Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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But some say, and among these be the Goorkhas who watched on the
hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little
bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of
the big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.
JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE
Gloriana! The Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us . . .
And where are the galleons of Spain?
Dobson.
One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman
skill in developing troubles with other countries and finding its
honour abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large
contempt for all other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens
and Emperors, and knows little and thinks less of their internal
affairs. All it regards is its own dignity, which is its King,
Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or later, an international difference
ends in the common people, who have no dignity, shouting the
common abuse of the street, which also has no dignity, across the
seas in order to vindicate their own dignity. The consequences may
or may not be war, but the chances do not favour peace.
An advantage in living in a civilised land which is really
governed lies in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and
Emperors of the continent are closely related by blood or marriage
- are, in fact, one large family. A wise head of them knows that
what appears to be a studied insult may be no more than some man's
indigestion or woman's indisposition to be treated as such, and
explained in quiet talk. Again, a popular demonstration, headed by
King and Court, may mean nothing more than that so-and-so's people
are out of hand for the minute. When a horse falls to kicking in a
hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not dismount, but puts his
open hand behind him, and the others draw aside. It is so with the
rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own and their
people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire
is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other
things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere
life and money to what the slang of the minute calls "puppets" and
"luxuries."
Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck
of a once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the
whipping-boy of all the world, and behaved, as every one knows,
most scandalously. But it is not generally known that that Power
fought a pitched battle with England and won a glorious victory.
The trouble began with the people. Their own misfortunes had been
many, and for private rage it is always refreshing to find a vent
in public swearing. Their national vanity had been deeply injured,
and they thought of their ancient glories and the days when their
fleets had first rounded the Cape of Storms, and their own
newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to extravagances. It
was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was checking
their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that
their ruler was in league with that country, and consequently
they, his people, would forthwith become a Republic and colonially
expand themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the
people threw stones at the English Consuls and spat at English
ladies, and cut off drunken sailors of our fleet in their ports
and hammered them with oars, and made things very unpleasant for
tourists at their customs, and threatened awful deaths to the
consumptive invalids at Madeira, while the junior officers of the
Army drank fruit-extracts and entered into blood-curdling
conspiracies against their monarch, all with the object of being a
Republic. Now the history of all the South American Republics
shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also
Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and
the propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments
can be arranged much more economically and with less effect on the
death-rate by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the
Power as represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It
was the kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider
explained that he could not check it. The people enjoyed all the
glory of war with none of the risks, and the tourists who were
stoned in their travels returned stolidly to England and told the
"Times" that the police arrangements of foreign towns were
defective.
This then was the state of affairs north of the Line. South it was
more strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England,
unable to go back because of the pressure of adventurous children
behind her, and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not
come to heel, but offering to buy out her rival; and the other
Power, lacking men or money, stiff in the conviction that three
hundred years of slave-holding and intermingling with the nearest
natives gave an inalienable right to hold slaves and issue half-
castes to all eternity. They had built no roads. Their towns were
rotting under their hands; they had no trade worth the freight of
a crazy steamer, and their sovereignty ran almost one musket-shot
inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons they
raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about
the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger
nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft
gunboat, designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred
and seventy tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson,
to be known for the future as Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft
looked exactly like a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the
middle; it drew five feet of water or less, carried a four-inch
gun forward, which was trained by the ship, and, on account of its
persistent rolling, was to live in three degrees worse than a
torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the
thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward,
his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, "Bai
Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick
about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's
first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for
second post on the "Anson" or the "Howe". He navigated her, under
convoy, tenderly and lovingly to the Cape (the story of the
topmast came with him), and he was so absurdly in love with his
wallowing wash-tub when he reported himself, that the Admiral of
the station thought it would be a pity to kill a new man on her,
and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied rule.
The Admiral visited her once in Simon's Bay, and she was bad, even
for a flat-iron gunboat strictly designed for river and harbour
defence. She sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of
a preparation of powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside
paint. She rolled in the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc's'le
was a dog-kennel; Judson's cabin was practically under the water-
line; not one of her dead-bights could ever be opened; and her
compasses, thanks to the influence of the four-inch gun, were a
curiosity even among Admiralty compasses. But Bai-Jove-Judson was
radiant and enthusiastic. He had even contrived to fill Mr.
Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, who was his chief
engineer, with the glow of his passion. The Admiral, who
remembered his own first command, when pride forbade him to
slacken off a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his
rigging to pieces in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly.
Her fenders were done all over with white sennit which was truly
white; her big gun was varnished with a better composition than
the Admiralty allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as
the chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were
made of four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons' heads that was
one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences with the Naval Brigade
in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being
painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty scale
supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship's
husband - a man who had a little money of his own and was willing
to spend it on his command. Judson looked at him hopefully. He was
only a Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years' standing.
He might be kept in Simon's Bay for six months, and his ship at
sea was his delight. The dream of his heart was to enliven her
dismal official gray with a line of gold-leaf and perhaps a little
scroll-work
at her blunt barge-like bows.
