. 
 
 - Jj: 'H'*itH'ii"**irifi'
 
 THE KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES
 
 "An unusually severe pitch . . . had lifted the big, throbbing screw 
 
 nearly to the surface." (See page 173.)
 
 THE KIPLING READER 
 
 )n 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO
 
 COPYRIGHT, l8gi, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1907, IQIO, 1913 
 BY RUD YARD KIPLING 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1891 
 BY RUD YARD KIPLING AND WALCOTT HALF.STIER 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1897 
 BY THE CENTURY COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 1893 
 BY MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, 1898 
 BY PERRY MASON AND COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQOS 
 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IF (from "Rewards and Fairies") ...... 3 
 
 THE BOLD TRENTICE . . . . . . . . . 5 
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT ........ 16 
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH (from "Puck of Pook's Hill") 37 
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL (from "Puck of Pook's Hill") ... 44 
 
 THE WINGED HATS (from "Puck of Pook's Hill") ... 63 
 
 THE BURNING OFTHE SARAH SANDS (from "Rewards and Fairies") 82 
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES (from "Rewards and Fairies") . . 91 
 
 PHILADELPHIA (from "Rewards and Fairies") . . . . 113 
 
 .007 (from 'The Day's Work") 115 
 
 THE EXPLORER (from 'The Five Nations") .... 136 
 
 THE YELLOWSTONE PARK (from "From Sea to Sea") . . 141 
 
 THE COASTWISE LIGHTS (from "The Seven Seas") . . . 148 
 
 ATRIP ACROSS A CONTINENT (from "Captains Courageous") . 150 
 
 THE SONG OF THE DEAD (from 'The Seven Seas") . . . 156 
 
 THE NIGHT RIDE TO THE Cow's MOUTH (from "The Naulahka") 159 
 
 THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS (from "The Seven Seas") 163 
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF (from 'The Day's Work") . 169 
 THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST (from "Ballads and Barrack 
 
 Room Ballads") 189 
 
 RECESSIONAL (from 'The Five Nations") 195
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 "An unusually severe pitch . . . had lifted the big, throb- 
 bing screw nearly to the surface." 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 " There's where you meet hunters, and trappers from the 
 Circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled 
 wolves " . 46 
 
 " Then they made the sign which no Indian makes outside 
 
 of the Medicine Lodges " no 
 
 " He took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like 
 
 a hunted cat on the top of a fence " 128 
 
 The Yellowstone Valley 144 
 
 " In the North by the torn berg-edges " 156
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The editors of this book wish to extend their 
 thanks to Mr. Kipling, The Century Company 
 and Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company, 
 whose cooperation has made this book possible. 
 It is hoped that the volume will lead many 
 readers to the beautiful and stimulating world 
 of literature that Mr. Kipling has created.
 
 IF 
 
 IF YOU can keep your head when all about you 
 Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
 But make allowance for their doubting too; 
 If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
 
 Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
 Or being hated don't give way to hating, 
 And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: 
 
 If you can dream and not make dreams your master; 
 
 If you can think and not make thoughts your aim, 
 If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 
 
 And treat those two impostors just the same; 
 If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 
 
 Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
 Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 
 
 And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools; 
 
 If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
 
 And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
 And lose, and start again at your beginnings 
 
 And never breathe a word about your loss; 
 If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
 
 To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
 And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
 
 Except the Will which says to them: ''Hold on!" 
 
 3
 
 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
 
 Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch, 
 If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 
 
 If all men count with you, but none too much; 
 If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
 
 With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 
 Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
 
 And which is more you'll be a Man. my son!
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE 
 
 AN INDIAN RAILWAY STORY OF HOW YOUNG OTTLEY 
 EARNED HIS LOCOMOTIVE 
 
 YOUNG OTTLEY'S father came to Calcutta in 1857 
 as fireman on the first locomotive ever run by the 
 D. I. R., the largest Indian railway. He spoke broad 
 Yorkshire, but young Ottley, being born in India, talked 
 the clipped singsong of half-castes and English-speaking 
 natives. When he was fifteen years old the D. I. R. took 
 him into their service as an apprentice in the locomotive 
 repair department of the Ajaibpore Workshops, and he 
 became one of a gang of three or four white men and nine 
 or ten natives. 
 
 There were scores of such gangs, each with its own hoisting 
 and overhead cranes, jack-screws, vises and lathes, and 
 their work was to mend locomotives and to teach the appren- 
 tices to behave. But the apprentices threw screws and nuts 
 at one another, chalked caricatures of unpopular foremen 
 on buffer-bars and discarded boilers, and did as little as they 
 could. 
 
 They were nearly all sons of old employees of the Company, 
 living with their parents in the white bungalows of Steam 
 Road, or Church Road, or Albert Road broad avenues of 
 pounded brick bordered by palms and crotons and bamboos 
 and bougainvilleas that made up the railway town of Ajaib- 
 
 5
 
 6 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 pore. They had never seen the sea or a steamer; half their 
 talk was made up of Hindustani slang; they were all volun- 
 teers in the D. I. R.'s railway corps gray uniform with 
 red facings and their talk was exclusively about engines 
 and the Company. 
 
 They all hoped to become engine-drivers earning eighteen 
 hundred dollars a year, and therefore they despised the clerks 
 in the Stores and Audit and Traffic departments, and ducked 
 them when they met at the Company's big swimming bath. 
 
 There were no strikes or tie-ups on the D. I. R. for the 
 reason that the ten or twelve thousand natives and two or 
 three thousand whites were doing their best to turn the 
 Company's employ into a caste in which their sons and 
 relatives would be sure of positions and pensions for evermore. 
 Everything in India crystallizes into a caste sooner or later 
 the big jute and cotton mills, the leather, harness, and opium 
 factories, the coal-mines and the dockyards till by the 
 third or fourth generation the heads of these concerns control 
 not only cheap labor but inherited instincts for a certain 
 kind of work, which no money can buy. Later on, when 
 India begins to be heard from as the manufacturing country 
 of the world, the Labor Unions of other lands will learn 
 something about the beauty of caste, which will greatly 
 interest and astonish them. 
 
 Those were the days when the D. I. R. decided that it would 
 be cheaper to employ native drivers as much as possible, 
 and the "Sheds," as they called the repair department, felt 
 the change acutely; for a native driver could misuse his engine 
 more curiously than any six monkeys. The Company had 
 not then unified its rolling stock, and this was very good for 
 apprentices anxious to learn because there were perhaps 
 twenty types of locomotives in use. 
 
 There were Hawthornes, E types, O types, outside cylin-
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE 7 
 
 ders, Spaulding and Cushman double-enders and short-run 
 Continental-built tank engines with many others, but the 
 native drivers burned them all out impartially, and the appren- 
 tices took to writing remarks in Bengali in the cab where 
 the next driver would be sure to see them. 
 
 Young Ottley worked with the others, but his father,' as 
 an old pensioned driver, taught him a great deal, that he 
 could not have learned in the Sheds, about the insides of 
 locomotives; and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede who 
 ran the Government mail, the big Thursday express, from 
 Serai Rajgara to Guldee Haut, was a friend of the Ottley 
 family, and dined with them every Friday night. 
 
 Olaf was an important person, for besides being the best 
 of the mail drivers, he was Past Master of the big railway 
 Lodge, "St. Duncan's in the East," secretary of the Drivers' 
 Provident Association, Captain in the D. I. R. Volunteer 
 Corps, and an author. 
 
 He had written a book in what he called English, and had 
 had it printed at his own expense in the ticket-printing 
 department. 
 
 Some of the copies were buff and green, and some were 
 pink and blue, and some were yellow and brown; for Olaf 
 liked cheapness, and wrapping-paper was cheaper than proper 
 book paper. It was called "The Art of Road Locos Repair, 
 or the Young Drivers' Wademecome," and was dedicated to 
 a man of the name of Swedenborg. 
 
 It covered every conceivable accident that could happen 
 to an engine on the road, and gave a rough and ready remedy 
 for it; but you had to understand Olaf's English, as well as 
 all the technical talk about engines, to make head or tail 
 of it, and you had also to know personally every engine on 
 the D. I. R.; for the "Wademecome" was full of what might 
 be called "locomotive allusions."
 
 8 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Olaf was immensely proud of his book, and would pin 
 young Ottley in a corner and make him learn whole pages 
 it was written question-and-answer fashion by heart. 
 
 "Never mind what she means," Olaf would shout. "You 
 learn word-perfect, and she shall help you in the Sheds. I 
 drive the Mail the Mail of all India and what I say is 
 true." 
 
 "But I do not wish to learn the book," said young Ottley, 
 who thought he saw quite enough of engines in business hours. 
 
 "You shall learn! I haf great friendships for your father, 
 and so I shall teach you if you like or not." 
 
 Young Ottley submitted, for he was really fond of Olaf, 
 and at the end of six months' teaching hi Olaf 's peculiar way 
 began to see that the "Wademecome" might be a very 
 valuable help in the Repair Sheds when broken-down loco- 
 motives of a new type came in. Olaf gave him a copy bound 
 in cartridge paper and edged round the margins with 
 square-headed manuscript notes, each line the result of 
 years of experience and accidents. 
 
 "There is nothing hi this book," said Olaf, "that I have 
 not tried in my time, and 7 say an engine is like the body 
 of a man. So long as there is steam the life, you see 
 so long, if you know, you can make her move a little so!" 
 He waggled his head slowly. "Till a man is dead, or an 
 engine she is at the bottom of a river, you can do something 
 with her. Remember that! 7 say it and I know." 
 
 He repaid young Ottley's time and attention by using 
 his influence to get him made a sergeant in his Volunteer 
 Corps, and young Ottley, being a keen volunteer and a good 
 shot, stood well with the Company in the matter of casual 
 leave. When repairs were light in the Sheds, and the honor 
 of the corps had to be upheld at a shooting match at some 
 faraway station against the men of Agra and Bandikui, the
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE 9 
 
 narrow-gauge railway towns of the west, young Ottley would 
 contrive to get away. 
 
 A 'prentice never dreams of paying his fare on any railroad, 
 least of all when he is in uniform, and young Ottley was prac- 
 tically as free of the Indian railway system as any member 
 of the Supreme Legislative Council who wears a golden 
 General Pass on his watchchain and can ride where he wishes. 
 
 Late in the September of his nineteenth year, he went 
 north to attend a shooting match, elegantly and accurately 
 dressed, with one eighth of one inch of white collar showing 
 above his gray uniform stock, and his rifle polished to 
 match his sergeant's sword in the rack above him. 
 
 The Rains were out, and in India that means a good deal 
 to the railways; for the rain falls for three months till the 
 whole country is one sea, and the snakes take refuge on the 
 embankment, and the racing floods puff out the brick ballast 
 from under the iron ties, and leave the rails hanging in fan- 
 tastic loops. Then the trains run as they can, and the 
 permanent-way inspectors spend their nights flourishing 
 about in trolleys which are called handcars in the United 
 States and everybody is covered with the fire-red rash of 
 prickly heat. 
 
 Young Ottley was used to these little things from his 
 birth, and all that he regretted was that his friends along 
 the line were so draggled and dripping and sulky that they 
 could not appreciate his gorgeousness; for he considered him- 
 self very consoling to behold when he cocked his helmet 
 over one eye and puffed native-made cigar smoke through 
 his nostrils. Until night fell he read the works of Mr. G. W. R. 
 Reynolds, which are sold on all the railway bookstalls. 
 
 Then he found they were changing engines at Guldee Haut, 
 and old Rustomjee, a Parsee, was the new driver, with Num- 
 ber Forty in hand. Young Ottley took the opportunity to
 
 io KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 go forward and tell Rustomjee exactly what they thought of 
 him in the Sheds, where the 'prentices had been repairing 
 some of his carelessness in the way of a dropped crown-sheet, 
 I think they called it. 
 
 Rustomjee said he had bad luck with engines, and young 
 Ottley went back to his carriage and slept. He was waked 
 by a bang, a bump and a stop, and saw, on the opposite 
 bunk, a lieutenant who was traveling north in charge of a 
 detachment of some twenty 'English soldiers. 
 
 " What's that?" said the lieutenant. 
 
 "Rustomjee has blown her up, perhaps," said young 
 Ottley, and dropped out into the wet, the lieutenant at his 
 heels. There he found Rustomjee sitting by the side of the 
 line, nursing a scalded foot and crying aloud that he was 
 a dead man, while the gunner-guard who is a kind of 
 conductor looked respectfully at the roaring, hissing engine. 
 
 "What has happened?" said young Ottley, by the light 
 of the gunner-guard's lantern. 
 
 "Phut gya (She has gone smash)," said Rustomjee. 
 
 "Without doubt, but where, you old father of owls?" 
 
 "Khudajhanta (God knows). I am a poor man. Number 
 Forty is broke." 
 
 Young Ottley jumped into the cab and turned off all the 
 steam he could find, for there was a good deal of it escaping. 
 Then he took the lantern and dived under the driving-wheels, 
 where he lay face up investigating among spurts of hot 
 water. 
 
 "Doocid plucky," said the officer. "I shouldn't like to do 
 that myself . What's gone wrong? " 
 
 "Cylinder head blown off, coupler-rod twisted, and several 
 more things. She is very badly wrecked. Oah, yes, she is 
 a total wreck," said young Ottley, between the spokes of the 
 right-hand driver.
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE n 
 
 "Doocid awkward," said the lieutenant, turning up his 
 coat collar in the wet. "What's to be done?" 
 
 Young Ottley came out, a rich black all over his red and 
 gray uniform, and drummed on his teeth with his ringer 
 nails, while the rain fell and the native passengers shouted 
 questions, and old Rustomjee told the gunner-guard to walk 
 back seven or eight miles and wire for help. 
 
 "I cannot swim," said the gunner-guard. "Go and lie 
 down." 
 
 "Olaf Swanson will be waiting at Serai Rajgara with the 
 mail. He will be angry," said young Ottley. Then he dived 
 under the engine again with a flare-lamp and sat cross-legged, 
 like a Hindoo idol, considering things and wishing he had 
 Olaf's "Wademecome" in his valise. 
 
 Number Forty was an old reconstructed Mutiny engine, 
 with Frenchified, cock-nosed cylinders and a profligate allow- 
 ance of underpinning. She had been through the sheds 
 several times, and young Ottley had heard much about her, 
 but nothing to her credit. 
 
 "You can lend me some men?" he said at last to the 
 officer. "Then I think we shall disconnect this side and 
 perhaps, notwithstanding, she will move. We will try." 
 
 "Of course we will. Hi! Sergeant!" said the lieutenant. 
 "Turn out your men here, and do what this officer tells 
 you." 
 
 "Officer!" said one of the privates, under his breath. 
 "Didn't think I ever 'listed to serve under a sergeant of 
 volunteers. Come on, men. Here's an 'orrible street acci- 
 dent. Looks like mother's teakettle broke. What d'yer 
 expect us to do, Mister Sergeant?" 
 
 Young Ottley explained his plan of campaign while he was 
 ravaging Rustomjee's tool-chest, and then the men crawled 
 and knelt and pushed and levered and hauled and turned
 
 12 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 spanners under the engine, as young Ottley told them. What 
 he wanted was to disconnect the right cylinder altogether, 
 and get off a badly twisted coupler-rod. Practically Num- 
 ber Forty's right side was paralyzed, and they pulled out 
 enough iron-mongery from underneath her to build a small 
 bridge. 
 
 Young Ottley knew his instructions by heart from the 
 "Wademecome," but even he began to feel a little alarmed 
 as he saw what came away from the engine and was stacked 
 by the side of the line. After forty minutes of the hardest 
 kind- of work it seemed to him that everything was clear, 
 and that he might venture to give her steam. She leaked 
 at every pore, but she moved moved as though every 
 foot would be her last and the soldiers cheered. 
 
 Rustomjee flatly refused to help in anything so revolu- 
 tionary as driving a locomotive on one cylinder, because, he 
 said, heaven had decreed that he should always be unlucky, 
 even with sound machines. Moreover, as he pointed out, 
 the pressure-gauge was jumping up and down like a bottle 
 imp. The stoker had long since gone away into the night, 
 for he was a prudent man. 
 
 "Doocid queer thing altogether," said the lieutenant, 
 "but look here, if you like I'll chuck on the coals and you 
 can drive the old jigamaroo, if she'll move." 
 
 "Perhaps she will blow up," said the gunner-guard. 
 
 "Shouldn't at all wonder. Where's the shovel?" said the 
 lieutenant. 
 
 "Oah, no. She's all right according to the book, I think," 
 said young Ottley. "Now we will go to Serai Rajgara if 
 she moves." 
 
 She moved with a long ssghee! ssghee! of exhaustion. She 
 moved at least seven miles an hour, and for the floods were 
 all over the line the voyage began.
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE 13 
 
 The lieutenant stoked four shovels to the minute, spreading 
 them thin, and Number Forty made noises like a dying cow, 
 and young Ottley discovered that it was one thing to run 
 a healthy switching-locomotive up and down the yards for 
 fun, and quite another to drive a very sick one over an 
 unknown road in absolute darkness and pouring rain. But 
 they felt their way along with their hearts in their mouths 
 till they came to a distant signal, and whistled frugally, 
 having no steam to spare. 
 
 "That might be Serai Rajgara," said young Ottley, hope- 
 fully. 
 
 "Looks like the Suez Canal with a steamer in it," said the 
 lieutenant. "I say, when an engine kicks up that sort of 
 noise she's a little impatient, isn't she?" 
 
 "That sort of noise" was a full-powered, furious yelling 
 whistle half a mile up the line. 
 
 "That is the down mail," said young Ottley. "We have 
 delayed Olaf two hours and forty-five minutes. She must 
 surely be in Serai Rajgara." 
 
 "Don't wonder she wants to get out of it," said the lieu- 
 tenant. " Golly, what a country ! " 
 
 The line was under water, and young Ottley sent the gunner- 
 guard on to find the switches and let Number Forty into 
 the siding. Then he followed and drew up with a doleful 
 wop! wop! wop! by the side of the great forty-five-ton six- 
 wheel coupled, eigh teen-inch inside cylinder Number Twenty- 
 Five, all chocolate and lemon and lacquer, standing at the 
 head of the down mail. 
 
