Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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"Any one hurt?"
"No one killed exactly, but we're very dry."
"Can you hold your men?"
The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There
were seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.
"We sha'n't sack this ash-bin, if that's what you mean. We're
mostly gentlemen here, though we don't look it."
"All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or
whatever it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for
your men."
"We'll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in
the litter there, go aboard the gunboat." The command wheeled
round, pushed through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search
through the village for spare huts.
The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was
in the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and
dangling chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse
being not more than four hundred miles away. "My children," said
he, facing the silent soldiery, "lay aside your arms."
Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to
smoke. "Let nothing," he added in his own tongue, "tempt you to
kill these who have sought your protection."
"Now," said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost,
"will you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by
all this nonsense?"
"It was of a necessitate," said the little man. "The operations of
war are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain.
Be'old my little sword."
"Confound your little sword, sir. I don't want it. You've fired on
our flag. You've been firing at our people here for a week, and
I've been fired at coming up the river."
"Ah! The 'Guadala'. She have misconstrued you for a slaver
possibly. How are the 'Guadala'?"
"Mistook a ship of Her Majesty's navy for a slaver! You mistake
any craft for a slaver! Bai Jove, sir, I've a good mind to hang
you at the yard-arm!"
There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick
in the rack of Judson's cabin. The Governor looked at the one mast
and smiled a deprecating smile.
"The position is embarrassment," he said. "Captain, do you think
those illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give
them beer."
"Never mind the traders, I want an explanation."
"Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain - in my
country." His eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
"What has that to do with -"
"Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But I" -
here he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled -" I am
loyalist to pits of all my stomachs."
"Go on," said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
"An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to
collect of the taximent from the traders when she are come here
necessarily. That was on account of political understandings with
your country and mine. But on that arrangement there was no money
also. Not one damn little cowrie. I desire damnably to extend all
commercial things, and why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion -
yes, I tell you - Republics in my country for to just begin. You
do not believe? See some time how it exist. I cannot make this
custom-houses and pay the so high-paid officials. The people too
in my country they say the king she has no regardance into Honour
of her nation. He throw away everything - Gladstone her all, you
say, pay?"
"Yes, that's what we say," said Judson with a grin.
"Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I - I
am loyalist to all my hands' ends. Captain, once I was attach‚ at
Mexico. I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her
stomach high. They desire - they desire - a course for the bills."
"What on earth is that?"
"The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for
see bloody row. Do I make its comprehension?"
"A run for their money - is that what you mean? Gad, you're
sporting, Governor."
"So I say. I am loyalist, too." He smiled more easily. "Now how
can anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the
Company's mens she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay at gate that
is quite correct. My army he says it will Republic and shoot me
off upon walls if I have not give her blood. An army, Captain, are
terrible in her angries - especialment when she are not paid. I
know, too," here he laid his hand on Judson's shoulder, "I know
too we are old friends. Yes! Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d'Onor -
time ever since; and a little, little cock-fight for pay at gate
that is good for my king. More sit her tight on throne behind, you
see? Now," he waved his hand round the decayed village, "I say to
my armies, Fight! Fight the Company's men when she come, but fight
not so very strong that you are any deads. It is all in the
raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good
friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No?
Perhaps your father, then? So you see no one are deads, and we
fight a fight, and it is all in the raporta, to please the people
in our country, and my armies they do not put me against the
walls. You see?"
"Yes; but the 'Guadala'. She fired on us. Was that part of your
game, my joker?"
"The 'Guadala'. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big
fool. But I think she have gone down the coast. Those your
gunboats poke her nose and shove her oar in every place. How is
'Guadala'?"
"On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off."
"There are any deads?"
"No."
The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. "There are no deads
here. So you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done.
Captain, you talk to the Company's mens. I think they are not
pleased."
"Naturally."
"They have no sense. I thought to go backwards again they would. I
leave her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay
and come facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must
conquer much in all these battles, or the king, he is kicked off
her throne. Now we have won this battle - this great battle," he
waved his arms abroad, "and I think you will say so that we have
won, Captain. You are loyalist also. You would not disturb to the
peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you this. Your Queen she know
too. She would not fight her cousins. It is a - a hand-up thing."
