.)flllE8 wim NEW CENTURY EDITION SIi|P i .11 ItU SItbrarg Nortly (Unraixm S^mfJUalUgt PR4854 P66 100579 This book may be kept out TWO WEEKS ONLY, and is subject to a fine of FIVE CENTS a day thereafter. It is due on the day indicated below: I7Apr'50S 3iVorS|J( l7Feb'56Z 6Sep'58tf 22Nov'6lO A P R. 1 T m r^ JUL2'^19i7 JAN i 2008 RuDYARD Kipling. I have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your w^er and wine The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives that yye led were mine. Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, One joy or woe that I did not know. Dear hearts across the seas? I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth. 100579 CONTENTS. PAGE. A Ballad of Burial 41 A Code of Morals 10 A Legend of the Foreign Office 15 Army Headquarters 13 Delilah 20 Departmental Ditties 3 General Summary 5 In Springtime 49 La Nuit Blanche 35 Municipal 30 My Rival 38 Pagett, M. P 43 Pink Dominoes 26 Possibilities 52 Public Waste 18 Study of an Elevation, in Indian Ink 9 The Betrothed 53 The Last Department 32 The Lovers' Litany 40 The Man Who Could Write 28 The Mare's Nest 47 The Overiand Mail 50 The Post That Fitted 7 The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal' vin 45 The Stf ry of Uriah 17 To the Unknown Goddess 33 What Happened 23 3 4 CONTENTS. PAGE. The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney 6i On Greenhow Hill 98 Bimi •. 125 Namgay Doola 134 Moti Guj— Mutineer 151 The Mutiny of the Mavericks 162 The Recrudescence of Imray 190 GENERAL SUMMARY. We are very slightly changed From the sem-.-apes who ranged India's prehiztoric clay; Whoso drew the longest bow, Ran his brother down, you know. As v/e run men down to-day. **Dowb,** the first of all his race Met the Mammoth lace to face On the lake or in the cave, Stole the steadiest canoe, Ate the quarry others slew, Died — and took the finest grave. When they scratch ci the reindeer bone, Some one made the sketch his own, Filched it from the artist — then, Even in those early days, Won a simple Viceroy's praise Through the toil of other men. Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage Favoritism governed kissage, Even as it does in this age. Who shall doubt the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid Was that the contractor did DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Cheops out of several millions? Or that Joseph's sudden rise To Comptroller of Supplies Was a fraud of monstrous size On king Pharaoh's swart Civilians? Thus, the artless songs I sing Do not deal with anything Nev/ or never said before. As it was in the beginning, Is to-day official sinning, And shall be forevermore. THE POST THAT FITTED. Though tangled and twisted the'course of true love. This ditty explains No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve If the Lover has brains. Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry 'An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called '*my little Carrie." Sleary *s pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way. Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight paltry dibs a day? Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters — Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin 's daughters. Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch, But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match. So they recognized the business, and to feed and clothe the bride. Got him made a Something Something some- where on the Bombay side. Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for hina to marry — 7 e DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. As the artless Sleary put it:— **J"st the thing for me and Carrie." Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin — impulse of a baser mind? No! he started epileptic fits of an appalling ^ kind. (Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: — '*Pears, shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather. ' *) Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite Sleary with distressing vigor — always in the Boffkins' sight. Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring Told him his ** unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying. Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy,— Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ, Wired three short words to Carrie — took his ticket, packed his kit — Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last long, lingering fit. Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read — and laughed until she wept — Mrs. Boffkins' warning letter on the ** wretched epilept." DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 9 Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkins sits Waiting- for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits. STUDY OF AN ELEVATION IN INDIAN INK. This ditty is a string of lies. But — how the deuce did Gubbins rise? Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Stands at the top of the tree; And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led To the hoisting of Potiphar G. Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is seven years junior to Me; Each bridge that he makes he either buckles or breaks, And his work is as rough as he. Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is coarse as a chimpanzee ; And I can't understand why you gave him your hand. Lovely Mehitable Lee. Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is dear to the Powers that Be; For They bow and they smile in an affable style Which is seldom accorded to Me. 10 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Potiphar Gubbins, C. E. , Is certain as certain can be Of a highly paid post which is claimed by a host Of seniors — including Me. Careless and lazy is he, Greatly inferior to Me. What is the spell that you manage so well, Commonplace Potiphar G. ? Lovely Mehitable Lee, Let me inquire of thee, Should I have riz to what Potiphar is, Hadst thou been mated to Me? A CODE OF MORALS. Lest you should think this story true, I merely mention I Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most Unmitigated misstatement. Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order, And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border, To sit on a rock with a heliograph ; but ere he left he taught His wife the wording of the Code that sets the miles at naught. And love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair; DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 11 So Cupid and Apollo linked, per heliograph, the pair, At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills he flashed her counsel wise — At e'en, the dying sunset bore her husband's homilies. He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old ; But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs) That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-Gen- eral Bangs. 'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, that tittupped on the way, . When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play ; They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt — So stopped to take the message down — and this is what they learnt: — *' Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore. *'Was ever General Officer addressed as *dear' before? *My love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountain top?" 12 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. The artless Aide-de-camp was mute ; the gilded Staff were still, As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill ; For, clear as summer's lightning flare, the husband's warning ran: — *' Don't dance or ride with General Bangs — a most immoral man. ' * (At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise — But howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.) With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting details of the General's pri- vate life. The artless Aide-de-camp was mute ; the shin- ing Staff was still, And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill. And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not) : — *'I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there ! Trot ! ' ' All honor unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know By word or act official who read off that helio. ; But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan They knew the worthy General as "that most immoral man." DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 13 ARMY HEADQUARTERS. Old is the song that I sing — Old as my unpaid bills — Old as the hicken that kitmutgars bring Men at dak-bungalows, .old as the Hills. Ahasuerus Jenkins of the ''Operatic Own" Was dowered with a tenor voice of super- Santley tone. His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer; He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh ! he had an ear. He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day, He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way. His method of saluting was the joy of all be- holders. But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his shoulders. He took two months to Simla when the year was at the spring, And underneath the deodars eternally did sing. He warbled like a bulbiil, but particularly at Cornelia Agrippina, who was musical and fat. She controlled a humble husband, who in turn controlled a Dept. Where Cornelia Agrippina' s human singing birds were kept 14 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. From April to October on a plump retaining fee, Supplied, of course, per mensem^ by the Indian Treasury. Cornelia used to sing with him, and Jenkins used to play; He praised unblushingly her notes, for he was false as they : So when the winds of April turned the bud- ding- roses brown, Cornelia told her husband: — ''Tom,you mustn't send him down." They haled him from his regiment, which didn't much regret him; They found for him an office stool, and on that stool they set him, To play with maps and catalogues three idle hours a day. And draw his plump retaining fee — which means his double pay. Now, ever after dinner, when the coffee cups are brought, Ahasuerus waileth o'er the grand pianoforte ; And, thanks to fair Cornelia, his fame hath waxen great. And Ahasuerus Jenkins is a power in the State. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 15 A LEGEND OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE. This is the reason why Rustum Beg, Rajah of Kolazai, Drinketh the "simpkin" and brandy peg, Maketh the money to fly, Vexeth a Government tender and kind, Also — but this is a detail — blind. Rustum Beg of Kolazai — slightly backward native state — Lusted for a C. S. I., — so began to sanitate. Built a Jail and Hospital — nearly built a City drain — Till his faithful subjects all thought their ruler was insane. Strange departures made he then — yea, Depart- ments stranger still, Half a dozen Englishmen helped the Rajah with a will, Talked of noble aims and high, hinted of a future fine For the State of Kolazai, on a strictly Western line. Rajah Rustum held his peace; lowered octroi dues a half; Organized a State Police; purified the Civil Staff; Settled cess and tax afresh in a very liberal way; Cut temptations of the flesh — also cut the Bukhshi's pay; 16 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Roused his Secretariat to a fine Mahratta fury, By a Hookum hinted at supervision of dasturi; Turned the State of Kolazai very nearly upside down; When the end of May was nigh, waited his achievement crown. Then the Birthday Honors came. Sad to state and sad to see, Stood against the Rajah's name nothing more than C. I. E. ! Things were lively for a week in the State of Kolazai. Even now the people speak of that time regret- fully. How he disendowed the Jail — stopped at once the City drain ; Turned to beauty fair and frail — got his senses back again; Doubled taxes, cesses, all ; cleared away each new-built thana; Turned the two-lakh Hospital into a superb Zenana : Heaped upon the Bukhshi Sahib wealth and honors manifold ; Clad himself in Eastern garb — squeezed his people as of old. Happy, happy Kolazai! Never more will Rus- tum Beg Play to catch the Viceroy's eye. He prefers the **simpkin" peg. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 17 THE STORY OF URIAH. ; •'Now there were two men in one city; the one rich and the other poor, " ■ Jack Barrett went to Ouetta ': Because they told him to. 1 He left his wife at Simla -1 On three-fourths his monthly screw: ; Jack Barrett died at Quetta i Ere the next month's pay he drew. ] Jack Barrett went to Quetta. i He didn't understand j The reason of his transfer ■ From the pleasant mountain-land: ■ The season was September, \ And it killed him out of hand. Jack Barrett went to Quetta, i And there gave up the .Cfhost, j Attempting two men's duty ^ In that very healthy post; | And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him ^ Five lively months at most. '■ Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta Enjoy profound repose; But I shouldn't be astonished If now his spirit knows The reason of his transfer From the Himalayan snows. And, when the Last Great Bugle Call Adown the Hurnai throbs, a Ditties 18 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIE^ When the last grim joke is entered In the big black Book of Jobs, And Quetta graveyards give again Their victims to the air, I shouldn't like to be the man Who sent Jack Barrett there. PUBLIC WASTE. Walpole talks of "a. man and his price.** List to a ditty queer — The sale of a Deputy- Acting- Vice- Resident-Engineer, Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide, By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side. By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State, Because of the gold on his breeks, and the sub- jects wherein he must pass; Because in all matters that deal not with Rail- ways his knowledge is great. Now Exeter Battleby Tring had labored from boyhood to eld On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and South ; Many lines had he built and surveyed — impor- tant the posts which he held ; And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 19 Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still — Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge ; Never clanked sword by his side— Vauban he knew not, nor drill Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the "College." Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls, Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels, Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls For the billet of "Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels." Letters not seldom they wrote him, "having the honor to state," It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf: Much would accrue to his bank book, and he consented to wait Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself. "Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five, Even to Ninety and Nine'''— these were the terms of the pact: Thus did the Little Tin Gods (long may Their Highnesses thrive!) Silence his mouth with rupees, keepine their Circle intact ; 20 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line, (The which was one mile and one furlong — a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge). So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign, And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his age. DELILAH. We have another Viceroy now, those days are dead and done, Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne. Delilah Aberyswith was a lady — not too young — With a perfect taste in dresses, and a badly bitted tongue. With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise, And a little house in Simla, in the Prehistoric Days. By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power, Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour; And many little secrets, of a half-official kind, Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind. She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 21 Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one. He wrote for divers papers, which, as every- body knows. Is worse than serving in a shop or scaring off the crows. He praised her "queenly beauty" first; and, later on, he hinted At the "vastness of her intellect" with compli- ments unstinted. He went with her a-riding, and his love for her was such That he lent her all his horses, and — she galled them very much. One day. They brewed a secret of a fine fin- ancial sort; It related to Appointments, to a Man and a Report. 'Twas almost worth the keeping (only seven people knew it), And Gunne rose up to seek the truth and patiently ensue it. It was a Viceroy's Secret, but — perhaps the wine was red — Perhaps an aged Councilor had lost his aged head — Perhaps Delilah's eyes were bright— Delilah's whispers sweet — ■ The Aged Member told her what 'twere trea- son to repeat. 22 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Ulysses went a-riding, and they talked of love and flowers; Ulysses went a-calling, and he called for sev- eral hours; Ulysses went a-waltzing, and Delilah helped him dance — Ulysses let the waltzes go, and waited for his chance. The summer sun was setting, and the summer air was still, The couple went a-walking in the shade of Summer Hill, The wasteful sunset faded out in turkis-green and gold, Ulysses pleaded softly and . . . that bad Delilah told! Next morn a startled Empire learnt the all- important news; Next week the Aged Councilor was shaking in his shoes; Next month I met Delilah, and she did not show the least Hesitation in affirming that Ulysses was a •* beast." We have another Viceroy now, those days are dead and done, Of Delilah Aberyswith and most mean Ulysses Gunne! DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 23 WHAT HAPPENED. Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazar, Owner of a native press, "Barrishter-at-Lar," Waited on the Government with a claim to wear Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair. Then the Indian Government winked a wicked wink, Said to Chunder Mookerjee: ** Stick to pen and ink. They are safer implements ; but, if you insist, We will let you carry arms wheresoe'er you list." Hurree Chunder Mookerjee sought the gun- smith and Bought the tuber of Lancaster, Ballard, Dean and Bland, Bought a shiny bowie-knife, bought a town- made sword, Jingled like a carriage horse when he went abroad. But the Indian Government, always keen to please. Also gave permission to horrid men like these — Yar Mahommed Yusufzai, down to kill of steal, Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer, Tantia the Bhil. 24 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Killar Khan the Marri chief, Jowar Singh the Sikh, Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat, Abdul Huq Rafiq — He was a Wahabi; last, little Boh Hla-oo Took advantage of the act — took a Snider too. They were unenlightened men, Ballard knew them not, They procured their swords and guns chiefly on the spot. And the lore of centuries, plus a hundred fights, Made them slow to disregard one another's rights. With a unanimity dear to patriot hearts All those hairy gentlemen out of foreign parts Said: "The good old days are back — let us go to war!" Swaggered down the Grand Trunk Road, into Bow Bazar. Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail, Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail, Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee As he ground the butcher-knife of the Khy- beree. Jowar Singh the Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, took the dagger from its place, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 25 While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared the dahblade from the scabbard. "What became of Mookerjee? Soothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute, But the belts of them all simply bulge with loot. What became of Ballard's guns? Afghans black and grubby Sell them for their silver weight to the men of Pubbi; And the shiny bowie-knife and the town-made sword are Hanging in a Marri camp just across the Border. What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar Prodding Siva's sacred bull down the Bow Bazar. Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh — question land and sea — Ask the Indian Congressmen — only don't ask me! O. H. HILL LIBRARY 26 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. PINK DOMINOES. "They are fools who kiss and tell," Wisely has the poet sung. Man may hold all sorts of posts If he'll only hold his tongue. jenny and Me were engaged, you see, One of the eve of the Fancy Ball; So a kiss or two was nothing to you Or any one else at all. Jenny would go in a domino — Pretty and pink but warm ; While I attended, clad in a splendid Austrian uniform. Now we had arranged, through notes ex- changed Early that afternoon. At Number Four to waltz no more, But to sit in the dusk and spoon. (I wish you to see that Jenny and Me Had barely exchanged our troth ; So a kiss or two was strictly due By, from, and between us both.) When Three was over, an eager lover, I fled to the gloom outside ; And a Domino came out also Whom I took for my future bride. That is to say, in a casual way, I slipped my arm around her; DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 27 With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you), And ready to kiss I found her. She turned her head and the name she said Was certainly not my own ; But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek She fled and left me alone. Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame She'd doffed her domino; And I had embraced an alien waist — But I did not tell her so. Next morn I knew that there were two Dominoes pink, and one Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian Vouse, Our big political gun. Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold, And her eye was a blue cerulean ; And the name she said when she turned her head Was not in the least like * 'Julian." Now wasn't it nice, when want of pice Forbade us twain to marry, That old Sir J. , in the kindest way, Made me his Secretarry? 28 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE. Shun— shun the Bowl ! That fatal, facile drink Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in't: Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in't. There may be silver in the "blue-black" — all I know of is the iron and the gall. Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure — is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued, therefore: ''I With the selfsame weapon can attain as high.** Only he did not possess, when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L 1. (Men who spar with Government, need to back their blows. Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.) Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright. Till an Indian paper found that he could write: Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark, When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark. Certainly he scored it, bold and black and firm, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 29 In that Indian paper— made his seniors squirm, Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth- Was there ever known a more misguided youth? When the rag he wrote for, praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame: When the men he wrote of, shook their heads and swore, Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more. Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim, Till he found promotion didn't come to him; Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot. And his many Districts curiously hot. Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win, Boanerges Blitzen didn't care a pin: Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right — Boanerges Blitzen put it down to "spite." Languished in a District desolate and dry; Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by; Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair. That was seven years ago — and he still is there 30 DEPARTMEiNTAL DITTIES. MUNICIPAL. "Why is my District death-rate low?" Said Blinks of Hezebad. "Wells, drains, and sewage-outfalls are My own peculiar fad. I learned a lesson once. It ran Thus," quote that most veracious man: — It was an August evening, and, in snowy gar- ments clad, I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezebad ; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all, A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall. I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed That the Commissariat elephant has suddenly gone musth. I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town. The buggy was a new one, and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain. Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain ; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five- foot patent wheels. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 31 He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, dis- traught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear — Reached the four-foot drain-head safely, and, in darkness and despair. Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror- stiffened hair. Heard it trumpet on my shoulder — tried to crawl a little higher — Found the Main Drain sewage-outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes. Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a pur- chase on my toes ! It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning gray Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away. Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain. They flushed that four-foot drain-head, and — it never choked again. You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure. Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer. I believe in well-flushed culverts . . . This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. THE LAST DEPARTMENT. Twelve hundred million men are spread About this Earth, and I and You' Wonder, when You and I aie dead, What will those luckless millions do. *'None whole or clean," we cry, *'or free from stain Of favor." Wait awhile, till we attain The Last Department, where nor fraud nor fools, Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again. Fear, Favor, or Affection — what are these To the grim Head who claims our services? I never knew a wife or interest 5^et Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease;" When leave, long over-due, none can deny; When idleness of all Eternity Becomes our furlough, and the marigold Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury. Transferred to the Eternal Settlement Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent, No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals, Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent. And One, long since a pillar of the Court, As mud between the beams thereof is wrought ; And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops Is subject-matter of his own Report. "Wop! wop! wop! went a volley of musketry." — Page 10. Departmental Ditties. DEPARTIVIENTAL DITTIES. 3J (These be the glorious ends whereto we pass- Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was; And He shall see the 7nallie steals the slab For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.) A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight, A draught of water, or a horse's fright— * The droning of the fat Sheristadar Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night. For you or Me. Do those who live decline The step that offers, or their work resign? Trust me. To-day's Most Indispensables, Five hundred men can take your place or mine. TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS. Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my soul going out from afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar? Have I met you and passed you already, un- knowing, unthinking, and blind? Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?* Does the P. and O. bear you to me-ward, or clad in short frocks in the West, ' * Are you growing the charms that shall' capture and torture the heart in my breast? • Ditties 34 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Will you stay in the Plains till September— my passion as warm as the day? Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play? When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue, And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay "thirteen-two;" When the peg and the pigskin shall please not; when I buy me Calcutta-built clothes; When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses; for- swearing the swearing of oaths; As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends; When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends. Ah Goddess! child, spinster, or widow — as of old on Mars Hill when they raised To the God that they knew not an altar — so I, a young Pagan, have praised The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet if half that men tell me be true, You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 35 LA NUIT BLANCHE. A much-discerning Public hold The Singer generally sings Of personal and private things, And prints and sells his past for gold. Whatever I may here disclaim, The very clever folk I sing to Will most indubitably cling to Their pet delusion, just the same. I had seen, as dawn was breaking And I staggered to my rest, Tari Devi softly shaking From the Cart Road to the crest. I had seen the spurs of Jakko Heave and quiver, swell and sink. Was it Earthquake or tobacco, Day of Doom or Night of Drink? In the full, fresh, fragrant morning I observed a camel crawl. Laws of gravitation scorning. On the ceiling and the wall ; Then I watched a fender walking, And I heard gray leeches sing, And a red-hot monkey talking Did not seem the proper thing. Then a Creature, skinned and crimson, Ran about the floor and cried. And they said I had the "jims" on, And they dosed me with bromide, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. And they locked me in my bedroom — Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse — Though I said: "To give my head room You had best unroof the house." But my words were all unheeded, Though I told the grave M. D. That the treatment really needed Was a dip in open sea That was lapping just below me, Smooth as silver, white as snow. And it took three men to throw me When I found I could not go. Half the night I watched the heavens — Fizz like '8i champagne — Fly to sixes and to sevens, Wheel and thunder back again; And when all was peace and order Save one planet nailed askew. Much I wept because my warder Would not let me set it true. After frenzied hours of waiting, When the Earth and Skies were dumb, Pealed an awful voice dictating An interminable sum, Changing to a tangled story — "What she said you said I said" — Till the moon arose in glory, And I found her ... in my head ; Then a face came, blind and weeping, And it couldn't wipe its eyes, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 37 And it muttered I was keeping Back the moonlight from the skies; So I patted it for pity, But it whistled shrill with wrath. And a huge black Devil City Poured its peoples on my path. So I fled with steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain < Kept me always in one place; >■ While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire. In intolerable stillness Rose one little, little star. And it chuckled at my illness, And it mocked me from afar; And its brethern came and eyed me, Called the Universe to aid ; Till I lay, with naught to hide me, 'Neath the Scorn of All Things Made. Dim and saffron, robed and splendid, Broke the solemn, pitying Day, And I knew my pains were ended, And I turned and tried to pray ; But my speech was shattered wholly, And I wept as children weep. Till the dawn-wind, softly, slowly Brought to burning eyelids sleep. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. MY RIVAL. i I go to concert, party, ball — ; What profit is in these? I I sit alone against the wall j And strive to look at ease. J The incense that is mine by right ] They burn before Her shrine; ', And that's because I'm seventeen ■ And She is forty-nine. I cannot check my girlish blush, \ My color comes and goes; ■ I redden to my finger-tips, 5 And sometimes to my nose. t But She is white where white should be, j And red where red should shine. j The blush that flies at seventeen I Is fixed at forty-nine. 1 I wish I had Her constant cheek: j I wish that I could sing All sorts of funn}'- little songs. Not quite the proper thing. I'm very g-aiic/ie and very shy, Her jokes aren't in my line; And, worst of all, I'm seventeen While She is forty-nine. The young men come, the young men go, , Each pink and white and neat, j She's older than their mothers, but i They grovel at Her feet. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 39 ^ They walk beside Her 'rickshaw wheels— ' None ever walk by mine ; \ And that's because I'm seventeen And She is forty-nine. She rides with half a dozen men, ' (She calls them *'boys" and "mashers") ^ I trot along the Mall alone ; \ My prettiest frocks and sashes \ Don't help to fill my programme-card, ] And vainly I repine ; From ten to two A. M. \ Ah me! Would I were forty-nine! i She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear " I And "sweet retiring maid." ' \ I'm always at the back, I ki>ow, \ She puts me in the shade. '\ She introduces me to men, \ "Cast" lovers, I opine, ^i For sixty takes to seventeen, -I Nineteen to forty-nine. 1 But even She must older grow '' And end Her dancing days, She can't go on forever so At concerts, balls, and plays. One ray of priceless hope I see Before my footsteps shine : Just think, that She'll be eighty-one When I am forty-nine. 40 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. THE LOVERS' LITANY. Eyes of gray — a sodden quay, Driving rain and falling tears, As the steamer wears to sea In a parting storm of cheers. Sing, for Faith and Hope are high- None so true as you and I — Sing the Lovers' Litany: **Love like ours can never die!" Eyes of black — a throbbing keel, Milky foam to left and right ; Whispered converse near the wheel In the brilliant tropic night. Cross that rules the Southern Sky! Stars that sweep and wheel and fly Hear the Lovers' Litany: — **Love like ours can never die!" Eyes of brown — a dusty plain Split and parched with heat of June, Flying hoof and tightened rein, Hearts that beat the old, old tune. Side by side the horses fly, Frame we now the old reply • Of the Lovers' Litany: — "Love like ours can never die!" Eyes of blue — the Simla Hills Silvered with the moonlight hoar; Pleading of the waltz that thrills, Dies and echoes round Benmore. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 41 ' •Mabel," "Officers," '•Good-by/' { Glamor, wine, and witchery — i On my soul's sincerity, \ '*Love like ours can never die!" i Maidens, of your charity, J Pity my most luckless state. Four times Cupid's debtor I — \ Bankrupt in quadruplicate. Yet, despite this evil case, i And a maiden showed me grace, Four-and-forty times would I .' Sing the Lovers' Litany: — ; **Love like ours can never die!" ; A BALLAD OF BURIAL. ("Saint Praxed's ever was the Church for Peace.") ; If down here I chance to die, i Solemnly I beg you take All that is left of ** I" ' To the Hills for old sake's sake. ' Pack me very thoroughly ) In the ice that used to slake i Pegs I drank when I was dry — This observe for old sake's sake. > I To the railway station hie, There a single ticket take ,; For Umbal la— goods train — I | Shall not mind delay or shake. I shall rest contentedly 42 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Spite of clamor coolies make ; Thus in state and dignity Send me up for old sake's sake. Next the sleepy Babu wake, Book a Kalku van *'for four." Few, I think, will care to make Journeys with me any more As they used to do of yore. I shall need a "special " break — Thing I never took before — Get me one for old sake's sake. After that — arrangements make. No hotel will take me in. And a bullock's back would break Neath the teak and leaden skin. Tonga ropes are frail and thin, Or, did I a back seat take, In a tonga I might spin — Do your best for old sake's sake. After that — your work is done. Recollect a Padre must Mourn the dear departed one — Throw the ashes and the dust. Don't go down at once. I trust You will find excuse to "snake Three days' casual on the bust," Get your fun for old sake's sake. I could never stand the Plains. Think of blazing June and May, Think of those September rain$ DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 43 Yearly till the Judgment Day! I should never rest in peace, I should sweat and lie awake. Rail me, then, on my decease, To the Hills for old sake's sake. PAGETT, M. P. The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad. Pagett, M. P., was a liar, and a fluent liar therewith, — He spoke of the heat of India as the ''Asian Solar Myth;" Came on a four months* visit, to "study the East," in November, And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay till September. March came in with the koil. Pagett was cool and gay, Called me a "bloated Brahmin," talked of my "princely pay." March went ou^ with the roses. "Where is your heat?" said he. "Coming," said I to Pagett. "Skittles!" said Pagett, M. P. April began with the punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat, — Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sand flies found him a treat. 44 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. He gr.ew speckled and lumpy — hammered, I grieve to say, Aryan brothers who fanned him, in an illiberal way. May set in with a dust-storm, — Pagett went down with the sun. All the delights of the season tickled him one by one. Imprimis — ten days' "liver" — due to his drink- ing beer; Later, a dose of fever — slight, but he called it severe. Dysent'ry touched him in June, after the Chota Bursat — Lowered his portly person — made him yearn to depart. He didn't call me a "Brahmin," or "bloated," or "overpaid," But seemed to think it a wonder that any one stayed. July was a trifle unhealthy, — Pagett was ill with fear. Called it the "Cholera Morbus," hinted that life was dear. He babbled of "Eastern exile," and mentioned his home with tears ; But I hadn't seen my children for close upon seven years. We reached a hundred and twenty once in the Court at noon, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 45 (I've mentioned Pagett was portly) Pagett went off in a swoon. That was an end to the business; Pagett, the perjured, fled With a practical, working knowledge of *' Solar Myths" in his head. And I laughed as I drove from the station, but the mirth died out on my lips As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their "Eastern trips," And the sneers of the traveled idiots who duly misgovern the land, And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into my hand. THE RUPAIYAT OF OMAR KALVIN. [Allowing for the difference 'twixt prose and rhymed exaggeration, this ought to reproduce the sense of what Sir A told the nation some time ago, when the Government struck from our incomes two per cent.] Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt, The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net; So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue Assail all Men for all that I can get. Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues — Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use, Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal — Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse! 4e DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Pay — and I promise, by the Dust of Spring", Retrenchment. If my promises can bring Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousand- fold— By Allah ! I will promise anything ! Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before I swore — but did I mean it when I swore? And then, and then. We wandered to the Hills, And so the Little Less became Much More. Whether at Boileaugunge or Babylon, I know not how the wretched Thing is done, The items of Receipt grow surely small; The Items of Expense mount one by one. I cannot help it. What have I to do With One and Five, or Four, or Three, or Two? Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please, Or Statemen call me foolish — Heed not you. Behold, I promise — Anything You Will. Behold, I greet you with an empty Till — Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Chanty Seek not the Reason of the Dearth, but fill. For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain Of ku'iwledge? Would it ease you of your Pain To know the tangled Threads of Revenue, I ravel deeper in a hopeless Skein? DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 47 ••Who hath not Prudence"— what was it I said, Uf Her who paints Her Eyes and tires Her Head, And Gibes and mocks the People in the Street, And fawns upon them for Her thriftless Bread? Accursed is She of Eve's daughters- She Hath cast off Prudence, and Her End shall be Destruction . . . Brethren, of your Bounty grant ^ Some portion of your daily Bread to Me. THE MARE'S NEST. Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse Was good beyond all earthly need; But, on the other hand, her spouse Was very, very bad indeed. He smoked cigars, called churches slow, And raced— but this she did not know. For Belial Machiavelli kept The little fact a secret, and. Though o'er his minor sins she wept, Jane Austen did not understand That Lilly -thirteen-two and bay- Absorbed one-half her husband's pay. She was so good, she made him worse; (Some women are like this, I think;) 48 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. He taught her parrot how to curse, Her Assam monkey how to drink. He vexed her righteous soul until She went up, and he went down hill. Then came the crisis, strange to say. Which turned a good wife to a better. A telegraphic peon, one day, Brought her — now, had it been a letter For Belial Machiavelli, I Know Jane would just have let it lie. But 'twas a telegram instead. Marked "urgent," and her duty plain To open it. Jane Austen read: — "Your Lilly's got a cough again. Can't understand why she is kept At your expense. " Jane Austen wept. It was a misdirected wire. Her husband was at Shaitanpore. She spread her anger, hot as fire, Through six thin foreign sheets or more, Sent off that letter, wrote another To her solicitor — and mother. Then Belial Machiavelli saw Her error and, I trust, his own, Wired to the minion of the Law, And traveled wifeward — not alone. For Lilly — thirteen-two and bay — Came in a horse-box all the way. There was a scene — a weep or two — With many kisses. Austen Jane "Boanerges BHtzen felt that this was fame."— Page 29. Departmental Ditties. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 49 Rode Lilly all the season through, And never opened wires again. She races now with Belial. This Is very sad, but so it is. IN SPRINGTIME. My garden blazes brightly with the rosebush and the peach, And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well. From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel's chattering speech, And the blue-jay screams and flutters where the cheery sat-bhai dwell. But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koiVs note is strange ; I am sick of endless sunshine, sick of blos- som-burdened bough. Give me back the leafless woodlands where the winds of Springtime range — Give me back one day in England, for it's Spring in England now! Through the pines the gusts are booming, o'er the brown fields blowing chill, From the furrow of the ploughshare streams the fragrance of the loam. And the hawk nests on the cliff-side and the jackdaw in the hill, And my heart is back in England mid the sights and sounds of Home, A Ditties 50 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. But the garland of the sacrifice this wealth of rose and peach is ; Ah! koil, little koil, singing on the sirh bough, In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell-like speech is — Can you tell me aught of England or of Spring in England now? THE OVERLAND MAIL. (Foot-Service to the Hills.) In the name of the Empress of India, make way, O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam. The woods are astir at the close of the day — We exiles are waiting for letters from Home. Let the robber retreat — let the tiger turn tail- In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail! With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in. He turns to the foot-path that heads up the hill — The bags on his back and a cloth round his chin, And, tucked in his waist-belt, the Post Office bill:— "Despatched on this date, as received by the rail. Per runner, two bags of the Overland Mail/' DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 51 Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim. Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the clifif. Does the tempest cry ''Halt?" What are tem- pests to him? ^jtI^^ Service admits not a "but" or an "if " While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear Without fail, In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail. From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir From level to upland, from upland to crest From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridee to spur, ^ Fly the soft-sandaled feet, strains the brawny brown chest. From rail to ravine—to the peak from the vale — Up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail. There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road — A jingle of bells on the foot-path below— There's a scuffle above in the monkey's abode — -^ The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow. For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail: — "In the name of the Empress, the Overland Mail! 52 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. POSSIBILITIES. Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine — \ A fortnight fully to be missed, \ Behold, we lose our fourth at whist, j A chair is vacant where we dine. ] His place forgets him ; other men ; Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps. ; His fortune is the Great Perhaps \ And that cool rest-house down the glen, ■ Whence he shall hear, as spirits may, Our mundane revel on the height, ^ Shall watch each flashing 'nckskaw-Ught | Sweep on to dinner, dance, and play. \ Benmore shall woo him to the ball ? With lighted rooms and braying band, i And he shall hear and understand j *' Dream Faces" better than us all. i For, think you, as the vapors flee Across Sanjaolie after rain, His soul may climb the hill again To each old field of victory. Unseen, who women held so dear. The strong man's yearning to his kind Shall shake at most the window-blind, Or dull awhile the card-room's cheer. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 53 In his own place of power unknown, His Light o' Love another's flame, His dearest pony galloped lame, And he an alien and alone. Yet may he meet with many a friend- Shrewd shadows, lingering long unseen Among us when '*God save the Queen" Shows even "extras" have an end. And when we leave the heated room. And, when at four the lights expire. The crew shall gather round the fire And mock our laughter in the gloom. Talk as we talked, and they ere death— - First wanly, dance in ghostly wise. With ghosts of tunes for melodies,' And vanish at the morning's breath. THE BETROTHED. ••You must choose between me and your cigar." Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Mag-He and I are out. We quarreled about Havanas— we fought o'er a good cheroot, And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. 64 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Open the old cigar-box — let me consider a space ; In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face. Maggie is pretty to look at — Maggie's a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay, But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away — Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown — But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town! Maggie, my wife at fifty — gray and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold ! And the light of Days that have Been, the dark of the Days that Are, And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar — The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket — With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 55 Open the old cigar-box — let me consider a while — Here is a mild Manilla — there is a wifely smile. Which is the better portion — bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string? Counselors cunning and silent — comforters true and tried. And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride. Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes. Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close. This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return. With only a Suttee s passion — to do their duty and burn. This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead. The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty, will send me my brides again. 56 DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouth withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall. I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides. For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen. And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Partagas a matter of seven year; And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight. And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o*- the- Wisp of Love. Will it see me safe through my journey, or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I fol- low the fitful fire? DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 57 Open the old cigar-box — let me consider anew — Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke. Light me another Cuba; I hold to my first- sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse! THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY AND OTHER STORIES 59 THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY Once upon a time and very far from this land, lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer door- mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in her majesty's army; and private soldiers of that employ have small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep them- selves and their accouterments specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey their super- iors, and to pray for a war. All these things my friends accomplished, and of their own motion threw in some fighting- work for which the Arm Regulations did not call. Their fate sent them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though poets have sung other- wise. There men die with great swiftness and those who live suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends concerned them- selves much with the social or political aspects 61 62 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. of the East. They attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burmah. Then their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of canton- ment life was their portion. They were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty parade ground. They wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a bar- rack for two long years. There was Mul- vaney, the father in the craft who had served with various regiments from Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resource- ful, and in his pious hours an unequaled soldier. To him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow moving, heavy-footed York- shiremen, born on the wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers' carts at the back of York railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his cliiof virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cock- ney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mys- tery which even to-day I cannot explain *'There was always three av us, " Mulvaney used to say. "And by the grace av God, so long as our services lasts, three av us they'll always be. 'Tis betther so. " They desired no companionship beyond their own, and evil it was for any man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argu- ment was out of the question as regarded Mul- INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 63 vaney and the Yorkshireman ; and assault on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain — a business which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money, good luck and evil, battle and the chances of death, life and the chances of happiness from Calicut in southern, to Pashawur in northern India. Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friendship — frankly by Mul vaney from the beginning, sul- lenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and sus- piciously by Ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the army could fraternize with a red-coat. *'Like to like," said he. "I'm a bloomin' sodger — he's a bloomin' civilian. 'Taint natural— that's all." But that was not all. They thawed pro- gressively, and in the thawing told me more of their lives and adventures than I am likely to find room for here. Omitting all else, this tale begins with the la- mentable ihirst that was at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst — Mul- vaney told me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was only successful in the case of Ortheris. He whose talents were many, went frrth into the highways and stole a dog from a "civilian" — videlicet, some one, he knew not who, not in the army. Now that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry 64 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. was made from quarters last anticipated by Ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promis- ing a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string. The purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. He escaped, how- ever, with nothing worse than a severe repri- mand, and a few hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being *'the best soldier of his inches" in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions' creed. "A dhirty man," he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, *'goes to clink for weakness in the knees, an* is coort-martialed for a pair av socks missin* ; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service — a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an* whose 'couterments are widout a speck — that man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes, an* dhrink from day to divil. That's the pride av bein' dacint. " We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the barracks, where a water- course used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the Northwestern Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring white Jane Austen wept."— Page 48. Depaxtmental Ditties. INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 65 tinder a glaring sun, and on either side led the broad road that led to Delhi. It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking a day's leave and going upon a shooting tour. The peacock IS a holy bird throughout India, and whoso slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone forth he had contrived without in the least offending local religious susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold to profit. It seemed just possible then — *'But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin' widout a dhrink? The ground's powdher-dry underfoot, an' ut gets unto the throat fit to kill," wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. "An' a peacock is not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on wather— an' jungle-wather, too?" ^ Ortheris had considered the question in all Its bearings. He spoke, chewing his pipe-stem meditatively: " *Go forth, return in glory. To Clusium's royal 'ome; And round these bloomin' temples 'ang The bloomin' shields o* Rome.