 Olaf's red beard flared from the cab like a danger-signal, 
 and, as soon as they were within range, some knobby pieces 
 of Giridih coal whizzed past young Ottley's head. 
 
 "Your friend mad?" said the lieutenant, ducking. 
 
 "Aah! You fat Parsee pig!" roared Olaf. "This is the
 
 i 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 fifth time you make delay. Three hours' delay you make 
 me Swanson the Mail ! Now I will lose more time to 
 break your head." He swung on to the footplate of Number 
 Forty. 
 
 "Olaf!" cried young Ottley, and Olaf nearly tumbled back- 
 ward. "Rustomjee is behind." 
 
 "Of course. He is always. But you? How you come 
 here?" 
 
 "Oah, we smashed up. I have disconnected her, and 
 arrived on one cylinder, by the book. We are only a diagram 
 of an engine, I think." 
 
 "My Book! My very good Book! The 'Wademecome 
 Ottley, you are a fine driver. I forgive my delays. It was 
 worth. Oh, my Book! My Book!" and Olaf leaped back 
 to Number Twenty-Five, shouting things about Mr. Sweden- 
 borg and steam. 
 
 "That is all right," said young Ottley; "but where is Serai 
 Rajgara? We want assistance." 
 
 "There is no Serai Rajgara. The water is five feet down 
 the embankment, and the telegraph office has fell in. I will 
 report at Purnool Road. Good night. Good boy." 
 
 The mail train splashed out into the dark, and Ottley 
 made great haste to let off all the steam and draw the fire. 
 Number Forty had done enough for that night. 
 
 "Odd chap, that friend of yours," said the lieutenant, 
 when Number Forty stood empty and disarmed in the 
 gathering waters. "What do we do now? Swim?" 
 
 "Oah, no. At ten forty-five this morning that is coming, 
 an engine will perhaps arrive from Purnool Road and take 
 us north. Now we will go and lie down and sleep. You 
 see there is no Serai Rajgara. You could get a cup of tea 
 here once on a time." 
 
 "Oh, my aunt, what a country!" said the lieu tenant as he
 
 THE BOLD 'PRENTICE 15 
 
 followed Ottley to the carriage and lay down on the leather 
 bunk. 
 
 For the next three weeks Olaf Swanson talked of nothing 
 but his " Wademecome " and young Ottley. What he said 
 about his book does not matter, but the compliments of a 
 mail-driver are things to be repeated, as they were, to people 
 in high authority, the masters of many engines. So young 
 Ottley was sent for, and he came from the Sheds to the 
 Superintender's office, wondering which of his sins had been 
 found out this time. 
 
 It was a loop-line near Ajaibpore, where he could by 
 no possibility come to harm. It was light but steady traffic, 
 and a first-class superintendent was in charge, but it was a 
 driver's billet, to be made permanent after six months. As a 
 new engine was ordered for the loop, the foreman of the 
 Sheds told young Ottley he might look through the stalls 
 and suit himself with a machine. 
 
 He waited till Olaf came in, one week's end, and the two 
 went off to the Sheds together, old Olaf clucking, "Look! 
 Look! Look!" like a hen, and they chose a nearly new 
 Hawthorne, No. 239, that Olaf recommended. Then Olaf 
 went away, to give young Ottley his chance to order her to 
 the cleaning-pit, and jerk his thumb driver-fashion at the 
 cleaner and say, as he turned magnificently on his heel, 
 "Thursday, eight o'clock. Understand?" 
 
 That was almost the proudest moment of his life. The 
 proudest was when he pulled out of Atami Junction through 
 the brickfields on his way to his loop, and passed the down 
 mail, with Olaf in the cab. 
 
 They say in the Repair Sheds that you could have heard 
 Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine's whistle from Ra- 
 neegunge clear to Calcutta.
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 
 
 ALMOST any pilot will tell you that his work is much 
 more difficult than you imagine; but the pilots of the 
 Hugli know that they have one hundred miles of the 
 most dangerous river on earth running through their hands 
 the Hugli between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal and 
 say nothing. Their service is picked and sifted as carefully 
 as the bench of the Supreme Court, for a judge can only 
 hang the wrong man, but a careless pilot can lose a six thou- 
 sand ton ship with crew and cargo in less time t"han it takes 
 to reverse engines. 
 
 There is very little chance of getting off again when once 
 you touch in the furious current of the Hugli, loaded with 
 all the fat silt of the fields of Bengal, where soundings change 
 two feet between tides, and new channels make or efface 
 themselves in a season. Men have fought the Hugli for two 
 hundred years, till now the river owns a huge building, with 
 drawing, survey, and telegraph departments, devoted to its 
 exclusive service, as well as a body of wardens, who are 
 called Port Commissioners. 
 
 They and their officers govern absolutely, from the Hugli 
 bridge to the last buoy at Pilots Ridge, one hundred and forty 
 miles away, far out in the Bay of Bengal, where the steamers 
 first pick up the pilots from the pilot brig that always awaits 
 them there. 
 
 16
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 17 
 
 A Hugli pilot does not bring newspapers aboard a ship, or 
 scramble out of a dinghy, up rope ladders. He arrives in 
 his best clothes, with a native servant or assistant to wait 
 on him, and he behaves as a man should who can earn ten 
 thousand dollars a year after twenty years' apprenticeship. 
 He has beautiful rooms in the Port Office at Calcutta, and 
 generally keeps himself to the society of his own profession, 
 for though the telegraph reports the more important soundings 
 of the river daily, there is much to be learned between trip 
 and trip, which only his fellow pilots can tell him. 
 
 Some millions of tons of shipping must find their way to 
 and from Calcutta each twelvemonth, and unless the Hugli 
 were watched as closely as men watch the Atlantic cables, 
 there is a fear that it might silt up as it has silted up round 
 the old Dutch and Portuguese ports twenty and thirty miles 
 behind Calcutta. So the Port Office sounds and scours and 
 dredges, and builds spurs and devices for coaxing currents, 
 and labels all the buoys with their proper letters, and attends 
 to the semaphores and the lights and the drum, ball and cone 
 storm signals, and the pilots of the Hugli do the rest; but, 
 in spite of all the care, the Hugli swallows a ship or two every 
 year. 
 
 When Martin Trevor had followed this life from his boy- 
 hood; when he had risen to be a senior pilot, entitled to 
 bring up to Calcutta the big ships, drawing over twenty-four 
 feet, that can (or could till a few years ago) only pass by 
 special arrangement; when he had talked nothing but Hugli 
 and pilotage all his life, he was exceedingly indignant that 
 his only son should decide upon following his father's pro- 
 fession. Mrs. Trevor had died when the boy was a child, 
 and as he grew older, Trevor, in the intervals of his business, 
 noticed that the lad was often by the riverside no nice 
 place for a boy. Once, when he asked Jim if he took any
 
 i8 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 interest in ships, the boy replied by reeling off the list of all 
 the house-flags on the steamers then in sight at the moorings. 
 
 "You'll come to a bad end, Jim," said Trevor. "Little 
 boys haven't any business to know house-flags." 
 
 "Oh, Pedro at the Sailors' Home taught me. He says you 
 can't begin too early." 
 
 "At what, please?" 
 
 "Piloting. I'm nearly fourteen now, and and I know 
 where all the shipping in the river is, and I know what water 
 there was yesterday over the Mayapuf Bar, and I've been 
 down to Diamond Harbor, oh, a hundred times, and I've 
 
 "You'll go to school, son, and learn what they teach you, 
 and you'll turn out something better than a pilot," said his 
 father, but he might just as well have told a shovel-nosed 
 porpoise of the river to come ashore and begin life as a hen. 
 Jim held his tongue; he noticed that all the best pilots of the 
 Port Office did that; and devoted his young attention and 
 all his spare time and money to the river that he loved. 
 
 Trevor's son became as well known as the Bankshall itself, 
 and the Port Police let him inspect their launches, and the 
 tugboat captains had always a place for him at their table, 
 and the mates of the big steam dredgers used to show him 
 how the machinery worked, and there were certain native 
 rowboats that Jim practically owned; and he extended his 
 young patronage to the railway that runs to Diamond Harbor, 
 forty miles down the river. In the old days nearly all the 
 East India Company's ships used to discharge at Diamond 
 Harbor, on account of the shoals above, but now the ships 
 go straight up to Calcutta, and they have only some moorings 
 for vessels in distress there, and a telegraph service, and a 
 harbor-master, who was Jim's intimate friend. 
 
 He would sit in the office and listen to the soundings of the 
 shoals as they were reported every day, and attend to the
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 19 
 
 movements of the steamers up and down (Jim always felt 
 that he had lost something if any boat got in or out of the 
 river without his knowing it) and when the big liners with 
 their rows of shining portholes, tied up in Diamond Harbor 
 for the night, Jim would row from one ship to the other 
 through the sticky hot air and the buzzing mosquitoes and 
 listen respectfully as the great pilots conferred together. 
 
 Once, for a treat, his father took him down clear out to 
 the Sandheads and the pilot brig there, and Jim was joyfully 
 seasick as she tossed and pitched in the bay. So of course 
 he had to go down to the brig three or four times more with 
 friendly pilots till he had quite cured his weakness. The 
 cream of life, though, was coming up in a tug or a police 
 boat from Diamond Harbor to Calcutta, over the "James 
 and Mary" shoal those terrible sands christened after a 
 royal ship they sunk two hundred years ago. They are made 
 by two rivers that enter the Hugli six miles apart and throw 
 their own silt across the silt of the main stream, so that 
 with each turn of weather and tide the sands shift and change 
 like clouds. It was here (the tales sound much worse when 
 they are told in the rush and growl of the muddy waters) 
 that the Countess of Stirling, fifteen hundred tons, touched 
 and capsized in ten minutes, and a two-thousand ton steamer 
 in two, and a pilgrim ship in five, and another steamer liter- 
 ally in an instant, holding down her men with the masts 
 and shrouds as she lashed over. When a ship touches on 
 the "James and Mary, " the river knocks her down and buries 
 her, and then the sands quiver all around her and reach 
 out under water and take new shapes all dangerous. 
 
 Young Jim would lie up in the bows of the tug and watch 
 the straining buoys kick and smother in the coffee-colored 
 current, while the semaphores and flags signaled from the 
 bank how much water there was in the channel, till he learned
 
 20 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 the great law that men who only deal with men can afford 
 to be careless on the chance of their fellow men being like them ; 
 but that men who deal with things dare not relax for an 
 instant. "And that's the very reason," old McEwen the 
 pilot said to him once, ''that the 'James and Mary' is the 
 safest part of the river," and he put the big black Bandoorah, 
 that draws twenty-five feet, through the Eastern Gut with 
 a turban of white foam wrapped round her forefoot and her 
 screw beating as steadily as his own heart. 
 
 If Jim could not get away to the river there was always 
 the big, cool Port Office, where the soundings were calculated 
 and the maps were drawn; or the Pilot's room, where he 
 could lie on a long chair and listen to the talk about the 
 Hugli; and there was the library, where if you had money 
 you could buy charts and books of directions against the 
 time that you should actually steam over the places them- 
 selves. It was exceedingly hard for Jim to hold the list 
 of Jewish kings in his head, and he was more than uncertain 
 as to the end of the verb audio if you followed it far enough 
 down the page, but he could keep the soundings of three 
 channels distinct in his head and, what is more confusing, 
 the changes in the buoys from "Garden Reach" down to 
 Saugor, as well as the greater part of the shipping news in 
 the Calcutta Telegraph, the only paper he ever read. 
 
 Unluckily, you cannot peruse about the Hugli without 
 money, even though you are the son of the best known pilot 
 on the river, and as soon as Trevor understood how his son 
 was spending his time he cut down his pocket money and 
 Jim had a generous allowance. In his extremity Jim took 
 counsel with Pedro, the plum-colored mulatto at the Sailors' 
 Home, and Pedro was a bad man. He introduced Jim to 
 a Chinaman in Muchuatollah, one of the worst wards in the 
 city of Calcutta, and the Chinaman, who answered to the
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 21 
 
 name of Erh-Tze when he was not smoking opium, and 
 who happened to be master of a big junk, talked pigeon- 
 English to Jim for an hour on professional business, in flat 
 defiance of all Port regulations. 
 
 "S'pose you take? Can do?" he said at last. 
 
 Jim considered the chances. A junk he knew would draw 
 about eleven feet, and the regular fee for the qualified pilot 
 outward would be two hundred rupees. On the one hand 
 Jim was by no means a qualified pilot, so he could not ask 
 more than half. But, on the other hand, he was fully certain 
 of a thrashing from his father for piloting without license. 
 So he asked one hundred and seventy-five rupees to allow 
 for the beating, and Erh-Tze beat him down to a hundred 
 and twenty; and that was like a Chinaman all over. The 
 cargo of the junk was worth from fifty to a hundred thousand 
 rupees, and Erh-Tze was getting enormous freight on the 
 coffins of thirty or forty dead Chinamen whom he was taking 
 to be buried in their native country. 
 
 Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for this service, and 
 they have a superstition that the iron of steamships is bad 
 for the health of their dead. Erh-Tze's junk crept up from 
 Singapore via Panang and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where 
 Erh-Tze had been shocked and pained by the pilotage dues. 
 This time he was going out at a reduction with Jim, who, 
 Pedro had told him, was just as good as a pilot. The risks that 
 a Chinaman will run to save five rupees are not small, to 
 save seventy-five rupees he will but you shall hear. 
 
 Jim knew something of the outside of junks, but he was 
 not prepared when he went down that night with his charts, 
 for the confusion of cargo and coolies and coffins and clay- 
 cooking places, and other things that h'ttered her decks. 
 Jim had sense enough to haul her rudder up a few feet; for 
 he knew that a junk's rudder goes far below the bottom,
 
 and he allowed a foot extra to Erh-Tze's estimate of her 
 drafts of water. Then they staggered out into midstream 
 very early, and never had the city of his birth looked so beau- 
 tiful to Jim as when he feared he might never come back to 
 see it again. 
 
 Going down "Garden Reach" he discovered that the 
 junk would answer to her helm if you put it over enough, 
 and that she had a fair, though a strictly Chinese, notion of 
 sailing. He took charge of the tiller by stationing three 
 Chinese on each side of it, and, standing a little forward, 
 gathered their pigtails into his hands, three right and three 
 left, as though they had been the yoke-lines of a rowboat. 
 Erh-Tze almost smiled at this; he felt he was getting good 
 care for his money, and he took a neat little polished bamboo 
 to keep the men attentive, for he said to Jim this was no time 
 to teach the crew pigeon-English. The more way they 
 could get on the junk the better would she steer, and as soon 
 as he felt a little confidence in her, Jim ordered the big rustling 
 mat sails to be hauled up tighter and tighter. He did not 
 know their names at least any name that would be likely 
 to interest a Chinaman but Erh-Tze had not banged 
 about the waters of the Malay Archipelago for nothing, and 
 as he went forward with his little bamboo, the sails rose 
 like Eastern incantations. 
 
 Early as they were on the river a big American oil-ship 
 was ahead of them in tow, and when Jim saw her through 
 the smoking morning mist he was thankful. She would 
 draw all of seventeen feet and if he could steer by her they 
 would be safe. It is one thing to scurry up and down the 
 "James and Mary" in a police-tug without responsibility, 
 and quite another thing to cram a hard-mouthed old junk 
 across the same sands alone, with the certaintv of a thrashing 
 if you come out alive at the other end.
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 23 
 
 Jim glued his eyes to the American, and saw that at 
 Fultah she dropped her tug and stood down the river under 
 sail. He all but whooped aloud, for he knew that the number 
 of pilots who preferred to work a ship through the "James 
 and Mary" without tug was strictly limited. "If it isn't 
 father, it's Dearsley," said Jim; "but Dearsley went down 
 yesterday with the Bandoorah. If I'd gone home last evening 
 instead of going to Pedro, I'd have met father. He must 
 have got his ship quick, but father is a very quick man." 
 Then Jim reflected that they kept a piece of knotted rope 
 on the pilot brig that stung like a wasp; but this thought 
 he dismissed as beneath the dignity of an officiating pilot 
 who need only nod his head to set Erh-Tze's bamboo to work. 
 
 As the American came round, just before the "Fultah 
 Sands" Jim raked her with his spy-glass, and saw his father 
 on the poop with an unlighted cigar between his teeth. That 
 cigar, Jim knew, would be smoked on the other side of the 
 "James and Mary" and Jim felt entirely safe and happy. 
 This kind of piloting was child's play! His father could 
 not make a mistake if he tried; and Jim, with his six faithful 
 pigtails in his two hands, had leisure to admire the perfect 
 style in which the American was handled how she would 
 point her bowsprit jeeringly at a hidden bank, as much as 
 to say, "Not to-day, thank you, dear," and bow down 
 lovingly over a buoy as much as to say, " You're a gentleman, 
 at any rate," and come round sharp on her heel with a flutter 
 and a rustle, and a slow, steady swing something like a 
 woman staring round a crowded theatre through opera-glasses. 
 
 It was hard work to keep the junk near her, though Erh-Tze 
 set everything that was by any means settable, and used 
 the bamboo very generously. When they were almost under 
 her counter, and a little to the left, Jim would feel warm 
 and happy all over, thinking of the nautical and piloting
 
 24 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 things he knew. When they fell more than half a mile 
 behind, he was cold and miserable, thinking of all the things 
 he did not know or, more still, was not quite sure of. And 
 so they went down the river, Jim steering by his father turn 
 for turn, over the Mayapur Bar, with the semaphores on 
 each bank, signaling the depth of water, through the Western 
 Gut, and round the Makoaputti Lumps, and in and out of 
 twenty places, each more exciting than the last, and Jim 
 nearly pulled the six pigtails out for pure joy when the 
 lafct of the "James and Mary" had gone astern, and they were 
 walking through Diamond Harbor. 
 