"What?"
"Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?"
"Put-up job?"
"Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta?"
Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five
minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
"But look here, Governor," he said at last, "I've got to think of
other things than your riots in Europe. You've fired on our flag."
"Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and
also," he drew himself up to his full height, "we are both brave
men of bravest countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,"
here he uncovered, "and of our Queen," here he bowed low. "Now,
Captain, you shall shell my palace and I shall be your prisoner."
"Skittles!" said Bai-Jove-Judson. "I can't shell that old
hencoop."
"Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of
the best she manufac."
He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into
the cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little
he sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with
the gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms
watched the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter
on the quarter-deck of a gunboat.
"I'll put my men to build him a custom-house," said the head of
the Pioneers, gasping. "We'll make him one decent road at least.
That Governor ought to be knighted. I'm glad now that we didn't
fight 'em in the open, or we'd have killed some of them. So he's
won great battles, has he? Give him the compliments of the
victims, and tell him I'm coming to dinner. You haven't such a
thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven't seen one for six
months."
That evening there was a dinner in the village - a general and
enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor's house, and
whose tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The
Madeira was everything that the Governor had said, and more, and
it was tested against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson's
best Vanderhum, which is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle,
flavoured with orange-peel and spices. Before the coffee was
removed (by the lady who had made the flag of truce) the Governor
had sold the whole of his governorship and its appurtenances, once
to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson's grandfather
in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the Pioneers, in
consideration of that gentleman's good friendship. After the
negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and
there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the
British arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to
Judson and his companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking
of the flat-iron with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who
supplied the list of killed and wounded (not more than two
hundred) in his command.
"Gentlemen," said the Governor from under his cocked hat, "the
peace of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be
Knights of the Golden Hide. She shall go by the 'Guadala'."
"Great Heavens!" said Bai-Jove Judson, flushed but composed, "that
reminds me I've left that boat stuck on her broadside down the
river. I must go down and soothe the commandante. He'll be blue
with rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our
heads. A picnic, you understand."
"Ya - as, everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my
prisoner, but I am good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and
we shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners."
"I do hope," said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the
verandah into the roaring village, "that my chaps won't set the
town alight by accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His
Excellency the most illustrious Governor!"
Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more
swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high
in the arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that
they sang bade them, "Swing, swing together their body between
their knees"; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully,
except that they were anything but "steady from stroke to bow."
His Excellency the Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did
not wake when the chorus dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.
"Good-night and good-bye," said the head of the Pioneers to
Judson; "I'd give you my card if I had it, but I'm so damned drunk
I hardly know my own club. Oh, yes! It's the Travellers. If ever
we meet in Town, remember me. I must stay here and look after my
fellows. We're all right in the open, now. I s'pose you'll return
the Governor some time. This is a political crisis. Good-night."
The flat-iron went down stream through the dark. The Governor
slept on deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and
why he did not run into each bank many times, that officer does
not remember. Mr. Davies did not note anything unusual, for there
are two ways of taking too much, and Judson was only ward-room,
not foc's'le drunk. As the night grew colder the Governor woke up,
and expressed a desire for whiskey and soda. When that came they
were nearly abreast of the stranded "Guadala", and His Excellency
saluted the flag that he could not see with loyal and patriotic
strains.
"They do not see. They do not hear," he cried. "Ten thousand
saints! They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!"
He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded,
pulled the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the
full charge behind a common shell. That shell mercifully just
missed the stern of the "Guadala", and burst on the bank. "Now you
shall salute your Governor," said he, as he heard feet running in
all directions within the iron skin. "Why you demand so base a
quarter? I am here with all my prisoners."
In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his
reassurances were not heard.
"Captain," said a grave voice from the ship, "we have surrendered.
Is it the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship'?"
Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You
shall be ate by wild ants -flogged and drowned. Throw me a
balcony. It is I, the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson
of my soul, ascend her insides, and send me a bed, for I am
sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple time kill that captain!"
"Oh!" said the voice in the darkness, "I begin to comprehend." And
a rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with
Judson at his heels.
"Now we will enjoy executions," said the Governor on the deck.
"All these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not
drunk, why are so sloping the boards which do not support?"
The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency
sat down, slid to leeward, and was asleep again.
The captain of the "Guadala" bit his moustache furiously, and
muttered in his own tongue: "This land is the father of great
villains and the stepfather of honest men. You see our material,
Captain. It is so everywhere with us. You have killed some of the
rats, I hope?"
"Not a rat," said Judson genially.
"That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men;
but our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank
through your English treachery."
"Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size
without a word of warning, when you know that the countries were
at peace, is treachery enough in a small way."
"If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the
bottom, all of you. I would have taken the risk with my
Government. By that time it would have been -"
"A Republic? So you really did mean fighting on your own hook?
You're rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like
yours. Well, what are you going to do now?"
"Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken
cat" - he pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept -" is
here. I must take him back to his hole."
"Very good. I'll tow you off at daylight if you get steam ready."
"Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight
you."
"Humbug! You'll have lunch with me, and then you'll take the
Governor up the river."
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: "Let us drink.
What must be, must be; and after all we have not forgotten the
Peninsula. You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon
a shoal like a mud-dredger?"
"Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His
Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now."
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of
towing off the "Guadala" began. With the help of her own engines,
and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the
mud-bank sideways into the deep water, the flatiron immediately
under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost
peering through the window of the captain's cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the
Governor. He was uneasily conscious that he might, perhaps, have
exceeded his powers; and the captain of the "Guadala", in spite of
all his patriotic sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war
had been declared between the two countries. He did not need the
Governor's repeated reminders that war, serious war, meant a
Republic at home, possible supersession in his command, and much
shooting of living men against dead walls.
"We have satisfied our honour," said the Governor in confidence.
"Our army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will
show that we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! he is
a boy. He will call this a - a-. Judson of my soul, how you say
this is - all this affairs which have transpirated between us?"
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead.
"Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat's all
right, Captain. When will you come to lunch?"
"I told you," said the Governor, "it would be a larque to him."
"Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?" said the
captain. "We shall be happy to come when you please. Indeed, we
have no other choice," he added bitterly.
"Not at all," said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four
shot-blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him.
"It is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency's guns
knocked us about."
"Senior Captain," said the Governor pityingly, "that is very sad.
You are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We
shall not be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?"
"You couldn't spare us a little paint, could you? I'd like to
patch up a little after the - action," said Judson meditatively,
fingering his upper lip to hide a smile.
"Our store-room is at your disposition," said the captain of the
"Guadala", and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray
paint make a big show.
"Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare - to spare,
remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be
just our freeboard tint."
"Oh, yes. I'll spare them," said Mr. Davies savagely. "I don't
understand this how-d'you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming
one atop of the other in a manner o' speaking. By all rights,
they're our lawful prize."
The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr.
Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was
given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they
were a little warmed - the Governor genial and the captain almost
effusive - he explained, quite casually, over the opening of a
bottle that it would not be to his interest to report the affair
seriously, and it was in the highest degree improbable that the
Admiral would treat it in any grave fashion.
"When my decks are cut up" (there was one groove across four
planks), "and my plates buckled" (there were five lead patches on
three plates), "and I meet such a boat as the 'Guadala', and a
mere accident saves me from being blown out of the water -"
"Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost,"
said the captain of the 'Guadala'.
"Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was
saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do
but go away - if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal
for the sea voyage. It is very sad." Judson had compromised on
what he knew of the French tongue as a working language.
"It is enough," said the Governor, waving a generous hand. "Judson
of my soul, the coal is yours, and you shall be repaired - yes,
repaired all over of your battle's wounds. You shall go with all
the honours of all the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall
beat. Your, ah! - jolly boys shall spoke their bayonets. Is it not
so, Captain?"
