Albert’s uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we
became Canterbury Pilgrims and were brought home in the dog-cart with
red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had
known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time
in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when
requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his
bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up
people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost.
And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of
sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several
times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they
call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon’s teeth I am now
narrating.
It began with the pig dying--it was the one we had for the circus, but
it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness
and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we
hadn’t made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But
Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to
be dead, and as long as that pig was alive we all knew well enough that
it was it that made us run--and not us it.
The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the
tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we
took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when
you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that
found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes,
and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were
digging for treasure.
Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting
on the gravel and telling him how to do it.
‘Work with a will,’ Dicky said, yawning.
Alice said, ‘I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without
finding something. I think I’d rather it was a secret passage than
anything.’
Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.
‘A secret’s nothing when you’ve found it out. Look at the secret
staircase. It’s no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its
squeaking. I’d rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we
were little.’ It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old
very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which
is at ten, I believe.
‘How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers
foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?’ Noel asked, with his mouth full
of plum.
‘If they were really dead it wouldn’t matter,’ Dora said. ‘What I’m
afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when
you’re going upstairs to bed.’ ‘Skeletons can’t walk,’ Alice said in a
hurry; ‘you know they can’t, Dora.’
And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she
had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather
not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones,
or else they cry when it comes to bed-time, and say it was because of
what you said.
‘We shan’t find anything. No jolly fear,’ said Dicky.
And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard,
and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had
found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be
longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as
I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-colour, but like
a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said--
‘It IS the skeleton.’
The girls all drew back, and Alice said, ‘Oswald, I wish you wouldn’t.’
A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up,
with both hands.
‘It’s a dragon’s head,’ Noel said, and it certainly looked like it.
It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking
in the jaw.
Bill came back just then and said it was a horse’s head, but H. O. and
Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever
seen had a head at all that shape.
But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me
how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets,
so he went off and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and
Dora went off to finish reading Ministering Children. So H. O. and Noel
were left with the bony head. They took it away.
The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just
before breakfast Noel and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They
had got up early and had not washed at all--not even their hands and
faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with
proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.
When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H. O. in obedience to the secret
signal, Noel said--
‘You know that dragon’s head yesterday?’
‘Well?’ Oswald said quickly, but not crossly--the two things are quite
different.
‘Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed
dragon’s teeth?’
‘They came up armed men,’ said H. O., but Noel sternly bade him shut up,
and Oswald said ‘Well,’ again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he
smelt the bacon being taken in to breakfast.
‘Well,’ Noel went on, ‘what do you suppose would have come up if we’d
sowed those dragon’s teeth we found yesterday?’
‘Why, nothing, you young duffer,’ said Oswald, who could now smell the
coffee. ‘All that isn’t History it’s Humbug. Come on in to brekker.’
‘It’s NOT humbug,’ H. O. cried, ‘it is history. We DID sow--’
‘Shut up,’ said Noel again. ‘Look here, Oswald. We did sow those
dragon’s teeth in Randall’s ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has
come up?’
‘Toadstools I should think,’ was Oswald’s contemptible rejoinder.
‘They have come up a camp of soldiers,’ said Noel--ARMED MEN. So you see
it WAS history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has
come up. It was a very wet night. I daresay that helped it along.’
Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve--his brother or his ears.
So, disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to
the bacon and the banqueting hall.
He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But
after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother
said--
‘Why don’t you tell the others your cock-and-bull story?’
So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of
doubt. It was Dicky who observed--
‘Let’s go and have a squint at Randall’s ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare
there the other day.’
We went. It is some little way, and as we went, disbelief reigned superb
in every breast except Noel’s and H. O.’s, so you will see that even the
ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you
his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly
saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that
they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the
effect is the same as lies if you believe them.
There WAS a camp there with real tents and soldiers in grey and red
tunics. I daresay the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush,
too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know
that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little
hill, between Randall’s ten-acre meadow and Sugden’s Waste Wake pasture.