 From there to the mouth of the Hugli things are not so 
 bad at least, that was what Jim thought and held on 
 till the swell from the Bay of Bengal made the old junk 
 heave and snort, and the river broadened into the inland 
 sea, with islands only a foot or two high scattered about it. 
 The American walked away from the junk as soon as they 
 were beyond Kedgeree, and the night came on and the 
 water looked very big and desolate, so Jim promptly anchored 
 somewhere in the gray water, with the Saugor Light far 
 away off toward the east. He had a great respect for the 
 Hugli, and no desire whatever to find himself on the Gasper 
 Sand or any other nice little shoal in the dark. Erh-Tze 
 and the crew highly approved of this piece of seamanship. 
 They set no watch, lit no lights, and at once went to sleep. 
 
 Jim lay down between a red and black lacquer coffin and 
 a little live pig in a basket. As soon as it was light he began 
 studying his chart of the Hugli mouth, trying to find out 
 where in the river he might be. He decided to be on the 
 safe side, and wait for another sailing ship and follow her 
 out. So he made an enormous breakfast of rice and boiled 
 fish, while Erh-Tze lit firecrackers and burned gilt-paper 
 before his Joss with ostentation. Then they heaved up their
 
 AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 25 
 
 rough and tumble anchor and made after a big, fat, iron 
 four-masted sailing ship heavy as a hay wain. The junk, 
 which was really a very weatherly boat, and might have 
 begun life as a private pirate in Annam thirty years ago, 
 followed under easy sail for the four-master would run 
 no risks. She was in old McE wen's hands, and she waddled 
 about like a broody hen, giving each shoal wide allowances. 
 All this happened near the outer Floating Light, some hundred 
 and twenty miles from Calcutta and apparently in the open sea. 
 
 Jim knew old McE wen's appetite, and had often heard 
 him pride himself on getting his ship to the pilot brig between 
 meal hours, so he argued that if the pilot brig was get-at-able 
 (and Jim himself had not the ghost of a notion where she 
 might be) McEwen would find her before one o'clock. 
 
 It was a blazing hot day, and McEwen fidgeted the four- 
 master down to "Pilots Ridge" with what little wind 
 remained, and sure enough there lay the Pilot Brig and Jim 
 felt cold up his back as Erh-Tze paid him his hundred and 
 twenty rupees and he went overside in the junk's crazy 
 dinghy. McEwen was leaving the four-master in a long, 
 slashing whale-boat, that looked very spruce and pretty 
 and Jim could see that there was a certain amount of excite- 
 ment among the pilots on the brig. He noticed that his 
 father was there. The ragged Chinese gave way in a ragged 
 fashion, and Jim felt very unwashen and disreputable when 
 he heard the click and swash of McEwen's oars alongside, 
 and McEwen saying, "James Trevor, for the sake of the 
 service, I'll trouble you to come along with me." 
 
 Jim obeyed there was no where else to go. He got 
 into the European boat and from the corner of one eye 
 watched McEwen's angry whiskers stand up all round his 
 face li^e the frill of a royal Bengal tiger, while his face turned 
 purple and his voice shook.
 
 26 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "An' is this how you break the regulations o' the port o' 
 Calcutta? Are ye aware o' the penalties ye've laid yourself 
 open to? " he roared. 
 
 Jim said nothing. There was not very much to say, and 
 McEwen roared aloud: "Man, ye've personated a Hugli 
 pilot, an' that's as much as to say ye've personated ME! 
 What did yon yellow heathen give you for an honorarium?" 
 
 "Hundred and twenty," said Jim. 
 
 "An' by what manner o' means did ye get through the 
 'James and Mary'?" 
 
 "Father," was the answer. "He went down the same 
 tide and I we steered by him." 
 
 McEwen whistled and choked; perhaps it was with anger. 
 "Made a'stalkin' horse o' your father. Jim, boy, he'll make 
 an example o' you." 
 
 The boat hooked on the Pilot Brig's chains, and McEwen 
 said, as he rolled on deck, "Yon's an enterprising cub o' 
 yours, Trevor. Ye'd better put him to the regular business, 
 or one o' these fine days he'll be acting as pilot before he's 
 qualified, and sinkin' junks in the fairway. If ye've no other 
 designs I'd take him in as my cub, for there's no denying 
 he's a resourceful lad for all that he's an unlicked whelp." 
 
 "That," said Trevor, reaching for Jim's left ear, as Jim 
 set foot on the deck, "is something we can remedy," and he 
 led him below. 
 
 The little knotted piece of rope that they keep for general 
 purposes on the Pilot Brig found out every place on him, 
 but when it was all over Jim was an unlicked cub no longer. 
 He was McE wen's property, and a week later, when the 
 Ellora came along, going up to Calcutta he bundled 
 overside with McE wen's enameled leather hand-bag and a 
 roll of charts, and a little bag of his own.
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 
 
 DAN had come to grief over his Latin, and was kept 
 in; so Una went alone to Far Wood. Dan's big 
 catapult and the lead bullets that Hobden had made 
 for him were hidden in an old hollow beech-stub on the 
 west of the wood. They had named the place out of the verse 
 in Lays of Ancient Rome. 
 
 From lordly Volaterrae, 
 
 Where scowls the far-famed hold, 
 Piled by the hands of giants 
 
 For Godlike Kings of old. 
 
 They were the "Godlike Kings," and when old Hobden 
 piled some comfortable brushwood between the big wooden 
 knees of Volaterrae, they called him "Hands of Giants." 
 
 Una slipped through their private gap in the fence, and 
 sat still a while, scowling as scowlily and lordlily as she knew 
 how; for " Volaterrae " is an important watch-tower that juts 
 out of Far Wood just as Far Wood juts out of the hillside. 
 Pook's Hill lay below her, and all the turns of the brook 
 as it wanders from out of the Willingford Woods, between 
 hop-gardens, to old Hobden's cottage at the Forge. The 
 Sou'-West wind (there is always a wind by "Volaterrae") 
 blew from the bare ridge where Cherry Clack Windmill stands. 
 
 Now wind prowling through woods sounds like exciting 
 things going to happen, and that is why on "blowy days" 
 
 27
 
 2 8 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 you stand up in Volaterrae and shout bits of the Lays to 
 suit its noises. 
 
 Una took Dan's catapult from its secret place, and made 
 ready to meet Lars Porsena's army stealing through the 
 wind- whitened aspens by the brook. A gust boomed up the 
 valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully: 
 
 " Verbenna down to Ostia 
 
 Hath wasted all the plain; 
 Astur hath stormed Janiculum 
 
 And the stout guards are slain." 
 
 But the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside 
 and shook a single oak in Gleason's pasture. Here it made 
 itself all small and crouched among the grasses, waving the 
 tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail before she 
 springs. 
 
 "Now welcome welcome Sextus," sang Una, loading the 
 catapult 
 
 "Now welcome to thy home, 
 
 Why dost thou turn and run away? 
 Here lies the rod of Rome." 
 
 She fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly 
 wind, and heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture. 
 
 "Oh, my Winkie!" she said aloud, and that was something 
 she had picked up from Dan. "I believe I've tickled up a 
 Gleason cow." 
 
 "You little painted beast!" a voice cried. "I'll teach you 
 to sling your masters!" 
 
 She looked down most cautiously, and saw a young man 
 covered with hoopy bronze armor all glowing among the 
 late broom. But what Una admired beyond all was his 
 great bronze helmet with its red horse-tail that flicke.d in the
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 29 
 
 wind. She could hear the long hairs rasp on his shimmery 
 shoulder-plates. 
 
 "What does the Faun mean," he said, half aloud to himself, 
 " by telling me the Painted People have changed? " He caught 
 sight of Una's yellow head. "Have you seen a painted 
 lead-slinger? " he called. 
 
 "No-o," said Una. "But if you've seen a bullet 
 
 " Seen? " cried the man. "It passed within a hair's breadth 
 of my ear." 
 
 "Well, that was me. I'm most awfully sorry." 
 
 "Didn't the Faun tell you I was coming?" He smiled. 
 
 "Not if you mean Puck. I thought you were a Gleason 
 
 cow. I I didn't know you were a a W T hat are 
 
 you?" 
 
 He laughed outright, showing a set of splendid teeth. 
 His face and eyes were dark, and his eyebrows met above 
 his big nose in one bushy black bar. 
 
 "They call me Parnesius. I have been an officer of the 
 Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion the Ulpia Victrix. 
 Did you sling that bullet?" 
 
 "I did. I was using Dan's catapult," said Una. 
 
 "Catapults!" said he. "I ought to know something about 
 them. Show me!" 
 
 He leaped the rough fence with a rattle of spear, shield, 
 and armor, and hoisted himself into " Volaterrae " as quickly 
 as a shadow. 
 
 "A sling on a forked stick. 7 understand!" he cried, and 
 pulled at the elastic. "But what wonderful beast yields 
 this stretching leather?" 
 
 "It's laccy elastic. You put the bullet into that loop, 
 and then you pull hard." 
 
 The man pulled, and hit himself square on his thumb-nail. 
 
 "Each to his own weapon," he said, gravely, handing it
 
 30 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 back. "I am better with the bigger machine, little maiden. 
 But it's a pretty toy. A wolf would laugh at it. Aren't 
 you afraid of wolves?" 
 
 "There aren't any," said Una. 
 
 "Never believe it! A wolf is like a Winged Hat. He 
 comes when he isn't expected. Don't they hunt wolves 
 here?" 
 
 "We don't hunt," said Una, remembering what she had 
 heard from grown-ups. "We preserve pheasants. Do you 
 know them?" 
 
 "I ought to," said the young man, smiling again, and he 
 imitated the cry of the cock-pheasant so perfectly that a 
 bird answered out of the wood. 
 
 "What a big painted clucking fool is a pheasant," he said. 
 "Just like some Romans!" 
 
 "But you're a Roman yourself, aren't you?" said Una. 
 
 "Ye-es and no. I'm one of a good few thousands who have 
 never seen Rome except in a picture. My people have 
 lived at Vectis for generations. Vectis! That island West 
 yonder that you can see from so far in clear weather." 
 
 "Do you mean the Isle of Wight? It lifts up just before 
 rain, and we see it from the Downs." 
 
 "Very likely. Our Villa's on the South edge of the Island, 
 by the Broken Cliffs. Most of it is three hundred years 
 old, but the cow-stables, where our first ancestor lived, must 
 be a hundred years older. Oh, quite that, because the founder 
 of our family had his land given him by Agricola at the 
 Settlement. It's not a bad little place for its size. In 
 springtime violets grow down to the very beach. I've 
 gathered seaweeds for myself and violets for my mother 
 many a time with our old nurse." 
 
 "Was your nurse a a Romaness too?" 
 
 "No, a Numidian. Gods be good to her! A dear, fat,
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 31 
 
 brown thing with a tongue like a cowbell. She was a free 
 woman. By the way, are you free, Maiden?" 
 
 "Oh, quite," said Una. "At least, till tea time; and in 
 summer our governess doesn't say much if we're late." 
 
 The young man laughed again a proper undei standing 
 laugh. 
 
 "I see," said he. "That accounts for your being in the 
 wood. We hid among the cliffs." 
 
 "Did you have a governess, then?" 
 
 "Did we not? A Greek, too. She had a way of clutching 
 her dress when she hunted us among the gorze-bushes that 
 made us laugh. Then she'd say she'd get us whipped. She 
 never did, though, bless her! Aglaia was a thorough sports- 
 woman, for all her learning." 
 
 "But what lessons did you do when when you were 
 little!" 
 
 "Ancient history, the Classics, arithmetic, and so on," 
 he answered. "My sister and I were thickheads, but my 
 two brothers (I'm the middle one) liked those things, and, of 
 course, Mother was clever enough for any six. She was 
 nearly as tall as I am, and she looked like the new statue 
 on the Western Road the Demeter of the Baskets, you 
 know. And funny! Roma Dea! How Mother could make 
 us laugh!" 
 
 "What at?" 
 
 "Little jokes and sayings that every family has. Don't 
 you know? " 
 
 "I know we have, but I didn't know other people had them 
 too," said Una. "Tell me about all your family, please." 
 
 "Good families are very much alike. Mother would sit 
 spinning of evenings while Aglaia read in her corner, and 
 Father did accounts, and we four romped about the passages. 
 When our noise grew too loud the Pater would say, 'Less
 
 32 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES . 
 
 tumult! Less tumult! Have you never heard of a Father's 
 right over his children? He can slay them, my loves slay 
 them dead, and the Gods highly approve of the action!' 
 Then Mother would prim up her dear mouth over the wheel 
 and answer: 'H'm! I'm afraid there can't be much of the 
 Roman Father about you!' Then the Pater would roll 
 up his accounts, and say, 'I'll show you!' and then then, 
 he'd be worse than any of us!" 
 
 "Fathers can if they like,'' said Una, her eyes dancing. 
 
 "Didn't I say all good families are very much the same?" 
 
 "What did you do in summer?" said Una. "Play about, 
 like us?" 
 
 "Yes, and we visited our friends. There are no wolves in 
 Vectis. We had many friends, and as many ponies as we 
 wished." 
 
 "It must have been lovely, said Una. "I hope it lasted 
 forever." 
 
 "Not quite, little maid. When I was about sixteen or 
 seventeen, the Father felt gouty, and we all went to the 
 Waters." 
 
 "What waters?" 
 
 "At Aquae Sulis. Every one goes there. You ought to 
 get your Father to take you some day." 
 
 "But where? I don't know," said Una. 
 
 The young man looked astonished for a moment. "Aquae 
 Sulis," he repeated. "The best baths in Britain. Just as 
 good, I'm told, as Rome. All the old gluttons sit in its hot 
 water, and talk scandal and politics. And the Generals 
 come through the streets with their guards behind them; 
 and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff 
 guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and gold- 
 smiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, 
 and ultra-Roman Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 33 
 
 tame tribesmen pretending to be civilized, and Jew lecturers, 
 and oh, everybody interesting. We young people, of 
 course, took no interest in politics. We had not the gout: 
 there were many of our age like us. We did not find life sad. 
 
 "But while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking, 
 my sister met the son of a magistrate in the West and a 
 year afterward she was married to him. My young brother, 
 who was always interested in plants and roots, met the First 
 Doctor of a Legion from the City of the Legions, and he 
 decided that he would be an Army doctor. I do not think 
 it is a profession for a well-born man, but then I'm not 
 my brother. He went to Rome to study medicine, and now 
 he's First Doctor of a Legion in Egypt at Antinoe, I think, 
 but I have not heard from him for some time. 
 
 "My eldest brother came across a Greek philosopher, and 
 told my Father that he intended to settle down on the estate 
 as a farmer and a philosopher. You see. You see" 
 the young man's eyes twinkled "his philosopher was a 
 long-haired one!" 
 
 "I thought philosophers were bald," said Una. 
 
 "Not all. She was very pretty. I don't blame him. 
 Nothing could have suited me better than my eldest brother's 
 doing this, for I was only too keen to join the Army. I had 
 always feared I should have to stay at home and look after 
 the estate while my brother took this." 
 
 He rapped on his great glistening shield that never seemed 
 to be in his way. 
 
 "So we were well contented we young people and we 
 rode back to Clausentum along the Wood Road very quietly. 
 But when we reached home, Aglaia, our governess, saw 
 what had come to us. I remember her at the door, the 
 torch over her head, watching us climb the cliff-path from the 
 boat. 'Aie! Aie!' she said. 'Children you went away.
 
 34 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Men and a woman you return!' Then she kissed Mother, 
 and Mother wept. Thus our visit to the Waters settled our 
 fates for each of us, Maiden. " 
 
 He rose to his feet and listened, leaning on the shield-rim. 
 
 "I think that's Dan my brother," said Una. 
 
 "Yes; and the Faun is with him," he replied, as Dan with 
 Puck stumbled through the copse. 
 
 "We should have come sooner," Puck called, "but the 
 beauties of your native tongue, O Parnesius, have enthralled 
 this young citizen." 
 
 Parnesius looked bewildered, even when Una explained. 
 
 "Dan said the plural of 'dominus' was 'dominoes,' and 
 when Miss Blake said it wasn't he said he supposed it was 
 'backgammon,' and so he had to write it out twice for 
 cheek, you know." 
 
 Dan had climbed into Volaterrae, hot and panting. 
 
 "I've run nearly all the way," he gasped, "and then Puck 
 met me. How do you do, Sir?" 
 
 "I am in good health," Parnesius answered. "See! I 
 have tried to bend the bow of Ulysses, but He held 
 
 up his thumb. 
 
 "I'm sorry. You must have pulled off too soon," said 
 Dan. "Puck said you viere telling Una a story." 
 
 "Continue, O Parnesius," said Puck, who had perched 
 Himself on a dead branch above them. "I will be chorus. 
 Has he puzzled you much, Una?" 
 
 "Not a bit, except I didn't know where Ak Ak 
 something was," she answered. 
 
 " Oh, Aquae Sulis. That's Bath, where the buns come from. 
 Let the hero tell his own tale." 
 
 Parnesius pretended to thrust his spear at Puck's legs, 
 but Puck reached down, caught at the horse-tail plume, 
 and pulled off the tall helmet.
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 35 
 
 " Thanks, jester," said Parnesius, shaking his curly dark 
 head. "That is cooler. Now hang it up for me. 
 
 "I was telling your sister how I joined the Army," he said 
 to Dan. 
 
 "Did you have to pass an Exam?" Dan asked eagerly. 
 
 "No, I went to my Father, and said I should like to enter 
 the Dacian Horse (I had seen some at Aquae Sulis); but he 
 said I had better begin service in a regular Legion from Rome. 
 Now, like many of our youngsters, I was not too fond of any- 
 thing Roman. The Roman-born officers and magistrates 
 looked down on us British-born as though we were barbarians. 
 I told my Father so. 
 
 "'I know they do,' he said; 'but remember, after all, we 
 are the people of the Old Stock, and our duty is to the 
 Empire. ' 
 
 "'To which Empire?' I asked. 'We split the Eagle before 
 I was born.' 
 
 "'What thieves' talk is that?' said my Father. He hated 
 slang. 
 
