Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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"Good man!" shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery through the
mists. "Whar you raise dat tonga? I'm coming with you. Ow! But
I've a head and half. I didn't sit out all night. They say the
Battery's awful bad," and he hummed dolorously -
"Leave the what at the what's-its-name,
Leave the flock without shelter,
Leave the corpse uninterred,
Leave the bride at the altar
"My faith! It'll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this
journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachwan!"
On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers discussing
the latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was here that
Bobby learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.
"They went into camp," said an elderly Major recalled from the
whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, "they went
into camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred and
ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts
with sore eyes. A Madras Regiment could have walked through 'em."
"But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!" said Bobby.
"Then you'd better make them as fit as be-damned when you rejoin,"
said the Major brutally.
Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed window-pane
as the train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the
health of the Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her
contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie
Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their
strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up
the last straggler of the little army that was to fight a fight,
in which was neither medal nor honour for the winning, against an
enemy none other than "the sickness that destroyeth in the
noonday."
And as each man reported himself, he said: "This is a bad
business," and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment
and Battery in the cantonment was under canvas, the sickness
bearing them company.
Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters'
temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy's neck for
the joy of seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.
"Keep 'em amused and interested," said Revere. "They went on the
drink, poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no
improvement. Oh, it's good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a -
never mind."
Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary mess
dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly weeping
over the condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far forgot
himself as to insinuate that the presence of the officers could do
no earthly good, and that the best thing would be to send the
entire Regiment into hospital and "let the doctors look after
them." Porkiss was demoralised with fear, nor was his peace of
mind restored when Revere said coldly: "Oh! The sooner you go out
the better, if that's your way of thinking. Any public school
could send us fifty good men in your place, but it takes time,
time, Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble, to make
a Regiment. S'pose you're the person we go into camp for, eh?"
Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear which
a drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later,
quitted this world for another where, men do fondly hope,
allowances are made for the weaknesses of the flesh. The
Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily across the Sergeants'
Mess tent when the news was announced.
"There goes the worst of them," he said. "It'll take the best, and
then, please God, it'll stop." The Sergeants were silent till one
said: "It couldn't be him!" and all knew of whom Travis was
thinking.
Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing
the fainthearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when
there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good
cheer, for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his
dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading back men who,
with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always
wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-
flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech,
and more than once tending the dying who had no friends - the men
without "townies"; organizing, with banjos and burnt cork, Sing-
songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and
generally, as he explained, "playing the giddy garden-goat all
round."
"You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment
of enthusiasm. "How the devil do you keep it up?"
Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket
of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written
letters which perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the
boy. A letter came to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not
above reproach, but the sentiments must have been most
satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby's eyes softened marvellously,
and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for a while ere,
shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.
By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and
the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds
indeed, was a mystery to both skipper and C. 0., who learned from
the regimental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in
request in the hospital tents than the Reverend John Emery.
"The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?" said
the Colonel, who did his daily round and ordered the men to get
well with a hardness that did not cover his bitter grief.
"A little, sir," said Bobby.
"Shouldn't go there too often if I were you. They say it's not
contagious, but there's no use in running unnecessary risks. We
can't afford to have you down, y' know."
Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-
runner plashed his way out to the camp with the mail-bags, for the
rain was falling in torrents. Bobby received a letter, bore it off
to his tent, and, the programme for the next week's Sing-song
being satisfactorily disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an
hour the unhandy pen toiled over the paper, and where sentiment
rose to more than normal tide-level, Bobby Wick stuck out his
tongue and breathed heavily. He was not used to letter-writing.
"Beg y' pardon, sir," said a voice at the tent door; "but Dormer's
'orrid bad, sir, an' they've taken him orf, sir."
"Damn Private Dormer and you too!" said Bobby Wick, running the
blotter over the half-finished letter. "Tell him I'll come in the
morning."
"'E's awful bad, sir," said the voice hesitatingly. There was an
undecided squelching of heavy boots.
"Well?" said Bobby impatiently.