‘There would be cover here for a couple of regiments,’ whispered Oswald,
who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born
general.
Alice merely said ‘Hist’, and we went down to mingle with the troops as
though by accident, and seek for information.
The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of
cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.
We went up to him and said, ‘Who are you? Are you English, or are you
the enemy?’
‘We’re the enemy,’ he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he
was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.
‘The enemy!’ Oswald echoed in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to
a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English
field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in
his foreign fastnesses.
The enemy seemed to read Oswald’s thoughts with deadly unerringness. He
said--
‘The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are
trying to keep us out of Maidstone.’
After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going
on with. This soldier, in spite of his unerringness in reading Oswald’s
innermost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would
never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have
known from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps
(Oswald thought this, and it made his blood at once boil and freeze,
which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he
thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn’t matter
what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what to
say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of the
enemy’s dark secrets, Noel said--
‘How did you get here? You weren’t here yesterday at tea-time.’
The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said--
‘I daresay it does seem quick work--the camp seems as if it had sprung
up in the night, doesn’t it?--like a mushroom.’
Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The
words ‘sprung up in the night’ seemed to touch a string in every heart.
‘You see,’ whispered Noel, ‘he won’t tell us how he came here. NOW, is
it humbug or history?’
Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not
bother, remarked, ‘Then you’re an invading army?’
‘Well,’ said the soldier, ‘we’re a skeleton battalion, as a matter of
fact, but we’re invading all right enough.’
And now indeed the blood of the stupidest of us froze, just as the
quick-witted Oswald’s had done earlier in the interview. Even H. O.
opened his mouth and went the colour of mottled soap; he is so fat that
this is the nearest he can go to turning pale. Denny said, ‘But you
don’t look like skeletons.’
The soldier stared, then he laughed and said, ‘Ah, that’s the padding in
our tunics. You should see us in the grey dawn taking our morning bath
in a bucket.’ It was a dreadful picture for the imagination. A skeleton,
with its bones all loose most likely, bathing anyhow in a pail. There
was a silence while we thought it over.
Now, ever since the cleaning-cauldron soldier had said that about taking
Maidstone, Alice had kept on pulling at Oswald’s jacket behind, and he
had kept on not taking any notice. But now he could not stand it any
longer, so he said--
‘Well, what is it?’
Alice drew him aside, or rather, she pulled at his jacket so that he
nearly fell over backwards, and then she whispered, ‘Come along, don’t
stay parlaying with the foe. He’s only talking to you to gain time.’
‘What for?’ said Oswald.
‘Why, so that we shouldn’t warn the other army, you silly,’ Alice said,
and Oswald was so upset by what she said, that he forgot to be properly
angry with her for the wrong word she used.
‘But we ought to warn them at home,’ she said--’ suppose the Moat House
was burned down, and all the supplies commandeered for the foe?’
Alice turned boldly to the soldier. ‘DO you burn down farms?’ she asked.
‘Well, not as a rule,’ he said, and he had the cheek to wink at Oswald,
but Oswald would not look at him. ‘We’ve not burned a farm since--oh,
not for years.’
‘A farm in Greek history it was, I expect,’ Denny murmured. ‘Civilized
warriors do not burn farms nowadays,’ Alice said sternly, ‘whatever they
did in Greek times. You ought to know that.’
The soldier said things had changed a good deal since Greek times.
So we said good morning as quickly as we could: it is proper to be
polite even to your enemy, except just at the moments when it has really
come to rifles and bayonets or other weapons.
The soldier said ‘So long!’ in quite a modern voice, and we retraced our
footsteps in silence to the ambush--I mean the wood. Oswald did think of
lying in the ambush then, but it was rather wet, because of the rain the
night before, that H. O. said had brought the army-seed up. And Alice
walked very fast, saying nothing but ‘Hurry up, can’t you!’ and dragging
H. O. by one hand and Noel by the other. So we got into the road.
Then Alice faced round and said, ‘This is all our fault. If we hadn’t
sowed those dragon’s teeth there wouldn’t have been any invading army.’