 "'Well, Sir,' I said, 'we've one Emperor in Rome, and I 
 don't know how many Emperors the outlying Provinces have 
 set up from time to time. Which am I to follow?' 
 
 "'Gratian,' said he. 'At least he's a sportsman.' 
 
 "'He's all that,' I said. 'Hasn't he turned himself into 
 a raw-beef-eating Scythian?' 
 
 "'Where did you hear of it?' said the Pater. 
 
 "'At Aquae Sulis,' I said. It was perfectly true. This 
 precious Emperor Gratian of ours had a bodyguard of fur- 
 cloaked Scythians, and he was so crazy about them that he 
 dressed like them. In Rome of all places in the world! It 
 was as bad as if my own Father had painted himself blue ! 
 
 '"No matter for the clothes,' said the Pater. 'They are 
 only the fringe of the trouble. It began before your time or
 
 36 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 mine. Rome has forsaken her Gods, and must be punished. 
 The great war with the Painted People broke out in the very 
 year the temples of our Gods were destroyed. We beat the 
 Painted People in the very year our temples were rebuilt. 
 Go back further still.' ... He went back to the time of 
 Diocletian; and to listen to him you would have thought 
 Eternal Rome herself was on the edge of destruction, just 
 because a few people had become a little large-minded. 
 
 "I knew nothing about it. Aglaia never taught us the 
 history of our own country. She was so full of her ancient 
 Greeks. 
 
 " 'There is no hope for Rome,' said the Pater, at last. ' She 
 has forsaken her Gods, but if the Gods forgive us here, we 
 may save Britain. To do that, we must keep the Painted 
 People back. Therefore, I tell you, Parnesius, as a Father, 
 that if your heart is set on service, your place is among men 
 on the Wall and not with women among the cities." 5 
 
 "What Wall?" asked Dan and Una at once. 
 
 "Father meant the one we call Hadrian's W T all. I'll tell 
 you about it later. It was built long ago, across North 
 Britain, to keep out the Painted People Picts you call 
 them. Father had fought in the great Pict War that lasted 
 more than twenty years, and he knew what fighting meant. 
 Theodosius, one of our great Generals, had chased the little 
 beasts back far into the North before I was born: down at 
 Vectis, of course, we never troubled our heads about them. 
 But when my Father spoke as he did, I kissed his hand, and 
 waited for orders. We British-born Romans know what is 
 due to our parents." 
 
 "If I kissed my Father's hand, he'd laugh," said Dan. 
 
 "Customs change; but if you do not obey your father, 
 the Gods remember it. You may be quite sure of that. 
 
 "After our talk, seeing I was in earnest, the Pater sent
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 37 
 
 me over to Clausentum to learn my foot-drill in a barrack 
 full of foreign Auxiliaries as unwashed and unshaved a mob 
 of mixed barbarians as ever scrubbed a breastplate. It was 
 your stick in their stomachs and your shield in their faces to 
 push them into any sort of formation. When I had learned 
 my work the Instructor gave me a handful and they were 
 a handful! of Gauls and Iberians to polish up till they 
 were sent to their station^ up-country. I did my best, and 
 one night a villa in the suburbs caught fire, and I had my 
 handful out and at work before any of the other troops. 
 I noticed a quiet-looking man on the lawn, leaning on a stick. 
 He watched us passing buckets from the pond, and at last he 
 said to me: 'Who are you?' 
 
 "'A probationer, waiting for a cohort,' I answered. 7 
 didn't know who he was from Deucalion! 
 
 "'Born in Britain?' he asked. 
 
 "'Yes, if you were born in Spain,' I said, for he neighed 
 his words like an Iberian mule. 
 
 "'And what might you call yourself when you are at 
 home?' he said laughing. 
 
 "'That depends,' I answered; 'sometimes one thing and 
 sometimes another. But now I'm busy.' 
 
 "He said no more till we had saved the family Gods (they 
 were respectable householders), and then he grunted across 
 the laurels: 'Listen, young sometimes-one- thing-and-some- 
 times-another. In future call yourself Centurion of the 
 Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth, the Ulpia Victrix. That 
 will help me to remember you. Your Father and a few other 
 people call me Maximus.' 
 
 "He tossed me the polished stick he was leaning on, and 
 went away. You might have knocked me down with it!" 
 
 "Who was he?" said Dan. 
 
 "Maximus himself, our great General! The General of
 
 38 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Britain who had been Theodosius's right hand in the Pict 
 War! Not only had he given me my Centurion's stick 
 direct, but three steps in a good Legion as well! A new man 
 generally begins in the Tenth Cohort of his Legion, and 
 works up. " 
 
 "And were you pleased?" said Una. 
 
 "Very. I thought Maximus had chosen me for my good 
 looks and fine style in marching, ,but, when I went home, 
 the Pater told me he had served under Maximus in the 
 great Pict War, and had asked him to promote me." 
 
 "A child you were!" said Puck, from above. 
 
 "I was," said Parnesius. "Don't begrudge it me, Faun. 
 Afterward the Gods know I put aside the games!" And 
 Puck nodded, brown chin on brown hand, his big eyes still. 
 
 "The night before I left we sacrificed to our ancestors 
 the usual little Home Sacrifice but I never prayed so 
 earnestly to all the Good Shades, and then I went with my 
 Father by boat to Regnum, and across the chalk eastward 
 to Anderida yonder." 
 
 "Regnum? Anderida?" The children turned their faces 
 to Puck. 
 
 "Regnum's Chichester," he said, pointing toward Cherry 
 Clack, and he threw his arm South behind him " Ander- 
 ida's Pevensey." 
 
 "Pevensey again!" said Dan. ''Where Weland landed?" 
 
 "Weland and a few others," said Puck. "Pevensey isn't 
 young even compared to me!" 
 
 "The headquarters of the Thirtieth lay at Anderida in 
 summer, but my own Cohort, the Seventh, was on the Wall 
 up North. Maximus was inspecting Auxiliaries the Abulci, 
 I think at Anderida, and we stayed with him, for he and 
 my Father were very old friends. I was only there ten days 
 when I was ordered to go up with thirty men to my Cohort."
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 39 
 
 He laughed merrily. "A man never forgets his first march. 
 I was happier than any Emperor when I led my handful 
 through the North Gate of the Camp, and we saluted the 
 Guard and the Altar of Victory there." 
 
 "How? How?" said Dan and Una. 
 
 Parnesius smiled, and stood up, flashing in his armor. 
 
 "So!" said he; and he moved slowly through the beautiful 
 movements of the Roman Salute, that ends with a hollow 
 clang of the shield coming into its place between the shoulders. 
 
 " Hai ! " said Puck. " That sets one thinking ! " 
 
 "We went out fully armed," said Parnesius, sitting down; 
 "but as soon as the road entered the Great Forest, my men 
 expected the packhorses to hang their shields on. 'No!' I 
 said; 'you can dress like women in Anderida, but while you're 
 with me you will carry your own weapons and armor.' 
 
 "'But it's hot,' said one of them, 'and we haven't a doctor. 
 Suppose we get sunstroke, or a fever?' 
 
 '"Then die,' I said, 'and a good riddance to Rome! Up 
 shield up spears, and tighten your foot-wear!" 
 
 "'Don't think yourself Emperor of Britain already,' a 
 fellow shouted. I knocked him over with the butt of my 
 spear, and explained to these Roman-born Romans that, 
 if there were any further trouble, we should go on with one 
 man short. And, by the Light of the Sun, I meant it too! 
 My raw Gauls at Clausentum had never treated me so. 
 
 "Then, quietly as a cloud, Maximus rode out of the fern 
 (my Father behind him), and reined up across the road. 
 He wore the Purple, as though he were already Emperor; 
 his leggings were of white buckskin laced with gold. 
 
 "My men dropped like like partridges. 
 
 "He said nothing for some time, only looked with his eyes 
 puckered. Then he crooked his forefinger, and my men 
 walked crawled, I mean to one side.
 
 40 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 '"Stand in the sun, children/ he said, and they formed 
 up on the hard road. 
 
 "'What would you have done,' he said to me, 'if I had 
 not been here? ' 
 
 "'I should have killed that man,' I answered. 
 
 '"Kill him now,' he said. 'He will not move a limb.' 
 
 " ' No,' I said. ' You've taken my men out of my command. 
 I should only be your butcher if I killed him now.' Do you 
 see what I meant?" Parnesius turned to Dan. 
 
 "Yes," said Dan. "It wouldn't have been fair, somehow." 
 
 "That was what I thought," said Parnesius. But Maxi- 
 mus frowned. 'You'll never be an Emperor, 'he said. 'Not 
 even a General will you be.' 
 
 "I was silent, but my Father seemed pleased. 
 
 "'I came here to see the last of you,' he said. 
 
 "'You have seen it,' said Maximus. 'I shall never need 
 your son any more. He will live and he will die an officer 
 of a Legion and he might have been Prefect of one of my 
 Provinces. Now eat and drink with us,' he said. 'Your 
 men will wait till you have finished.' 
 
 "My miserable thirty stood like wine-skins glistening in 
 the hot sun, and Maximus led us to where his people had 
 set a meal. Himself he mixed the wine. 
 
 "'A year from now,' he said, 'you will remember that 
 you have sat with the Emperor of Britain and Gaul.' 
 
 "'Yes,' said the Pater, 'you can drive two mules Gaul 
 and Britain.' 
 
 "'Five years hence you will remember that you have 
 drunk' he passed me the cup and there was blue borage 
 in it ' with the Emperor of Rome ! ' 
 
 "'No; you can't drive three mules; they will tear you in 
 pieces,' said my Father. 
 
 "'And you on the Wall, among the heather, will weep
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 41 
 
 because your notion of justice was more to you than the 
 favor of the Emperor of Rome.' 
 
 "I sat quite still. One does not answer a General who 
 wears the Purple. 
 
 '"I am not angry with you,' he went on; 'I owe too much 
 to your Father 
 
 "'You owe me nothing but advice that you never took/ 
 said the Pater. 
 
 to be unjust to any of your family. Indeed, I 
 say you will make a good officer, but, so far as I am concerned, 
 on the Wall you will live, and on the Wall you will die,' 
 said Maximus. 
 
 "'Very like,' said iny Father. 'But we shall have the 
 Picts and their friends breaking through before long. You 
 cannot move all troops out of Britain to make you Emperor, 
 and expect the North to sit quiet.' 
 
 "'I follow my destiny,' said Maximus. 
 
 "'Follow it, then,' said my Father pulling up a fern root; 
 'and die as Theodosius died.' 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' said Maximus. ' My old General was killed because 
 he served the Empire too well. 7 may be killed, but not 
 for that reason,' and he smiled a little pale gray smile that 
 made my blood run cold. 
 
 "'Then I had better follow my destiny,' I said, 'and take 
 my men to the Wall.' 
 
 "He looked at me a long time, and bowed his head slanting 
 like a Spaniard. 'Follow it, boy,' he said. That was all. 
 I was only too glad to get away, though I had many messages 
 for home. I found my men standing as they had been put 
 they had not even shifted their feet in the dust and off I 
 marched, still feeling that terrific smile like an east wind up 
 my back. I never halted them till sunset, and" he turned 
 about and looked at Pook's Hill below him "then I
 
 42 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 halted yonder." He pointed to the broken, bracken- 
 covered shoulder of the Forge Hill behind old Hobden's 
 cottage. 
 
 "There? Why, that's only the old Forge where they 
 made iron once," said Dan. 
 
 "Very good stuff it was too," said Parnesius, calmly. 
 "We mended three shoulder-straps here and had a spear-head 
 riveted. The forge was rented from the Government by 
 a one-eyed smith from Carthage. I remember we called him 
 Cyclops. He sold me a beaver-skin rug for my sister's 
 room." 
 
 "But it couldn't have been here," Dan insisted. 
 
 "But it was! From the Altar of Victory at Anderida to the 
 First Forge in the Forest here is twelve miles seven hundred 
 paces. It is all in the Road Book. A man doesn't forget 
 his first march. I think I could tell you every station 
 
 between this and " He leaned forward, but his eye 
 
 was caught by the setting sun. 
 
 It had come down to the top of Cherry Clack Hill, and the 
 light poured in between the tree trunks so that you could 
 see red and gold and black deep into the heart of Far Wood; 
 and Parnesius in his armor shone as though he had been 
 afire. 
 
 "Wait," he said, lifting a hand, and the sunlight jinked 
 on his glass bracelet. "Wait! I pray to Mithras !" 
 
 He rose and stretched his arms westward, with deep, 
 splendid-sounding words. 
 
 Then Puck began to sing too, in a voice like bells tolling, 
 and as he sang he slipped from "Volaterrae" to the ground, 
 and beckoned the children to follow. They obeyed ; it seemed 
 as though the voices were pushing them along; and through 
 the goldy-brown light on the beech leaves they walked, while 
 Puck between them chanted something like this :
 
 A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH 43 
 
 Cur mundus militat sub vana gloria 
 Cujus prosperitas est transitoria? 
 Tam cito labitur ejus potentia 
 Quam vasa figuli quae sunt fragilia. 1 
 
 They found themselves at the little locked gates of the 
 
 wood. 
 
 Quo Caesar abiit celsus imperio? 
 
 Vel Dives splendidus totus in prandio? 
 
 Die ubi Tullius 
 
 Still singing, he took Dan's hand and wheeled him round 
 to face Una as she came out of the gate. It shut behind 
 her, at the same time as Puck threw the memory-magicking 
 Oak, Ash, and Thorn leaves over their heads. 
 
 "Well, you are jolly late," said Una. "Couldn't you get 
 away before?" 
 
 "I did," said Dan. "I got away in lots of time, but 
 but I didn't know it was so late. Where've you been?" 
 
 "In Volaterrae waiting for you." 
 
 "Sorry," said Dan. "It was all that beastly Latin." 
 
 1 " Why with vain pomp parades the world, 
 Whose glory lives for but a single day? 
 As quickly is its power down hurled, 
 As fragile products of the potter's clay." 
 
 a " With what command did noble Caesar quit this life? 
 Or Dives, lavish, spendthrift in his simplest meal? 
 Say where our Tullius (Cicero) "
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 
 
 When I left Rome for Lalage's sake 
 
 By the Legions' Road to Rimini, 
 She vowed her heart was mine to take 
 
 With me and my shield to Rimini 
 
 (Till the Eagles flew from Rimini!) 
 And I've tramped Britain and I've tramped Gaul 
 And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall 
 
 As white as the neck of Lalage 
 
 As cold as the heart of Lalage! 
 And I've lost Britain and I've lost Gaul 
 
 (the voice seemed very cheerful about it), 
 
 And I've lost Rome, and worst of all, 
 I've lost Lalage! 
 
 THEY were standing by the gate to Far Wood when 
 they heard this song. Without a word they hurried 
 to their private gap and wriggled through the hedge 
 almost atop of a jay that was feeding from Puck's hand. 
 " Gently ! " said Puck. "What are you looking for? " 
 "Parnesius, of course," Dan answered. "We've only just 
 remembered yesterday. It isn't fair." 
 
 Puck chuckled as he rose. "I'm sorry, but children who 
 spend the afternoon with me and a Roman Centurion need 
 a little settling dose of Magic before they go to tea with 
 their governess. Ohe, Parnesius!" he called. 
 
 44
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 45 
 
 "Here, Faun!" came the answer from " Volaterrae." They 
 could see the shimmer of bronze armor in the beech crotch, 
 and the friendly flash of the great shield uplifted. 
 
 "I have driven out the Britons." Parnesius laughed like 
 a boy. "I occupy their high forts. But Rome is merciful! 
 You may come up." And up they three all scrambled. 
 
 "What was the song you were singing just now?" said 
 Una, as soon as she had settled herself. 
 
 "That? Oh, Rimini. It's one of the tunes that are always 
 being born somewhere in the Empire. They run like a pesti- 
 lence for six months or a year, till another one pleases the 
 Legions, and then they march to that." 
 
 "Tell them about the marching, Parnesius. Few people 
 nowadays walk from end to end of this country," said 
 Puck. 
 
 "The greater their loss. I know nothing better than the 
 Long March when your feet are hardened. You begin after 
 the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour after 
 sundown." 
 
 "And what do you have to eat?" Dan asked, promptly. 
 
 "Fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine happens 
 to be in the rest-houses. But soldiers are born grumblers. 
 Their very first day out, my men complained of our water- 
 ground British corn. They said it wasn't so filling as the 
 rough stuff that is ground in the Roman ox-mills. However, 
 they had to fetch and eat it." 
 
 "Fetch it? Where from? " said Una. 
 
 "From that newly invented water-mill below the Forge." 
 
 "That's Forge Mill our Mill ! " Una looked at Puck. 
 
 "Yes; yours," Puck put in. "How old did you think it 
 was?" 
 
 "I don't know. Didn't Sir Richard Dalyngridge talk 
 about it?"
 
 46 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "He did, and it was old in his day," Puck answered. 
 "Hundreds of years old." 
 
 "It was new in my day," said Parnesius. "My men 
 looked at the flour in their helmets as though it had been 
 a nest of adders. They did it to try my patience. But I 
 addressed them, and we became friends. To tell the 
 truth, they taught me the Roman Step. You see, I'd only 
 served with quick-marching Auxiliaries. A Legion's pace is 
 altogether different. It is a long, slow stride, that never 
 varies from sunrise to sunset. "Rome's Race Rome's 
 Pace," as the proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight 
 hours, neither more nor less. Head and spear up, shield on 
 your back, cuirass-collar open one hand's breadth and 
 that's how you take the Eagles through Britain." 
 
 "And did you meet any adventures?" said Dan. 
 
 "There are no adventures South the Wall," said Parnesius. 
 "The worst thing that happened me was having to appear 
 before a magistrate up North, where a wandering philosopher 
 had jeered at the Eagles. I was able to show that the old 
 man deliberately blocked our road, and the magistrate told 
 him, out of his own Book, I believe, that, whatever his God 
 might be, he should pay proper respect to Caesar." 
 
 "What did you do?" said Dan. 
 
 "Went on. Why should / care for such things, my business 
 being to reach my station? It took me twenty days. 
 