* You'd better go. You ain't to shoot yourself —not while there's a chanst of liquor. Me an' Learoyd '11 stay at 'ome an' keep shop— case o* anythin' turnin' up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an' ketch the little peacockses or somethin'. You kin get one day's leave & Dittiee '66 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. easy as winkin'. Go along an' get it, and get peacockses or somethin'." *'Jock," said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd who was half asleep under the shadow of the bank. He roused slowly. *'Sitha, Mulvaney, go," said he. And Mulvaney went, cursing his allies with Irish fluency and barrack-room point. *'Take note," said he, when he had won his holiday and appeared dressed in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowl- ing-piece in his h and — ' ' take note, Jock, an* you, Orth'ris,I am goin' in the face av my own will — all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin* will come avpermiscuous huntin* afther peacockses in a disolit Ian' ; an' I know that I will lie down an* die wid thirrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy scuts — an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry. " He waved a huge paw and went away. At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed, much begrimed with dirt. ** Peacockses?" queried Ortheris, from the safe rest of a barrack-room table, whereon he was smoking crossed-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a bench. **Jock,'* said Mulvaney, as he stirred up the sleeper. ** Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?" Very slowly the meaning of the words com- municated itself to the half-roused man. He understood — and again — what might these things mean? Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the room INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 67 howled with delight. There was war in the bond^s ^^^"^^ ^^ last— war and the breaking of Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must follow the direct reply This IS more binding than the tic of tried friendship. Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered by the only means in his power and so swiftly that the Irishman had barely time to avoid the blow 11 ,^?^§^^ter around increased. Learoyd looked bewilderedly at his friend-himself as greatly bewildered. Ortheris dropped from the table. His world was falling. •'Come outside," said Mulvaney; and as the occupants of the barrack-room prepared ioy- ously to follow, he turned and said furiously •-- There will be no fight this night-onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The man that Qoes, follows on." No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling with the buttons of his coat. The parade ground was deserted except for the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney s impetuous rush carried his com- panions far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn around and continue the discussion. "Be still, now. 'Twas my fault for beginnin* things in the middle av an end, Jock. I should ha comminst wid an explanation; but Tock dear on your sowl, are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that Iver was— betther than ngntin me? Considher before ye answer." 68 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an arm, kicked tentatively, and answered: *'Ah'm fit." He was accustomed to fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind. They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled himself in mighty words. "Followin* your fools* scheme, I vv^int out into the thrackless desert beyond the barricks. An* there I met a pious Hindoo dhriving a buUock-kyrat. I tuk ut for granted he would be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an' I jumped in — ** "You long, lazy, black-haired swine," drawled Ortheris, who would have done the same thing under similiar circumstances. " 'Twas the height av policy. That na*gur man dhruv miles an' miles— as far as the new railway line they're buildin* now back of the Tavi River. * 'Tis a kyart for dhirt only, ' says he now an' again timorously, to get nie out av ut. * Dhirt I am,' sez I, *an* the dhryest that you iver kyarted. Drive on, me son, and glory be wid you.' At that I v;ent to slape, an* took no heed till he pulled up on the embankment av the line where the coolies were pilin' mud. There was a matther av tv/o thousand coolies on that line — you remimbcr that Prisintly a bell rang, an' they throops oil to a big pay- shed. 'Where's the white nan in charge?' sez I to my kyart-driver * In the shed,* sez he, 'engaged on a riffle.* 'A fwhat?' sez I. *Riffle,* sez he. 'You take ticket. Retakes INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 69 money. You get nothin'.' 'Oho!* sez I, 'that's what the shuperior an' cultivated man calls a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an' sin. Lead on to that raffle, though fwhat the mischief 'tis doin' so far away from uts home — which is the charity-bazaar at Christ- mas, an' the colonel's wife grinnin' behind the tea-table — is more than I know.' Wid that I went to the shed an' found 'twas pay-day among the coolies. There wages was on a table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man — sivun fut high, four fut wide, an' three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was payin* the coolies fair an' easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that month, an' each man sez, 'Yes, av course.' Thin he would deduct from their wages accordin'. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full of gun-wads an' scattered ut among the coolies. They did not take much joy av that performance, an' small wondher. A man close to me picks up a black gun-wad, an' sings out, *Ihaveut. ' 'Good may ut do you, ' sez I. The coolie went forward to this big, fine red man, who threw a cloth off of the most sumpshus, jooled, enameled, an' variously bediviled sedan- chair I iver saw. ' ' "Sedan-chair! Put your 'ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don't yer know a palanquin when you see it?" said Ortheris with great scorn. "I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an* chair ut shall be, little man," continued the Irishman. •' 'Twas a most amazin' chair — all lined wid 70 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. pink silk and fitted wid red silk curtains. 'Here ut is,' sez the red man. *Here ut is,' sez the coolie, an' he grinned weakly ways. *Is ut any use to you?* sez the red man. 'No,' sez the coolie; 'I'd like to make a presint av ut to you. ' 'I am graciously pleased to accept that same,' sez the red man; an' at that all the coolies cried aloud fwhat was mint for cheerful notes, an' wint back to their diggin', lavin' me alone in the shed. The red man saw me, an' his face grew blue on his big, fat neck. 'Fwhat d'you want here?' sez he. 'Standin'-room an' no more,' sez I, 'onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an* that's manners, ye ruffian" for I was not goin* to have the service throd upon. *Out of this,' sez he. *I'm in charge av this section av con- struction.' *I'm in charge av mesilf,' sez I, *an' it's like I will stay awhile. D'ye raffle much in these parts?' 'Fwhat's that to you?* sez he. 'Nothin',' sez I, 'but a great dale to you, for begad I'mthinkin' you get the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so?' I sez, an' wid that I went to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that man's name is Dearsley, an' he's been rafflin' that ould sedan-chair monthly this matter av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket — or he gives 'em the go — Wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for 'tis too big to carry away, an' he'd sack the man that thried to sell Ut. That Dearsley has been makin' the rowliu* INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 71 wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin*. Two thousand coolies defrauded wanst a month!" **Dom t' coolies. Hast gotten t' cheer, man?" said Learoyd. "Hould on. Havin' onearthed this amazin* an* stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin* all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'Tis a king's chair or a quane's. There's gold on ut an silk an' manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, 'tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin' — me bein* the ould man — but — any way he has had ut nine months, an' he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or it may be six " There was along pause, and the jackals howl- ed merrily. Learoyd bared one arm and con- templated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly to himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed emotion. **I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut," said Mulvaney. "I made bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front attack — fut, horse, an' guns — an* all for nothin', seein' that I had no transport to convey the machine away. *I will not argue wid you, ' sez I, 'this day, but subse- quently, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin' jool, we'll talk ut out lengthways. 'Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned emolumints, an' by prisint ipformashin, — 'twas the kyart man that tould 72 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY, me — 'ye've been perpethrating that same for nine months. But I'm a just man,' sez I, 'an' overlookin' the presumpshin that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honest, ' — at that he turned sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable— 'I'm willin' to compound the felony for this month's win- nin's. ' " "Ah! Ho!" from Learoyd and Ortheris. "That man Dearsley's rushin' on his fate," continued Mulvaney, solemnly wagging his head. "All hell had no name bad enough for me that tide. Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin' him from continuin' in his evil ways widout a remonstrince, an' to a man av conscience a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. "Tis not for me to argue,' sez I, 'f whatever ye are. Mister Dearsley, but by my hand I'll take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.' 'You will have to fight me for ut,' sez he, 'for well I know you will never dare make report to any one.' 'Fight I will,' sez I, 'but not this day, for I'm rejuced for want av nourishment.* *Ye're an ould bould hand,' sez he, sizin' me up an' down; 'ana jool av a fight we will have. Eat now an' dhrink, an* go your way.' Wid that he gave me some hump an' whisky, good whisky, an' we talked av this an' that the while. "It goes hard on me now,' sez I, wipin* my mouth, 'to confiscate that piece av furniture; but justice is justice.' 'Ye've not got ut yet,' sez he; 'there's the fight between.' INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 73 'There is,' sez I, *an* a good fight. Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my regi- ment for the dinner you have given this day. * Then I came hot-foot for you two. Hould your tongue, the both. 'Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an' he shall have his pick betune me an' Jock. Jock's a dece vin* fighter, for he is all fat to the eyes, an' he moves slow. Now I'm all beef to the look, an I move quick. By my reckonin', the Dearsley man won't take me; so me an' Orth'ris '11 see fair play. Jock, I tell you, 'twill be big fightin', — whipped, wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business 'twill take a good three av us — Jock '11 be very hurt — to take away that sedan-chair." ** Palanquin." This from Ortheris. **Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. *Tis the only sellin* piece av property widin* reach that we can get so cheap. An' fwhat's a fight after all? He has robbed the naygur man dis- honust We rob him honust. " "But wot'll we do with the bloomin* harticle when we've got it? Them palanquins are as big as 'ouses, an' uncommon 'ard to sell, as McCleary said when ye stole the sentry- box from the Curragh." "Who's going to dot* fightin*?" said Lea- royd, and Ortheris subsided. The three returned to barracks without a word. Mul- vaney's last argument clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible and to be attained in the least embarrassing fashion. 71 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. It would eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney. Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Lea- royd alone was without care, or Mulvaney dived darkly into the future and little Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely pay-shed by the side of the half-built embank- ment only a few hundred coolies know, and their tale is a confusing one, running thus: "We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the sahib— Dearsley oahib. They made oration, and noticeably the small man among the red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many very strong words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib after the custom of white men — with his hands, mak- ing no noise, and never at all pulling Dearsley Sahib's hair. Such of us as were not afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the midday meal. The small man in the red coat had possessed him- self of Dearsley Sahib's watch. No, he did not steal that watch. He held it in his hands, and at certain season made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the com- bat of young bulls in spring. Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley Sahib was much more red than the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his life — because we greatly loved > INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 75 him— some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red coats. But a certain man — very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who fought — that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away. It is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. After that Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise; these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and at- tempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no com- plaint of these latter things having been done? We were senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. There was no palanquin near the pay-shed. What do we know about pa- lanquins. Is is true that Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place, on account of sickness, for ten days? This is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for Dearsley Sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. Yet if Dearsley vSahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak the truth. There was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine tenths of our monthly wage. On such mulctings Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin. What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of our wages. Will the government repay us those moneys? Those three men in red coats bore the palan- 76 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. quin upon their shoulders and departed. All the money that Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin. Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees weVe there — all our money. It was our bank box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to Dearsley Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man look upon us with the eye of disfavor? Before God, there was a palanquin, and now there is no palan- quin; and if they send the police here to make inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. Why should a palan- quin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know nothing." Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the descent upon Dears- ley. From the lips of the coolies I received it. Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of unchast- ened splendor — evidently in past days the litter of a queen. The pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the Hin- doo Pantheon — lacquer on cedar. The oedar INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 77 sliding doors were fitted with hasps of trans- lucent Jaipur enamel, and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains, which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace, were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discolored by time and wear; but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley's pay- shed to the canton- ment was a narrow and uneven one, and trav- ersed by three very inexperienced palanquin- bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognize the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a '* fence." *'rm askin' you to warehouse ut, " said Mul- vaney, when he was brought to consider the question. "There's no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud have ut if we fought. Jock fought — an' oh, sorr, when the throuble was at uts finest an' Jock was bleedin* like a stuck pig, an' little Orth'ris was shquealin' on one leg, chewing big bites outav Dearsley 'swatch, I would ha' given my place in the fight to have had you see wan round. He tuk Jock, as I sus- picioned he would, an' Jock was deceptive. Nine rounds they were even matched, an* at the tenth — About that palanquin now. 7S INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. There's not the least trouble in the world, or we wud not ha' brought ut here. You will ondherstand that the queen — God bless her! — docs not reckon for a privit soldier to kape ele- phints an' palanquins an' sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from Dears- ley's through that cruel scrub that n'r broke Orth'ris* heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a civit-cat av a jackal roosted in ut. as well we knew in the mornin'. I put ut to you, sorr, is an elegant palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin'-place av all the vermin in can- tonmints? We brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin' men in the payshed yonder — lookin' at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel — an' well knowin' that they can dhraw their pay ivery month widout stoppages for riffles. Indi- rectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprin- cipled son av a night-hawk the peasantry av a numerous village. An' besides, will I let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? Not I. 'Tis not every day a piece av pure polry comes into the market. There's not a king widin these forty miles" — he waved his hand round the dusty horizon — *'not a king wud not be glad to buy it. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I'll take ut up along the road an' dis- pose av ut. ' * •*How?" said I. "Get into ut, av course, an* keep wan eye open through the curtain. Whin I see a likely INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 79 man of the native persuasion, I will descend blushin' from my canopy, and say: 'Buy a palanquin, ye black scut?' I will have to hire four men to carry me first, though, and that's impossible till next pay-day." Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it would be better to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man, capable, despite his mag- nificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of the civil law, a thing much abhorred by the soldier. Under the circum- stances their fun had come and passed, the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. Wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin? "A first-class rifle shot an' a good little man av your inches you are," said Mulvaney. **But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. 'Tis me has to lie awake av nights schamin' an' plottin* for the three av us. Orth'ris, me son, 'tis no matther av a few gallons av beer — no, nor twenty gallons — but tubs an' vats an' firkins in that sedan-chair." Meantime, the palanquin stayed in my stall, the ke> of which was in Mulvaney's hand. Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that Mulvaney, dried by four weeks' drought, would avoid excess. Next morning he and the palanquin had dis- appeared. He had taken the precaution of 80 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. getting three days' leave *'to see a friend on the railway,'* and the colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hop- ing it would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully gave him all he demanded. At this point his history, as recorded in the mess-room, stopped. Ortheris carried it not much further. **No, 'e wasn't drunk," said the little man, loyally, •'the liquor was no more than feelin' its way round inside of 'im ; but 'e went an' filled that *ole bloomin' palanquin with bottles 'fore 'e went off. He's gone an' 'ired six men to carry *im, an* I 'ad to 'elp 'im into 'is nupshal couch, 'cause 'e wouldn't 'ear reason. 'E's gone off in 'is shirt an' trousies, swearin' tremenjus — gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin' 'is legs out o' windy." *'Yes," said I, ''but where?" "Now you arx me a question. 'E said *e was going to sell that palanquin; but from observations what happened when I was stuffin* 'im through the door, I fancy 'e's gone to the new embarkment to mock at Dearsley. Soon as Jock's off duty I'm going there to see if 'e's safe — not Mulvaney, but t'other man. My saints, but I pity 'im as 'elps Terence out o* the palanquin when 'e's once fair drunk!" "He'll come back," I said. " 'Corse 'e will. On'y question is, what'll 'e be doin' on the road. Killing Dearsley, like as not. 'E shouldn't 'a gone without Jock or me." Re-enforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 81 foreman of the coolie-gang^. Dearsley's head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley indij^nantly de- nied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated brave. "I had my pick o' you two," he explained to Learoyd, "and you got my palanquin— not be- fore I'd made my profit on it. Why'd I do harm when everything's settled? Your man did come here— drunk as Davy's cow on a frosty night— came a-purpose to mock me— struck his 'ead out of the door and called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an' sent him along. But I never touched him. " To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity, answered only: *'If owt comes to Mulvaney long o* you, I'll grip- pie you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly ifead, an' I'll draw t' throat twisty-ways, man. See there now. ' ' The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over his supper that evening. Three days passed— a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close, and Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thmg to travel along the ways without com- ment. Yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested the immedi- 6 Dittiea 8-2 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. ate smashment as a sacrifice to liis ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well. "When Mulvaney goes up the road," said he, *' 'e's like to go a very long ways up, espe- cially when 'e's so blue drunk as 'e is now. But what gits me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool of the niggers somewhere about. That don't look good. The drink must ha' died out in 'im by this, unless 'e's broke a bank, an' then — Why don't 'e come back? 'E didn't ought to ha' gone off without us." Even Ortheris' heart sunk at the end of the seventh da}^, for half the regiment were out scouring the country-sides, and Learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much- trusted adjutant. *' Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would," said he. *'No; he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers — and yet that isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs — some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-room. The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days' confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a man who could put polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can. How does he do it?" INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 83 **With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir," said the adjutant. "He is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are deal- ing with an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a queer gang. " "For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouches from the depot worry me some- times with their offensive virtue. They don't seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters. I believe I'd forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could in decency accept." "Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir," said the adjutant. "Mulvaney's explana- tions are one degree less wonderful than his performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey try- ing to sell his colonel's charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady's hack. Shakbolt com- manded the Tyrone then." "Shakbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses answering to 84 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. that description. He used to buy unbacked devils and tame them by starvation. What did Mulvaney say?" **That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, anxious to 'sell the poor baste where he would get something to fill out his dimples.' Shakbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why Mulvaney exchanged to ours." "I wish he were back," said the colonel; **for I like him, and believe he likes me." That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris and I went into the waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their clamor — and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments — could not take us out of our- selves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likeness of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds, blowing across the rose gardens to the southward, brought the scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of rain- scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub, seamed with cattle-paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter. "This, " said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation of it all, "this is INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 85 sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o' mad country. Like a grate when the fire's put out by the sun. " He shaded his eyes against the moonlight. "An' there's a loony dancin' in the middle of it all. Quite right. I'd dance, too, if I wasn't so down-heart." There pranced a portent in the face of the moon — a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of the earth ; it was coming toward us, and its outline was never twice the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighboring mound and flung all its legs and arms to the winds. "My, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!" said Ortheris. "Seems like if 'e comes any furder we'll 'ave to argify with 'im. " Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave tongue to the stars. "Mulvaney! Mulvaney! A hoo!" Then we yelled all together, and the figure dipped into the hollow till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs. Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting bass and falsetto. "You damned fool!'' said they, and severally punched him with their fists. "Go easy!" he answered, wrapping a huge arm around each. '*I would have you to know 66 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. that I am a god, to be treated as such — though, by my faith, I fancy I've got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier." The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mul- vaney as mad. He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. But he wore one wondrous garment— a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heels — of pale pink silk, wrought all over, in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindoo gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled the folds round him. Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying to remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed: *'What 'ave you done with the palanquin? You're wearin' the linin'." **I am," said the Irishman, *'an' by the same token the 'broidery is scrapin* me hide off. I've lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me boots, an' me trousers like an open-work stocking on a gyurl's leg at a dance, I began to feel like a naygur — all timorous. Give me a pipe an' I'll tell on." He lighted a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro in a gale of laughter. "Mulvaney," said Ortheris sternly, " 'tain't INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 87 no time for laughin'. You've given Jock an* me more trouble than you're worth. You *ave been absent without leave, and you'll go into the cells for that; an' you 'ave come back dis- gustingly dressed, an' most improper, in the linin* o' that bloomin' palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An' we thought you was dead all the time." *'Bhoys," said the culprit, still shaking gentl}', *'whin I've done my tale you may cry if you like, an 'little Orth'ris here can thrample my insidesout. Ha' done an' listen. My per- formmces ha' been stupendous; my luck has been the blessed luck of the British army — an' there's no better than that. I went out drunk and drinking in the palanquin, and I have come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was up? He was at the bottom of ut all." *'Ah said so," murmured Learoyd. "To- morrow ah'll smash t' face in upon his head." *'Ye will not. Dearsley's a jool av a man. Afther Orth'ris had put me into the palanquin an' the six bearer-men were gruntin' down the road, I tuk thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim: *Go to the embank- ment, ' and there, bein' most amazin' full, I shtuck my head out av the concern an' passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha- mis- called him outrageous, for whin I am that ^vay the power of the tongue comes on me. I can bare remimber tellin* him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth of a skate, which was thrue afther Learovd had handled 88 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. ut; an' I clear remimber his taking no manner nor matter of offense, but givin' me a big dhrink of beer. 'Twas the beer that did the thrick, for I crawled back into the palanquin, steppin* on me right ear wid me left foot, an' thin I slept like the dead. Wanst I half roused, an* begad the noise in my head was tremenjus — roarin' an* poundin' an' rattlin' such as was quite new to me. 'Mother av mercy,* thinks I, 'phwat a concertina I will have on my shoulders whin I wake!' An' wid that I curls myself up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoy, that noise was not dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain. '* There followed an impressive pause. *'Yes, he had put me on a thrain — put me, palanquin an' all, an' six black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confi- dence, on the flat av a ballast-truck, and we were rowlin' and bowlin' along to Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up the nan' intro- duce m3^self to the coolies. As I was sayin', I slept for the better part av a day an' a night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on one av his material thrains to Benares, all for to make me over- stay m.y leave an' get me into the cells." The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares was at least ten hours by rail from cantonments, and nothing in the world could have saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge. Learoyd, drawing back a lit- INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 89 tie, began to place soft blows over selected portions of Mulvaney's body. His thoughts were away on the embankment, and they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney con- tinued: "Whin I was full awake, the palan- quin was set down in a street, I suspicioned, for I could hear people passin* and talkin'. But I knew well I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments — smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av a a cavalry stable-litter. This place smelt mari- gold flowers an' bad water, an' wanst some- thin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muz- zle at the chink of the shutter. *It's in a village I am,' thinks I to myself, *an* the paro- chial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin.' But anyways I had no desire to move. Only lie still whin you're in foreign parts, an' the standin' luck av the British army will carry ye through. That is an epigram. I made ut. "Thin a lot av whisperin' devils surrounded the palanquin. *Take ut up,' says wan man. •But who'll pay us?' says another. *The Maharanee's minister, av course,' sez the man. *Oho!' sez I to myself; 'I'm a quane in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I'll be an emperor if I lie still long enough. But this is no village I've struck.' I lay quiet, but I gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an' I saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an' horses an' a sprinklin' av naked priests, all yellow powder an' tigers* tails. But I may tell you, Orth'ris, an' you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins 90 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. ours was tke most imperial an' magnificent. Now, a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the quane happens to be takin' a ride. 'Women an' priest!' sez I. 'Your father's son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin's. ' Six black devils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the rowlin' an* the rockin' made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins — not more than fifty avthem — an' we grated an' bumped like Queenstown potato-sacks in a runnin' tide. I cud hear the women giglin' and squirmin' in their palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. They made way for ut, an', begad, the pink muslin men o' mine were howlin*, *Room for the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun.* Do you know ave the lady, sorr?" **Yes," said I. *'She is a very estimable old queen of the Cerntral India States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Be- nares without all the city knowing her palan- quin?" *• 'Twas the eternal foolishness av the nay- gur men. They saw the palanquin lying lone- ful an' forlornsome, an' the beauty of ut, after Dearsley's men had dhropped ut an' gone away, an' they gave ut the best name that occurred to thim. Quite right, too. For aught we know, the old lady was travelin' in- cog, — like me. I'm glad to hear she's fat. I was no light-weight myself, an' my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 91 most improper carvin's an* cuttin's I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush — like a mahar- anee. " *'The temple of the Prithi-Devi," I mur- mured, remembering the monstrous horrors of that sculptured archway at Benares. "Pretty Devilskins, savin' your presence, sorr. There was nothin' pretty about ut, ex- cept me! 'Twas all half dhark, an' whin the coolies left they shut a big black gate behind av us, an' half a company av fat yellow priests began pully-haulin* the palanquins into dhark- er place yet — a big stone hall full av pillars an* gods an' incense an' all manner av similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I per- ceived I wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein' cut off. By the same token, a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly turned me inside out drag- ging the palanquin to the temple. Now the disposishin ave the forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun — that was me — lay by the favor of Providence on the far left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephants' heads. The remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing into the biggest, fattest, and most amazin' she-god that iver I dreamed av. Her head ran up into the black above us, an' her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin' out av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to sing an' play on somethin*, back in the dhark, an* 'twas a queer song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av my neck. 92 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. Thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an' the women bundled out. I saw what I'll never see again. 'Twas more glorious than transformations, at a pantomime, for they was in pink, an' blue, an' silver, an' red, an' grass- green, wid diamonds, an' imeralds, an' great red rubies. I never saw the like, an' I never will again." "Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters of most of the kings of India, the chances are that you won't," I said, for it was dawning upon me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big queen's praying at Benares. "I niver will," he said, mournfully. "That sight doesn't come twict to any man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door. I didn't think he'd have the inso- lence to disturb the Maharanee av Gokral-See- tarun, so I lay still. *The old cow's asleep,' sez he to another. 'Let her be,' sez that. * 'Twill be long before she has a calf !' I might ha* known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in Injia — an' for the matter o' that in Eng- land, too — is childher. That made me more sorry I'd come, me bein', as you well know, a childless man. "They prayed, an' the butter- fires blazed up an' the incense turned everything blue, an' between that an' the fires the women looked as tho' they were all ablaze an' twinklin'. They took hoid of the she-god's knees, they cried out, an* they threw themselves about, an' that world-without-end-amen music was INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 93 dhrivin* thim mad. Mother av HIven! how they cried, an* the ould she-god grinnin* above them all so scornful! The dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' I was thinkin' harder than the thoughts wud go through my head — thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner of non- sense as well. The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin* lower and dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where my foot was stood the livin* spit an' image o' myself worked on the linin*. This man here, it was." He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand imder one, and thrust into the fire-light a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god Krishna playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eyes, and the blue-black mustache of the god made up a far-off resem- blance to Mulvaney. "The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I believe I was mad, too. I slid the off-shutter open an' rowled out into the dhark behind the elephant- head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knee, slipped off my boots, and took a general hould av all the pink linin' av the palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman's driss when you thread on ut at a sargent's ball, an' a bot- tle came with ut. I tuk the bottle, an' the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pil- lar, the pink linin' wrapped round me most ^ INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. graceful, the music thunderin' like kettle- drums, an' a cowld draft blowin* round my bare legs. By this hand that did ut, I was Krishna tootlin' on the flute — the god that the rig'mental chaplain talks about. A sweet sight I must ha' looked. I knew my eyes were big and my face was wax-white, an' at the worst I must ha' looked like a ghost. But they took me for the livin* god. The music stopped, and the women were dead dumb, an' I crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an' I did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I had done at the rig'mental theater many times, an' slid across the temple in front av the she-god, tootlin' on the beer-bottle." *'Wot did you toot?" demanded Ortheris. **Me? Oh!" Mulvaney sprung up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated deity in the half light. **1 sung: *• 'Only say You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan, Don't say nay, Charmin' Juley Callaghan.' I didn't know my own voice when I sung. An' oh! 'twas pitiful to see the women. The dar- lin's were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last wan I could see her poor little fingers workin' one in another as if she wanted to touch my feet. So I threw the tail of this pink overcoat over her head for the greater honor, an' slid into the dhark on the other side of the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All I wanted was to get away clear. INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 95 So I tuk him by his greasy throat an* shut the speech out av him. *Out!* sez I. 'Which way, ye fat heathen?* *Oh!'sezhe. 'Man,* sez I. *\Vhite man, soldier man, common sol- dier man. Where is the back door?' 'This way,' sez my fat friend, duckin' behind a big^ bull-god an' divin* into a passage. Thin I re- mimbered that I must ha' made the miraculous reputation of that temple for the next fifty years. 'Not so fast,' I sez, an' I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled like a father. I took him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to put a knife into me unbeknownst, an* I ran him up an* down the passage twice to collect his sensibili- ties. 'Be quiet,' sez he, in English. 'Now you talk sense,' I sez. 'Fhwat'll you give me for the use of that most iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?' 'Don't tell,' sez he. *Is ut like?' sez I. 'But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home, an' I've done you a service.' Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to draw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes and began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could hould no more." "You lie!" said Ortheris. "You're mad or sunstrook. A native don't give coin unless you cut it out av 'im. 'Tain't nature." "Then my lie an' my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder/' retorted 96 INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. Mulvaney, unruffled, nodding across the scrub. **An' there's a dale more in nature than your squidci^y little legs have iver taken you to, Orth'ris, me son. Four hundred, and thirty- four rupees by my reckonin', an' a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a remim- brancer. " •'An' 'e give it to you for love?" said Or- theris. **We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin', but considher fwhat I had done fof the good av the temple and the iverlastin* joy av those women. 'Twas cheap at the price. I would ha' taken more if I could ha' found it. I turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another passage, an* I found myself up to my knees in Benares river- water, an' bad smellin* ut is. More by token I had come out on the river line close to the burnin'-ghat and contagious to a cracklin' corpse. This was in the heart av the night, for I had been four hours in the temple. There was a crowd av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an* wint across the river. Thin I came home, lyin' up by day. " *'How on earth did you manage?" I said. **How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched, an' he niver told how near he was to breakin' down. That's why he is phwat he is. An' now" — Mulvaney yawned portentously — *'now I will go and give myself up for absince widout leave. It's eig]^t- an'-twenty days an' the rough end of the col- INCARNATION OF MULVANEY. 07 onel's tongue in orderly-room, any way you look at ut. But 'tis cheap at the price." •*Mulvaney,'* said I, softly, **if there hap- pens to be a-ny sort of excuse that the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you'll get nothing more than the dressing down. The new recruits are in, and — " "Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the ould man wants? 'Tis not my way, but he shall have thim. " And he flapped his way to cantonments, singing lustily: "So they sent a corp'ril's file, And they put me in the guyard room, For conduck unbecomin' of a soldier." Therewith he surrendered himself to the joy- ful and almost weeping guard, and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager's cot for untold hours, and between laughter and good- will the affair was smoothed over, so that he could next day teach the new recruits how to •*fear God, honor the queen, shoot straight, and keep clean." 9 Dittiea ON GREENHOW HILL. ^^Ohe ahmed din! Shaft 2 Ullah alioo! Baha- dur Khan, where are you? Come out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don't kill your own kin! Come out to me!" The deserter from a native corps was crawl- ing round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades. Misled by the rain and the dark- ness, he came to the English wing of the camp, and with his yelping and rifle practice dis- turbed the men. They had been making roads all day, and were tired Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd's feet. "Wot's all that?" he said, thickly Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall. The men swore. "It's that bloomin' deserter from the Aurangaba- dis," said Ortheris. "Git up, some one, an' tell 'em *e's come to the wrong shop." "Go to sleep, little man," said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the door. "I can't rise an' expaytiate with him. *Tis rainin' in- trenchin' tools outside." " 'Tain't because you bloomin* can't. It's cause you bloomin' won't, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar you. 'Ark to 'im 'owling!" 96 ON GREENHOW HILL. 99 "Wot's the good of argyfying? Put a bullet into the swine! 'E's keepin' us awake!" said another voice. A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness. ** 'Tain't no good, sir. I can't see 'im. 'E's 'idin* somewhere down 'ill." Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ** Shall I try to get 'im, sir?" said he. **No," was the answer; **lie down. I won't have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends." Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head uader the tent wall, he called, as a 'buss conductor calls in a block, ** 'Igher up, there! 'Igher up!" The men laughed, and the laughter was car- ried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots, for the Aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colors. *'An' that's all right," said Ortheris, with- drawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. *'S'elpme Gawd, tho" that man's not fit to live — messin' with my beauty-sleep this way." "Go out and shoot him in the morning, then," said the subaltern, incautiously. "Si- lence in the tents now! Get your rest, men!" Ortheris lay down withahappy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd. 100 ON GREENHOW HILL. The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himala- yas, and for a week had been waiting for a fly- ing column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had be- come a nuisance. In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accouter- ments. The native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed. **rm goin* to lay fer a shot at that man," said Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle. ** 'E comes up the water-course every evenin* about five o'clock. If we go and lie out on the north 'ill a bit this afternoon we'll get *im. " *'You're a bloodthirsty little mosquito," said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. *'But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere's Jock?" **Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, 'cause *e thinks 'isself a bloomin' marksman," said Ortheris, with scorn. The "Mixed Pickles" were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too imper- tinent. This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis going to their road-making. "You've got to sweat to-day," said Ortheris genially. "Were going to get your man. ON GREENHOW HILL. 101 You didn't knock 'im out last night by any chance, any of you?" *'No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at 'im, " said a private. "He's my cousin, and I ought to have cleared our dishonor. But good-luck to you. " They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he explained, **this is a long-range show, an* I've got to do it.** His was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, whom, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turn- ing in. Charges and scuffles he held in con- tempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needle slope that commanded a clear view of the water-course and a brown bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without. *' 'Ere'sthe tail o' the wood," said Ortheris. ** *E's got to come up the water-course, 'cause it gives 'im cover. We'll lay 'ere. 'Tain't not *arf so bloomin' dusty neither." He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines. 102 ON GREENHOW HILL. *'This is something like," he said, luxuri- ously. "Wot a 'evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost. How much d' you make it, Mulvaney?" "Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekase the air's so thin." Wop ! wop ! wop ! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill. "Curse them Mixed Pickles firin' at nothin'I They'll scare 'arf the country." "Thry a sigh tin' shot in the middle of the row," said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. "There's a red rock yonder he'll be sure to pass. Quick!" Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock. "'Good enough!" said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. "You snick your sights to mine, or a little lower. You're always firin' high. But remember, first shot to me. Oh, Lordy, but it's a lovely afternoon." The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts. "One o' them damned gardeners o' th' Pickles," said he, fingering the rent. "Firin* to th' right flank, when he knowed I was there. ON GREENHOW HILL. 103 If I knew who he was I'd a ripped the hide off 'un. Look at ma tunic!" "That's the spishil trustability av a marks- man. Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an' he'll loose on anythin* he sees or hears up to th' mile. You're well out av that fancy-firin' gang, Jock. Stay here." "Bin firin' at the bloomin' wind in the bloomin' treetops," said Ortheris, with a chuckle. "I'll show you some firin' later on.*' They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing and returned to camp, and left the wood to a few scared apes. The water-course lifted up its voice in the silence and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened, and lay still soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, be- tween the whiffs of his pipe : "Seems queer — about *im yonder — desertin* at all." " 'E'll be a bloomin* side queerer when I've done with 'im,** said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them. "I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin'; but, my faith! I make less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin' him, " said Mulyaney, 104 ON GREENHOW HILL. "Happen there was a lass tewed up wi* it. Men do more than more for th' sake of a lass. " "They make most av us 'list. They've no manner av right to make us desert." "Ah, they make us 'list, or their fathers do," said Learoyd, softly, his helmet over his eyes. Ortheris' brows contracted savagely. He was watching the valley. "If it's a girl, I'll shoot the beggar twice over, an' second time for bein' a fool. You're blasted sentimental all of a sudden. Thinkin' o' your last near shave?" "Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin* o* what had happened." "An' fwhat has happened, ye lumberin' child av calamity, that you're lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an' sug- gestin* invidious excuses for the man Stanley's goin' to kill. Ye'll have to wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an' bellow melojus to the moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors of Lotha- rius Learoyd. Stanley, kape a rowlin' rig'men- tal eye on the valley." ''It's along o' yon hill there," said Learoyd, watching the bare sub-Himalayan spurr that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was speaking more to himself than his fellows. "Ay," said he; "Rumbolds Moor stands up ower Skipton town, an' Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brigg. I reckon you've never heard tell o' Greenhow Hill, but yon bit o* bare stuff, if there was nobbut a white road ON GREENHOW HILL. 105 windin*, is like ut, strangely like. Moors an* moors — moors wi' never a tree for shelter, an' gray houses wi' flag-stone rooves, and pewits cryin', an' a windhover goin' to and fro just like these kites. And cold! a wind that cuts you like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple color o' their cheeks an* nose-tips, an' their blue eyes, driven into pin-points by the wind. Miners mostly, bur- rowin' for lead i' th' hillsides, followi'n' the trail of th' ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin' I ever seen. You'd come on a bit o' crackin' wood windlass like a well- head, an' you was let down i' th' bight of a rope, fendin' yoursen off the side wi' one hand, carryin' a candle stuck in a lump o' clay with t'other, an' clickin' hold of a rope with t'other hand." "An' that's three of them," said Mulvaney. **Must be a good climate in those parts." Learoyd took no heed. "An' then yo' came to a level, where you crept on your hand an' knees through a mile o* windin' drift, an' you come out into a cave- place as big as Leeds Town-hall, with an engine pumpin' water from workin's 'at went deeper still. It's a queer country, let alone minin', for the hill is full of those natural caves, an' the rivers an' the becks drops into what they call pot-holes, an' come out again miles away. " "Wot was you doin' there?" said Ortheris. **I was a young chap then, an' mostly went wi' 'osses, leadin' coal and lead ore; but at th' 106 ON GREENHOW HILL. time I'm tellin* on I was drivin' the wagon team i* the big sumph. I didn't belong to that countryside by rights. I went there because of a little difference at home, an' at fust I took up wi' a rough lot. One night we'd been drinkin', and I must hav' hed more than I could stand, or happen th' ale was none so good. Though i' them days, by for God, I never seed bad ale." He flung his arms over his head and gripped a vast handful of white violets. "Nah," said he, "I never seed the ale I could not drink, the 'bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th* others, an' when I was climbin* ower one of them walls built o' loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones an' all, an' broke my arm. Not as I knowed much about it, for I fell on th' back o' my head, an' was knocked stupid like. An' when I come to mysen it were mornin', an' I were lyin* on the settle i' Jesse Roantree's house-place, an* 'Liza Roantree was settin' sewin'. I ached all ower, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi' gold letters — 'A Present from Leeds,* — as I looked at many and many a time after. 'You're to lie still while Doctor War bottom comes, because your arm's broken, an' father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo' when he was goin' to work, an* carried you here on his back,' sez she. *0a!' sez I; an' I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o' mysen. * Father's gone to his work these three hours, ON GREENHOW HILL, 107 an* he said he'd tell 'em to get somebody to drive the train.' The clock ticked an* a bee corned in the house, an' they rung i' my head like mill wheels. An' she gave me another drink an' settled the pillow. *Eh, but yo're young to be getten drunk an' such like, but yo' won't do it again, will yo'?' 