"That was the first hint I got. The second was a few nights later,
when we were smoking in the billiard-room. I had been reading Marco
Polo, and the talk got on to Persia and drifted all over the north side
of the Himalaya. Tommy, with an abstracted eye, talked of Alexander
and Timour and Genghis Khan, and particularly of Prester John, who was
a character and took his fancy. I had told him that the natives in the
Pamirs were true Persian stock, and this interested him greatly. 'Why
was there never a great state built up in those valleys?' he asked.
'You get nothing but a few wild conquerors rushing east and west, and
then some squalid khanates. And yet all the materials were there--the
stuff for a strong race, a rich land, the traditions of an old
civilisation, and natural barriers against all invasion.'
"'I suppose they never found the man,' I said.
"He agreed. 'Their princes were sots, or they were barbarians of
genius who could devastate to the gates of Peking or Constantinople,
but could never build. They did not recognise their limits, and so
they went out in a whirlwind. But if there had been a man of solid
genius he might have built up the strongest nation on the globe. In
time he could have annexed Persia and nibbled at China. He would have
been rich, for he could tap all the inland trade-routes of Asia. He
would have had to be a conqueror, for his people would be a race of
warriors, but first and foremost he must have been a statesman. Think
of such a civilisation, THE Asian civilisation, growing up mysteriously
behind the deserts and the ranges! That's my idea of Prester John.
Russia would have been confined to the line of the Urals. China would
have been absorbed. There would have been no Japan. The whole history
of the world for the last few hundred years would have been different.
It is the greatest of all the lost chances in history.' Tommy waxed
pathetic over the loss.
"I was a little surprised at his eloquence, especially when he seemed
to remember himself and stopped all of a sudden. But for the next week
I got no peace with his questions. I told him all I knew of Bokhara,
and Samarkand, and Tashkend, and Yarkand. I showed him the passes in
the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush. I traced out the rivers, and I
calculated distances; we talked over imaginary campaigns, and set up
fanciful constitutions. It a was childish game, but I found it
interesting enough. He spoke of it all with a curious personal tone
which puzzled me, till one day when we were amusing ourselves with a
fight on the Zarafshan, and I put in a modest claim to be allowed to
win once in a while. For a second he looked at me in blank surprise.
'You can't,' he said; 'I've got to enter Samarkand before I can...'
and he stopped again, with a glimmering sense in his face that he was
giving himself away. And then I knew that I had surprised Tommy's
secret. While he was muddling his own job, he was salving his pride
with fancies of some wild career in Asia, where Tommy, disguised as the
lord knows what Mussulman grandee, was hammering the little states into
an empire.
"I did not think then as I think now, and I was amused to find so odd a
trait in a dull man. I had known something of the kind before. I had
met fellows who after their tenth peg would begin to swagger about some
ridiculous fancy of their own--their little private corner of soul
showing for a moment when the drink had blown aside their common-sense.
Now, I had never known the thing appear in cold blood and everyday
life, but I assumed the case to be the same. I thought of it only as a
harmless fancy, never imagining that it had anything to do with
character. I put it down to that kindly imagination which is the old
opiate for failures. So I played up to Tommy with all my might, and
though he became very discreet after the first betrayal, having hit
upon the clue, I knew what to look for, and I found it. When I told
him that the Labonga were in a devil of a mess, he would look at me
with an empty face and change the subject; but once among the Turcomans
his eye would kindle, and he would slave at his confounded folly with
sufficient energy to reform the whole East Coast. It was the spark
that kept the man alive. Otherwise he would have been as limp as a
rag, but this craziness put life into him, and made him carry his head
in the air and walk like a free man. I remember he was very keen about
any kind of martial poetry. He used to go about crooning Scott and
Macaulay to himself, and when we went for a walk or a ride he wouldn't
speak for miles, but keep smiling to himself and humming bits of songs.
I daresay he was very happy,--far happier than your stolid, competent
man, who sees only the one thing to do and does it. Tommy was muddling
his particular duty, but building glorious palaces in the air.
"One day Mackay, the old trader, came to me after a sitting of the
precious Legislative Council. We were very friendly, and I had done
all I could to get the Government to listen to his views. He was a
dour, ill-tempered Scotsman, very anxious for the safety of his
property, but perfectly careless about any danger to himself.