 "Of course, the farther North you go the emptier are the 
 roads. At last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare 
 hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have 
 been. No more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who 
 knew your Father when he was young, and invite you to stay 
 with them; no news at the temples and way-stations except 
 bad news of wild beasts. There's where you meet hunters, 
 and trappers for the Circuses, prodding along chained bears
 
 " There's where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses, 
 prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves." 

 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 47 
 
 and muzzled wolves. Your pony shies at them, and your 
 men laugh. 
 
 "The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts 
 with watch-towers of gray stone, and great stone-walled 
 sheepfolds, guarded, by armed Britons of the North Shore. 
 In the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows 
 of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black 
 smoke from the mines. The hard road goes on and on 
 and the wind sings through your helmet-plume past altars 
 to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of 
 Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the moun- 
 tain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freez- 
 ing in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken 
 stone. 
 
 "Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see 
 a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and 
 then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and 
 temples, shops and theaters, barracks, and granaries, trickling 
 along like dice behind always behind one long, low, 
 rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. 
 And that is the Wall!" 
 
 "Ah!" said the children taking breath. 
 
 "You may well," said Parnesius. "Old men who have 
 followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire 
 is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!" 
 
 " Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen garden? " 
 said Dan. 
 
 "No, no! It is Hie Wall. Along the top are towers with 
 guard-houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest 
 part of it three men with shields can walk abreast from 
 guard-house to guard-house. A little curtain wall, no higher 
 than a man's neck, runs along the top of the thick wall, so 
 that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries
 
 48 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty feet high is the 
 Wall, and on the Picts' side, the North, is a ditch, strewn 
 with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and 
 tires of wheels joined by chains. The Little People come 
 there to steal iron for their arrow-heads. 
 
 "But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the town 
 behind it. Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches 
 on the South side, and no one was allowed to build there. 
 Now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, 
 from end to end of the Wall; making a thin town eighty miles 
 long. Think of it ! One roaring, rioting, cock-fighting, wolf- 
 baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna on the West to Sege- 
 dunum on the cold eastern beach! On one side heather, 
 woods and ruins where Picts hide, and on the other, a vast 
 town long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a 
 snake basking beside a warm wall ! 
 
 "My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great 
 North Road runs through the Wall into the Province of 
 Valentia." Parnesius laughed scornfully. "The Province 
 of Valentia! We followed the road, therefore, into Hunno 
 town, and stood astonished. The place was a fair a fair 
 of peoples from every corner of the Empire. Some were 
 racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs 
 baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks 
 fight. A boy not much older than myself, but I could see 
 he was an Officer, reined up before me and asked what I 
 wanted. 
 
 "'My station,' I said, and showed him my shield." Par- 
 nesius held up his broad shield with its three X's like letters 
 on a beer-cask. 
 
 " 'Lucky omen ! ' said he. ' Your Cohort's the next tower to 
 us, but they're all at the cock-fight. This is a happy place. 
 Come and wet the Eagles.' He meant to offer me a drink.
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 49 
 
 "'When I've handed over my men,' I said. I felt angry 
 and ashamed. 
 
 "'Oh, you'll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense/ he 
 answered. 'But don't let me interfere with your hopes. 
 Go on to the Statue of Roma Dea. You can't miss it. The 
 main road into Valentia!' and he laughed and rode off. I 
 could see the Statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there 
 I went. At some time or other the Great North Road ran 
 under it into Valentia; but the far end had been blocked up 
 because of the Picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, 
 'Finish!' It was like marching into a cave. We grounded 
 spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel 
 of the arch, but none came. There was a door at one side 
 painted with our number. We prowled in, and I found a 
 cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food. Then I 
 climbed to the top of the Wall, and looked out over the 
 Pict country, and I thought," said Parnesius. "The 
 bricked-up arch with 'Finish!' on the plaster was what 
 shook me, for I was not much more than a boy." 
 
 "What a shame!" said Una. "But did you feel happy 
 after you'd had a good Dan stopped her with a 
 
 nudge. 
 
 "Happy?" said Parnesius. "When the men of the Cohort 
 I was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, 
 their birds under their arms, and asked me who I was? No, 
 I was not happy; but I made my new Cohort unhappy 
 too. ... I wrote my Mother, I was happy but oh, my 
 friends" he stretched arms over bare knees "I would 
 not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through 
 my first months on the W T all. Remember this: among the 
 officers was scarcely one, except myself (and I thought I had 
 lost the favor of Maximus, my General), scarcely one who 
 had not done something of wrong or folly. Either he had
 
 50 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, 
 or blasphemed the Gods, and so had been sent to the Wall 
 as a hiding-place from shame or fear. And the men were 
 as the officers. Remember, also, that the Wall was, manned 
 by every breed and race in the Empire. No two towers 
 spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same Gods. In 
 one thing only we were all equal. No matter what arms we 
 had used before we came to the Wall, on the Wall we were 
 all archers, like the Scythians. The Pict cannot run away 
 from the arrow, or crawl under it. He is a bowman himself. 
 He knows!" 
 
 "I suppose you were fighting Picts all the time," said Dan. 
 
 "Picts seldom fight. I never saw a fighting Pict for half 
 a year. The tame Picts told us they had all gone North." 
 
 "What is a tame Pict?" said Dan. 
 
 "A Pict there were many such who speaks a few 
 words of our tongue, and slips across the Wall to sell ponies 
 and wolf-hounds. Without a horse and a dog, and a friend, 
 man would perish. The Gods gave me all three, and there 
 is no gift like friendship. Remember this" Parnesius 
 turned to Dan "when you become a young man. For 
 your fate will turn on the first true friend you make." 
 
 "He means," said Puck, grinning, "that if you try to make 
 yourself a decent chap when you're young, you'll make rather 
 decent friends when you grow up. If you're a beast, you'll 
 have beastly friends. Listen to the Pious Parnesius on 
 Friendship!" 
 
 "I am not pious," Parnesius answered, "but I know what 
 goodness means; and my friend, though he was without hope, 
 was ten thousand times better than I. Stop laughing, Faun ! " 
 
 "Oh, Youth Eternal and All-believing," cried Puck, as he 
 rocked on the branch above. "Tell them about your Perti- 
 nax."
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 51 
 
 "He was that friend the Gods sent me the boy who 
 spoke to me when I first came. Little older than myself, 
 commanding the Augusta Victoria Cohort on the tower 
 next to us and the Numidians. In virtue he was far my 
 superior. 
 
 "Then why was he on the Wall?" Una asked, quickly. 
 "They'd all done something bad. You said so yourself.'' 
 
 "He was the nephew, his Father had died, of a great rich 
 man in Gaul who was not always kind to his Mother. When 
 Pertinax grew up, he discovered this, and so his uncle shipped 
 him off, by trickery and force, to the Wall. We came to 
 know each other at a ceremony in our Temple in the dark. 
 It was the Bull Killing," Parnesius explained to Puck. 
 
 "/ see," said Puck, and turned to the children. "That's 
 something you wouldn't quite understand. Parnesius means 
 he met Pertinax in church." 
 
 "Yes in the Cave we first met, and we were both raised 
 to the degree of Gryphons together." Parnesius lifted his 
 hand toward his neck for an instant. "He had been on the 
 Wall two years, and knew the Picts well. He taught me first 
 how to take heather." 
 
 "What's that? "said Dan. 
 
 "Going out hunting in the Pict country with a tame Pict. 
 You are quite safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a 
 sprig of heather where it can be seen. If you went alone you 
 would surely be killed, if you were not smothered first in the 
 bogs. Only the Picts know their way about those black and 
 hidden bogs. Old Allo, the one-eyed, withered little Pict 
 from whom we bought our ponies," was our special friend. 
 At first we went only to escape from the terrible town, and to 
 talk together about our homes. Then he showed us how to 
 hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns like Jewish 
 candlesticks. The Roman-born officers rather looked down
 
 52 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 on us for doing this, but we preferred the heather to their 
 amusements. Believe me," Parnesius turned again to Dan, 
 "a boy is safe from all things that really harm when he is 
 astride a pony or after a deer. Do you remember, O Faun," 
 he turned to Puck, "the little altar I built to the Sylvan Pan 
 by the pine-forest beyond the brook?" 
 
 "Which? The stone one with the line from Xenophon?" 
 said Puck, in quite a new voice. 
 
 "No. What do I know of Xenophon? That was Perti- 
 nax after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an 
 arrow by chance ! Mine I made of round pebbles in 
 memory of my first bear. It took me one happy day to 
 build." Parnesius faced the children quickly. 
 
 "And that was how we lived on the Wall for two years 
 a little scuffling with the Picts, and a great deal of hunting 
 with old Allo in the Pict country. He called us his children 
 sometimes, and we were fond of him and his barbarians, 
 though we never let them paint us Pict fashion. The marks 
 endure till you die." 
 
 "How's it done?" said Dan. "Anything like tattooing?" 
 
 "They prick the skin till the blood runs, and rub in colored 
 juices. Allo was painted blue, green, and red from his forehead 
 to his ankles. He said it was part of his religion. He told 
 us about his religion (Pertinax was always interested in such 
 things), and as we came to know him well, he told us what 
 was happening in Britain behind the Wall. Many things 
 took place behind us in those days. And, by the Light of 
 the Sun," said Parnesius, earnestly, "there was not much 
 that those little people "did not know ! He told me when 
 Maximus crossed over to Gaul, after he had made himself 
 Emperor of Britain, and what troops and emigrants he had 
 taken with him. We did not get the news on the Wall till 
 fifteen days later. He told me what troops Maximus was
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 53 
 
 taking out of Britain every month to help him to conquer 
 Gaul; and I always found the numbers as he said. Won- 
 derful! And I tell another strange thing!" 
 
 He jointed his hands across his knees, and leaned his head 
 on the curve of the shield behind him. 
 
 "Late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the 
 Picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with some 
 new hounds. Rutilianus, our General, had given us ten 
 days' leave, and we had pushed beyond the Second Wall 
 beyond the Province of Valentia into the higher hills, 
 where there are not even any of Rome's old ruins. We 
 killed a she-wolf before noon, and while Allo was skinning 
 her he looked up and said to me, 'When you are Captain 
 of the Wall, my child, you won't be able to do this any more!' 
 
 "I might as well have been made Prefect of Lower Gaul, 
 so I laughed and said, 'Wait till I am Captain.' 'No don't, 
 wait,' said Allo. 'Take my advice and go home both of 
 you.' 'We have no homes,' said Pertinax. 'You know 
 that as well as we do. We're finished men thumbs down 
 against both of us. Only men without hope would risk their 
 necks on your ponies.' The old man laughed one of those 
 short Pict laughs like a fox barking on a frosty night. 
 'I'm fond of you two,' he said. 'Besides, I've taught you 
 what little you know about hunting. Take my advice and 
 go home.' 
 
 "'We can't,' I said. 'I'm out of favor with my General, 
 for one thing; and for another, Pertinax has an uncle.' 
 
 "'I don't know about his uncle,' said Allo, 'but the trouble 
 with you, Parnesius, is that your General thinks well of you.' 
 
 "'Roma Dea!' said Pertinax, sitting up, 'What can you 
 guess what Maximus thinks, you old horse-coper? ' 
 
 "Just then (you know how near the brutes creep when 
 one is eating?) a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us, and
 
 54 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at their 
 tails. He ran us far out of any country we'd ever heard of, 
 straight as an arrow till sunset, toward the sunset. We 
 came at last to long capes stretching into winding waters, 
 and on a gray beach below us we saw ships drawn up. Forty- 
 seven we counted not Roman galleys but the raven- 
 winged ships from the North where Rome does not rule. 
 Men moved in the ships, and the sun flashed on their helmets 
 winged helmets of the red-haired men form the North 
 where Rome does not rule. We watched, and we counted, 
 and we wondered; for though we had heard rumors concerning 
 these Winged Hats, as the Picts called them, never before had 
 we looked upon them. 
 
 "'Come away! Come away!' said Allo. 'My heather 
 won't protect you here. We shall all be killed!' His legs 
 trembled like his voice. Back we went back across the 
 heather under the moon, till it was nearly morning, and our 
 poor beasts stumbled on some ruins. 
 
 "When we woke, very stiff and cold, Allo was mixing 
 the meal and water. One does not light fires in the Pict 
 country except near a village. The little men are always 
 signaling to each other with smokes, and a strange smoke 
 brings them out buzzing like bees. They can sting, too ! 
 
 "'What we saw last night was a trading-station/ said 
 Allo. 'Nothing but a trading-station.' 
 
 "'I do not like lies on an empty stomach,' said Pertinax. 
 'I suppose' (he had eyes like an eagle's), 'I suppose that 
 is a trading-station also?' He pointed to a smoke far off 
 on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the Pict's Call: 
 Puff double-puff: double-puff puff! They make it by 
 raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire. 
 
 '"No/ said Allo, pushing the platter back into the bag. 
 'That is for you and me. Your fate is fixed. Come/
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 55 
 
 ''We came. When one takes heather, one must obey 
 one's Pict but that wretched smoke was twenty miles 
 distant, well over on the east coast, and the day was as hot 
 as a bath. 
 
 "' Whatever happens,' said Allo, while our ponies grunted 
 along, 'I want you to remember me.' 
 
 "'I shall not forget,' said Pertinax. 'You have cheated 
 me out of my breakfast.' 
 
 '"What is a handful of crushed oats to a Roman?' he said. 
 Then he laughed his laugh that was not a laugh. 'What 
 would you do if you were a handful of oats being crushed 
 between the upper and lower stones of a mill? ' 
 
 "'I'm Pertinax, not a riddle-guesser,' said Pertinax. 
 
 '"You're a fool,' said Allo. 'Your Gods and my Gods 
 are threatened by strange Gods, and all you can do is to 
 laugh.' 
 
 "'Threatened men live long,' I said. 
 
 '"I pray the Gods that may be true,' he said. 'But I 
 ask you again not to forget me.' 
 
 "We climbed the last hot hill and looked out on the eastern 
 sea, three or four miles off. There was a small sailing-galley 
 of the North Gaul pattern at anchor, her landing-plank 
 down and her sail half up; and below us, alone in a hollow, 
 holding his pony, sat Maximus, Emperor of Britain ! He was 
 dressed like a hunter, and he leaned on his little stick; but 
 I knew that back as far as I could see it, and I told 
 Pertinax. 
 
 '"You're madder than Allo!' he said. It must be the 
 sun!' 
 
 "Maximus never stirred till we stood before him. Then 
 he looked me up and down, and said: 'Hungry again? It 
 seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. I 
 have food here. Allo shall cook it.'
 
 56 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "'No,' said Allo. 'A Prince in his own land does not 
 wait on wandering Emperors. I feed my two children 
 without asking your leave.' He began to blow up the 
 ashes. 
 
 "'I was wrong,' said Pertinax. 'We are all mad. Speak 
 up, O Madman called Emperor!' 
 
 "Maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but two 
 years on the Wall do not make a man afraid of mere looks. 
 So I was not afraid. 
 
 "'I meant you, Parnesius, to live and die an Officer of the 
 Wall,' said Maximus. 'But it seems from these,' he fumbled 
 in his breast, 'you can think as well as draw.' He pulled 
 out a roll of letters I had written to my people, full of draw- 
 ings of Picts, and bears and men I had met on the Wall. 
 Mother and my sister always liked my pictures. 
 
 "He handed me one that I had called ' Maximus 's Soldiers.' 
 It showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old Doctor of the 
 Hunno hospital snuffing at them. Each time that Maximus 
 had taken troops out of Britain to help him to conquer 
 Gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine to keep 
 them quiet, I suppose. On the Wall, we always called a 
 wine-skin a 'Maximus.' Oh, yes; and I had drawn them in 
 Imperial helmets! 
 
 "'Not long since,' he went on, 'men's names were sent 
 up to Caesar for smaller jokes than this.' 
 
 "'True, Caesar,' said Pertinax; 'but you forget that was 
 before I, your friend's friend, became such a good spear- 
 thrower.' 
 
 "He did not actually point his hunting spear at Maximus, 
 but balanced it on his palm so ! 
 
 '"I was speaking of time past,' said Maximus, never 
 fluttering an eyelid. 'Nowadays one is only too pleased to 
 find boys who can think for themselves, and their friends.'
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 57 
 
 He nodded at Pertinax. 'Your Father lent me the letters, 
 Parnesius, so you run no risk from me.' 
 
 "'None whatever,' said Pertinax, and rubbed the spear- 
 point on his sleeve. 
 
 '"I have been forced to reduce the garrisons in Britain, 
 because I need troops in Gaul. Now I come to take troops 
 from the Wall itself/ said he. 
 
 "'I wish you joy of us/ said Pertinax. 'We're the last 
 sweepings of the Empire the men without hope. Myself, 
 I'd sooner trust condemned criminals.' 
 
 "'You think so?' he said, quite seriously. 'But it will 
 only be till I win Gaul. One must always risk one's life, or 
 one's soul, or one's peace or some little thing.' 
 
 " Allo passed round the fire with the sizzling deer's meat. 
 He served us two first. 
 
 "'Ah!' said Maximus, waiting his turn. 'I perceive you 
 are in your own country. Well, you deserve it. They tell me 
 you have quite a following among the Picts, Parnesius.' 
 
 "'I have hunted with them/ I said. 'Maybe I have a 
 few friends among the heather.' 
 
 "'He is the only armored man of you all who understands 
 us/ said Allo, and he began a long speech about our virtues, 
 and how we had saved one of his grandchildren from a wolf 
 the year before." 
 
 "Had you? "said Una. 
 
 "Yes; but that was neither here nor there. The little 
 green man orated like a like Cicero. He made us out to 
 be magnificent fellows. Maximus never took his eyes off 
 our faces. 
 
 "'Enough/ he said. 'I have heard Allo on you. I wish 
 to hear you on the Picts.' 
 