"Excusin' 'imself before 'and for takin' the liberty, 'e says it
would be a comfort for to assist 'im, sir, if -
"
tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here, come in out of the rain till I'm
ready. What blasted nuisances you are! That's brandy. Drink some;
you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell me if I go too fast."
Strengthened by a four-finger "nip" which he swallowed without a
wink, the Hospital Orderly kept up with the slipping, mud-stained,
and very disgusted pony as it shambled to the hospital tent.
Private Dormer was certainly "'orrid bad." He had all but reached
the stage of collapse, and was not pleasant to look upon.
"What's this, Dormer?" said Bobby, bending over the man. "You're
not going out this time. You've got to come fishing with me once
or twice more yet."
The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said, - "Beg y'
pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now, but would you min' 'oldin' my
'and, sir'?
Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy-cold hand closed on
his own like a vice, forcing a lady's ring which was on the little
finger deep into the flesh. Bobby set his lips and waited, the
water dripping from the hem of his trousers. An hour passed, and
the grasp of the hand did not relax, nor did the expression of the
drawn face change. Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot
with the left hand (his right arm was numbed to the elbow), and
resigned himself to a night of pain.
Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on the side of a
sick man's cot, and a Doctor in the doorway using language unfit
for publication.
"Have you been here all night, you young ass?" said the Doctor.
"There or thereabouts," said Bobby ruefully. "He's frozen on to
me."
Dormer's mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed.
The clinging hand opened, and Bobby's arm fell useless at his
side.
"He'll do," said the Doctor quietly. "It must have been a toss-up
all through the night. 'Think you're to be congratulated on this
case."
"Oh, bosh!" said Bobby. "I thought the man had gone out long ago -
only - only I didn't care to take my hand away. Rub my arm down,
there's a good chap. What a grip the brute has! I'm chilled to the
marrow!" He passed out of the tent shivering.
Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by
strong waters. Four days later, he sat on the side of his cot and
said to the patients mildly: "I'd 'a' liken to 'a' spoken to 'im -
so I should."
But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter, - he had
the most persistent correspondent of any man in camp, - and was
even then about to write that the sickness had abated, and in
another week at the outside would be gone. He did not intend to
say that the chill of a sick man's hand seemed to have struck into
the heart whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such
length. He did intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the
forthcoming Sing-song, whereof he was not a little proud. He also
intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us,
and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish
headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess.
"You are overdoing it, Bobby," said his skipper. "'Might give the
rest of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were
the whole Mess rolled into one. Take it easy."
"I will," said Bobby. "I'm feeling done up, somehow." Revere
looked at him anxiously and said nothing.
There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and
a rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a
paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers, and the rush of a
galloping horse.
"Wot's up?" asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the
answer - "Wick, 'e's down."
They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. "Any one but Bobby
and I shouldn't have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right."
"Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from
the doolie. "Not going out this journey." Then with an air of
supreme conviction - "I can't, you see."
"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had
hastened over from the mess where he had been dining.
He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the
life of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy
apparition in a blue-gray dressing-gown, who stared in horror at
the bed and cried - "Oh, my Gawd! It can't be 'im!" until an
indignant Hospital Orderly whisked him away.
If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby
would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days,
and the Surgeon-Major's brow uncreased. "We'll save him yet," he
said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain, had
a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously
in the mud.
"Not going out this journey," whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at
the end of the third day.
"Bravo!" said the Surgeon-Major. "That's the way to look at it,
Bobby."
As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby's mouth, and he
turned his face to the tent-wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major
frowned.
"I'm awfully tired," said Bobby, very faintly. "What's the use of
bothering me with medicine? I - don't - want - it. Let me alone."
The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift
away on the easy tide of Death.
"It's no good," said the Surgeon-Major. "He doesn't want to live.
He's meeting it, poor child." And he blew his nose.
Half a mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to
the Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of
danger. The clash of the brass and the wail of the horns reached
Bobby's ears.
Is there a single joy or pain,
That I should never kno-ow?
You do not love me, 'tis in vain,
Bid me good-bye and go!