"'Captain Thirlstone,' he said, 'that Governor of yours is a damned
fool.'
"Of course I shut him up very brusquely, but he paid no attention. 'He
just sits and grins, and lets yon Pentecostal crowd we've gotten here
as a judgment for our sins do what they like wi' him. God kens what'll
happen. I would go home to-morrow, if I could realise without an
immoderate loss. For the day of reckoning is at hand. Maark my words,
Captain--at hand.'
"I said I agreed with him about the approach of trouble, but that the
Governor would rise to the occasion. I told him that people like Tommy
were only seen at their best in a crisis, and that he might be
perfectly confident that when it arrived he would get a new idea of the
man. I said this, but of course I did not believe a word of it. I
thought Tommy was only a dreamer, who had rotted any grit he ever
possessed by his mental opiates. At that time I did not understand
about the kings from Orion.
"And then came the thing we had all been waiting for--a Labonga rising.
A week before I had got leave and had gone up country, partly to shoot,
but mainly to see for myself what trouble was brewing. I kept away
from the river, and therefore missed the main native centres, but such
kraals as I passed had a look I did not like. The chiefs were almost
always invisible, and the young bloods were swaggering about and
bukking to each other, while the women were grinding maize as if for
some big festival. However, after a bit the country seemed to grow
more normal, and I went into the foothills to shoot, fairly easy in my
mind. I had got up to a place called Shimonwe, on the Pathi river,
where I had ordered letters to be sent, and one night coming in from a
hard day after kudu I found a post-runner half-dead of fatigue with a
chit from Utterson, who commanded a police district twenty miles nearer
the coast. It said simply that all the young men round about him had
cleared out and appeared to be moving towards Deira, that he was in the
devil of a quandary, and that, since the police were under the
Governor, he would take his orders from me.
"It looked as if the heather were fairly on fire at last, so I set off
early next morning to trek back. About midday I met Utterson, a very
badly scared little man, who had come to look for me. It seemed that
his policemen had bolted in the night and gone to join the rising,
leaving him with two white sergeants, barely fifty rounds of
ammunition, and no neighbour for a hundred miles. He said that the
Labonga chiefs were not marching to the coast, as he had thought, but
north along the eastern foothills in the direction of the mines. This
was better news, for it meant that in all probability the railway would
remain open. It was my business to get somehow to my chief, and I was
in the deuce of a stew how to manage it. It was no good following the
line of the natives' march, for they would have been between me and my
goal, and the only way was to try and outflank them by going due east,
in the Deira direction, and then turning north, so as to strike the
railway about half-way to the mines. I told Utterson we had better
scatter, otherwise we should have no chance of getting through a
densely populated native country. So, about five in the afternoon I
set off with my chief shikari, who, by good luck, was not a Labonga,
and dived into the jungly bush which skirts the hills.
"For three days I had a baddish time. We steered by the stars,
travelling chiefly by night, and we showed extraordinary skill in
missing the water-holes. I had a touch of fever and got light-headed,
and it was all I could do to struggle through the thick grass and
wait-a-bit thorns. My clothes were torn to rags, and I grew so
footsore that it was agony to move. All the same we travelled fast,
and there was no chance of our missing the road, for any route due
north was bound to cut the railway. I had the most sickening
uncertainty about what was to come next. Hely, who was in command at
Deira, was a good enough man, but he had only three companies of white
troops, and the black troops were as likely as not to be on their way
to the rebels. It looked as if we should have a Cawnpore business on a
small scale, though I thanked Heaven there were no women in the case.
As for Tommy, he would probably be repeating platitudes in Deira and
composing an intelligent despatch on the whole subject.
"About four in the afternoon of the third day I struck the line near a
little station called Palala. I saw by the look of the rails that
trains were still running, and my hopes revived. At Palala there was a
coolie stationmaster, who gave me a drink and a little food, after
which I slept heavily in his office till wakened by the arrival of an
up train. It contained one of the white companies and a man Davidson,
of the 101st, who was Hely's second in command. From him I had news
that took away my breath. The Governor had gone up the line two days
before with an A.D.C. and old Mackay. 'The sportsman has got a move
on him at last,' said Davidson, 'but what he means to do Heaven only
knows. The Labonga are at the mines, and a kind of mine-guard has been
formed for defence. The joke of it is that most of the magnates are
treed up there, for the railway is cut and they can't get away. I
don't envy your chief the job of schooling that nervous crowd.'