 "I told him as much as I knew, and Pertinax helped me 
 out. There is never harm in a Pict if you but take the trouble
 
 58 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 to find out what he wants. Their real grievance against 
 us came from our burning their heather. The whole garrison 
 of the Wall moved out twice a year, and solemnly burned 
 the heather for ten miles North. Rutilianus, our General, 
 called it clearing the country. The Picts, of course, scampered 
 away, and all we did was to destroy their bee-bloom in the 
 summer, and ruin their sheep-food in the spring. 
 
 "'True, quite true,' said Allo. 'How can we make our 
 holy heather-wine, if you burn our bee-pasture? ' 
 
 "We talked long, Maximus asking keen questions that 
 showed he knew much and had thought more about the 
 Picts. He said presently to me: "If I gave you the old 
 Province of Valentia to govern, could you keep the Picts 
 contented till I won Gaul? Stand away, so that you do not 
 see Allo's face; and speak your own thoughts.' 
 
 "'No,' I said. 'You cannot re-make that Province. The 
 Picts have been free too long. 
 
 "'Leave them their village councils, and let them furnish 
 their own soldiers,' he said. 'You, I am sure, would hold 
 the reins very lightly.' 
 
 "'Even then, no,' I said. 'At least not now. They have 
 been too oppressed by us to trust anything with a Roman 
 name for years and years.' 
 
 "I heard old Allo behind me mutter: 'Good child!' 
 
 "'Then what do you recommend,' said Maximus, 'to keep 
 the North quiet till I win Gaul?' 
 
 " 'Leave the Picts alone,' I said. ' Stop the heather-burning 
 at once, and they are improvident little animals send 
 them a shipload or two of corn now and then.' 
 
 "'Their own men must distribute it not some cheating 
 Greek accountant,' said Pertinax. 
 
 "'Yes, and allow them to come to our hospitals when they 
 are sick,' I said.
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 59 
 
 "'Surely they would die first/ said Maximus. 
 
 "'Not if Parnesius brought them in/ said Allo. 'I could 
 show you twenty wolf-bitten, bear-clawed Picts within 
 twenty miles of here. But Parnesius must stay with them 
 in Hospital, else they would go mad with fear.' 
 
 "'/ see/ said Maximus. 'Like everything else in the 
 world, it is one man's work. You, I think, are that one 
 man.' 
 
 '"Pertinax and I are one/ I said. 
 
 "'As you please, so long as you work. Now, Allo, you 
 know that I mean your people no harm. Leave us to talk 
 together/ said Maximus. 
 
 "'No need!' said Allo. 'I am the corn between the upper 
 and lower millstones. I must know what the lower millstone 
 means to do. These boys have spoken the truth as far as 
 they know it. I, a Prince, will tell you the rest. I am 
 troubled about the Men of the North.' He squatted like 
 a hare in the heather, and looked over his shoulder. 
 
 "'I also/ said Maximus, 'or I should not be here.' 
 
 "'Listen/ said Allo. 'Long and long ago the Winged 
 Hats' he meant the Northmen ' came to our beaches 
 and said, "Rome falls! Push her down!" We fought you. 
 You sent men. We were beaten. After that we said to the 
 Winged Hats, "You are liars! Make our men alive that 
 Rome killed, and we will believe you." They went away 
 ashamed. Now they come back bold, and they tell the old 
 tale, which we begin to believe that Rome falls ! ' 
 
 "'Give me three years' peace on the Wall/ cried Maximus, 
 'and I will show you and all the ravens how they lie!' 
 
 "'Ah, I wish it too! I wish to save what is left of the corn 
 from the millstones. But you shoot us Picts when we come 
 to borrow a little iron from the Iron Ditch; you burn our 
 heather, which is all our crop; you trouble us with your
 
 6o KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 great catapults. Then you hide behind the Wall, and 
 scorch us with Greek fire. How can I keep my young men 
 from listening to the Winged Hats in winter especially, 
 when we are hungry? My young men will say, "Rome can 
 neither fight nor rule. She is taking her men out of Britain. 
 The Winged Hats will help us to push down the Wall. Let 
 us show them the secret roads across the bogs." Do 7 want 
 that? No!' He spat like an adder. '/ would keep the 
 secrets of my people though I were burned alive. My two 
 children here have spoken truth. Leave us Picts alone. 
 Comfort us, and cherish us, and feed us from far off with 
 the hand behind your back. Parnesius understands us. Let 
 him have rule on the Wall, and I will hold my young men 
 quiet for' he ticked it off on his fingers 'one year 
 easily: the next year not so easily: the third year, perhaps! 
 See, I give you three years. If then you do not show us that 
 Rome is strong in men and terrible in arms, the Winged Hats, 
 I tell you, will sweep down the Wall from either sea till they 
 meet in the middle, and you will go. / shall not grieve over 
 that, but well I know tribe never helps tribe except for one 
 price. We Picts will go too. The Winged Hats will grind 
 us to this!' He tossed a handful of dust hi the air. 
 
 " ' Oh, Roma Dea ! ' said Maximus, half aloud. ' It is always 
 one man's work always and everywhere!' 
 
 "'And one man's life,' said Allo. 'You are Emperor, 
 but not a God. You may die.' 
 
 "'I have thought of that, too,' said he. 'Very good. 
 If this wind holds, I shall be at the East end of the Wall 
 by morning. To-morrow, then, I shall see you two when I 
 inspect; and I will make you Captains of the Wall for this 
 work.' 
 
 "'One instant, Caesar,' said Pertinax. 'All men have their 
 price. I am not bought yet.'
 
 ON THE GREAT WALL 61 
 
 "'Do you also begin to bargain so early?' said Maximus. 
 'Well?' 
 
 "'Give me justice against my uncle Icenus, the Duumvir 
 of Divio in Gaul,' he said. 
 
 "'Only a life? I thought it would be money or an office 
 Certainly you shall have him. Write his name on these 
 tablets on the red side; the other is for the living!' And 
 Maximus held out his tablets. 
 
 "'He is of no use to me dead,' said Pertinax. 'My mother 
 is a widow. I am far off. I am not sure he pays her all her 
 dowry.' 
 
 "'No matter. My arm is reasonably long. We will 
 look through your uncle's accounts in due time. Now, 
 farewell till to-morrow, O Captains of the Wall ! ' 
 
 "We saw him grow small across the heather as he 
 walked to the galley. There were Picts, scores, each side 
 of him, hidden behind stones. He never looked left or 
 right. He sailed away Southerly, full spread before the 
 evening breeze, and when we had watched him out to sea, 
 we were silent. We understood Earth bred few men like to 
 this man. 
 
 "Presently Allo brought the ponies and held them for us 
 to mount a thing he had never done before. 
 
 "'Wait awhile,' said Pertinax, and he made a little altar 
 of cut turf, and strewed heather-bloom atop, and laid upon 
 it a letter from a girl in Gaul. 
 
 "'What do you do, O my friend?' I said. 
 
 "'I sacrifice to my dead youth,' he answered, and, when 
 the flames had consumed the letter, he ground them out 
 with his heel. Then we rode back to that Wall of which 
 we were to be Captains." 
 
 Parnesius stopped. The children sat still, not even asking 
 if that were all the tale. Puck beckoned, and pointed the way
 
 62 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 out of the wood. "Sorry," he whispered, "but you must 
 go now." 
 
 "We haven't made him angry, have we?" said Una. "He 
 looks so far off, and and thinky." 
 
 "Bless your heart, no. Wait till to-morrow. It won't 
 be long. Remember, you've been playing 'Lays of Ancient 
 Rome.'" 
 
 And as soon as they had scrambled through their gap, 
 where Oak, Ash, and Thorn grow, that was all they remem- 
 bered.
 
 THE WINGED HATS 
 
 THE next day happened to be what they called a Wild 
 Afternoon. Father and Mother went out to pay 
 calls; Miss Blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and 
 they were left all alone till eight o'clock. 
 
 When they had seen their dear parents and their dear 
 preceptress politely off the premises they got a cabbage-leaf 
 full of raspberries from the gardener, and a Wild Tea from 
 Ellen. They ate the raspberries to prevent their squashing, 
 and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf with Three Cows 
 down at the Theater, but they came across a dead hedgehog 
 which they simply had to bury, and the leaf was too useful 
 to waste. 
 
 Then they went on to the Forge and found old Hobden 
 the hedger at home with his son the Bee Boy who is not quite 
 right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of bees in his 
 naked hands; and the Bee Boy told them the rhyme about 
 the slow-worm : 
 
 " If I had eyes as I could see, 
 No mortal man would trouble me." 
 
 They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobden said 
 the loaf-cake which Ellen had given them was almost as good 
 as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how 
 to set a wire at the right. height for hares. They knew about 
 rabbits already. 
 
 63
 
 64 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Then they climbed up Long Ditch into the lower end of 
 Far Wood. This is sadder and darker than the " Volaterrae" 
 end because of an old marlpit full of black water, where 
 weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows 
 and alders. But the birds come to perch on the dead branches, 
 and Hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of 
 medicine for sick animals. 
 
 They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the 
 beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had 
 given them, when they saw Parnesius. 
 
 "How quietly you came!" said Una, moving up to make 
 room. "Where's Puck?" 
 
 "The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that 
 I should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold," he replied. 
 
 "I only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't 
 understand it," said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from 
 behind the log. 
 
 "I don't understand all of it," said Una, "but I like hearing 
 about the little Picts." 
 
 "What 7 can't understand," said Dan, "is how Maximus 
 knew all about the Picts when he was over in Gaul." 
 
 "He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know 
 everything, everywhere," said Parnesius. "We had this 
 much from Maximus' mouth after the Games." 
 
 "Games? What games?" said Dan. 
 
 Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to 
 the ground. "Gladiators! That sort of game," he said. 
 " There were two days' Games in his honor when he landed 
 all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end of the Wall. 
 Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' games ; 
 but I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches 
 on the sand, but by Maximus. In the old days the Legions 
 kept silence before their Emperor. So did not we! You
 
 THE WINGED HATS 65 
 
 could hear the solid roar run West along the Wall as his chair 
 was carried rocking through the crowds. The garrison beat 
 round him clamoring, clowning, asking for pay, for change 
 of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. 
 That chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and 
 falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes." 
 Parnesius shivered. 
 
 "Were they angry with him?" said Dan. 
 
 "No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer 
 walks among them. If he had turned his back an instant, 
 or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would 
 have been another Emperor made on the Wall that hour. 
 Was it not so, Faun?" 
 
 "So it was. So it always will be," said Puck. 
 
 "Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we 
 followed to the Temple of Victory, where he lodged with 
 Rutilianus, the General of the Wall. I had hardly seen 
 the General before, but he always gave me leave when I wished 
 to take Heather. He was a great glutton, and kept five 
 Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. 
 We could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the 
 tables were empty. He lay snorting on a couch. Maximus 
 sat apart among long rolls of accounts. Then the doors 
 were shut. 
 
 "'These are your men,' said Maximus to the General, who 
 propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and 
 stared at us like a fish. 
 
 "'I shall know them again, Caesar,' said Rutilianus. 
 
 "'Very good,' said Maximus. 'Now hear! You are not 
 to move man or shield on the Wall except as these boys 
 shall tell you. You will do nothing, except eat, without 
 their permission. They are the head and arms. You are 
 the belly!'
 
 66 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 " ' As Caesar pleases,' the old man grunted. ' If my pay and 
 profits are not cut, you may make my Ancestors' Oracle my 
 master. Rome has been! Rome has been!' Then he turned 
 on his side to sleep. 
 
 "'He has it,' said Maximus. 'We will get to what 7 need.' 
 
 "He unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies 
 on the Wall down to the sick that very day in Hunno 
 Hospital. Oh, but I groaned when his pen marked off detach- 
 ment after detachment of our best of our least worthless 
 men! He took two towers of our Scythians, two of our 
 North British auxiliaries, two Numidian cohorts, the Dacians 
 all, and half the Belgians. It was like an eagle pecking a 
 carcass. 
 
 '"And now, how many catapults have you?' He turned 
 up a new list, but Pertinax laid his open hand there. 
 
 '"No, Caesar,' said he. 'Do not tempt the Gods too far. 
 Take men, or engines, but not both; else we refuse.'" 
 
 "Engines?" said Una. 
 
 "The catapults of the Wall huge things forty feet high 
 to the head firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts. Nothing 
 can stand against them. He left us our catapults at last, 
 but he took a Caesar's half of our men without pity. We 
 were a shell when he rolled up the lists! 
 
 "'Hail, Caesar! We, about to die, salute you!' said Perti- 
 nax, laughing. 'If any enemy even leans against the Wall 
 now, it will tumble.' 
 
 '"Give me the three years Allo spoke of,' he answered, 
 'and you shall have twenty thousand men of your own 
 choosing up here. But now it is a gamble a game played 
 against the Gods, and the stakes are Britain, Gaul, and, per- 
 haps, Rome. You play on my side? ' 
 
 "'We will play, Caesar,' I said, for I had never met a man 
 like this man.
 
 THE WINGED HATS 67 
 
 "'Good. To-morrow,' said he, 'I proclaim you Captains 
 of the Wall before the troops.' 
 
 "So we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning 
 the ground after the Games. We saw great Roma Dea 
 atop of the Wall, the frost on her helmet, and her spear 
 pointed toward the North Star. We saw the twinkle of 
 night-fires all along the guard-towers, and the line of the 
 black catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. 
 All these things we knew till we were weary; but that night 
 they seemed very strange to us, because the next day we 
 knew we were to be their masters. 
 
 "The men took the news well; but when Maximus went 
 away with half our strength, and we had to spread ourselves 
 into the emptied towers, and the townspeople complained 
 that trade would be ruined, and the Autumn gales blew 
 it was dark days for us two. Here Pertinax was more than 
 my right hand. Being born and bred among the great 
 country-houses in Gaul, he knew the proper words to address 
 to all from Roman-born Centurions to those dogs of the 
 Third the Libyans. And he spoke to each as though 
 that man were as high-minded as himself. Now 7 saw 
 so strongly what things were needed to be done, that I forgot 
 things are only accomplished by means of men. That was 
 a mistake. 
 
 "I feared nothing from the Picts, at least for that year, 
 but Allo warned me that the Winged Hats would soon 
 come in from the sea at each end of the Wall to prove to the 
 Picts how weak we were. So I made ready in haste, and 
 none too soon. I shifted our best men to the ends of the 
 Wall, and set up screened catapults by the beach. The 
 Winged Hats would drive in before the snow-squalls 
 ten or twenty boats at a time on Segedunum or Ituna, 
 according as the wind blew.
 
 68 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "Now a ship coming in to land men must furl her sail. 
 If you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot, 
 your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut 
 through the cloth) into the bag of it. Then she turns over, 
 and the sea makes everything clean again. A few men 
 may come ashore, but very few. ... It was not hard 
 work, except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand 
 and snow. And that was how we dealt with the Winged 
 Hats that winter. 
 
 "Early in the Spring, when the East winds blow like 
 skinning-knives, they gathered again off the East end with 
 many ships. Allo told me they would never rest till they 
 had taken a tower in open fight. Certainly they fought 
 in the open. We dealt with them thoroughly through a long 
 day: and, when all was finished, one man dived clear of the 
 wreckage of his ship, and swam toward shore. I waited, 
 and a wave tumbled him at my feet. 
 
 "As I stooped I saw he wore such a medal as I wear." 
 Parnesius raised his hand to his neck. "Therefore, when he 
 could speak I addressed him a certain Question which can 
 only be answered in a certain manner. He answered with 
 the necessary Word the Word that belongs to the Degree 
 of Gryphons in the science of Mithras my God. I put my 
 shield over him till he could stand up. You see I am not 
 short, but he was a head taller than I. He said: 'What 
 now?' I said: 'At your pleasure, my brother, to stay or 
 
 go-' 
 
 "He looked out across the surf. There remained one ship 
 unhurt, beyond range of our catapults. I checked the cata- 
 pults and he waved her in. She came as a hound comes 
 to a master. When she was yet a hundred paces from the 
 beach, he flung back his hair, and swam out. They hauled 
 him in, and went away. I knew that those who worship
 
 THE WINGED HATS 69 
 
 Mithras are many and of all races, so I did not think much 
 more upon the matter. 
 
 "A month later I saw Allo with his horses by the 
 Temple of Pan, O Faun ! and he gave me a great necklace 
 of gold studded with coral. 
 
 "At first I thought it was a bribe from some tradesman 
 in the town meant for old Rutilianus. 'Nay,' said Allo. 
 'This is a gift from Amal, that Winged Hat whom you saved 
 on the beach. He says you are a Man.' 
 
 "'He is a Man, too. Tell him I can wear his gift,' I 
 answered. 
 
 "'Oh, Amal is a young fool; but, speaking as sensible 
 men, your Emperor is doing such great things in Gaul that 
 the Winged Hats are anxious to be his friends, or, better 
 still, the friends of his servants. They think you and Perti- 
 nax could lead them to victories.' Allo looked at me like 
 a one-eyed raven. 
 
 " ' Allo,' I said, 'you are the corn between the two millstones. 
 Be content if they grind evenly, and don't thrust your hand 
 between them.' 
 
 "'I?' said Allo. 'I hate Rome and the Winged Hats 
 equally; but if the Winged Hats thought that some day 
 you and Pertinax might join them against Maximus they 
 would leave you in peace while you considered. Time is 
 what we need you and I and Maximus. Let me carry 
 a pleasant message back to the Winged Hats something 
 for them to make a council over. We barbarians are all 
 alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman 
 says. Eh?' 
 
 "'We have no men. We must fight with words,' said 
 Pertinax. 'Leave it to Allo and me.' 
 
 "So Allo carried word back to the Winged Hats that we 
 would not fight them if they did not fight us; and they (I
 
 70 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea) agreed 
 to a sort of truce. I believe Allo, who, being a horse-dealer 
 loved lies, also told them we might some day rise against 
 Maximus as Maximus had risen against Rome. 
 . "Indeed, they permitted the corn-ships which I sent to 
 the Picts to pass North that season without harm. Therefore 
 the Picts were well fed that winter, and, since they were 
 in some sort my children, I was glad of it. We had only 
 two thousand men on the Wall, and I wrote many times to 
 Maximus and begged prayed him to send me only one 
 cohort of my old North British troops. He could not spare 
 them. He needed them to win more victories in Gaul. 
 