An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy's face, and
he tried to shake his head.
The Surgeon-Major bent down -" What is it, Bobby? "---" Not that
waltz," muttered Bobby. "That's our own - our very ownest own . .
Mummy dear."
With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early
next morning.
Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went
into Bobby's tent to write a letter to Papa Wick which should bow
the white head of the ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the
keenest sorrow of his life. Bobby's little store of papers lay in
confusion on the table, and among them a half-finished letter. The
last sentence ran: "So you see, darling, there is really no fear,
because as long as I know you care for me and I care for you,
nothing can touch me."
Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out, his eyes
were redder than ever.
Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not
unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a convalescent and should
have been tenderly treated.
"Ho! "said Private Conklin. "There's another bloomin' orf'cer da-
ed."
The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a
smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bedgown was
regarding him with deep disfavour.
"You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf'cer? - bloomin'
orf'cer? I'll learn you to misname the likes of 'im. Hangel!
Bloomin' Hangel! That's wot 'e is!"
And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the
punishment that he did not even order Private Dormer back to his
cot.
IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier's life for me!
Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free.
The Ramrod Corps.
People who have seen say that one of the quaintest spectacles of
human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls' school. It
starts without warning, generally on a hot afternoon, among the
elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control.
Then she throws up her head and cries, "Honk, honk, honk," like a
wild goose, and tears mix with the laughter. If the mistress be
wise, she will rap out something severe at this point to check
matters. If she be tender-hearted, and send for a drink of water,
the chances are largely in favour of another girl laughing at the
afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the trouble spreads,
and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys'
school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm
weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice
meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from
the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects
develop. At least, this is what folk say who have had experience.
Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British
Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being
made between their respective charges. But it is a fact that,
under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into
ditthering, rippling hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his
trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into the
newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a Martini from
a Snider say: "Take away the brute's ammunition!"
Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his
hand. He doesn't wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be
supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions:
but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic
defender of the national honour" one day, and "a brutal and
licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he
looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas
except people who have theories to work off on him, and nobody
understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what
is the matter with himself.
That is the prologue. This is the story: -
Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi M'Kenna,
whose history is well known in the regiment and elsewhere. He had
his Colonel's permission, and, being popular with the men, every
arrangement had been made to give the wedding what Private
Ortheris called "eeklar." It fell in the heart of the hot weather,
and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the
bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that the affair would
be only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the "eeklar" of
that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant's
wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very
busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in
barracks. All the rest were more or less miserable.
And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work was
over at eight in the morning, and for the rest of the day they
could lie on their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the
punkah-coolies. They enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle
of the day, and then threw themselves down on their cots and
sweated and slept till it was cool enough to go out with their
"towny," whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words,
and the Adjective, and whose views on every conceivable question
they had heard many times before.
There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance
Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any
profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of
96ø or 98ø in the shade, running up sometimes to 103ø at midnight.
Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale,
muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for
six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole
regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do.
It was too early for the excitement of fever or cholera. The men
could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow of the
barrack creeping across the blinding white dust. That was a gay
life.
They lounged about cantonments - it was too hot for any sort of
game, and almost too hot for vice - and fuddled themselves in the
evening, and filled themselves to distension with the healthy
nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the
less exercise they took and more explosive they grew. Then tempers
began to wear away, and men fell a-brooding over insults real or
imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of. The tone of the
repartees changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: I'll
knock your silly face in," men grew laboriously polite and hinted
that the cantonments were not big enough for themselves and their
enemy, and that there would be more space for one of the two in
another Place.
It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of
the case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons
in an aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots
side by side, and would sometimes spend a long afternoon swearing
at each other; but Simmons was afraid of Losson and dared not
challenge him to a fight. He thought over the words in the hot
still nights, and half the hate he felt towards Losson he vented
on the wretched punkah-coolie.
Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little
cage, and lowered the cage into the cool darkness of a well, and
sat on the well-curb, shouting bad language down to the parrot. He
taught it to say: "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and
several other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big
gross man, and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the
sentence correctly. Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the
room were laughing at him - the parrot was such a disreputable
puff of green feathers and it looked so human when it chattered.
Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of the cot,
and ask the parrot what it thought of Simmons. The parrot would
answer: "Simmons, ye so-oor." Good boy," Losson used to say,
scratching the parrot's head; "ye 'ear that, Sim?" And Simmons
used to turn over on his stomach and make answer: "I 'ear. Take
'eed you don't 'ear something one of these days."
In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of
blind rage came upon Simmons and held him till he trembled all
over, while he thought in how many different ways he would slay
Losson. Sometimes he would picture himself trampling the life out
of the man with heavy ammunition-boots, and at others smashing in
his face with the butt, and at others jumping on his shoulders and
dragging the head back till the neckbone cracked. Then his mouth
would feel hot and fevered, and he would reach out for another sup
of the beer in the pannikin.
But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with him
longest was one connected with the great roll of fat under
Losson's right ear. He noticed it first on a moonlight night, and
thereafter it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating
roll of fat. A man could get his hand upon it and tear away one
side of the neck; or he could place the muzzle of a rifle on it
and blow away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be
sleek and contented and well-to-do, when he, Simmons, was the butt
of the room. Some day, perhaps, he would show those who laughed at
the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as the rest,
and held a man's life in the crook of his forefinger. When Losson
snored, Simmons hated him more bitterly than ever. Why should
Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay awake hour after
hour, tossing and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain
gnawing into his right side and his head throbbing and aching
after Canteen? He thought over this for many, many nights, and the
world became unprofitable to him. He even blunted his naturally
fine appetite with beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot
talked at and made a mock of him.
The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than
before. A Sergeant's wife died of heat-apoplexy in the night, and
the rumour ran abroad that it was cholera. Men rejoiced openly,
hoping that it would spread and send them into camp. But that was
a false alarm.
It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the
deep double verandahs for "Last Post," when Simmons went to the
box at the foot of his bed, took out his pipe, and slammed the lid
down with a bang that echoed through the deserted barrack like the
crack of a rifle. Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no
notice; but their nerves were fretted to fiddle-strings. They
jumped up, and three or four clattered into the barrack-room only
to find Simmons kneeling by his box.
"Ow! It's you, is it?" they said, and laughed foolishly. "We
thought 'twas -"
Simmons rose slowly. If the accident had so shaken his fellows,
what would not the reality do?
"You thought it was - did you? And what makes you think?" he said,
lashing himself into madness as he went on; "to Hell with your
thinking, ye dirty spies!"
"Simmons, ye so-oor," chuckled the parrot in the verandah
sleepily, recognising a well-known voice. Now that was absolutely
all.
The tension snapped. Simmons fell back on the arm-rack
deliberately, - the men were at the far end of the room, - and
took out his rifle and packet of ammunition. "Don't go playing the
goat, Sim!" said Losson. "Put it down," but there was a quaver in
his voice. Another man stooped, slipped his boot, and hurled it at
Simmons's head. The prompt answer was a shot which, fired at
random, found its billet in Losson's throat. Losson fell forward
without a word, and the others scattered.
"You thought it was!" yelled Simmons. "You're drivin' me to it! I
tell you you're drivin' me to it! Get up, Losson, an' don't lie
shammin' there - you an' your blasted parrit that druv me to it!
But there was an unaffected reality about Losson's pose that
showed Simmons what he had done. The men were still clamouring in
the verandah. Simmons appropriated two more packets of ammunition
and ran into the moonlight, muttering: "I'll make a night of it.
Thirty roun's, an' the last for myself. Take you that, you dogs!"
He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on the
verandah, but the bullet flew high, and landed in the brickwork
with a vicious phwit that made some of the younger ones turn pale.
It is, as musketry theorists observe, one thing to fire and
another to be fired at.
Then the instinct of the chase flared up. The news spread from
barrack to barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture
of Simmons, the wild beast, who was heading for the Cavalry
parade-ground, stopping now and again to send back a shot and a
curse in the direction of his pursuers.
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