Call the Babu and see if his last month's bill is paid. Not
paid! Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club this way. Babu,
attach that body till the bill is paid.' Revel, you might just hurry
up your dying once in a way to give us the pleasure of seeing Houligan
perform."
"I'll die legitimately," said Revel. "I'm not going to create a fresh
scandal in the station. I'll wait for heat-apoplexy, or whatever is
going, to come and fetch me."
"This is _pukka_ hot-weather talk," said Saveloy. "I come over for
a little honest poker, and find two moderately sensible men, Revel
and Dallston, talking tombs. I'm sorry I've thrown away my valuable
evening."
"D'you expect us to talk about buttercups and daisies, then?" said
Dallston.
"No, but there's some sort of medium between those and Sudden Death."
"There isn't. I haven't seen a daisy for seven years, and now I want
to die," said Revel, plunging luxuriously into his peg.
"I knew a Johnnie on the Frontier once who _did_," began Dallston
meditatively.
"Half a minute. Bearer, _cherut lao_! Tobacco soothes the nerves when a
man is expecting to hear a whacker. We know what your Frontier stories
are, Martha."
Dallston had once, in a misguided moment, taken the part of Martha in
the burlesque of _Faust_, and the nickname stuck.
"'Tisn't a whacker, it's a fact. He told me so himself."
"They always do, Martha. I've noticed that before. But what did he tell
you?"
"He told me that he had died."
"Was _that_ all? Explain him."
"It was this way. The man went down with a bad go of fever and was
off his head. About the second day it struck him in the middle of the
night."
"Steady the Buffs! Martha, you aren't an Irishman yet."
"Never mind. It's too hot to put it correctly. In the middle of the
night he woke up quite calm, and it struck him that it would be a good
thing to die--just as it might ha' struck him that it would be a good
thing to put ice on his head. He lay on his bed and thought it over,
and the more he thought about it, the better sort of _bundobust_ it
seemed to be. He was quite calm, you know, and he said that he could
have sworn that he had no fever on him."
"Well, what happened?"
"Oh, he got up and loaded his revolver--he remembers all this--and let
fly, with the muzzle to his temple. The thing didn't go off, so he
turned it up and found he'd forgot to load one chamber."
"Better stop the tale there. We can guess what's coming."
"Hang it! It's a _true_ yarn. Well, he jammed the thing to his head
_again_, and it missed fire, and he said that he felt ready to cry with
rage, he was so disgusted. So he took it by the muzzle and hit himself
on the head with it."
"Good man! Didn't it go off _then_?"
"No, but the blow knocked him silly, and he thought he was dead. He was
awfully pleased, for he had been fiddling over the show for nearly half
an hour. He dropped down and died. When he got his wits again, he was
shaking with the fever worse than ever, but he had sense enough to go
and knock up the doctor and give himself into his charge as a lunatic.
Then he went clean off his head till the fever wore out."
"That's a good story," said Revel critically. "I didn't think you had
it in you at this season of the year."
"I can believe it," said the man they called Saveloy. "Fever makes one
do all sorts of queer things. I suppose your friend was mad with it
when he discovered it would be so healthy to die."
"S'pose so. The fever must have been so bad that he felt all
right--same way that a man who is nearly mad with drink gets to look
sober. Well, anyhow, there was a man who died."
"Did he tell you what it felt like?"
"He said that he was awfully happy until his fever came back and shook
him up. Then he was sick with fear. I don't wonder. He'd had rather a
narrow escape."
"That's nothing," said Saveloy. "I know a man who lived."
"So do I," said Revel. "Lots of 'em, confound 'em."
"Now, this takes Martha's story, and it's quite true."
"They always are," said Martha. "I've noticed that before."
"Never mind, I'll forgive you. But this happened to me. Since you _are_
talking tombs, I'll assist at the séance. It was in '82 or '83, I have
forgotten which. Anyhow, it was when I was on the Utamamula Canal
Headworks, and I was chumming with a man called Stovey. You've never
met him because he belongs to the Bombay side, and if he isn't really
dead by this he ought to be somewhere there now. He was a _pukka_
sweep, and I hated him. We divided the Canal bungalow between us, and
we kept strictly to our own side of the buildings."
"Hold on! I call. What was Stovey to look at?" said Revel.
"Living picture of the King of Spades--a blackish, greasy sort of
ruffian who hadn't any pretence of manners or form. He used to dine in
the kit he had been messing about the Canal in all day, and I don't
believe he ever washed. He had the embankments to look after, and I was
in charge of the headworks, but he was always contriving to fall foul
of me if he possibly could."
"I know that sort of man. Mullane of Ghoridasah's built that way."
"Don't know Mullane, but Stovey was a sweep. Canal work isn't exactly
cheering, and it doesn't take you into _much_ society. We were like a
couple of rats in a burrow, grubbing and scooping all day and turning
in at night into the barn of a bungalow. Well, this man Stovey didn't
get fever. He was so coated with dirt that I don't believe the fever
could have got at him. He just began to go mad."
"Cheerful! What were the symptoms?"
"Well, his naturally vile temper grew infamous. It was really unsafe to
speak to him, and he always seemed anxious to murder a coolie or two.
With me, of course, he restrained himself a little, but he sulked like
a bear for days and days together. As he was the only European society
within sixty miles, you can imagine how nice it was for me. He'd sit
at table and sulk and stare at the opposite wall by the hour--instead
of doing his work. When I pointed out that the Government didn't send
us into these cheerful places to twiddle our thumbs, he glared like
a beast. Oh, he was a thorough hog! He had a lot of other endearing
tricks, but the worst was when he began to pray."
"Began to--how much?"
"Pray. He'd got hold of an old copy of the _War Cry_ and used to
read it at meals; and I suppose that that, on the top of tough goat,
disordered his intellect. One night I heard him in his room groaning
and talking at a fearful rate. Next morning I asked him if he'd been
taken worse. 'I've been engaged in prayer,' he said, looking as black
as thunder. 'A man's spiritual concerns are his own property.' One
night--he'd kept up these spiritual exercises for about ten days,
growing queerer and queerer every day--he said 'Good-night' after
dinner, and got up and shook hands with me."
"Bad sign, that," said Revel, sucking industriously at his cheroot.
"At first I couldn't make out what the man wanted. No fellow shakes
hands with a fellow he's living with--least of all such a beast as
Stovey. However, I was civil, but the minute after he'd left the room
it struck me what he was going to do. If he hadn't shaken hands I'd
have taken no notice, I suppose. This unusual effusion put me on my
guard."
"Curious thing! You can nearly always tell when a Johnnie means pegging
out. He gives himself away by some softening. It's human nature. What
did you do?"