I am sorry to say Daisy said, ‘Never mind, Alice, dear. WE didn’t sow
the nasty things, did we, Dora?’
But Denny told her it was just the same. It was WE had done it, so long
as it was any of us, especially if it got any of us into trouble. Oswald
was very pleased to see that the Dentist was beginning to understand
the meaning of true manliness, and about the honour of the house of
Bastable, though of course he is only a Foulkes. Yet it is something to
know he does his best to learn.
If you are very grown-up, or very clever, I daresay you will now have
thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything,
especially if you’re reading this aloud to anybody. It’s no good putting
in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of
the kind at the time.
We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled
with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the
dragon’s teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed
without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of
the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike
dragon’s teeth.
Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was
only fair.
‘How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?’ Dickie said.
‘Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies
of dead English soldiers, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘If they’re the old Greek kind of dragon’s-teeth soldiers, they ought to
fight each other to death,’ Noel said; ‘at least, if we had a helmet to
throw among them.’
But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be of no use for
H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.
Denny said suddenly--
‘Couldn’t we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn’t know the way to
Maidstone?’
Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown.
He said--
‘Fetch all the tools out of your chest--Dicky go too, there’s a good
chap, and don’t let him cut his legs with the saw.’ He did once,
tumbling over it. ‘Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had
the Benevolent Bar. Courage and dispatch, and look sharp about it.’
When they had gone we hastened to the crossroads, and there a great idea
occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in
a very short time the board in the field which says ‘No thoroughfare.
Trespassers will be prosecuted’ was set up in the middle of the road to
Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it
stand up.
Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and
sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said ‘To
Maidstone’ on the Dover Road, and ‘To Dover’ on the road to Maidstone.
We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as
an extra guard.
Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.
Some of us did not want the girls to go, but it would have been unkind
to say so. However, there was at least one breast that felt a pang of
joy when Dora and Daisy gave out that they would rather stay where they
were and tell anybody who came by which was the real road.
‘Because it would be so dreadful if someone was going to buy pigs or
fetch a doctor or anything in a hurry and then found they had got to
Dover instead of where they wanted to go to,’ Dora said. But when it
came to dinner-time they went home, so that they were entirely out of
it. This often happens to them by some strange fatalism.
We left Martha to take care of the two girls, and Lady and Pincher went
with us. It was getting late in the day, but I am bound to remember no
one said anything about their dinners, whatever they may have thought.
We cannot always help our thoughts. We happened to know it was roast
rabbits and currant jelly that day.
We walked two and two, and sang the ‘British Grenadiers’ and ‘Soldiers
of the queen’ so as to be as much part of the British Army as possible.
The Cauldron-Man had said the English were the other side of the hill.
But we could not see any scarlet anywhere, though we looked for it as
carefully as if we had been fierce bulls.
But suddenly we went round a turn in the road and came plump into a lot
of soldiers. Only they were not red-coats. They were dressed in grey
and silver. And it was a sort of furzy-common place, and three roads
branching out. The men were lying about, with some of their belts
undone, smoking pipes and cigarettes.
‘It’s not British soldiers,’ Alice said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I’m afraid
it’s more enemy. You didn’t sow the army-seed anywhere else, did you, H.
O. dear?’
H. O. was positive he hadn’t. ‘But perhaps lots more came up where we
did sow them,’ he said; ‘they’re all over England by now very likely.
_I_ don’t know how many men can grow out of one dragon’s tooth.’
Then Noel said, ‘It was my doing anyhow, and I’m not afraid,’ and he
walked straight up to the nearest soldier, who was cleaning his pipe
with a piece of grass, and said--
‘Please, are you the enemy?’ The man said--
‘No, young Commander-in-Chief, we’re the English.’
Then Oswald took command. ‘Where is the General?’ he said.
‘We’re out of generals just now, Field-Marshal,’ the man said, and his
voice was a gentleman’s voice. ‘Not a single one in stock. We might suit
you in majors now--and captains are quite cheap. Competent corporals
going for a song. And we have a very nice colonel, too quiet to ride or
drive.’
Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.
‘You seem to be taking it very easy,’ he said with disdainful
expression.
‘This IS an easy,’ said the grey soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if
it would draw.
‘I suppose YOU don’t care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!’
exclaimed Oswald bitterly. ‘If I were a soldier I’d rather die than be
beaten.’
The soldier saluted. ‘Good old patriotic sentiment’ he said, smiling at
the heart-felt boy.
But Oswald could bear no more. ‘Which is the Colonel?’ he asked.
‘Over there--near the grey horse.’
‘The one lighting a cigarette?’ H. O. asked.
‘Yes--but I say, kiddie, he won’t stand any jaw. There’s not an ounce of
vice about him, but he’s peppery. He might kick out. You’d better bunk.’
‘Better what?’ asked H. O.
‘Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit,’ said the soldier.
‘That’s what you’d do when the fighting begins,’ said H. O. He is often
rude like that--but it was what we all thought, all the same.
The soldier only laughed.
A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in
our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the Colonel. It was she who
wanted to. ‘However peppery he is he won’t kick a girl,’ she said, and
perhaps this was true.
But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand
in front of the Colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would
salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, ‘One,
two, three’, and we all saluted very well--except H. O., who chose that
minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only
saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the
back of his jacket and stood him on his legs.
‘Let go, can’t you,’ said H. O. ‘Are you the General?’
Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the
Colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we
threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was--
‘Oh, how CAN you!’
‘How can I WHAT?’ said the Colonel, rather crossly.
‘Why, SMOKE?’ said Alice.
‘My good children, if you’re an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend
you to play in some other backyard,’ said the Cock-Hatted Man.
H. O. said, ‘Band of Hope yourself’--but no one noticed it.
‘We’re NOT a Band of Hope,’ said Noel. ‘We’re British, and the man over
there told us you are. And Maidstone’s in danger, and the enemy not a
mile off, and you stand SMOKING.’ Noel was standing crying, himself, or
something very like it.
‘It’s quite true,’ Alice said.
The Colonel said, ‘Fiddle-de-dee.’
But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, ‘What was the enemy like?’ We told him
exactly. And even the Colonel then owned there might be something in it.
‘Can you show me the place where they are on the map?’ he asked.
‘Not on the map, we can’t,’ said Dicky--‘at least, I don’t think so,
but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an
hour.’
The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the Colonel, who returned his scrutiny,
then he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, we’ve got to do something,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Lead on,
Macduff.’
The Colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of
command which the present author is sorry he can’t remember.
Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching
at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One’s
horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in
a ballad. They call a grey-roan a ‘blue’ in South Africa, the
Cocked-Hatted One said.
We led the British Army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of
Sugden’s Waste Wake pasture. Then the Colonel called a whispered halt,
and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning
commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald
as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as
quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are
reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for whatever reason.
Our Colonel’s orderly crackled most. If you’re not near enough to tell
a colonel by the crown and stars on his shoulder-strap, you can tell him
by the orderly behind him, like ‘follow my leader’.
‘Look out!’ said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, ‘the camp’s
down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap.’
The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled
beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness
the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word
that he must have known was not right--at least when he was a boy.
‘I don’t care,’ said Oswald, ‘they were there this morning. White tents
like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.’
‘With sand,’ said Dicky.
‘That’s most convincing,’ said the Colonel, and I did not like the way
he said it.
‘I say,’ Oswald said, ‘let’s get to the top corner of the ambush--the
wood, I mean. You can see the crossroads from there.’
We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed
our almost despairing spirits.
We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald’s patriotic heart really did
give a jump, and he cried, ‘There they are, on the Dover Road.’
Our miscellaneous signboard had done its work.
‘By Jove, young un, you’re right! And in quarter column, too! We’ve got
em on toast--on toast--egad!’ I never heard anyone not in a book say
‘egad’ before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly
to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take
cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he
said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body very
friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to
the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life.