 "Then came news that he had defeated and slain the 
 Emperor Gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, I 
 wrote again for men. He answered: 'You will learn that 
 I have at last settled accounts with the pup Gratian. There 
 was no need that he should have died, but he became confused 
 and lost his head, which is a bad thing to befall any Emperor. 
 Tell your Father I am content to drive two mules only; 
 for unless my old General's son thinks himself destined 
 to destroy me, I shall rest Emperor of Gaul and Britain 
 and then you, my two children, will presently get all the 
 men you need. Just now I can spare none.'" 
 
 "What did he mean by his General's son?" said Dan. 
 
 "He meant Theodosius Emperor of Rome, who was the 
 son of Theodosius the General under whom Maximus had 
 fought in the old Pict War. The two men never loved each 
 other, and when Gratian made the younger Theodosius 
 Emperor of the East (at least, so I've heard), Maximus 
 carried on the war to the second generation. It was his fate, 
 and it was his fall. But Theodosius the Emperor is a good 
 man. As I know." Parnesius was silent for a moment 
 and then continued:
 
 THE WINGED HATS 71 
 
 "I wrote back to Maximus that, though we had peace 
 on the Wall, I should be happier with a few more men and 
 some new catapults. He answered: 'You must live a little 
 longer under the shadow of my victories, till I can see what 
 young Theodosius intends. He may welcome me as a brother 
 Emperor, or he may be preparing an army. In either case 
 I -cannot spare men just now.'"' 
 
 "But he was always saying that," cried Una. 
 
 "It was true. He did not make excuses; but thanks, as 
 he said, to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on 
 the Wall for a long, long time. The Picts grew fat as their 
 own sheep among the heather, and as many of my men 
 as lived were well exercised in their weapons. Yes, the 
 Wall looked strong. For myself, I knew how weak we were. 
 I knew that if even a false rumor of any defeat to Maximus 
 broke loose among the Winged Hats, they might come down 
 in earnest, and then the Wall must go! For the Picts I 
 never cared, but in those years I learned something of the 
 strength of the Winged Hats. They increased their strength 
 every day, but I could not increase my men. Maximus had 
 emptied Britain behind us, and I felt myself to be a man 
 with a rotten stick standing before a broken fence to turn 
 bulls. 
 
 "Thus, my friends, we lived on the Wall, waiting wait- 
 ing waiting for the men that Maximus never sent ! 
 
 "Presently he wrote that he was preparing an army against 
 Theodosius. He wrote and Pertinax read it over my 
 shoulder in our quarters: ' Tell your Father that my destiny 
 orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by them. 
 I hope within a year to finish with Theodosius, son of Theo- 
 dosius, once and for all. Then you shall have Britain to rule, 
 and Pertinax, if he chooses, Gaul. To-day I wish strongly 
 you were with me to beat my Auxiliaries into shape. Do
 
 72 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 not, I pray you, believe any rumor of my sickness. I have 
 a little evil in my old blood which I shall cure by riding swiftly 
 into Rome.' 
 
 " Said Pertinax : ' It is finished with Maximus ! He writes 
 as a man without hope. I, a man without hope, can see 
 this. What does he add at the bottom of the roll? "Tell 
 Pertinax I have met his late Uncle, the Duumvir of Divio, 
 and that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his Mother's 
 monies. I have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the 
 mother of a hero, to Nic&a, where the climate is warm." 
 
 "'That is proof!' said Pertinax. 'Nicaea is not far by sea 
 from Rome. A woman there could take ship and fly to 
 Rome in time of war. Yes, Maximus foresees his death, 
 and is fulfilling his promises one by one. But I am glad 
 my Uncle met him.' ' 
 
 "'You think blackly to-day?' I asked. 
 
 "'I think truth. The Gods weary of the play we have 
 played against them. Theodosius will destroy Maximus. 
 It is finished ! ' 
 
 "'Will you write him that?' I said. 
 
 "'See what I shall write,' he answered, and he took pen 
 and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender as a 
 woman's and full of jests. Even I, reading over his shoulder, 
 took comfort from it till I saw his face ! 
 
 "'And now,' he said, sealing it, 'we be two dead men, 
 my brother. Let us go to the Temple.' 
 
 "We prayed a while to Mithras, where we had many times 
 prayed before. After that we lived day by day among evil 
 rumors till winter came again. 
 
 "It happened one morning that we rode to the East Shore, 
 and found on the beach a fair-haired man, half frozen, bound 
 to some broken planks. Turning him over, we saw by his 
 belt-buckle that he was a Goth of an Eastern Legion. Sud-
 
 THE WINGED HATS 73 
 
 denly he opened his eyes and cried loudly: 'He is dead! 
 The letters were with me, but the Winged Hats sunk the 
 ship.' So saying, he died between our hands. 
 
 "We asked not who was dead. We knew! We raced 
 before the driving snow to Hunno, thinking perhaps Allo 
 might be there. We found him already at our stables, and 
 he saw by our faces what we had heard. 
 
 "'It was in a tent by the Sea,' he stammered. 'He was 
 beheaded by Theodosius. He sent a letter to you, written 
 while he waited to be slain. The Winged Hats met the ship 
 and took it. The news is running through the heather like 
 fire. Blame me not! I cannot hold back my young men 
 any more.' 
 
 " 'I would we could say as much for our men,' said Pertinax, 
 laughing. 'But, Gods be praised, they cannot run away.' 
 
 "'What do you do?' said Allo. 'I bring an order a 
 message from the Winged Hats that you join them with 
 your men, and march South to plunder Britain.' 
 
 '"It grieves me,' said Pertinax, 'but we are stationed here 
 to stop that thing.' 
 
 "'If I carry back such an answer they will kill me,' said 
 Allo. 'I always promised the Winged Hats that you would 
 rise when Maximus fell. I I did not think he could fall.' 
 
 '"Alas! my poor barbarian,' said Pertinax, still laughing. 
 'Well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown 
 back to your friends. We will make you a prisoner, although 
 you are an ambassador.' 
 
 "'Yes, that will be best/ said Allo, holding out a halter. 
 We bound him lightly, for he was an old man. 
 
 "'Presently the Winged Hats may come to look for you, 
 and that will give us more time. See how the habit of playing 
 for time sticks to a man!' said Pertinax, as he tied the rope. 
 
 "'No,' I said. 'Time may help. If Maximus wrote us
 
 74 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 letters while he was a prisoner, Theodosius must have sent the 
 ship that brought it. If he can send ships, he can send men.' 
 
 "'How will that profit us?' said Pertinax. 'We serve 
 Maximus, not Theodosius. Even if by some miracle of the 
 Gods Theodosius down South sent and saved the Wall, we 
 could not expect more than the death Maximus died.' 
 
 "'It concerns us to defend the Wall, no matter what 
 Emperor dies, or makes die,' I said. 
 
 "'That is worthy of your brother the philosopher,' said 
 Pertinax. ' Myself I am without hope, so I do not say solemn 
 and stupid things! Rouse the Wall!' 
 
 "We armed the Wall from end to end; we told the officers 
 that there was a rumor of Maximus's death which might 
 bring down the Winged Hats, but we were sure, even if it 
 were true, that Theodosius, for the sake of Britain, would 
 send us help. Therefore we must stand fast. . . . My 
 friends, it is above all things strange to see how men bear 
 ill news! Often the strongest till then become the weakest, 
 while the weakest, as it were, reach up and steal strength from 
 the Gods. So it was with us. Yet my Pertinax by his jests 
 and his courtesy and his labors had put heart and training 
 into our poor numbers during the past years more than 
 I should have thought possible. Even our Libyan Cohort 
 the Thirds stood up in their padded cuirasses and did 
 not whimper. 
 
 "In three days came seven chiefs and elders of the Winged 
 Hats. Among them was that tall young man, Amal, whom 
 I had met on the beach, and he smiled when he saw my 
 necklace. We made them welcome, for they were ambas- 
 sadors. We showed them Allo, alive but bound. They 
 thought we had killed him, and I saw it would not have 
 vexed them if we had. Allo saw it too, and it vexed him. 
 Then in our quarters at Hunno we came to Council.
 
 THE WINGED HATS 75 
 
 "They said that Rome was falling, and that we must join 
 them. They offered me all South Britain to govern after 
 they had taken a tribute out of it. 
 
 "I answered, 'Patience. This Wall is not weighed off 
 like plunder. Give me proof that my General is dead.' 
 
 "'Nay,' said one elder, 'prove to us that he lives'; and 
 another said, cunningly, 'What will you give us if we read 
 you his last words? ' 
 
 "'We are not merchants to bargain/ cried Amal. 'More- 
 over, I owe this man my life. He shall have his proof.' 
 He threw across to me a letter (well I knew the seal) from 
 Maximus. 
 
 " ' We took this out of the ship we sunk,' he cried. ' I cannot 
 read, but I know one sign, at least, which makes me believe.' 
 He showed me a dark stain on the outer roll that my heavy 
 heart perceived was the valiant blood of Maximus. 
 
 "'Read!' said Amal. 'Read, and then let us hear whose 
 servants you are ! ' 
 
 "Said Pertinax, very softly, after he had looked through 
 it: 'I will read it all. Listen, barbarians!' He read from 
 that which I have carried next my heart ever since. " 
 
 Parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted piece 
 of parchment, and began in a hushed voice : 
 
 '"To Parnesius and Pertinax, the not unworthy Captains 
 of the Wall, from Maximus, once Emperor of Gaul and Britain, 
 now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of Theo- 
 dosius Greeting and Good-bye ! ' 
 
 "'Enough,' said young Amal; 'there is your proof! You 
 must join us now ! ' 
 
 "Pertinax looked long and silently at him, till that fair 
 man blushed like a girl. Then read Pertinax: - 
 
 "'/ have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who 
 have wished me evil, but if ever I did any evil to you two I repent,
 
 76 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 and I ask your forgiveness. The three mules which I strove 
 to drive have torn me in pieces as your Father prophesied. 
 The naked swords wait at the tent door to give me the death 
 I gave to Gratian. Therefore I, your General and your Emperor, 
 send you free and honorable dismissal from my service, which 
 you entered, not for money or office, but, as it makes me warm to 
 believe, because you loved me I ' 
 
 "'By the light of the Sun/ Amal broke in. 'This was 
 in some sort a Man! We may have been mistaken in his 
 servants ! ' 
 
 "And Pertinax read on: 'You gave me the time for which 
 I asked. If I have failed to use it, do not lament. We have 
 gambled very splendidly against the Gods, but they hold weighted 
 dice, and I must pay the forfeit. Remember, I have been; but 
 Rome is; and Rome will be! Tell Pertinax his Mother is in 
 safety at Nic&a, and her monies are in charge of the Prefect 
 at Antipolis. Make my remembrances to your Father and 
 to your Mother, whose friendship was great gain to me. Give 
 also to my little Picts and to the Winged Hats such messages 
 as their thick heads can understand. I would have sent you three 
 Legions this very day if all had gone aright. Do not forget 
 me. We have worked together. Farewell! Farewell! Fare- 
 well!' 
 
 "Now, that was my Emperor's last letter. (The children 
 heard the parchment crackle as Parnesius returned it to its 
 place.) 
 
 "'I was mistaken/ said Amal. 'The servants of such a 
 man will sell nothing except over the sword. I am glad of 
 it.' He held out his hand to me. 
 
 " 'But Maximus has given you your dismissal/ said an elder. 
 ' You are certainly free to serve or to rule whom you 
 please. Join do not follow -join us!' 
 
 '"We thank you/ said Pertinax. 'But Maximus tells us
 
 THE WINGED HATS 77 
 
 to give you such messages as pardon me, but I use his 
 words your thick heads can understand.' He pointed 
 through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up. 
 
 "'We understand/ said an elder. 'The Wall must be 
 won at a price?' 
 
 "'It grieves me,' said Pertinax, laughing, 'but so it must 
 be won,' and he gave them of our best Southern wine. 
 
 "They drank, and wiped their yellow beards in silence 
 till they rose to go. 
 
 "Said Amal, stretching himself (for they were barbarians), 
 'We be a goodly company; I wonder what the ravens and the 
 dogfish will make of some of us before this snow melts.' 
 
 "'Think rather what Theodosius may send,' I answered; 
 and though they laughed, I saw that my chance shot troubled 
 them. 
 
 "Only old Allo lingered behind a little. 
 
 "'You see,' he said, winking and blinking, 'I am no more 
 than their dog. When I have shown their men the secret 
 short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one.' 
 
 '"Then I should not be hi haste to show them those ways,' 
 said Pertinax, 'till I were sure that Rome could not save 
 the Wall.' 
 
 "'You think so? Woe is me!' said the old man. 'I 
 only wanted peace for my people,' and he went out stumbling 
 through the snow behind the tall Winged Hats. 
 
 "In this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which 
 is very bad for doubting troops, the War came upon us. At 
 first the Winged Hats swept in from the sea as they had 
 done before, and there we met them as before with the 
 catapults; and they sickened of it. Yet for a long time they 
 would not trust their duck-legs on land, and I think when it 
 came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little Picts 
 were afraid^or ashamed to show them all the roads across
 
 78 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 the heather. I had this from a Pict prisoner. They were 
 as much our spies as our enemies, for the Winged Hats op- 
 pressed them, and took their winter stores. Ah, foolish 
 Little People! 
 
 "Then the Winged Hats began to roll us up from each end 
 of the Wall. I sent runners Southward to see what the news 
 might be in Britain; but the wolves were very bold that 
 winter among the deserted stations where the troops had 
 once been, and none came back. We had trouble too with 
 the forage for the ponies along the Wall. I kept ten, and so 
 did Pertinax. We lived and slept in the saddle riding east 
 or west, and we ate our worn-out ponies. The people of the 
 town also made us some trouble till I gathered them all in 
 one quarter behind Hunno. We broke down the Wall on 
 either side of it to make as it were a citadel. Our men fought 
 better in close order. 
 
 "By the end of the second month we were deep in the 
 War as a man is deep in a snowdrift or in a dream. I think 
 we fought in our sleep. At least I know I have gone on the 
 Wall and come off again, remembering nothing between, 
 though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my 
 sword, I could see, had been used. 
 
 "The Winged Hats fought like wolves all in a pack. 
 WTiere they had suffered most, there they charged in most 
 hotly. This was hard for the defender, but it held them from 
 sweeping on into Britain. 
 
 "In those days Pertinax and I wrote on the plaster of the 
 bricked archway into Valentia the names of the towers, and 
 the days on which they fell one by one. We wished for some 
 record. 
 
 "And the fighting? The fight was always hottest to left 
 and right of the great Statue of Roma Dea, near to Rutilianus' 
 house. By the light of the Sun, that old fat man, whom we
 
 THE WINGED HATS 79 
 
 had not considered at all, grew young again among the 
 trumpets! I remember he said his sword was an oracle! 
 'Let us consult the Oracle,' he would say, and put the handle 
 against his ear, and shake his head wisely. 'And this day 
 is allowed Rutilianus to live,' he would say, and, tucking 
 up his cloak, he would puff and pant and fight well. Oh, 
 there were jests in plenty on the Wall to take the place of food! 
 
 "We endured for two months and seventeen days always 
 being pressed from three sides into a smaller space. Several 
 times Allo sent in word that help was at hand. We did not 
 believe it, but it cheered our men. 
 
 "The end came not with shoutings of joy, but, like the 
 rest, as in a dream. The Winged Hats suddenly left us in 
 peace for one night, and the next day; which is too long for 
 spent men. W T e slept at first lightly, expecting to be roused, 
 and then like logs, each where he lay. May you never need 
 such sleep! When I waked our towers were full of strange, 
 armed men, who watched us snoring. I roused Pertinax, 
 and we leaped up together. 
 
 "'What?' said a young man in clean armor. 'Do you 
 fight against Theodosius? Look!' 
 
 "North we looked over the red snow. No Winged Hats 
 were there. South we looked over the white snow, and 
 behold there were the Eagles of two strong Legions encamped. 
 East and west we saw flame and fighting, but by Hunno 
 all was still. 
 
 '"Trouble no more,' said the young man. 'Rome's arm 
 is long. Where are the Captains of the Wall? ' 
 
 "We said we were those men. 
 
 "'But you are old and gray-haired.' he cried. 'Maximus 
 said that they were boys.' 
 
 " ' Yes, that was true some years ago,' said Pertinax. ' What 
 is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child?'
 
 8o KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "'I am called Ambrosius, a secretary of the Emperor,' 
 he answered. 'Show me a certain letter wnich Maximus 
 wrote from a tent at Aquileia, and perhaps I will believe.' 
 
 "I took it from my breast, and when he had read it he 
 saluted us, saying: 'Your fate is in your own hands. If 
 you choose to serve Theodosius, he will give you a Legion. 
 If it suits you to go to your homes, we will give you a Tri- 
 umph.' 
 
 "'I would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps, 
 oils, and scents,' said Pertinax, laughing. 
 
 "' Oh, I see you are a boy,' said Ambrosius. 'And you?' 
 turning to me. 
 
 "'We bear no ill-will against Theodosius, but in War >' 
 
 I began. 
 
 "'In War it is as it is in Love,' said Pertinax. 'Whether 
 she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only. 
 That given, there remains no second worth giving or taking.' 
 
 '"That is true,' said Ambrosius. 'I was with Maximus 
 before he died. He warned Theodosius that you would 
 never serve him, and frankly I say I am sorry for my Emperor.' 
 
 "'He has Rome to console him,' said Pertinax. 'I ask 
 you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get this 
 smell out of our nostrils.' 
 
 "None the less they gave us a Triumph!" 
 
 "It was well earned," said Puck, throwing some leaves 
 into the still water of the marlpit. The black, oily circles 
 spread dizzily as the children watched them. 
 
 "I want to know, oh, ever so many things," said Dan. 
 "What happened to old Allo? Did the Winged Hats ever 
 come back? And what did Amal do?" 
 
 "And what happened to the fat old General with the five 
 cooks?" said Una. "And what did your Mother say when 
 you came home?" .
 