"There's nothing like a first command, is there?" said the
Admiral, reading his thoughts. "You seem to have rather queer
compasses, though. Better get them adjusted."
"It's no use, sir," said Judson. "The gun would throw out the Pole
itself. But - but I've got the hang of most of their weaknesses."
"Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees,
please?" The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the
needle merrily, and the Admiral whistled.
"You must have kept close to your convoy?"
"Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir," said Judson with a
flush, for he resented the slur on his seamanship. " It's - it's a
little out of hand, now, but she'll settle down after a while."
The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the
Service, but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the
squadron in Simon's Bay, for they one and all made light of the
flat-iron for many days. "What can you shake out of her, Judson?"
said the Lieutenant of the "Mongoose", a real white-painted, ram-
bow gunboat with quick-firing guns, as he came into the upper
verandah of the little naval Club overlooking the dockyard one hot
afternoon. It is in that Club as the captains come and go that you
hear all the gossip of all the Seven Seas.
"Ten point four," said Bai-Jove-Judson.
"Ah! That was on her trial trip. She's too deep by the head now. I
told you staying that topmast would throw her out of trim."
"You leave my top-hamper alone," said Judson, for the joke was
beginning to pall on him.
"Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy's top-hamper! Keate, have you
heard of the flat-iron's top-hamper? You're to leave it alone.
Commodore Judson's feelings are hurt."
Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big "Vortigern", and he
despised small things. "His top-hamper," said he slowly. "Oh, ah
yes, of course. Juddy, there's a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I
think they're foul of your screws. Better go down, or they'll
carry away something."
"I don't let things carry away as a rule. You see I've no Torpedo
Lieutenant on board, thank God!"
Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging
in of a small torpedo-boat on the "Vortigern", that the boat had
broken the crutches in which she rested, and was herself being
repaired in the dockyard under the Club windows.
"One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy; you're hereby appointed
dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you're very good
and there's no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour.
Waitabeechee, Commodore. What'll you take? Vanderhum for the 'Cook
and the captain bold, And the mate o' the Nancy brig, And the
bo'sun tight' (Juddy, put that cue down or I'll put you under
arrest for insulting the lieutenant of the real ship) 'And the
midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig."
By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding
him with the half-butt. The Admiral's Secretary entered, and saw
the scuffle from afar.
"Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that - er topmast of yours away!
Here's the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a staff-captain
instead of a bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night.
That's what makes Sperril tumble home from the waist uppards.
Sperril, I defy you to touch me. I'm under orders for Zanzibar.
Probably I shall annex it!"
"Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!" said the Staff-Captain,
disregarding the scoffer of the "Mongoose".
"I told you you'd be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh
beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you
understand, Juddy?"
Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.
"Now, what does the Admiral want with Judson?" said Keate from the
bar.
"Don't know. Juddy's a damned good fellow, though. I wish to
goodness he was on the Mongoose with us."
The Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" dropped into a chair and read the
mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street
and shouted to him. Judson's eyes were very bright, and his figure
was held very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the
Lieutenant of the "Mongoose", the Club was empty.
"Juddy, there will be a beautiful row," said that young man when
he had heard the news delivered in an undertone. "You'll probably
have to fight, and yet I can't see what the Admiral's thinking of
to -"
"My orders are not to fight under any circumstances," said Judson.
"Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?"
"To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I
may want a few men for the day."
"Anything on the "Mongoose" is at your service. There's my gig
come in now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you'll
need all the knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two
together! Come over with me!"
For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of
the "Mongoose", listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking
notes, and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but
things like these: "Now you'll have to put in here if there's any
sea on. That current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets
west at this season of the year, remember. Their boats never come
south of this, see? So it's no good looking out for them." And so
on and so forth, while Judson lay at length on the locker by the
three-pounder, and smoked and absorbed it all.
Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon's Bay, only a little
smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the
second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could
carry. At the Admiral's house, the ancient and retired bo'sun, who
had seen many Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and
brushes and gave a new coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big
cannon-balls that stood one on each side of the Admiral's
entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great events were stirring.
And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely
for the defense of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and
was swept from end to end and sat upon her twin-screws and leaped
as gracefully as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr.
Davies began to fear for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo
boys that made the majority of the crew were deathly sick. She ran
along a very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays,
where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and
very many extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do
with the story, but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.
At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly
muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands
standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson
hugged the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the
Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" had told him. Then he found a river
full of the smell of fever and mud, with green stuff growing far
into its waters, and a current that made the flatiron gasp and
grunt.
"We will turn up here," said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up
accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant,
and the Kroo boys grinning. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the
bows and meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After six
hours of rooting through this desolation at an average rate of
five miles an hour, his eyes were cheered by the sight of one
white buoy in the coffee-hued mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up
to it cautiously, and a leadsman took soundings all around it from
a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head
on one side.
"About seven feet, isn't there?" said he. "That must be the tail
end of the shoal. There's four fathom in the fairway. Knock that
buoy down with axes. I don't think it's picturesque somehow." The
Kroo men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and
the mooring-chain sank with the lasst splinters of wood. Bai-Jove
Judson laid the flat-iron carefully over the site, while Mr.