‘I think he’s a general in disguise,’ Noel said. ‘He’s been giving us
chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle.’
Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then--and he is not ashamed to own
it--yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She
had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky. Even in war girls can
sometimes be useful in their humble way.
The Colonel fussed about and said, ‘Take cover there!’ and everybody hid
in the ditch, and the horses and the Cocked Hat, with Alice, retreated
down the road out of sight. We were in the ditch too. It was muddy--but
nobody thought of their boots in that perilous moment. It seemed a long
time we were crouching there. Oswald began to feel the water squelching
in his boots, so we held our breath and listened. Oswald laid his ear to
the road like a Red Indian. You would not do this in time of peace, but
when your country is in danger you care but little about keeping your
ears clean. His backwoods’ strategy was successful. He rose and dusted
himself and said--‘They’re coming!’
It was true. The footsteps of the approaching foe were now to be heard
quite audibly, even by ears in their natural position. The wicked enemy
approached. They were marching with a careless swaggeringness that
showed how little they suspected the horrible doom which was about to
teach them England’s might and supremeness.
Just as the enemy turned the corner so that we could see them, the
Colonel shouted--‘Right section, fire!’ and there was a deafening
banging.
The enemy’s officer said something, and then the enemy got confused and
tried to get into the fields through the hedges. But all was vain. There
was firing now from our men, on the left as well as the right. And
then our Colonel strode nobly up to the enemy’s Colonel and demanded
surrender. He told me so afterwards. His exact words are only known to
himself and the other Colonel. But the enemy’s Colonel said, ‘I would
rather die than surrender,’ or words to that effect.
Our Colonel returned to his men and gave the order to fix bayonets, and
even Oswald felt his manly cheek turn pale at the thought of the amount
of blood to be shed. What would have happened can never now be revealed.
For at this moment a man on a piebald horse came clattering over a
hedge--as carelessly as if the air was not full of lead and steel at
all. Another man rode behind him with a lance and a red pennon on it. I
think he must have been the enemy’s General coming to tell his men not
to throw away their lives on a forlorn hope, for directly he said they
were captured the enemy gave in and owned that they were. The enemy’s
Colonel saluted and ordered his men to form quarter column again. I
should have thought he would have had about enough of that myself.
He had now given up all thought of sullen resistance to the bitter end.
He rolled a cigarette for himself, and had the foreign cheek to say to
our Colonel--
‘By Jove, old man, you got me clean that time! Your scouts seem to have
marked us down uncommonly neatly.’
It was a proud moment when our Colonel laid his military hand on
Oswald’s shoulder and said--
‘This is my chief scout’ which were high words, but not undeserved, and
Oswald owns he felt red with gratifying pride when he heard them.
‘So you are the traitor, young man,’ said the wicked Colonel, going on
with his cheek.
Oswald bore it because our Colonel had, and you should be generous to a
fallen foe, but it is hard to be called a traitor when you haven’t.
He did not treat the wicked Colonel with silent scorn as he might have
done, but he said--
‘We aren’t traitors. We are the Bastables and one of us is a Foulkes.
We only mingled unsuspected with the enemy’s soldiery and learned the
secrets of their acts, which is what Baden-Powell always does when the
natives rebel in South Africa; and Denis Foulkes thought of altering
the sign-posts to lead the foe astray. And if we did cause all this
fighting, and get Maidstone threatened with capture and all that, it
was only because we didn’t believe Greek things could happen in Great
Britain and Ireland, even if you sow dragon’s teeth, and besides, some
of us were not asked about sowing them.’
Then the Cocked-Hatted One led his horse and walked with us and made
us tell him all about it, and so did the Colonel. The wicked Colonel
listened too, which was only another proof of his cheek.