'Noa,' sez I. 'I wouldn't if she'd not but stop they mill- wheels clatterin'.' " *' Faith, it's a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you're sick!" said Mulvaney. "Dirt cheap at the price av twenty broken heads." Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many women in his life. *'An' then Doctor Warbottom comes ridin* up, an' Jesse Roantree along with 'im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi* poor folks same as theirsens. 'What's tha bin agaate on naa?' he sings out. *Brekkin tha thick head?' An' he felt me all over. 'That's none broken. Tha' nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an' that's daafteneai.* An' so he went on, callin' me all the names he could think on, but settin' my arm, wi' Jesse's help, as careful as could be. 'Yo' mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse, ' he says, when he had strapped me up an' given me a dose o' physic; 'an' you an' 'Liza will tend him, though he's scarcelins worth the trouble. An' tha'll lose tha work,' sez he, 'an' tha'll be upon th' Sick Club for a couple o' months an' more. Doesn't tha think tha's a fool?' " 108 ON GREENHOW HILL. **But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I'd like to know?" said Mulvaney. **Sure, folly's the only safe way to wisdom, for I've thried it." ** Wisdom!" grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin. *' You're bloomin' Solomons, you two, ain't you?" Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud. "And that was how I comed to know 'Liza Roantree. There's some tunes as she used to sing — aw, she were always singin* — that fetches Greenhow Hill be- fore my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would learn me to sing bass, an' I was to go to th' chapel wi' 'em, where Jesse and she led thesingin', th' old man playin* the fiddle. He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi* music, an' he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a bi^ case alongside o* th' eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi' th' fid- dle-stick to make him give ower sawin' at th* right time. *'But there was a black drop in it all, an' it was a man in a black coat that brought it. When th' Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow, he would always stop wi' Jesse Roantree, an' he laid hold of me from th* be- ginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, an' he meaned to do it. At th' same time I jealoused 'at he were keen o' savin' 'Liza ON GREENHOW HILL. 109 Roantree's soul as well, an' I could ha' killed him many a time. An' this went on till one day I broke out, an' borrowed th' brass for a drink from 'Liza. After fower days I come back, wi' my tail between my legs, just to see 'Liza again. But Jesse were at home, an' th* preacher — th' Reverend Amos Barraclough. 'Liza said naught, but a bit o* red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin* his best to be civil : 'Nay, lad, it's like this. You've getten to choose which way it's goin' to be. I'll ha' nobody across ma doorsteps as goes a-drinkin', an' bor- rows my lass' money to spend i' their drink. Ho'd tha tongue, 'Liza,' sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at I were welcome to th' brass, an' she were none afraid that I wouldn't pay it back. Then the reverend cuts in, seein' as Jesse were losin' his temper, an' they fair beat me among them. But it were 'Liza, as looked an' said naught, as did more than either o' their tongues, an' soa I concluded to get converted." * * F what ! ' ' shouted Mulvaney. Then, check- ing himself, he said, softly: "Let be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an' most women; an' there's a deal av piety in a girl if the men would only let it stay there. I'd ha' ben converted myself under the circumstances. ' ' *'Nay, but," pursued Learoyd, with a blush, •*I meaned it." Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, hav- ing regard to his business at the time. no ON GREENHOW HILL. *'Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn't know yon preacher Barraclough — a lit- tle white-faced chap wi* a voice as 'ud wile a bird off on a bush, and a way o' layin* hold o' folks as made them think they'd never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him, an' — an' you never seed 'Liza Roantree — never seed 'Liza Roantree. . . . Happen it was as much 'Liza as th* preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it, an' I was fair ashamed o' mysen, an' so become what they called a changed character. And when I think on, it's hard to believe as yon chap going to prayer-meetin's, chapel, and class-meetin's were me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o' shoutin', and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, 'Joyful! joyful!' and 'at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i' a coach an' six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin' : 'Doesn't tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn't tha feel it?' An' sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn't, an' how was that?" "The iverlastin' nature av mankind,** said Mulvaney. "An', furthermore, I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They're a new corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she's the mother of them all — ay, an* the father, too. I like her bekase she's most remarkable regimental in her fit- tings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, OK GREENHOW HILL. Ill or Cape Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein* fwat I am, an* a priest handy, I go tinder the same orders an' the same words an' the same unction as tho' the pope himself come down from the dome av St. Peter's to see me off. There's neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, not betwixt nor between with her, an' that's what I like. But mark you, she's no manner av Church for a wake man, bekase she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died, that was three months comin' to his grave; begad he'd ha' sold the sheebeen above our heads for ten minutes' quittance of pMrgathory. An' he did all he could. That's why I say it takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an' for that reason you'll find so many women go there. An' that same's a conundrum." "Wot's the use o* worritin' 'bout these things?" said Ortheris. "You're bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any'ow." He jerked the cartridge out of the breech-lock into the palm of his hand. *' 'Ere's my chaplain," he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a marionette. " 'E's goin' to teach a man all about which is which, an' wot's true, after all, before sundown. But wot 'appened after that, Jock?" "There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th' gate i' my face for and that were my dog Blast, th' only one saved out o* a litter o' pups as was blowed up when a keg o* minin' powder loosed off in th' storekeeper's 112 ON GREENHOW HILL. hut. They liked his name no better than his business, which was fightin' every dog he corned across ; a rare good dog, wi' spots o' black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o' one side wi* being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile. "They said I mun give him up 'cause he were worldly and low; and would I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake of a dog? *Nay,' says I, *if th' door isn't wide enough for th' pair on us, we'll stop outside or we'll none be parted.' And th' preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a likin' for him from th' first — I reckon that was why I come to like th* preacher — and wouldn't hear o' changin' his name to Bless, as some o' them wanted. So th' pair on us became reg'lar chapel members. But it's hard for a young chap o' my build to cut tracks from the world, th' flesh, an' the devil all av a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time, while th' lads as used to stand about th' town-end an' lean ower th' bridge, spitting into th' beck o' a Sunday, would call after me, *Sitha, Learoyd, when's tha bean to preach, 'cause we're comin' to hear that.' * He'd tha jaw! He hasn't getten th' white choaker on th* morn,' another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i' th' bottom of my Sun- day coat, and say to mysen, *If 'twere Monday and I warn't a member o' the Primitive Meth- odists, I'd leather all th' lot of yond*.* That was th' hardest of all — to know that I could fight and I mustn't fight." Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney, ON GREENHOW HILL. 113 ** So what wi' singin', practicin*, and class meetin's, and th' big fiddle, as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o' time i' Jesse Roantree's house-place. But often as I was there, th' preacher fared to me to go oftener, and both th' old an' th' young woman were pleased to have him. He lived i' Pately Brigg, as were a goodish step off, but he come. I liked him as well or better as any man I'd ever seen i' one way, and yet I hated him wi' all my heart i' t' other, and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I was on my best behavior, and he was that fair and open that I was bound to be fair with him. Rare and good company he was, if I hadn't wanted to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when he was goin' from Jesse's I'd set him a bit on the road." *'See 'im *ome, you mean?" said Ortheris. **Aye. It's a way we have i' Yorkshire o* seein' friends off. Yon was a friend as I didn't want to come back and he didn't want me to come back neither, and so we'd walk together toward Pately, and then he'd set me back again, and there we'd be twal two i' o'clock the mornin' settin' each other to an' fro like a blasted pair o' pendulums twixt hill and valley, long after th* light had gone out i' 'Liza's window, as both on us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon." *'Ah!" broke in Mulvaney, '*ye'd no chanst against the maraudin' psalm-singer. They'll take the airs and the graces, instid av the 8 Ditties 114 ON GREENHOW HILL. man, nine times out av ten, an' they only find the blunder later — the wimmen. " *'That's just where yo're wrong," said Learoyd, reddening^ under the freckled tan of his cheek. "I was th' first wi' Liza an' yo'd think that were enough. But th' parson were a steady-gaited sort o' chap and Jesse were strong on his side, and all th' women i' the congregation dinned it to 'Liza 'at she were fair fond to take up wi' a wastrel ne'er-doweel like me, as was scarcelins respectable and a fighting dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn't do herself harm. They talk o' rich folk bein' stuck up an' genteel, but for cast-iron pride o' res- pectibility, there's naught like poor chapel folk. It's as cold as th' wind o' Greenhow Hill — aye, and colder, for 'twill never change. And now I come to think on it one of the strangest things I know is 'at they couldn't abide th' thought o' soldiering. There's a vast o' fightin* i' th' Bible, and there's a deal of Methodists i' th' army; but to hear chapel- folk talk yo'd think that solderin' were next door, an' t'other side, to hangin'. I' their meetin's all their talk is o' fightin'. When Sammy Strother were struk for summat to say in his prayers, he'd sing out: *The sword o' th' Lord and o* Gideon.' They were alius at it about puttin' on th' whole armor o' right- eousness, an' fightin' the good fight o' faith. And then, atop o' 't all, they held a prayer- meetin' ower a young chap as wanted to 'list, ON GREENHOW HILL, 115 and nearly deafened him till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in the Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sun- days and playin* truant o' week-days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fighting', rabbit- runnin, ' and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi' it, an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier, an' they'd all fetch a deep breath and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin'." **Fwhy is it?" said Mulvaney, bringing down his hands on his thigh with a crack. *'In the name av God, fwhy is it? I've seen it, tu. They cheat an' they swindle, an' they lie, an* they slander, an' fifty things fifty times worse; but the last an' the worst, by their reckonin', is to serve the Widdy honest. It's like the talk av childer — scein' things all round/' "Plucky lot of fightin' good fights of whats- ername they'd do if we didn't see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin' as theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T'other callin' to which to come on. I'd give a month's pay to get some o' them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin' through a day's road-makin' an' a night's rain. They'd carry on a deal afterward — same as we're supposed to carry on. I've bin turned out of a measly 'arf license pub. down Lambeth way, full o' greasy kebmen, 'fore now," said Ortheris with an oath. 116 ON GREENHOW HILL. "Maybe you were dhrunk," said Mulvaney, soothingly. "Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. I was wearin' the queen's uniform." "I'd not particular thought to be a soldier i' them days," said Learoyd, still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, "but his sort o'talk put it i* my head. They was so good, th' chapel folk, that they tumbled over t'other side. But I stuck to it for 'Liza's sake, specially as she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were getting up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin's night after night for a matter of three months." "I know what a horotorio is," said Ortheris, pertly. "It's a sort of chaplain's sing-song — words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah choruses." "Most Greenhow Hill folks played some in- strument or t'other, an' they all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they was so pleased wi' the noise they made they didn't fair to want anybody to listen. The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn't playin' the flute, an* they set me, as hadn't got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterth- waite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a' gate playin'. Old Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th' conductor an' th* first fiddle an' th* leadin* singer, beatin' time wi' his fiddle-stick, till at times he*d rap with it on the table, and cry out : *Now, you mun all stop, it's my turn.' And he'd face round to his ON GREENHOW HILL. 117 front, fair sweatin' wi' pride, to sing the tenor solos. But he were grandest i' th' chorus waggin* his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and singin' hisself black in the face. A rare singer were Jesse. "Yo* see, I was not o' much account wi' *em all exceptin' to Eliza Roantree, and I had a deal o' time settin' quiet at meeting and horo- torio practices to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at beginnin', it got stranger still at after, when I was shut in, and could study what it meaned. "Just after th' horotorios come off, 'Liza, as had alius been weakly like, was took very bad. I walked Doctor Warbottom's horse up and down a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn't let me go, though I fair ached to see her. •' 'She'll be better i' noo, lad— better i' noo,* he used to say. 'Tha mun ha* patience.* Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th' Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin' propped up among th' pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on th' settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th' preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i' them days, and i' one way we was rare good comrades. But I could ha' stretched him time and again with a good-will. I rnind one day he said he would like to go down into th' bowels o' th' earth, and see how th' Lord had builded th' framework o' the everlastin' hills. He was one of them chaps as had a gift 118 ON GREENHOW HILL. o' sayin' things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney here, as would ha' made a rale good preacher if he had nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit o' miner's kit as almost buried th' little man, and his white face, down i' th' coat collar and hat flap, looked like the face of a boggart, and " he cowered down i' th' bottom o' the wagon. I was drivin' a tram as led up a bit of an in- cline up to th' cave where the engine was pumpin', and where th' ore was brought up and put into th' wagons as went down o' them- selves, me piittin' th' brake on and th' horses a-trottin' after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th' dark, and could nobbut see th' day shinin* at the hole like a lamp at a street end, I feeled downright wicked. My religion dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin' between me and Eliza. The talk was 'at they were to be wed when she got better, an' I couldn't get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and I came out wi' a chorus that was all cussin' an' swearin' at my horses, an* I began to know how I hated him. He were such a little chap, too. I could drop him wi* one hand down Garstang's copperhole — a place where th' beck slithered ower th' edge on a rock, and fell wi' a bit of a whisper into a pit as rope i* Greenhow could plump." Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent vio- lets. "Aye, he should see th* bowels o' th' earth an* never naught else. I could take him ON GREENHOW HILL. 119 a mile or two along th' drift, and leave him wi' his candle doused to cry hallelujah, wi* none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down the ladderway to th' drift where Jesse Roantree was workin', and why shouldn't he slip on th' ladder, wi' my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi* my heel? If I went fust down th' ladder, I could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squashin' down the shaft, breakin' his bones at ev'ry timbering as Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn't a bone left when he brought to th' bot- tom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver 'an ar to put round 'Liza Roantree's waist. Niver no more — niver no more. " The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and OrtheriG, moved by his comrade's passion, jrought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillsides for his quarry, mutter- ing ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the water-course supplied the necessary small-talk till Learoyd picked up his story. "But it's none so easy to kill a man like you. When I'd give up my horses to th* lad as took my place, and I was showin' th' preacher th* workin's, shoutin' into his ear across th' clang o' th* pumpin' engines, I saw he was afraid o' naught; and when the lamp-light showed his black eyes, I could feel as he was masterin* me again. I were no better nor Blast chained 120 ON GREENHOW HILL. up short and growlin' i' the depths of him while a strange dog went safe past. '* 'Th'art a coward and a fool,' I said to mysen; an' wrestled i' my mind again* him till, when we come to Garstang's copper-hole, I laid hold o' the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest on it. *Now, lad,' I says, 'it's to be one or t'other on us — thee or me — for 'Liza Roantree. Why, isn't thee afraid for thysen?' I says, for he were still i' my arms as a sack. 'Nay; I'm but afraid for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught,' says he. I set him down on th' edge, an' th' beck run stiller, an' there was no more buzzin' in my head like when th' bee come through th' window o' Jesse's house. *What dost tha mean?' says I. ** 'I've often thought as thou ought to know,' says he, *buc 'twas hard to tell theeo 'Liza Roantree's for neither ou us, nor for nobody o' this earth. Doctor Warbottom says —and he knows her, and her mother before her — that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer. He's known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!' says he. And that weak little man pulled me fur- ther back and set me again' him, and talked it all over quiet and still, me turnin' a bunch 'o candles in my hand, and counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were th' regular preachin' talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to think as he were more of a man than I'd ever given ON GREENHOW HILL. 121 him credit for, till I were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen. **Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they lasted, and I said to mysen: * 'Liza Roantree hasn't six months to live. ' And when we came into th' daylight again we were like dead men to look at, an' Blast come behind us without so much as waggin' his tail. When I saw 'Liza again she looked at me a minute and says: * Who's telled tha? For I see tha knows. ' And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke down. •'You see, I was a young chap i' them days, and had seen naught o' life, let alone death, as is alius a-waitin*. She telled me as Doctor Warbottom said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin* to Bradford, to Jesse's brother David, as worked i' a mill, and I mun hold up like a man and a Christian, and she'd pray for me well; and they went away, and the preacher that same back end o* the year were appointed to another circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow HilL *'I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th* chapel, but 'tweren't th' same thing at all after. I hadn't 'Liza's voice to follow i* th* singin*, nor her eyes a-shinin* acrost their heads. And i' th' class-meetings they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn't a word to say for mysen. *' Blast and me moped a good deal, and hap- pen we didn't behave ourselves over well, for they dropped us, and wondered however they'd 122 ON GREENHOW HILL. come to take us up. I can't tell how we got through th* time, while i' th' winter I gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th' door o' th' house, in a long street o' lit- tle houses. He'd been sendin' th' children, 'way as were clatterin' their clogs in th' case- way, for she were asleep. ** *Is it thee?' he says; 'but you're not to see her. I'll none have her wakened for a nowt like thee. She's goin' fast, and she mun go in peace. Thou it never be good for naught i' th' world, and as long as thou lives thou'll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!' So he shut the door softly i' my face. *' Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about right, an' I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting sergeant. The old tales o' th* chapel folk came buzzin' into my head. I was to get away, and this were th' regular road for the likes o' me. I 'listed there an' then, took th* Widow's shillin', and had a bunch o' rib- bons pinned i' my hat. *'But next day I found my way to David Roantree's door, and Jesse came to open it. Says he: 'Thou's come back again wi' th* devil's colors flyin' — thy true colors, as I always telled thee. ' *'But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-by, till a woman calls down th' stairway — she says, *John Lea- royd's to come up.' Th' old man shift aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like. *But thou'lt be quiet, John/ says ON GREENHOW HILL. 123 he, 'for she's rare and weak. Thou wast alius a good lad. ' "Her eyes were alive wi' light, and her hair was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks were thin — thin to frighten a man that's strong. 'Nay, father, yo* mayn't say th' devil's colors. Them ribbons is pretty.' An' she held out her hands for th' hat, an' she put all straight as a woman will wi' ribbons. •Nay, but what they're pretty,' she says. *Eh, but I'd ha' liked to see thee i' thy red coat, John, for thou wast alius my own lad — my very own lad, and none else.* "She lifted up her arms, and they came round my neck i* a gentle grip, and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. *Now yo' mun get away, lad,' says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs. **Th' recruiting sergeant were waitin' for me at th' corner public-house. *Yo've sen your sweetheart?' says he. *Yes, I've seen her,' says L *Well, we'll have a quart now, and you'll do your best to forget her,' says he, bein' one o' them smart, bustlin* chaps. *Aye, sergeant,' says I. 'Forget her.' And I've been forgettin' her ever since." He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted. Private Stanley Ortheris was 124 ON GREENHOW HILL. engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled up the water-course. **See that beggar? Got 'im." Seven hundred yards away and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investi- gation. "That's a clean shot, little man," said Mul- vaney. Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. *' Happen there was a lass tewed up wi* him, too," said he. Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work. For he saw that it was good. BIMI. The orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the discussion. The night was stifiingly hot,and as Hans Breitmann and I passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak of the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England to be exhibited at a shil- ling a head. For four days he had struggled, yelled, and wrenched at the heavy iron bars of his prison without ceasing, and had nearly slain a Lascar incautious enough to come within reach of the great hairy paw. *'It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick," said Hans Breit- mann, pausing by the cage. "You haf too much Ego in your Cosmos." The orang-outang's arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No one would have believed that it would make a sudden snake- like rush at the German's breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out : Hans stepped back unconcernedly, to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close to one of the boats. "Too much Ego," said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged devil, who was rending the silk to tatters. 125 126 BIMi. Then we laid out our bedding in the bows, among the sleeping Lascars, to catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was like smoky oil, except wh^re it turned to fire under our forefoot and whirled back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a thunder-storm some miles away; we could see the glimmer of the lightning. The ship's cow, distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed un- happily from time to time in exactly the same key as the lookout man at the bows answered the hourly call from the bridge. The tramp- ling tune of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift, as it was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of hushed noise. Hans lay down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar. This was naturally the be- ginning of conversation. He owned a voice as soothing as the wash of the sea, and stores of experiences as vast as the sea itself ; for his business in life was to wander up and down the world, collecting orchids and wild beasts and ethnological specimens for German and American dealers. I watched the glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orang-outang, troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell like a soul in purgatory, and to wrench madly at the bars of the cage. *'If he was out now dere would not be much of us left, hereabouts," said Hans lazily. *'He BiMt. 12t screams gfood. See, now, how I shall tame mm when he stops himself." There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans' mouth came an imitation of a snake's his3, so perfect that I almost sprung to my feet. The sustained murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the bars ceased. The orang-outang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror. ;*Dot stop him," said Hans. ♦'! learned dot tnck m Mogoung Tanjong when I was collect- ing liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery one in der world is afraid of der mon- keys—except der snake. So I blay snake agamst monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in his Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep or will you listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?" **There's no tale in the wide world that I can't believe, " I said. **If you have learned pelief you haf learned somedmgs. Now I shall try your pelief. Good! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys— it was in '79 or 'So, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago— -over dere in der dark"— he pointed southward to New Gumea generally — " Mein Gott! I would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey do not bite off your thumbs der are always dying from nostalgia— home-sick— for dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway arrested in defelopment— und too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, 128 BIMI. und dere I found a man dot was called Bert- ran. He was a Frenchman, und he was a goot man — naturalist to the bone. Dey said he was an escaped convict, but he was a naturalist, und dot was enough for me. He would call all her life beasts from der forest, und dey would come. I said he was St. Francis of Assisi in a new dransmigration produced, und he laughed und said he haf never preach to der fishes. He sold them for tripang — beche- de-mer. "Und dot man, who was king of beasts- tamer men, he had in der house shush such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage — a great orang-outang dot thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child — der orang- outang — und he was child and brother and opera comique all round to Bertran. He had his room in dot house — not a cage, but a room — mit a bed and sheets, and he would go to bed and get up in der morning and smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand-in-hand, which was most horrible. HerrGott! I haf seen dot beast throw him- self back in his chair and laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me. He was not a beast; he was a man, and he talked to Bertran, und Bertran comprehended, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me except when I talk too long to Bertran und say nod- dings at all to him. Den he would pull me awa — dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous paws — shush as if I was a child. He was not a beast, he was a man. Dis I saw pefore I BIMI. 129 know him three months, tmd Bertran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between his big-dog teeth und der blue gum. "I was dere a year, dere und at der oder islands— somedimes for monkeys and some- dimes for butterflies and orchits. One time Bertran say to me dot he will be married, because he haf found a girl dot was goot, and he inquire if this marrying idea was right. I would not say, pecause it was not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off court- ing der girl — she was a half-caste French girl —very pretty. Haf you got a new light for my cigar? Oof! Very pretty. Only I say: Haf you thought of Bimi? If he pulls me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for wed- ding present der stuff figure of Bimi. ' By dot time I had learned somedings about der mon- key peoples. *Shoot him?' says Bertran. *He is your beast,' I said; 'if he was mine he would be shot now. * *'Den I felt at der back of my neck der fin- gers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I tell you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf- and-dumb alphabet all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, and he tilt up my chin und look into my face, shust to see if I understood his talk so well as he understood mine. ** *See now dere!' says Bertran, *und you 9 Ditties 130 BiMI. would shoot him while he Is cuddling you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!* **But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life's enemy, pecause his fingers haf talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a pistol in my belt, und he touch it once, and I open der breech to show him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods, and he understood. **So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was skippin' alone on der beach mit der half of a human soul in his belly. I was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till he haf made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran: *For any sakes, kill Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy. ' *' Bertran haf said; 'He is not mad at all. He haf obey and love my wife, und if she speaks he will get her slippers,' und he looked at his wife across der room. She was a very pretty girl. *'Den I said to him: * Dost thou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot is lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him? Shoot him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eyes dot means killing — und killing. ' Bimi come to der house, but dere was no light in his eyes. It was all put away, cunning — so cunning — und he fetch der girl her slippers, and Bertran turn tome und say: 'Dost thou know him in nine months more dan 1 haf known him in twelve years? Shall a child stab his fader? I have fed BIMI. 131 him, und he was my child. Do not speak this nonsense to my wife or to me any more. * **Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases for der speci- mens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle while mit Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say: 'Let us go to your house und get a trink. ' He laugh und say: *Come along, dry mans.* '*His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her bedroom door und dot was shut tight — locked. Den he look at me, und his face was white. I broke down her door mit my shoulder, und der thatch of der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der floor. Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on der table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere was noddings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor, und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but Bertran looked a liddle longer at what was upon the floor und der walls, und der hole in der thatch. Den he pe^an to laugh, soft and low, und I knew und thank Gott dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He stood still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said: 'She haf locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi done. Dot is so. We will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely come. ' 132 BIMt. **I tell you we waited ten days in dot house. after der room was made into a room again, and once or twice we saw Bimi comin* a liddle way from der woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called him when he was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping along der beach und making noises, mit a long piece of black hair in his hands. Den Bertran laugh and say, ^Fi done!* shust as if it was a glass broken upon der table ; •und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet in his voice and laughed to him- self. For three days he made love to Bimi, pecause Bimi would not let himself be touched. Den Bimi come to dinner at der same table mit us, und der hair on his hands was all black und thick mit — mit what had dried on his hands. Bertran gave him sangaree till Bimi was drunk and stupid, und den Hans paused to puff at his cigar. *'And then?" said I. *'Und den Bertran kill him with his hands, und I go for a walk upon der beach. It was Bertran's own piziness. When I come back der ape he was dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him ; but still he laughed a liddle und low, and he was quite content. Now you know der formula of der strength of der orang-outang — it is more as seven to one in relation to man. But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der mericle." The infernal clamor in the cage recom- menced. **Aha! Dot friend of ours haf still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be quiet, thou!" BIMI. 133 Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking in his cage. "But why in the world didn't 5"ou help Bert- ran instead of letting him be killed?" I asked. *'My friend, " said Hans, composedly stretch- ing himself to slumber, '*it was not nice even to mineself dot I should lif after I had seen dot room wit der hole in der thatch. Und Bert- ran, he was her husband. Goot-night, und sleep well.** NAMGAY DOOLA. Once upon a time there was a king who lived on the road to Thibet, very many miles in the Himalaya Mountains. His kingdom was 1 1 ,000 feet above the sea, and exactly four miles square, but most of the miles stood on end, owing to the nature of the country. His rev- enues were rather less than ;^4oo yearly, and they were expended on the maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was tributary to the Indian government, who allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further increased his revenues by selling timber to the railway companies, for he would cut the great deodar trees in his own forest and they fell thundering into the Sutlej River and were swept down to the Plains, 300 miles away, and became railway ties. Now and again this king, whose name does not matter, would mount a ring-streaked horse and ride scores ©f miles to Simlatown to confer with the lieuten- ant-governor on matters of state, or assure the viceroy that his sword was at the service of the queen-empress. Then the viceroy would cause a ruffle of drums to be sounded and the ring- streaked horse and the cavalry of the state — 134 NAMGAY DOOLA. 135 two men in tatters— and the herald who bore the Silver Stick before the king would trot back to their own place, which was between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch forest. , , . Now, from such a king, always remembermg that he possessed one veritable elephant and could count his descent for 1,200 years I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions, no more than mere license to live. The night had closed in ram, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Dongol Pa— the T^Iountain of the Council of the Gods; ^upheld the evening star. The monkeys sung sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roots in the fern-draped trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the ^mseen villacres the scent of damp wood smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine- cones. That smell is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if it once gets into the blood of a man he will, at the last, forgetting every- thing else, return to the Hills to die. ine clouds closed and the smell went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mists and the boom of the butle) River. ^ ^ ,. A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated lamentably at my tent-door. He was scuffling with the prime minister and the direc- tor-general of public education, and he was 4 136 NAMGAY DOOLA. royal gift to me and my camp servants. 1 expressed my thanks suitably and inquired if I might have audience of the king. The prime minister re-adjusted his turban — it had fallen off in the struggle — and assured me that the king would be very pleased to see me. There- fore I dispatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation, climbed up to the king's palace through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but it stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much alike all the world over. The palace was a four-roomed, white-washed mud-and-timber house, the finest in all the Hills for a day's journey. The king was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a safforn-yellow turban of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the palace court-yard, which was occupied by the elephant of state. The great beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his back stood out against the sky line. The prime minister and the director-general of public instruction were present to introduce me ; but all the court had been dismissed lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The king cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honored presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason NAMGAY DOOLA. 137 of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his king- dom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent, more than the average. I said that the fame of the king had reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they heard daily of the glory of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like prime minister and lotus-eyed direc- tor-general of public education. Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the king's right hand. Three mmutes later he was telling me that the condi- tion of the maize crop was something disgrace- ful, and that the railway companies would not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the bottles. We dis- cussed very many quaint things, and the king became confidential on the subject of govern- ment generally. Most of all he dwelt on the short-comings of one of his subjects, who, from what I could gather, had been paralyzing the executive. •'In the old days," said the king, "I could have ordered the elephant yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e'en send him seventy miles across the hills to be tried, and his keep for that time would be upon the state. And the elephant eats everything. " "What be the man's crimes, Rajah Sahib>" said I. ••Firstly, he's an 'outlander,' and no man of mme own people. Secondly, since of my favor 138 NAMGAY DOOLA. I gave him land upon his coming, he refuses to pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below — entitled by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax . . . and he brings a poisonous spawn of babies." "Cast him into jail," I said. "Sahib," the king answered, shifting a little on the cushions, "once and only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God, for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my vow? Were it only the lopping off of a hand or a foot, I should not delay. But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One or another of my people" — he looked obliquely at the director-general of pub- lic education — "would at once write a letter to the viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of that ruffle of drums." He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber one, and passed the pipe to me. "Not content with refusing revenue," he continued, "this outlander re- fuses also to beegar" (this is the corvee or forced lahor on the roads), "and stirs my people up to the like treason. Yet he is, if so he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when the logs stick fast." NAMGAY DOOLA. 139 *'But he worships strange gods," said the prime minister, deferentially. "For that I have no concern," said the king, who was as tolerant as Akbar in matters of be- lief. "To each man his own god, and the fire or Mother Earth for us all at the last. It is the rebellion that offends me." "The king has an army," I suggested. '*Has not the king burned the man's house, and left him naked to the night dews?" "Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once I sent my army against him when his excuses became wearisome. Of their heads he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also the guns would not shoot." I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old muzzle-loading fowl- ing-piece with ragged rust holes where the nip- ples should have been; one-third a wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten stock, and one- third a four-bore flint duck gun, without a flint. "But it is to be remembered," said the king, reaching out for the bottle, "that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry face. What shall I do to him, sahib?" This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused taxes to their king as offerings to their gods. The rebel must be a man of character, "If it be the king's permission," I said, "I will not strike my tents till the third day, and I will see this man The mercy of the king is godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of 140 NAMGAY DOOLA. witchcraft. Moreover, both the bottles, and another, be empty." "You have my leave to go," said the king. Next morning the crier went through the state proclaiming that there was a log-jam on the river and that it behooved all loyal sub- jects to clear it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist, warm valley of poppy fields, and the king and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed deodar logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, while the popula- tion of the state prodded at the nearest logs with poles, in the hope of easing the pressure. Then there went up a shout of * ' Namgay Doola, Namgay Doola!" and a large, red-haired vil- lager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he ran. "That is he. That is the rebel!" said the king. "Now will the dam be cleared." "But why has he red hair?" I asked, since red hair among hill-folk is as uncommon as blue or green. "Heisanoutlander," said the king. "Well done! Oh, well done'" Namgay Doola had scrambled on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of a boat-hook. It slid forward slowly, as an alligator moves, and three or four others followed it. The green water spouted through the gaps. Then the villagers howled NAMGAY DOOLA. 141 and shouted and leaped among the logs, pull- ing and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from up-stream battered the now weakening dam. It gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing butts, bobbing black heads, and a confusion inde- scribable, as the river tossed everything be- fore it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants of the jam and disappear be- tween the great grinding tree trunks. It rose close to the bank, and blowing like a grampus, Namgay Doola wiped the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the king. I had time to observe the man closely. The virulent redness of his shock head and beard was most startling, and in the thicket of hair twinkled above high cheek-bones two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an out- lander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gut- turals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent. *'Whencecomest thou?" I asked, wondering. **From Thibet. " He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand, and Namgay Doola took it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably fami- liar. It was the whooping of Namgay Doola. 14^ NAMGAY doola. "You see no\Y, " said the king, "why I would not kill him. He is a bold man among my logs, but," and he shook his head like a school- master, "I know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let lis re- turn to the palace and do justice," It was that king's custom to judge his sub- jects every day between eleven and three o'clock. I heard him do justice equitably on weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me. "Again it is Namgay Doola," he said, despairingly. "Not content with refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor are my taxes lieavy. " A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear, advanced trembling. He had been in Namgay Doola's conspiracy, but had told everything and hoped for the king's ^avor. "Oh, king!" said I, "if it be the king's will, let this matter stand over till the morning. Only the gods can do right in a hurry, and it may be that yonder villager has lied." "Nay, for I know the nature of Nam.gay Doola; but since a guest asks, let the matter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak harshly to this red-headed outlander? He may listen to thee." I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not keep my counten- NAMGAY DOOLA. 143 ance. Namgfay Doola grinned so persuasively and began to tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy field by the river. Would I care to shoot that bear? I spoke austerely on the sin of detected conspiracy and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterward he with- drew from my tent, and I heard him singing softly among the pines. The words were un- intelligible to me, but the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something strangely familiar. "Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee, ' ' crooned Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a square foot of velvet from the center of my best camera cloth. This made me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy field as I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the scent of the tasseled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow — one of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in the act of firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant red head. The lesser tU NAMGAY DOOLA. animal was trailing something rope-like that left a dark track on the path. They were within six feet of me, and the shadov/ of the moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and went to bed. Next morning the kingdom was in an uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was sacri- lege unspeakable against the holy cow! The state desired his blood, but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with big stones, and defied the world. The king and I and the populace appr@ached the hut cautiously. There was no hope of capturing our man without loss of life, for from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle ,of an extremely well- cared- for gun — the only gun in the state that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just be- fore we came up. The standing army stood. It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time show- ers of scalding water. We saw red heads bob- bing up and down within. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire. Blood- curdling yells of defiance were the only answer to our prayers. NAMGAY DOOLA. 145 *'Never/* said the king-, puffing, "has such a thing- befallen my state. Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon." He looked at me imploringly. **Is there any priest in the kingdom to whom he will listen?" said I, for a light was begin- ning to break upon me. **He worships his own god," said the prime minister. "We can but starve him out." "Let the white man approach," said Nam- gay Doola from within. "All others I will kill. Send me the white man." The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A fresh-gathered cow's tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black velvet — my black velvet — rudely hacked into the semblance of masks. "And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?" I asked. He grinned more charmingly than ever. "There is no shame," said he. "I did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I was minded to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to death ; only in the legs." "And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king? Why at all?" "By the god of my father, I can not tell," said Namgay Doola. "And who was thy father?" "The same that had this gun. " He showed me his weapon, a Tower musket, bearing date IQ Ditties 146 NAMGAY DOOLA. 1 832 and the stamp of the Honorable East India Company. **And thy father's name?" said I. *'Timlay Doola," said he. '*At the first, I being then a little child, it is in my mind that he wore a red coat. ' ' "Of that I have no doubt; but repeat the name of thy father twice or thrice." He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling- accent in his speech came. "Thimla Dhula!" said he excitedly. "To this hour I worship his god." "May I see that god?" "In a little while — at twilight time." "Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?" "It is long ago. But there was one word which he said of ten. Thus, 'Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides, thus." "Even so. And what was thy mother?" "A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they call an outlander, be- cause my hair as as thou seest. " The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight — the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling back a whisp of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass crucifix, leaning against NAMGAY DOOLA. 147 the helmet badge of a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment. **Thus did my father/' he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then, all together, they struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hill-side : "Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee. ' ' I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they sung, as if their hearts would break, their version of the chorus of" The Wearing of the Green": "They're hanging men and women, too, For the wearing of the green." A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight years old — could he have been in the fields last night? — was watching me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin between finger and thumb, and looked— only looked— at the gun leaning against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his porringer-like face. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied. The inevitable blood-instinct held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess. Angelus was over. 148 NAMGAY DOOLA. "Thus my father sung. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be that the god will understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue. " "And why?" Again that soul-compelling grin. "What occupation would be to me between crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not understand." He picked the masks off the floor and looked in my face as simply as a child. "By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make those deviltries?" I said, pointing. "I can not tell. I am but a Lepcha of Dar- jiling, and yet the stuff " "Which thou has stolen," said I. "Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff — the stuff. What else should I have done with the stuff?" He twisted the velvet between his fingers. "But the sin of maiming the cow — consider that." "Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the heifer'3 tail waved in the moonlight, and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I. " "That is true," said I. "Stay within the door. I go to speak to the king." The popu- lation of the state were ranged on the hill-side. I went forth and spoke. "Oh, king," said I, "touching this man, there be two courses open to thy wisdom. NAMGAY DOOLA. 149 Thou canst either hang him from a tree — he and his brood — till there remains no hair that is red within thy land." *'Nay," said the king. "Why should I hurt the little children?" They had poured out of the hut and were making plump obeisance to everybody. Namgay Doola waited at the door with his gun across his arm. '*Or thou canst, discarding their impiety of the cow-maiming", raise him to honor in thy army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that glow- ing hair. Make him chief of thy army. Give him honor as may befall and full allow- ance of work, but look to it, oh, king, that neither he nor his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and favor, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he will be a bulwark of defense. But deny him even a tuftlet of grass for his ov/n. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover, he has brethren " The state groaned unanimously. "But if his brethren come they will surely fight with each other till they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the other. Shall he be of thy army, oh, king? Choose." The king bowed his head, and I said: "Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the king's army. Thy name shall no more be 150 NAMGAY DOOLA. Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for, as thou hast truly said, I know." Then Namgay Doola, new-christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola — which is Tim Doolan — clasped the king's feet, cuffed the standing army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to temple amking offerings for the sin of the cattle-maiming. And the king was so pleased with my perspi- cacity that he offered to sell me a village for ^20 sterling. But I buy no village in the Himalayas so long as one red head flares be- tween the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch forest. I know that breed. MOTI GUJ— MUTINEER. Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some forest land for coiTee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamiie is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, there- fore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's name was Moti Guj. He was the abso- lute property of his mahout, which would never have been the case under native rule: for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the 151 152 MOTI GUJ-MUTINEER. forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him 'some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond of liquor — arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up. There was no sleeping in the day-time on the planter's clearing: the wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on IMoti Guj°s neck and gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps — for he owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope — for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders — while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding; blow of the latter for the smack of the former MOTI GUJ— MUTINEER. 153 that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would* 'come up with a song from the sea," Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair. It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return' of the desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him. He went to the planter, and **My mother's dead," said he, weeping. "She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once before that when you were working forme last year, "said the planter, who knew something of the ways of native- dom. *'Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as ? mother to me," said Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor. *'Who brought you the news?" said the planter. "The post," said Deesa. "There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!" •'A devasting sickness has fallen on my vil- 154 MOTI GUJ— MUTINEER. lage, and all my wives are dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time. - *'Ca]l Chihun, who comes from Deesa's vil- lage," said the planter. *' Chihun, has this man got a wife?" *'He?" said Chihun. "No. Not a woman of our village would look at him. They'd sooner marry the elephant." Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed. **You will get into difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back to your work!" "Now I will speak Heaven's truth," gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. "I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble." A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. **Deesa," said he, "you've spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey your orders." "May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and soul, I return. As to the inconsid- erable interval, have I the gracious permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?" Permission was granted, and in answer to Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return. MOTI GUJ-MUTINEER. 155 * * Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give ear!" said Deesa, standing in front of him. . ,_ t.. Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. *'I am going away," said Deesa. Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could snatch all manner of nice things from the road-side then. "But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work." ,, . ^ . • -, . The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth. *'I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near forefoot and Til impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried mud-puddle." Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails. Moti -Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot. "Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees as Chihun here _ shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck'" Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus—'C^^ iron elephant goad. Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone. Moti Guj trumpeted. ^ "Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun s your mahout for ten days. And now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king! Jewel of all created ele- 156 MOTI GUJ— MUTINEER. phants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored health ; be virtuous. Adieu!" Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung- him into the air twice. That was his way of bidding him good-bye. ' ' He'll work now, ' ' said Deesa to the planter. •'Have I leave to go?" The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to haul stumps. Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back again — the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses. None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tip- pling, had drifted with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time. The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa. Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoul- ders, and began to walk away, as one having" business elsewhere. **Hi! Ho! Come back you!" shouted Chi- MOTI GUJ— MUTINEER. 157 hun. "Come back and put me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hill-sides! Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your fat forefoot!" Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words. **None of your nonsense with me," said he. '*To your pickets, devil-son!" *'Hrrump!" said Moti Guj, and that was all — that and the forebent ears. Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who had just set to work. Chihun reported the state of afifairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing and *'Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stooa outside the house, chucklingto himself and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an ele- phant will. *'We'll thrash him." said the planter. "He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty." Kala Nag — which means Black Snake — and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to admin- 1-8 MOTI GUj— MUTINEER. ister the graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly. They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they sidled up to Moti Guj meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty- nine years, been whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was his badge of authority ; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone with his ears cocked. That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work and is not tied up is about as man- ageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were com- ing away easily; he talked nonsense concern- ing labor and the inalienable rights of ele- phants to a long **nooning;" and, wandering to and fro. he thoroughly demoralized the gar- den till sundown, when he returned to his picket for food. '*If you won't work, you shan't eat," said Chihun, angrily. ** You're a wild elephant, MOTI GUJ-MUTINEER. 15^ and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle. " Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself, shouting, upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head. "Great Lord!" said Chihun. *' Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number, two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and two hundred pounds' weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me!" Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his food. He eat it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and thought of Deesa, One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or five hours in the night suffice — two just before midnight, lynig down on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eat- ing and fidgeting, and long grumbling solilo- quies. At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out 160 MOTI GVJ-MUTINEER. of his pickets, for a thought had come to him that Deesa might by lying drunk somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through the under- growth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the woods. At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercise had made him hungry. "Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the mysterious elephant lan- guage that some mahouts believe came from China at the birth of the world, when ele- phants and not men were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from places at varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the MOTI GUJ-MUTINEER. 161 1 i man and beast wept and slobbered over each \ other, and handled each other from head to ] heel to see that no harm had befallen. ■ **Now we will get to work," said Deesa. j •*Lift me up, my son and my joy!" Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for difficult I stumps. I The planter was too astonished to be very a»fry. 11 Dittiee THE MUTINY OF THE MAVER- ICKS. When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient premises, they condemned a .fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a far country which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They foregathered at the top of a tenement- house in Tehama Street, an unsavory quarter of the city, and there calling for certain drinks, they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known as the Third Three of the I. A. A.— an institution for the propa- gation of pure light, not to be confounded with any others; though it is affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal and work among the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a particular section of Scotland Yards knows too well and laughs at. A conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at head centers and tri- 162 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 163 angles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature. The Third Three conspired over whisky- cocktails and a clean sheet of note-paper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general election. You pick out and discuss in the company of congenial friends all the weak points in your opponents' organization, and unconsciously dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a miracle that the party holds together for an hour. *'Our principle is not so much active demon- stration—that we leave to others— as passive embarrassment to weaken and unnerve," said the first man. *' Wherever an organization is crippled, wherever a confusion is thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who take on the work ; we are but the forerunners." He was a German enthusiast, and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he quoted frequently. "That cursed empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we doubled the year's average I guess it wouldn't strike her anything special had occurred," said the second man. "Are you prepared to say that all our resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a hundred-ton gun or spiking -^ ten- thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in clear day- light? They can beat us at our game. Better 30m hands with the practical branches- we're in funds now. Try and direct a scare in a 164 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. crowded street. They value their greasy hides. " He was the drag upon the wheel, and an Americanized Irishman of the second gen- eration, despising his own race and hating the other. He had learned caution. The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the strategist, but unfort- unately his knowledge of life was limited. He picked a letter from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table. That epistle to the heathen contained some very concise directions from the First Three in New York. It said : "The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the smaller buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations, such as western bears, would increase their willingness to unload. This, however, can not be expected till they see clearly that foreign iron- masters are willing to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched to feel the pulse of the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at present the best for our purpose. — P. D. Q. As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania it was interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organized attack on an outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting. The first man read it through, and mur- mured : * 'Already? Surely they are in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip Singh could do in In- dia he has done, down to the distribution of his THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 165 photographs among the peasantry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that, and he has no substantial money backing from the Other Power. Even our agents in India know he hasn't. What is the use of our organization wasting men on work that is already done? Of course, the Irish regiments in India are half mutinous as they stand." This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control, being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of mus- ketry-fire, it becomes strangely and unpatriot- ically content with its lot. It has even been heard to cheer the queen with enthusiasm on these occasions. But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability in the policy of an English govern- ment, and the most sacred oaths of England would, even if embossed on vellum, find very few buyers among colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But there remains to England always her army. That can not change, except in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town, and seriously startle the publi- cans, but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the Conti- 166 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. nental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured that it is absolutely trustworthy. Imagine for a moment their emotions on realizing that such and such a regiment was in open revolt from causes directly due to England's management of Ireland. They would probably send the regiment to the polls forthwith, and examine their own consciences as to their duty to Erin, but they would never be easy any more. And it was this vague, unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. was laboring to produce. *' Sheer waste of breath," said the second man, after a pause in the council. **I don't see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but it has been tried before, and we must try it again. It looks well in the reports. If we send one man froni here, you many bet your life that other men are going too. Order up Mulcahy. " They ordered him up — c slim, slight, dark- haired young man, devoured with that blind, rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother's breast in the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York ; he had been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal fronts of Chicago ; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and being in sub- THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 167 ordinate, had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic print, from one iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines if need be to teach his gospel. And he went as his instructions advised, p. d. q. — which means "with speed" — to introduce embarrassment into an Irish regiment, ''al- ready half mutinous, quartered among Sikh peasantry, all wearing miniaturesof His High- ness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival." Other information equally valu- able was given him by his masters. He was to be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he was to write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a mother in New York to send him ;£"2oo a year over and above his regimental pay. In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe, went out in a troop-ship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the "Mavericks," because they were masterless and unbranded cattle— sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much wanted "moonlighters" from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never, to outward seeming, was there more promising 168 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. material to work on. The First Three had chosen their regiment well. It feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel and the regimental Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who held the keys of heaven and hell, and glared like an angry bull when he desired to be convincinof. Him also it loved because on occasions of stress he was wont to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into the merriest of the fray, where he always found, good man, that the saints sent him a revolver when there w^as a fallen private to be protected or — but this came as an after- thought — his own gray head to be guarded. Cautiously as he had been instructed, ten- derly and with much beer, Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen. And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly irresponsible, and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own goblins of the wrath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The underground work of a con- spiracy is always dull, and very much the same the world over. At the end of six months — the seed always falling on good ground — Mul- cahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not all their own and the natural revenges to satisfy? Who in these days could do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 169 who, again, could stay them if they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regi- ments only too anxious to join? And after- ward . . . here followed windy promises of gold and preferment, office and honor, ever dear to a certain type of Irishman. As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then said Dan: *'Mulcahy, you're a great man, an* you do credit to whoever sent you. Walk about a bit while we think ofit. " Mulcahy departed elated. He knew his words would sink deep. "Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let -me curl the tripes out of him?" grunted a voice. *' Because I'm not a fat-headed fool. Boys, 'tis what he's been driving at these six months — our superior corpril, with his education, and his copies of the Irish papers, and his everlast- ing beer. He's been sent for the purpose, and that's where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That man's a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the giftg of Providence not to fall in with his little plans. Of course we'll mutiny till all's dry. Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, mas- sacre the company officers, ransack the arsenal, and then — boys, did he tell you what next? He told me the other night, when he was be- 170 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. ginning to talk wild. Then we're to join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the Russians!" "And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of hell! Danny, I'd have lost the beer to ha* given him the belting he requires. " "Oh, let him go this a while, man! He's got no — no constructiveness; but that's the egg- meat of his plan, and you must understand that I'm in with it, an' so are you. We'll want oceans of beer to convince us — firmaments full. We'll give him talk for his money, and one by one all the boys'll come in, and he'll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers to squat in an' give drink to." "What makes me killing mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers did thirty years gone. That an' his pig's cheek in saying that other regiments would come along," said a Kerry man. "That's not so bad as hintin' we should loose off at the colonel. " "Colonel be sugared ! I'd as soon as not put a shot through his helmet, to see him jump and clutch his old horses' head. But Mulcahy talks o' shootin' our comp'ny orf'cers acciden- tal." **He said that, did he?" said Horse Egan. "Somethin* like that, anyways. Can't ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a bullet in hisj lungs, coughin' like a sick monkey an' sayin': *Bhoys, I do not mind your gettin' dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like men. The man that shot me is dhrunk. I'll suspend THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 171 investigations for six hours, while I get this bullet cut out, and then ' " *'An' then," continued Horse Egan, for the peppery major's peculiarities of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face — *'an' then, ye dissolute, half-baked, putty- faced scum o' Connemara, if I find a man so much as lookin' confused, bedad I'll coort- martial the whole company. A man that can't get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to belong to the Mavericks!" A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch. "It's pretty to think of," said the Kerry man slowly. '*Mulcahy would have us do all the devilment, and get clear himself, some- ways. He wudn't be takin' all this fool's throuble in shpoilin' the reputation of the regi- ment." ''Reputation of your grandmother's pig!" said Dan. "Well, an* he had a good reputation, too; so it's all right. Mulcahy must see his way clear out behind him, or he'd not ha' come so far, talkin' powers of darkness." "Did you hear anything of a regimental court-martial among the Black Boneens, these days? Half a company of 'em took one of the new draft an' hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third-story veranda. They gave no reason for so doin', but he was half head. I'm thinking that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy's, or a man in the same trade. They'd a deal 172 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. better ha' taken his beer," returned Dan, reflectively. ** Better still ha' handed him up to the colonel," said Horse Egan, **onless — But sure the news wud be all over the counthry an* give the reg'ment a bad name." "An' there'll be no reward for that man — but he went about talkin'," said the Kerry man, artlessly. "You speak by your breed," said Dan, with a laugh. "There was never a Kerry man yet that wudn't sell his brother for a pipe o* tobacco an' a pat on the back from a police- man. " "Thank God I'm not a bloomin' Orange- man," was the answer. "No, nor never will be," said Dan. "They breed men in Ulster. Would you like to thry the taste of one?" The Kerry man looked and longed, but fore- bore. The odds of battle were too great. "Then you'll not even give Mulcahy a — a strike for his money," said the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called "trouble" of any kind as the pinnacle of felicity. Dan answered not at all, but crept on tiptoe, with large strides, to the mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased like the King of Dahomey's state umbrella, stood the regimental colors. Dan lifted them tenderly, and unrolled in the light of the candles the record of the Mavericks — tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin was darkened everywhere with big brown THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 173 stains, the gold threads on the crowned harp were frayed and discolored, and the red bull, the totem of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Maver- icks keep their colors long and guard them very sacredly. **Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo. Moodkee, Ferozshah, and Sobraon — that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to join. Inkermann, the Alma, Sebastopol! What are those little busi- nesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The mut'ny,thinko' that; themut'ny an' some dirty little matters in Afghanistan, and for that an' these and those" — Dan pointed to the names of glorious battles — "that Yankee man with the partin' in his hair comes and says as easy as *have a drink' . . . Holy Moses! there's the captain!" But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out, and found the colors uncased. From that day dated the mutiny of the Mav- ericks, to the joy of Mulcahy and the pride of his mother in New York — the good lady who sent the money for the beer. Never, as far as words went, was such a mutiny. The conspir- ators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They were sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood ; but first they must have beer. They cursed the queen, they mourned over Ireland, they sug- gested hideous plunder of the Indian country- 174 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. side, and then, alas! some of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground in spasms of unholy laughter. The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is remarkable. None the less, they would swear no oaths but those of their own making, which were rare and curious, and they were always at pains to impress Mulcahy with the risks they ran. Naturally the flood of beer wrought demoral- ization. But Mulcahy confused the causes of things, and when a pot-valiant Maverick smote a servant on the nose or called his command- ing officer a bald-headed old lard-bladder, and even worse names, he fancied that rebellion and not liquor was at the bottom of the out- break. Other gentlemen who have concerned themselves in larger conspiracies have made the same error. The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should be startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political considera- tions. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan's instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would have killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on special duty some fifty miles away from the cantonment to cool his heels in a mud fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of the Mavericks, THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS, m reading his newspaper diligently and scenting frontier trouble from afar, posted to the army headquarters and pleaded with the commander- in-chief for certain privileges, to be granted under certain contingencies; which contingen- cies came about only a week later when the annual little war on the border developed itself and the colonel returned to carry the good news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of the chief for active service, and the men must get ready. On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal — yet great in con- spiracy — returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of strife and bowlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out, and the barracks of the Mavericks were one whitewashed pan- demonium. A private tearing through the barrack square gasped in his ear: "Service! Active service! It's a burnin' shame. " Oh, joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve of battle! They would not — noble and loyal sons of Ireland! — serve the queen longer. The news would flash through the country-side and over to England, and he — Mulcahy — the trusted of the Third Three, had brought about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor, by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse, beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and called all manner of 176 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternized with the native troops. Who, then, was the agent among the latter that had blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well? An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed by the infuri- ated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for he fought his way to shelter, flying for his life. Mulcahy could have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. The very pris- oners in the guard-room were shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild beasts, and from every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum. Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself speak. Eighty mei were pounding with fist and heel the tabl^ and trestles — eighty men flushed with mutijp stripped to their shirt-sleeves, their kj half-packed for the march to the sea, nfade the two inch boards thunder again as they chanted to a tune that Mulcahy knew well, the Sacred War Song of the Mavericks: "Listen in the north, my boys, there's trouble on the wind; Tramp o' Cossacks hoofs in front, gray great-coats behind, Trouble on the frontier of a most amazin' kind, Trouble on the water o* the Oxus!" Then as a table broke under the furious accompaniment : •'Hurrah! hurrah! its north by west we go: Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so; THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 177 Let "em hear the chorus from Umballa to Moscow, As we go marching to the Kremlin." ** Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders, where's my fine new sock widout the heel?" howled Horse Egan, ran- sacking everybody's knapsack but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that employ he steals best who steals last. **Ah, Mulcahy, you're in good time," he shouted! "We've got the route, and we're off on Thurs- day for a picnic wid the Lancers next door. " An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls, provided by the fore- thought of the queen, for such as might need them later on. Horse Egan unrolled his band- age and flicked it under Mulcahy's nose, chant- ing: •••Sheep's skin an' bees'-wa::. thunder, pitch and plaster ; ^ The more you try to pull it off, the mor^ it sticks the faster, As I was goin' to New Orleans ' You know the rest of it, my Ir!sh-American«= Jew boy. By gad, ye have to fight for the queen m the inside av a fortnight, my darlin'. " A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcaliy looked vacantly down the room. Bid a bo)' defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door, or a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last touches to the first ball-dress, but do not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon mutiny on the eve i2 Ditties 178 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. of a campaign; when it has fraternized with the native regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers into retirement v/ith ten thousand clamorous questions, and the pris- oners dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open, calling down all known diseases on the head of the doctor who has certified that they are *' medically unfit for active service." And even the Mavericks might have been mis- taken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls* school might have learned deportment from them. They knew that their colonel's hand had closed, and that he who broke that iron discipline would not go to the front. Nothing in the world wil?. persuade one of our soldiers when ho is ordered to the north on the smallest oi affairs, that he is not immediately going gloriously to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of the czar. A few of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy's beer, because the campaign was to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but, as Dan and Horse Egan said sternly: ''We've got the beerman with us; he shall drink now on his own hook. " Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on active service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any circumstances; but fortune was against him. "Sick — you?" said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship to his trade in Tralee poor-houses. "You're only homesick, and THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 179 what you call varicose veins come for over- eating. A little gentle exercise will cure that. ' ' And later: *'Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply for a sick certificate once. If he tries it twice, we call him an ugly name. Go back to your duty, and let's hear no more of your diseases." I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy's soul in those days, and Dan took an equal interest. To- gether they would communicate to their cor- poral all the dark lore of death that is the por- tion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience, but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the Afghan women-folk. Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead. Knew, too, that a change had come over Dan's usually respectful attitude toward him, and Horse Egan's laugh- ter and frequent allusions to abortive conspir- acies emphasized all that the conspirator had guessed. The horrible fascination of the death- stories, however, made him seek their society. He learned much more than he had bargained for; and in this manner. It was on the last night before the regiment entrained to the front. The barracks were stripped of every- thing movable, and the men were too excited 180 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital smell of chloride of lime, a stench that depresses the soul. "And what, " said Mulcahy in an awe-striken whisper, after some conversation on the eternal subject, "are you going to do to me, Dan?" This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a weak spirit. "You'll see," said Dan, grimly, turning over in his cot, "or I rather shud say you'll not see. " This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the bed-clothes. "Be easy with him," put in Egan from the next cot. "He has got his chanst o' goin' clean. Listen, Mulcahy: all we want is for the good sake of the regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud. There be heaps an' heaps of enemy — plenshus heaps. Go there an' do all you can and die decent. You'll die with a good name there. 'Tis not a hard thing considerin'. " Again Mulcahy shivered. "And how could a man wish to die better than fightin'?" added Dan consolingly. "And if I won't?" said the corporal in a dry whisper. "There'll be a dale of smoke," returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off the situation on his fingers, "sure to be, an' the noise of the firin' '11 be tremenjus, an' we'll be running about up and down, the regiment will. But we, Horse and I — we'll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you go. Maybe there'll be an accident." THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 181 "It's playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity's sake, let me go! I never did you harm, and — and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh, don't be hard on me, Dan! You are — you were in it, too. You won't kill me up there, will you?" "I'm not thinkin' of the treason ; though you shud be glad any honest boys drank with you. It's for the regiment. We can't have the shame o' you bringin' .:hame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat to get and stay behind an' live with the women at the depot — you that wanted us to run to the sea in wolf- packs like the rebels none of your black blood dared to be! But we knew about your goin' to the doctor, for he told it in mess, and it's all over the regiment. Bein' as we are your best friends, we didn't allow any one to molest you yet We \7ill see to you ourselves. Fight which you will — us or Ihc enemy — you'll never lie in that cot again, and there's more glory and maybe less kicks from fighting the enemy. That's fair speakin'. " "And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers — you've forgotten that, Dan," said Horse Egan, to justify sentence. "What's the use of plaguin' the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do yet not?" Mulcahy tor some weeks understood very little of anything at all save that ever at his elbow, in camp^ or at parade, stood two big men with soft voices adjuring him to commit /lari kari lest a worse thing should happen— to 182 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. die for the honor of the regiment in decency among the nearest knives. But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things that priests had said in his infancy, and his mother — not the one at New Xork — starting from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a hus- band's soul in torment. It is well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in times of trouble the weak human m.ind returns to the creed it sucked in at the breast, and if that creed be not a pretty one, trouble follows. Also, the death he would have to face would be physi- cally painful. Most conspirators have large imaginations. Mulcahy could see hiip.s€lf, as he lay on the earth in the nightT^dying by various causes. They were all horrible; the mother in New York was very far away, and the regiment, the engine that, once you fall in its grip, moves you forward whether you will or won't, was daily coming closer to the enemy! ^- ***** * They were brought to the field of Marzun- Katai, and with the Black Boneens to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. Thoy gathered behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 183 shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Den- nis, whose place was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally man- aged to make his way to the foremost of his boys, and lay, like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him crawled Mulcahy, ashen- gray, demanding absolution. "Wait till you're shot," said Father Dennis, sweetly. "There's a time for everything." Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fif- tieth time into the breech of his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a stray shot spoke like a snipe imme- diately above his head, and a general heave and tremor rippled the line. Other shots followed, and a few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had been lying down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and down the front of their com- panies. This maneuver, executed not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith,^ to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within extreme range; and, above all, if you are smitten you must make as little noise as possible and roll inward through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt v/hiff of the powder to noses rather cold :.t the tips, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each red casualty, that the strain 184 THE MUTINY OF THE MA ERICKS. on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day, and abate no whit of their zeal at the end; Enghsh regiments sometimes sulk under punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise commandant of highly strung troops allows them in seasons of waiting to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chanting "Sam Hall," to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to listen: "We'll sound the jubilee, from the center to the sea, And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van- Voght. " •*Sing, boys," said Father Dennis, softly. * ' It looks as if we cared for their Afghan peas. ' ' Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song imparted to him, as ^.o most of his comrades, in the strictest con- fidence by Mulcahy — that Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the chill fear of death upon him. Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are to herald the gen- eral rising of Erin, and to breathe which, ex- cept to those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in this place: THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 185 'The Saxon in heaven's just balance is weighed, His doom, like Belshazzar's, in death has been cast, And the hand of the 'venger shall never be stayed Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past, ' ' They were heart-filling lines, and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A. are better served by pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mul- cahy merrily on the back, asking him to sing- up. The officers lay down again. There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves, thunderously, thus: "St. Mary in heaven has written the vow That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood. From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plow, Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood !" *'ril speak to you after all's over," said Father Dennis, authoritatively, in Dan's ear. •'What's the use of confessing to me when you ,do this foolishness? Dan, you've been playing with fire! I'll lay you more penance in a week than—" "Come along to purgatory with us, father, dear. The Boneens are on the move , they'll let us go now!" The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg. "You've got to do it," said Dan, grimly. **Do it decent, anyhow;*' and the roar of the rush drowned his words as the rear companies thrust forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope : 186 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. "From the child at the breast to the hand at the plow Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!" They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans, whom it im- pressed as much as did the wild Irish yell. *' They came down singing," said the un- official report of the enemy, borne from village to village next day. *'They continued to sing, and it was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed that there was magic in the aforesaid song." Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighborhoodof Mulcahy. Twicethe man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was heaved like a half-drowned kitten into the unpaintale inferno of a hotly contested charge. At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented, while Dan toiled after him. The charge was checked at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy that scrambled up tooth and nail and heaved down among the bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight line of the rabid dog, led a collection of ardent souls at a newly unmasked battery, and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from that battery into the open plain where the enemy were retiring in sullen groups. THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 187 His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck Dan and Horse Egan, pantmg and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the grojLind by the captured guns, when, they noticed Mulcahy's flight. ^ ^ •"Mad " said Horse Egan, critically. Mad with fear! He's going straight to his death, an' shouting's no use." * ' Let him go. Watch now ! If we fire we 11 hit him maybe." . ^c u ^ The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time to take prisoners. Mulcahy ran on, sobbing, and the straight-held blade went home through the defenseless breast, and the body pitched forward almost before a shot from Dan's rifle brought down the slayer and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their dead. *'He was given the point, and that was an easy death," said Horse Egan, viewing the corpse. * ' But would you ha' shot him, Danny, if he had lived?" , ^ "He didn't live, so there's no sayin . But 1 doubt I wud have, bekase of the fun he gave us— let alone the beer. Hike up his legs. Horse, and we'll bring him in. Perhaps tis better this way." They bore the poor limp body to the mass ot the regiment, lolling open-mouthed on their rifles; and there w^s a general snigger when 188 THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. one of the younger subalterns said: *'That was a good man!" "Phew!" said Horse Egan when a burial party had taken over the burden. "I'm pow- erful dhry, and this reminds me, there'll be no more beer at all." "Fwhy not?" said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself for rest. "Are we not conspirin' all we can, an' while we con- spire are we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would not let her son's comrades perish of drouth — if she can be reached at the end pf a letter." ** You're a janius," said Horse Egan. *'0* coorse she will not. I wish this crool war was over, an* we'd get back to canteen. Faith, the commander-in-chief ought to be hanged on his own little sword-belt for makin' us work on wather. " The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan's opinion. So they made haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was rewarded by unexpected peace. •*We can fight the sons of Adam," said the tribesmen, "but we can not fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment never stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in. " They came in, and "this regiment" withdrew to con- spire under the leadership of Dan Grady. Excellent as a subordinate, Dan failed alto- gether as a chief-command — possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice of the only man in the regiment who could perpetrate more than one kind of handwriting. The same THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS. 183 mail that bore to Mulcahy's mother in New York a letter from the colonel, telling her how valiantly her son had fought for the queen, and how assuredly he would have been recom- mended for the Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve to say, by that same colonel and all the officers of the regiment, explaining their willingness to do ''anything which is contrary to the regula- tions and all kinds of resolutions' ' if only a little money could be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. Daniel Grady. Esquire, would receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who **was unwell at this present time of writing. " Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehema Street, San Francisco, with mar- ginal comments, as brief as they were bitter. The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then tlie Second Conspirator — he who believed in *'joining hands with the practical branches" — began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity, said: "Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We're left again. Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would, but" — here he laughed afresh — "I'd give considerable to know what was at the back of it all." His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady, discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York. THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. Imray had achieved the impossible. With- out warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen to disappear from the world — which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard- tables. Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the ad- ministration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town — 1,200 miles away — but Imray was not at the end of the drag- ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a man, became a mystery — such a 190 THE' RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. 191 thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a month and the?n forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an absurd letter to his mother, sayia^^,Jiifit Imray had unaccountably disappeared and his bungalow stood empity on the road. / After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the bunga- low from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghai — an affair which has been described in another place — and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He eat, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on the side- board, and this is not good for the insides of human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens — an enormous Rampour slut, who sung when she was ordered, and devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and whenever in her walks abroad she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty 192 THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. the Queen Empress, she returned to her master and gave him information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at night, her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her when he was on the frontier in search cf the local murderer who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much further than the Anda- man Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and employed a mono- gram on her night blanket and the blanket was double- woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog. Under no circumstances would she be sepa- rated from Strickland, and when he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the doctors because she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over the head with a gun, before she could understand that she THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. 193 must give room for those who could give quinine. A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my business took ^ me through that station, and naturally, the club quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. 13 nder the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth, which looked just as nice as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted when Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark, three-cornered cavarn of the roof, where the beams and the under side of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, bats, ants, and other things. Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the bells of St. Paul's, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she was glad to see me, Strickland had contrived to put together that sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was fin- ished went out about his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken up and given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and flung up a blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias the mango-trees in the U Ditties 194 THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat on the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the thing they call prickly heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not the least desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some one. Very much against my will, and because of the dark- ness of the rooms, I went into the naked draw- ing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have been a caller in the room — it seems to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my man that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and I could hardly coax her back to me — even with biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland rode back. THE RECRUDESCENCE OF lAIRAY. 195 dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was: *'Has any one called?" I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his name. Strickland ordered dinner without comment and since it was a real din- ner, with white table-cloth attached, we sat down. At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too. Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and went into the least-exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tiet- jens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out- of-doors in that pelting rain, it would not have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and there- fore the better animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some hideous domestic tragedy. *'She has done this ever since I moved in here." The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped out- side my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown e^g spatters a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow ; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the 196 THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veran- da, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and Tiet- jens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring above my head or on the door. I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe in his mouth. *'I thought you'd come," he said. *'Have I been walking around the house at all?" I explained that he had been in the dining- room and the smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not attend- ing to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering some one was reproaching me for my slackness, and through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain. THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. 197 I was in that house for two days, and Strick- land went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for com- pany. ^ We were alone in the house, but for all that it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through ; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect, and following the motions of some- thing that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and habit- able, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions. I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hos- pitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its 198 THE RECRUDESCENXE OF IMRAY. atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without con- tempt, for he is a man who understands things. "Stay on," he said, "and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?" I had seen him through one little affair con- nected with an idol that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people. Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn't care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda. " Ton my soul, I don't wonder," said Strickland, with his eves on the ceiling-cloth. "Look at that!" The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamp-light. **If you are afraid of snakes, of course — " said Strickland. "I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of man's fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser legs." THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. 1C9 *'You ought to get your thatch overhauled," I said. "Give me a masheer rod, and we'll poke 'em down." "They'll hide among the roof beams," said Strickland. "I can't stand snakes overhead. I'm going up. If I shake 'em down, stand by with the cleaning-rod and break their backs." I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth. Strick- land took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths. "Nonsense!" said Strickland, "They're sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of the room is just what they like. " He put his hand to the corner of the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice. It gave a great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend. " H 'm, " said Strickland ; and his voice rolled &nd rumbled in the roof. "There's rpom for 200 THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove! some one is occupying *em. " *' Snakes?" I said down below. *'No. It's a buffalo. Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer rod, and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main beam." I I handed up the rod. *'What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here," said Strickland, climbing further into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. ''Come out of that, whoever you are! Lookout! Heads below there! It's tottering." I saw the ceiling- cloth nearly in the center of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the lighted lamps on the table. I snatched a lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side. He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the table. ''It. strikes me," said he, pulling down th