"As you say, Excellency. But the traders in the town. What of
them?"
The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite
remember what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him
over night. Judson interrupted swiftly: "His Excellency has set
them to forced works on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a
custom-house. When that is done they will be released, I hope,
Excellency."
"Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my
heart." Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns,
while Mr. Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank
and the shot-marks on the deck and the bow-plates.
"Oh, this is too bad," said Judson when they went on deck. "That
idiot has exceeded his instructions, but - but yow must let me pay
for this!"
Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung
over the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a
foreign tongue. He smiled uneasily, and went on with his work.
"What is it?" said the Governor.
"That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he
has borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good."
Then in English, "Stand up, Mr. Davies. What the - in - do you
mean by taking their gold-leaf? My -, are we a set of pirates to
scrape the guts out of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you
butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a
tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't I maintain discipline in my own
ship without a blacksmith of a boiler-riveter putting me to shame
before a yellow-nosed picaroon. Get off the staging, Mr. Davies,
and go to the engine-room. Put down that leaf first, though, and
leave the books where they are. I'll send for you in a minute. Go
aft!"
Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies's round face was above the
bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it
rose inch by inch as the shower continued: blank amazement,
bewilderment, rage, and injured pride chasing each other across it
till he saw his superior officer's left eyelid flutter on the
cheek twice. Then he fled to the engine-room, and wiping his brow
with a handful of cotton-waste, sat down to overtake
circumstances.
"I am desolated," said Judson to his companions, "but you see the
material that you give us. This leaves me more in your debt than
before. The stuff I can replace" (gold-leaf is never carried on
floating gun-platforms), "but for the insolence of that man how
shall I apologise?"
Mr. Davies's mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred
the cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to
prevent laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room
plates. "Neat! Oh, damned neat!" he chuckled. "I've served with a
good few, but there never was one so neat as him. And I thought he
was the new kind that don't know how to put a few words, as it
were!"
"Mr. Davies, you can continue your work," said Judson down the
engine-room hatch. "These officers have been good enough to speak
in your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it.
Slap on every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?"
"Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn't miss it.
There's enough for two first-rates, and I've scoffed the best half
of it."
"Look sharp, then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon.
You'll have to cover it all."
"Neat! Oh, damned neat!" said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he
gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing
the long-deferred wish of Judson's heart.
It was the "Martin Frobisher", the flag-ship, a great war-boat
when she was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as
for steam. She could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was
under that that she stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of
silver beneath the moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given
Judson a task beyond his strength, was coming to look for him, and
incidentally to do a little diplomatic work along the coast. There
was hardly wind enough to move the "Frobisher" a couple of knots
an hour, and the silence of the land closed about her as she
entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little from time to time,
and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The full moon
rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral, gazing upon it,
thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer
to the very mood of his mind, there floated across the silver
levels of the water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant
sweetness, the throb of a mandolin, and the voice of one who
called upon a genteel Julia - upon Julia, and upon love. The song
ceased, and the sighing of the yards was all that broke the
silence of the big ship.
Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the
quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the
signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice
of the singer was the voice of Judson.
"Last week down our alley came a toff,
Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
Quite in a gentlemanly way " -
and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several
voices, and the signal-midshipman's foot began to tap the deck
furtively.
"'What cheer!' all the neighbours cried.
''Oo are you going to meet, Bill?
'Ave you bought the street, Bill?'
Laugh? - I thought I should ha' died
When I knocked 'em in the old Kent Road."
It was the Admiral's gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst
of that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, the
beribboned mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he
came up the side of the "Guadala", and it may or may not have been
the Admiral who stayed till two in the morning and delighted the
hearts of the Captain and the Governor. He had come as an unbidden
guest, and he departed as an honoured one, but strictly unofficial
throughout. Judson told his tale next day in the Admiral's cabin
as well as he could in the face of the Admiral's gales of
laughter, but the most amazing tale was that told by Mr. Davies to
his friends in the dockyard at Simon's Town from the point of view
of a second-class engine-room artificer, all unversed in
diplomacy.
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