And Oswald told the tale in the modest yet manly way that some people
think he has, and gave the others all the credit they deserved. His
narration was interrupted no less than four times by shouts of ‘Bravo!’
in which the enemy’s Colonel once more showed his cheek by joining. By
the time the story was told we were in sight of another camp. It was the
British one this time. The Colonel asked us to have tea in his tent,
and it only shows the magnanimosity of English chivalry in the field of
battle that he asked the enemy’s Colonel too. With his usual cheek he
accepted. We were jolly hungry.
When everyone had had as much tea as they possibly could, the Colonel
shook hands with us all, and to Oswald he said--
‘Well, good-bye, my brave scout. I must mention your name in my
dispatches to the War Office.’
H. O. interrupted him to say, ‘His name’s Oswald Cecil Bastable, and
mine is Horace Octavius.’ I wish H. O. would learn to hold his tongue.
No one ever knows Oswald was christened Cecil as well, if he can
possibly help it. YOU didn’t know it till now.
‘Mr Oswald Bastable,’ the Colonel went on--he had the decency not to
take any notice of the ‘Cecil’--‘you would be a credit to any regiment.
No doubt the War Office will reward you properly for what you have done
for your country. But meantime, perhaps, you’ll accept five shillings
from a grateful comrade-in-arms.’ Oswald felt heart-felt sorry to wound
the good Colonel’s feelings, but he had to remark that he had only done
his duty, and he was sure no British scout would take five bob for doing
that. ‘And besides,’ he said, with that feeling of justice which is part
of his young character, ‘it was the others just as much as me.’
‘Your sentiments, Sir,’ said the Colonel who was one of the politest
and most discerning colonels I ever saw, ‘your sentiments do you honour.
But, Bastables all, and--and non-Bastables’ (he couldn’t remember
Foulkes; it’s not such an interesting name as Bastable, of course)--‘at
least you’ll accept a soldier’s pay?’
‘Lucky to touch it, a shilling a day!’ Alice and Denny said together.
And the Cocked-Hatted Man said something about knowing your own mind and
knowing your own Kipling.
‘A soldier,’ said the Colonel, ‘would certainly be lucky to touch it.
You see there are deductions for rations. Five shillings is exactly
right, deducting twopence each for six teas.’
This seemed cheap for the three cups of tea and the three eggs and all
the strawberry jam and bread-and-butter Oswald had had, as well as what
the others ate, and Lady’s and Pincher’s teas, but I suppose soldiers
get things cheaper than civilians, which is only right.
Oswald took the five shillings then, there being no longer any scruples
why he should not.
Just as we had parted from the brave Colonel and the rest we saw a
bicycle coming. It was Albert’s uncle. He got off and said--
‘What on earth have you been up to? What were you doing with those
volunteers?’
We told him the wild adventures of the day, and he listened, and then he
said he would withdraw the word volunteers if we liked.
But the seeds of doubt were sown in the breast of Oswald. He was now
almost sure that we had made jolly fools of ourselves without a moment’s
pause throughout the whole of this eventful day. He said nothing at the
time, but after supper he had it out with Albert’s uncle about the word
which had been withdrawn.
Albert’s uncle said, of course, no one could be sure that the dragon’s
teeth hadn’t come up in the good old-fashioned way, but that, on the
other hand, it was barely possible that both the British and the enemy
were only volunteers having a field-day or sham fight, and he rather
thought the Cocked-Hatted Man was not a general, but a doctor. And the
man with a red pennon carried behind him MIGHT have been the umpire.
Oswald never told the others a word of this. Their young breasts were
all panting with joy because they had saved their country; and it would
have been but heartless unkindness to show them how silly they had been.
Besides, Oswald felt he was much too old to have been so taken in--if
he HAD been. Besides, Albert’s uncle did say that no one could be sure
about the dragon’s teeth.
The thing that makes Oswald feel most that, perhaps, the whole thing was
a beastly sell, was that we didn’t see any wounded. But he tries not to
think of this. And if he goes into the army when he grows up, he will
not go quite green. He has had experience of the arts of war and the
tented field. And a real colonel has called him ‘Comrade-in-Arms’, which
is exactly what Lord Roberts called his own soldiers when he wrote home
about them.