"I went on with Davidson, and very early next morning we came to a
broken culvert and had to stop. There we stuck for three hours till
the down train arrived, and with it Hely. He was for ordinary a stolid
soul, but I never saw a man in such a fever of excitement. He gripped
me by the arm and fairly shook me. 'That old man of yours is a hero,'
he cried. 'The Lord forgive me! and I have always crabbed him.'
"I implored him in Heaven's name to tell me what was up, but he would
say nothing till he had had his pow-pow with Davidson. It seemed that
he was bringing all his white troops up the line for some great
demonstration that Tommy had conceived. Davidson went back to Deira,
while we mended the culvert and got the men transferred to the other
train. Then I screwed the truth out of Hely. Tommy had got up to the
mines before the rebels arrived, and had found as fine a chaos as can
be imagined. He did not seem to have had any doubts what to do. There
was a certain number of white workmen, hard fellows from Cornwall
mostly, with a few Australians, and these he got together with Mackay's
help and organised into a pretty useful corps. He set them to guard
the offices, and gave them strict orders to shoot at sight any one
attempting to leave. Then he collected the bosses and talked to them
like a father. What he said Hely did not know, except that he had
damned their eyes pretty heartily, and told them what a set of swine
they were, making trouble which they had not the pluck to face.
Whether from Mackay, or from his own intelligence, or from a memory of
my neglected warnings, he seemed to have got a tight grip on the facts
at last. Meanwhile, the Labonga were at the doors, chanting their
battle-songs half a mile away, and shots were heard from the far
pickets. If they had tried to rush the place then, all would have been
over, but, luckily, that was never their way of fighting. They sat
down in camp to make their sacrifices and consult their witch-doctors,
and presently Hely arrived with the first troops, having come in on the
northern flank when he found the line cut. He had been in time to hear
the tail-end of Tommy's final address to the mineowners. He told them,
in words which Hely said he could never have imagined coming from his
lips, that they would be well served if the Labonga cleaned the whole
place out. Only, he said, that would be against the will of Britain,
and it was his business, as a loyal servant, to prevent it. Then,
after giving Hely his instructions, he had put on his uniform, gold
lace and all, and every scrap of bunting he possessed--all the orders
and 'Golden Stars' of half a dozen Oriental States where he had served.
He made Ashurst, the A.D.C., put on his best Hussar's kit, and Mackay
rigged himself out in a frock-coat and a topper; and the three set out
on horseback for the Labonga. 'I believe he'll bring it off, said
Hely, with wild eyes, 'and, by Heaven, if he does, it'll be the best
thing since John Nicholson!'
"For the rest of the way I sat hugging myself with excitement. The
miracle of miracles seemed to have come. The old, slack, incompetent
soul in Tommy seemed to have been driven out by that other spirit,
which had hitherto been content to dream of crazy victories on the
Oxus. I cursed my folly in having missed it all, for I would have
given my right hand to be with him among the Labonga. I envied that
young fool Ashurst his luck in being present at that queer
transformation scene. I had not a doubt that Tommy would bring it off
all right. The kings from Orion don't go into action without coming
out on top. As we got near the mines I kept my ears open for the sound
of shots; but all was still,--not even the kind of hubbub a native
force makes when it is on the move. Something had happened, but what
it was no man could guess. When we got to where the line was up, we
made very good time over the five miles to the mines. No one
interfered with us, and the nearer we got the greater grew my
certainty. Soon we were at the pickets, who had nothing to tell us;
and then we were racing up the long sandy street to the offices, and
there, sitting smoking on the doorstep of the hotel, surrounded by
everybody who was not on duty, were Mackay and Ashurst.
"They were an odd pair. Ashurst still wore his uniform; but he seemed
to have been rolling about in it on the ground; his sleek hair was
wildly ruffled, and he was poking holes in the dust with his sword.
Mackay had lost his topper, and wore a disreputable cap, his ancient
frock-coat was without buttons, and his tie had worked itself up behind
his ears. They talked excitedly to each other, now and then
vouchsafing a scrap of information to an equally excited audience.