Davies watched, biting his nails nervously.
"Can you back her against this current?" said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr.
Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-
Judson sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as
they came into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over
the tail of the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed
once before Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up
stream for half an hour, put into shoal water by the bank and
waited, with a slip-rope on the anchor.
"Seems to me," said Mr. Davies deferentially, "like as if I heard
some one a-firing off at intervals, so to say."
There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. "Seems to me,"
said Bai-Jove-Judson, "as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her
moorings."
Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer.
Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily built
white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red
boss in the centre.
"Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy, astern.
Let go, all!" The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the
water to mark where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-
iron waddled out into midstream with the white ensign at her one
mast-head.
"Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us," said
Judson. "And down we go!"
"It's war - bloody war. He's going to fire," said Mr. Davies,
looking up through the engine-room hatch.
The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns
at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips.
Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current
helped the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.
It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five
minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his
engine-room gave a wild shout.
"What's the matter? Hit?" said Bai-Jove-Judson.
"No, I've just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y' pardon, sir."
"Right 0! Just the half a fraction of a point more." The wheel
turned under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks
on the bank coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The
flat-iron smelt the shoal water under her,
checked for an instant, and went on. "Now we're over. Come along,
you thieves, there!"
The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the
wake of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was
unfortunate, because the lighter craft was dead over the missing
buoy.
"What you do here?" shouted a voice from the bows.
"I'm going on. Hold tight. Now you're arranged for!"
There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat's nose took
the shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her
forefoot. Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side
and drove her broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully.
There she heeled at an undignified angle, and her crew yelled
aloud.
"Neat! Oh, damn neat!" quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-
room plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned.
The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up
starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and
imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even
to her lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back,
without the advantage of the turtle's plating. And the one big
blunt gun in the bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.
But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson
took no sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.
"We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile
tricks," said the captain with language that need not be
published.
Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: "You stay o where
you are o, or I'll leave a hole-o in your bottom o that will make
you much os perforatados."
There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-
Judson was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies,
himself a man of few words, confided to one of his subordinates
that Lieutenant Judson was "a most remarkable prompt officer in a
way of putting it."
For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water,
and that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct
rumble.
"Was war declared?" said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed.
"Then, damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little
engines. There's war up there, though."
The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively
village, built round a whitewashed mud house of some pretensions.
There were scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery on duty,
white uniforms running to and fro and
shouting round a man in a litter, and on a gentle slope that ran
inland for four or five miles something like a brisk battle was
raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied carcasses
floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr.
Davies, who spat over the side.
"I want to get this gun on that house," said Bai-Jove-Judson,
indicating the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the
blue and white flag. The little twin screws kicked up the water
exactly as a hen's legs kick in the dust before she settles down
to a bath. The little boat moved un easily from left to right,
backed, yawed again, went ahead, and at last the gray blunt gun's
nose
was held as straight as a rifle-barrel on the mark indicated. Then
Mr. Davies allowed the whistle to speak as it is not allowed to
speak in Her Majesty's service on account of waste of steam. The
soldiery of the village gathered into knots and groups and
bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and every one except
the crew of the flatiron yelled aloud. Something like an English
cheer came down wind.
"Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably," said Mr. Davies. "They
must have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me."
"Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!" shouted Bai-Jove-Judson,
as the muzzle fell off the white house.
Something rang as loudly as a ship's bell on the forward plates of
the flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another
thing cut a groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-
Jove-Judson's left foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing
as the mood took them, and the man in the litter waved a shining
sword. The muzzle of the big gun kicked down a fraction as it was
laid on the mud wall at the bottom of the house garden. Ten pounds
of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds of metal was its charge.
Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a little, as a man
jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with a knee-cap,
and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in the fall. The
soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old black woman
climb to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time with
the flag halliards, then finding that they were jammed, took off
her one garment, which happened to be an Isabella-coloured
petticoat, and waved it impatiently. The man in the litter
flourished a white handkerchief, and Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. "Now
we'll give 'em one up the hill. Round with her, Mr. Davies. Curse
the man who invented those floating gun platforms. Where can I
pitch in a notice without slaying one of those little devils?"
The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a
disorderly fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small
but very compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade.
These last dragged quick-firing guns with them.
"Bai Jove, it's a regular army. I wonder whose," said Bai-Jove-
Judson, and he waited developments. The descending troops met and
mixed with the troops in the village, and, with the litter in the
centre, crowded down to the river, till the men with the quick-
firing guns came up behind them. Then they divided left and right
and the detachment marched through.
"Heave these damned things over!" said the leader of the party,
and one after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy
water. The flatiron lay close to the bank.
"When you're quite done," said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, "would
you mind telling me what's the matter? I'm in charge here."
"We're the Pioneers of the General Development Company," said the
leader. "These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for
twelve hours, and we're getting rid of their gatlings. Had to
climb out and take them; but they've snaffled the lock-actions.
Glad to see you."
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