When they saw me they rose and rushed for me, and dragged me between
them up the street, while the crowd tailed at our heels.
"'Ye're a true prophet, Captain Thirlstone,' Mackay began, 'and I ask
your pardon for doubting you. Ye said the Governor only needed a
crisis to behave like a man. Well, the crisis has come; and if there's
a man alive in this sinful world, it's that chief o' yours. And then
his emotion overcame him, and, hard-bitten devil as he was, he sat down
on the ground and gasped with hysterical laughter, while Ashurst, with
a very red face, kept putting the wrong end of a cigarette in his mouth
and swearing profanely.
"I never remember a madder sight. There was the brassy blue sky and
reddish granite rock and acres of thick red dust. The scrub had that
metallic greenness which you find in all copper places. Pretty
unwholesome it looked, and the crowd, which had got round us again, was
more unwholesome still. Fat Jew boys, with diamond rings on dirty
fingers and greasy linen cuffs, kept staring at us with twitching lips;
and one or two smarter fellows in riding-breeches, mine-managers and
suchlike, tried to show their pluck by nervous jokes. And in the
middle was Mackay, with his damaged frocker, drawling out his story in
broad Scots.
"'He made this laddie put on his braws, and he commandeered this
iniquitous garment for me. I've raxed its seams, and it'll never look
again on the man that owns it. Syne he arrayed himself in purple and
fine linen till he as like the king's daughter, all glorious without;
and says he to me, "Mackay," he says, "we'll go and talk to these
uncovenanted deevils in their own tongue. We'll visit them at home,
Mackay," he says. "They're none such bad fellows, but they want a
little humouring from men like you and me." So we got on our horses
and started the procession--the Governor with his head in the air, and
the laddie endenvouring to look calm and collected, and me praying to
the God of Israel and trying to keep my breeks from working up above my
knees. I've been in Kaffir wars afore, but I never thought I would
ride without weapon of any kind into such a black Armageddon. I am a
peaceable man for ordinar', and a canny one, but I wasna myself in that
hour. Man, Thirlstone, I was that overcome by the spirit of your
chief, that if he had bidden me gang alone on the same errand, I
wouldna say but what I would have gone.
"'We hadna ridden half a mile before we saw the indunas and their men,
ten thousand if there was one, and terrible as an army with banners. I
speak feeguratively, for they hadna the scrap of a flag among them.
They were beating the war-drums, and the young men were dancing with
their big skin shields and wagging their ostrich feathers, so I saw
they were out for business. I'll no' say but what my blood ran cold,
but the Governor's eye got brighter and his back stiffer. "Kings may
be blest," I says to myself, "but thou art glorious."
"'We rode straight for the centre of the crowd, where the young men
were thickest and the big war-drums lay. As soon as they saw us a
dozen lifted their spears and ran out to meet us. But they stopped
after six steps. The sun glinted on the Governor's gold lace and my
lum hat, and no doubt they thought we were heathen deities descended
from the heavens. Down they went on their faces, and then back like
rabbits to the rest, while the drums stopped, and the whole body
awaited our coming in a silence like the tomb.
"'Never a word we spoke, but just jogged on with our chins cocked up
till we were forenent the big drum, where yon old scoundrel Umgazi was
standing with his young men looking as black as sin. For a moment
their spears were shaking in their hands, and I heard the click of a
breech-bolt. If we had winked an eye we would have become pincushions
that instant. But some unearthly power upheld us. Even the laddie
kept a stiff face, and for me I forgot my breeks in watching the
Governor. He looked as solemn as an archangel, and comes to a halt
opposite Umgazi, where he glowers at the old man for maybe three
minutes, while we formed up behind him. Their eyes fell before his,
and by-and-by their spears dropped to their sides. "The father has
come to his children," says he in their own tongue. "What do the
children seek from their father?
"'Ye see the cleverness of the thing. The man's past folly came to
help him. The natives had never seen the Governor before till they
beheld him in gold lace and a cocked hat on a muckle horse, speaking
their own tongue and looking like a destroying angel. I tell you the
Labonga's knees were loosed under them. They durstna speak a word
until the Governor repeated the question in the same quiet, steely
voice. "You seek something," he said, "else you had not come out to
meet me in your numbers. The father waits to hear the children's
desires."
"'Then Umgazi found his tongue and began an uneasy speech. The mines,
he said, truly enough, were the abode of devils, who compelled the
people to work under the ground. The crops were unreaped and the buck
went unspeared, because there were no young men left to him. Their
father had been away or asleep, they thought, for no help had come from
him; therefore it had seemed good to them, being freemen and warriors,
to seek help for themselves.
"'The Governor listened to it all with a set face. Then he smiled at
them with supernatural assurance. They were fools, he said, and people
of little wit, and he flung the better part of the Book of Job at their
heads. The Lord kens where the man got his uncanny knowledge of the
Labonga. He had all their heathen customs by heart, and he played with
them like a cat with a mouse. He told then they were damned rascals to
make such a stramash, and damned fools to think they could frighten the
white man by their demonstrations. There was no brag about his words,
just a calm statement of fact. At the same time, he said, he had no
mind to let any one wrong his children, and if any wrong had been done
it should be righted. It was not meet, he said, that the young men
should be taken from the villages unless by their own consent, though
it was his desire that such young men as could be spared should have a
chance of earning an honest penny. And then he fired at them some
stuff about the British Empire and the King, and you could sec the
Labonga imbibing it like water. The man in a cocked hat might have
told them that the sky was yellow, and they would have swallowed it.
"'"I have spoken," he says at last, and there was a great shout from
the young men, and old Umgazi looked pretty foolish. They were coming
round our horses to touch our stirrups with their noses, but the
Governor stopped them.
"'"My children will pile their weapons in front of me," says he, "to
show me how they have armed themselves, and likewise to prove that
their folly is at an end. All except a dozen," says he, "whom I select
as a bodyguard." And there and then he picked twelve lusty savages for
his guard, while the rest without a cheep stacked their spears and guns
forenent the big drum.
"'Then he turned to us and spoke in English. "Get back to the mines
hell-for-leather, and tell them what's happening, and see that you get
up some kind of a show for to-morrow at noon. I will bring the chiefs,
and we'll feast them. Get all the bands you can, and let them play me
in. Tell the mines fellows to look active for it's the chance of their
lives. "Then he says to the Labonga, "My men will return he says, "but
as for me I will spend the night with my children. Make ready food,
but let no beer be made, for it is a solemn occasion."
"'And so we left him. I will not describe how I spent last night
mysel', but I have something to say about this remarkable phenomenon.
I could enlarge on the triumph of mind over matter. ....
"Mackay did not enlarge. He stopped, cocked his ears, and looked down
the road, from which came the strains of 'Annie Laurie,' played with
much spirit but grievously out of tune. Followed 'The British
Grenadiers,' and then an attempt at 'The March of the Priests.' Mackay
rose in excitement and began to crane his disreputable neck, while the
band--a fine scratch collection of instruments--took up their stand at
the end of the street, flanked by a piper in khaki who performed when
their breath failed. Mackay chuckled with satisfaction. 'The deevils
have entered into the spirit of my instructions,' he said. 'In a wee
bit the place will be like Falkirk Tryst for din.
"Punctually at twelve there came a great hullabaloo up the road, the
beating of drums and the yelling of natives, and presently the
procession hove in sight. There was Tommy on his horse, and on each
side of him six savages with feather head-dress, and shields and
war-paint complete. After him trooped about thirty of the great
chiefs, walking two by two, for all the world like an Aldershot parade.
They carried no arms, but the bodyguard shook their spears, and let
yells out of them that would have scared Julius Caesar. Then the band
started in, and the piper blew up, and the mines people commenced to
cheer, and I thought the heavens would fall. Long before Tommy came
abreast of me I knew what I should see. His uniform looked as if it
had been slept in, and his orders were all awry. But he had his head
flung back, and his eyes very bright, and his jaw set square. He never
looked to right or left, never recognised me or anybody, for he was
seeing something quite different from the red road and the white
shanties and the hot sky."
The fire had almost died out. Thirlstone stooped for a moment and
stirred the peats.
"Yes," he said, "I knew that in his fool's ear the trumpets of all Asia
were ringing, and the King of Bokhara was entering Samarkand."