 THE WINGED HATS 81 
 
 "She'd say you're settin' too long over this old pit, so late 
 as 'tis already," said old Hobden's voice behind them. 
 "Hst!" he whispered. 
 
 He stood still, for not twenty paces away a magnificent 
 dog-fox sat on his haunches and looked at the children as 
 though he were an old friend of theirs. 
 
 "Oh, Mus' Reynolds, Mus' Reynolds!" said Hobden, 
 under his breath. "If I knowed all was inside your head, 
 I'd know something wuth knowin'. Mus' Dan an' Miss 
 Una, come along o' me while I lock up my liddle hen-house."
 
 THE BURNING OF THE SARAH SANDS 
 
 MEN have sailed the seas for so many years, and have 
 there done such amazing things in the face of danger, 
 difficulty, and death, that no one tale of heroism 
 exists which cannot be capped by at least a score of others. 
 But since the behavior of bodies of untried men under trying 
 circumstances is always interesting, and since I have been put 
 in possession of some facts not very generally known, I will 
 try here to tell you the story of the Sarah Sands. 
 
 She was a small, four-masted you must specially remem- 
 ber the masts iron-built screw steamer of eleven hundred 
 tons, chartered to take out British troops to India. That 
 was in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, when everything 
 that could sail or steer was in great demand for troops 
 were being rushed into the country against time. 
 
 Among the regiments was the 54th of the Line, now the 
 Second Battalion of the Dorset Regiment a good corps 
 about a hundred years old, with a very fair record of service, 
 but in no special way differing, so far as one can see, from a 
 hundred other regiments. It was hurried out in three ships. 
 The Headquarters that is to say, the Lieutenant-Colonel, 
 the regimental books, pay-chest, band and Colors you 
 must specially remember the Colors with some fourteen 
 officers, three hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and 
 perhaps a dozen women, left Portsmouth, England, on the 
 1 5th of August, 1857, all packed tight in the Sarah Sands. 
 
 82
 
 THE BURNING OF THE SARAH SANDS 83 
 
 Her crew, with the exception of the engineers and the 
 firemen, seemed to have been foreigners and pier-head jumpers 
 picked up at the last minute. They were bad, lazy and 
 insubordinate. 
 
 The accommodation for the troops was generously described 
 as "inferior," and what men called "inferior" fifty years 
 ago would now be called vile. Nor, in spite of the need, 
 was there any great swiftness about the Sarah Sands. She 
 took two long months to reach Cape Town, and she stayed 
 there five days to coal, leaving on the 2oth of October. By 
 this time the crew were all but openly mutinous, and the 
 troops, who must have learned a little seamanship by that 
 time, worked her out of the harbor. 
 
 On the yth of November, nearly three weeks later, a squall 
 struck her and carried away her foremast, and it is to be 
 presumed that the troops turned to and cleared away the 
 wreckage. On the nth of November the real trouble began, 
 for, in the afternoon of that day, three months out from 
 Portsmouth, a party of soldiers working in the hold saw smoke 
 coming from the after-hatch. The Sarah Sands was then, 
 maybe, within a thousand miles of Mauritius, in half a gale 
 and a sea full of sharks. Captain 'Castles, the skipper, 
 promptly lowered and provisioned the boats; got them over- 
 side with some difficulty and put the women into them. 
 Some of the sailors, the bad kind the engineers and the 
 firemen and a few others behaved well jumped into the 
 long-boat and kept away from the ship. They knew she 
 carried two magazines full of cartridges. 
 
 The troops, on the other hand, did not make any fuss, 
 but under their officers' orders cleared out the starboard 
 or right-hand magazine, while volunteers tried to save the 
 regimental Colors. These stood at the end of the first-class 
 saloon, probably clamped against a partition behind the
 
 84 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 captain's chair, and the saloon was full of smoke. Two 
 lieutenants made a dash for them, and were nearly suffocated. 
 A ship's quartermaster Richard Richmond was his name - 
 put a wet cloth over his face, managed to tear down the 
 Colors, and then fainted. A private and his name was 
 W. Wiles dragged out both Richmond and the Colors, 
 and the two men dropped senseless on deck while the troops 
 cheered. That, at least, was a good omen for the beginning 
 of the fight. 
 
 The saloon must have been one of the narrow, cabin-lined, 
 old-fashioned "cuddies," placed aft, above the screw, and 
 all the fire was in the stern of the ship, abaft the engine-room. 
 It was blazing very close to the port or left-hand magazine, 
 and as an explosion there would have blown the Sarah Sands 
 in two, they called for more volunteers, and one of the lieu- 
 tenants who had been choked in the saloon went down into 
 that port magazine and passed up a barrel of ammunition, 
 which was joyfully hove overboard. After this example work 
 went on regularly. 
 
 They pulled up the fainting men with ropes while those 
 who did not faint grabbed what cartridge barrels they could 
 get at in the smother, and an official and serene Quartermaster- 
 sergeant stood on the hatch as he jotted down the number 
 of rescued barrels in his note-book. They pulled out all 
 except two, which slid from the arms of a fainting man 
 there was a good deal of fainting that evening and rolled 
 out of reach. Besides these, there were somewhere in that 
 magazine two barrels of signaling powder for the ship's 
 use, but this the troops did not know, and were the more 
 comfortable for their ignorance. 
 
 Then the flames broke through the after-deck, the light 
 attracting shoals of sharks, and the mizzen-mast flared up 
 and went overside with a crash. The drag of the drifting
 
 THE BURNING OF THE SARAH SANDS 85 
 
 lumber would have pulled the ship's stern to the wind, in 
 which case the flames must have swept forward and destroyed 
 everything; but a man with a hatchet ran along the bulwarks 
 and cut the wreck clear, while the boats surged and rocked 
 at a safe distance and the sharks, so it is said, tried to upset 
 them with their tails. 
 
 A captain of the 54th he was a jovial soul, and made 
 jokes throughout the affair headed a party of men to cut 
 away the bridge, the deck cabins, and everything else that 
 was inflammable this in case the flames should sweep 
 forward again while a provident lieutenant with some more 
 troops lashed spars and things together for a raft, and other 
 gangs pumped water desperately on to what was left of the 
 saloon and the magazines. Work was carried on, more or 
 less, in military fashion. 
 
 One record says quaintly: "It was necessary to make 
 some deviation from the usual military evolutions while the 
 flames were in progress. The men formed in sections, coun- 
 termarched round the forward part of the ship, which may 
 perhaps be better understood when it is stated that those 
 with their faces to the after part where the fire raged were 
 on their way to relieve their comrades who had been working 
 below. Those proceeding "forward" were going to recruit 
 their exhausted strength and prepare for another attack when 
 it came to their turn." 
 
 No one seemed to have much hope of saving the ship so 
 long as the last powder was unexploded. Indeed, Captain 
 Castles told an officer of the 54th that the game was up, 
 and the officer replied: "We'll fight till we're driven over- 
 board!" It seemed that he would be taken at his word, 
 for just then the signaling powder and the two missing 
 ammunition casks blew up, and the ship from midships aft 
 looked like one volcano.
 
 86 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 The cartridges sputtered like crackers, and cabin doors 
 and timbers were shot all over the deck, and two or three 
 men were hurt. But this isn't in any official record 
 just after the roar of it, when the ship's stern was dipping 
 and all believed the Sarah Sands was settling for her last 
 lurch, some merry jester of the 54th cried "Lights out! " and 
 the jovial captain shouted back, "All right, we'll keep the 
 old woman afloat yet!" Not one man of the troops made 
 any attempt to get on to the rafts; and when they found 
 the ship was still floating they went to work double 
 tides. 
 
 At this point in the story we come across Mr. Eraser, the 
 Scottish engineer, who, like all his countrymen, had been 
 holding his trump card in reserve. He knew the Sarah 
 Sands was built with a water-tight bulkhead behind the 
 engine-room and the coal bunkers; and he proposed to cut 
 through the decks above that bulkhead and drown out the 
 fire by pumping water on it generously. Also, he pointed 
 out that it would be as well to remove the coal hi the bunkers, 
 as the iron bulkhead was almost red-hot and the coal was 
 catching light. 
 
 So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, each man for the 
 minute or two that he could endure, and shoveled away the 
 singeing, fuming fuel, and other volunteers were lowered with 
 ropes into the bonfire aft, and when they could throw no 
 more water on that they were hauled up half roasted. 
 
 Mr. Eraser's plan saved the ship, though every particle 
 of wood in the after part of her was destroyed, and a bluish 
 vapor hung over the red-hot iron beams and ties, and the sea 
 for miles about looked like blood under the glare, as men 
 pumped and passed water in buckets, flooding the burned-out 
 stern, sluicing the bulkhead and damping the coal beyond the 
 bulkhead all through the long night. The very sides of the
 
 THE BURNING OF THE SARAH SANDS 87 
 
 ship were red-hot, so that they wondered when tne plates 
 would buckle and wrench out the rivets and let the whole 
 freight down to the sharks. 
 
 The mizzen-mast, as you know, had gone; the main-mast, 
 though wrapped round with wet blankets, was alight, and 
 everything abaft the main-mast was one red furnace. There 
 was the constant danger of the ship, now broadside on to the 
 heavy seas, falling off before the wind and leading the flames 
 forward again. So they hailed the boats to tow and hold 
 her head to wind; but only the gig obeyed. The others 
 had all they could do to keep afloat; one of them had been 
 swamped, though all the people were saved, and as for the 
 long-boat full of mutinous seamen, she behaved infamously. 
 One record says that "She not only held aloof, but consigned 
 the ship and all she carried to perdition." So the Sarah 
 Sands fought for her own life alone. 
 
 About three on the morning of the i2th of November, 
 pumping, bucketing, sluicing, and damping, they began to 
 hope that they had bested the fire. By nine o'clock they 
 saw steam coming up instead of smoke, and at midday 
 they called in the boats and took stock of the damage. From 
 the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing that you could call 
 ship except the mere shell of her. It was a steaming heap 
 of scrap-iron with twenty feet of black, greasy water flooding 
 across the bent and twisted beams and rods, and in the 
 middle of it all, four huge water-tanks rolled to and fro, 
 thundering against the naked iron sides. 
 
 Moreover they could not see this till things had cooled 
 down the explosion of the powder had blown a hole right 
 through the port quarter and every time she rolled the sea 
 came in green. Of the four masts only one was left; and 
 the rudder-head stuck up all bald and black and naked 
 among the jam of collapsed deck-beams. The photograph
 
 88 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 of the wreck looks exactly like that of a gutted theater after 
 the flames and the firemen have done their worst. 
 
 They spent the whole of the i2th of November pumping 
 water out of the ship as zealously as they had pumped it in; 
 they lashed up the loose tanks somehow as soon as they 
 were cool enough to touch; and they plugged the hole at 
 the stern with hammocks, sails and planks and a sail over all. 
 Then they rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the rudder- 
 head. Six men sat on planks on one side of it and six at the 
 other, hauling at the bar with ropes and letting go as they 
 were told. That made as good a man-power steering gear 
 as they could expect. 
 
 On the 1 3th of November, still pumping, they spread 
 one sail on their solitary mast you see now how lucky 
 it was that the Sarah Sands had started with four of them 
 and took advantage of the trade winds to make for Mauritius. 
 Captain Castles, with one chart and one compass, lived in 
 a tent where some cabins had once stood, and at the end of 
 twelve days he sighted land. Their average run was about 
 four knots an hour; so it is no wonder that as soon as they 
 were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frasef, the Scottish 
 engineer, wished to start his engines. I suppose it must 
 have been a matter of professional honor with him not to 
 arrive in port under sail alone. The troops looked down into 
 the black hollow of the ship as the shaft made its first revolu- 
 tion shaking the hull horribly; and if you can realize what 
 it means to be able to see a naked screw-shaft at work from 
 the upper deck of a liner, you can realize what had happened 
 to the Sarah Sands. They waited outside Port Louis for the 
 daylight, and were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. 
 Then they came in without loss of a single life very dirty, 
 their clothes so charred that they hardly dared take them 
 off, and very hungry. Port Louis gave them public banquets
 
 THE BURNING OF THE SARAH SANDS 89 
 
 in the market place, and the French inhabitants were fascinat- 
 ingly polite, as only the French can be. 
 
 But the records say nothing of what befell the sailors who 
 "consigned the ship to perdition." One account merely 
 hints that "this was no time for retribution," but the troops 
 had probably administered their own justice to these gentle- 
 men during the twelve days' sail to Mauritius. The men 
 who were berthed aft, the officers and the women lost every- 
 thing they had; and the companies who had been berthed 
 forward and so kept some kit lent them clothes and canvas 
 to make clothing. 
 
 On the 2oth of December they were all re-embarked from 
 Mauritius on the Clarendon. It was poor accommodation 
 for heroes. The Clarendon had been condemned as a coolie- 
 ship, and was full of centipedes and other animals picked up 
 in the Brazil trade. Her engines broke down frequently; 
 and her captain died of exposure and anxiety during a hur- 
 ricane. It was the 25th of January before she reached the 
 mouth of the Hugli. 
 
 By this time many men probably considered this quite 
 as serious as the fire the troops were out of tobacco, and 
 when they came across the American ship, Hamlet, Captain 
 Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the way up the Hugli to 
 Calcutta, the officers rowed over to ask if there was any 
 tobacco for sale. They told the skipper the history of their 
 adventures and he said: "Well, I'm glad you've come to 
 me, because I have some tobacco. How many men are you? " 
 "Three hundred," said the officers. Thereupon Captain 
 Lecran got out four hundred pounds of best Cavendish as 
 well as one thousand Manila cigars for the officers, and refused 
 to take payment on the grounds that Americans did not 
 accept anything from shipwrecked people. They were not 
 shipwrecked at the time, but evidently they had been ship-
 
 9 o KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 wrecked quite enough for Captain Lecran because when 
 they rowed back a second time and tried to insist on paying 
 for the tobacco he only gave them some more grog, "which," 
 the record says, "caused it to be dark when we returned to 
 our ship." After pipes were lit "our band played 'Yankee 
 Doodle,' blue lights were burned, the signal-gun fired" 
 that must have been a lively evening at Kedgeree "and 
 everything in our power was had recourse to so as to convey 
 to our American cousins our appreciation of their kindness." 
 
 Last of all the Commander-in-Chief issued a General 
 Order to be read at the head of every regiment in the British 
 Army. He was pleased to observe that "the behavior of 
 the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, and by its result 
 must render manifest to all the advantage of subordination 
 and strict obedience to orders under the most alarming and 
 dangerous circumstances in which soldiers can be placed." 
 
 That is the moral of my tale.
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 
 
 IT WAS almost the end of their visit to the seaside. They 
 had turned themselves out of doors while their trunks 
 were being packed, and strolled over the Downs toward 
 the dull evening sea. The tide was dead low under the 
 chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along the 
 sands up the coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, 
 gray Brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the Channel. 
 
 They walked to The Gap where the cliff is only a few feet 
 high. A windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below 
 stands at the edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little 
 farther on, and an old ship's figure-head of a Turk in a turban 
 stared at them over the wall. 
 
 " This time to-morrow we shall be at home, thank goodness," 
 said Una. " I hate the sea !" 
 
 "I believe it's all right in the middle," said Dan. "The 
 edges are the sorrowful parts." 
 
 Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, leveled 
 his telescope at some fishing boats, shut it with a click and 
 walked away. He grew smaller and smaller along the edge 
 of the cliff, where neat piles of white chalk every few yards 
 show the path even on the darkest night. 
 
 "Where's Cordery going?" said Una. 
 
 "Halfway to Newhaven," said Dan. "Then he'll meet 
 the Newhaven coastguard and turn back. He says if coast- 
 
 01
 
 9 2 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 guards were done away with smuggling would start up at 
 once." 
 A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing: 
 
 "The moon she shined on Telscombe Tye 
 
 On Telscombe Tye at night it was 
 She saw the smugglers riding by, 
 A very pretty sight it was!" 
 
 Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced 
 man in very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came 
 up, followed by Puck. 
 
 "Three Dunkirk boats was standin' in!" 
 
 the man went on. 
 
 "Hssh!" said Puck. "You'll shock these nice young 
 people." 
 
 "Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!" He shrugged his shoul- 
 ders almost up to his ears spread his hands abroad, and 
 jabbered in French. "No comprenny?" he said. "I'll give 
 it you in Low German." And he went off in another language, 
 changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly 
 knew him for the same person. But his dark, beady-brown 
 eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children 
 felt that they did not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown 
 coat, brown knee-breeches and broad-brimmed hat. His hair 
 was tied in a short pigtail which danced wickedly when he 
 turned his head. 
 
 "Ha' done!" said Puck, laughing. "Be one thing or 
 t'other, Pharaoh. French or English or German no great 
 odds which." 
 
 "Oh, but it is, though," said Una quickly. "We haven't 
 begun German yet, and and we're going back to our 
 French next week."
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 93 
 
 "Aren't you English?" said Dan. "We heard you singing 
 just now." 
 
 "Aha! That was the Sussex side o' me. Dad he married 
 a French girl out o' Boulogne, and French she stayed till 
 her dyin' day. She was an Aurette, of course. We Lees 
 mostly marry Aurettes. Haven't you ever come across the 
 
 saying: 
 
 " ' Aurettes and Lees, 
 
 Like as two peas. 
 What they can't smuggle, 
 
 They'll run over seas?' " 
 
 "Then, are you a smuggler?" Una cried; and, "Have you 
 smuggled much?" said Dan. 
 
 Mr. Lee nodded solemnly. 
 
 "Mind you," said he, "I don't uphold smuggling for the 
 generality o' mankind mostly they can't make a do of it 
 but I was brought up to the trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line 
 o' descent on" he waved across the Channel "on both 
 sides the water. 'Twas all in the families, same as fiddling. 
 The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across the Bou- 
 logne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London 
 town, by the safest road." 
 
 "Then where did you live?" said Una. 
 
 "You mustn't ever live too close to your business in our 
 trade. We kept our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but 
 otherwise we Lees was all honest cottager folk at Warming- 
 hurst under Washington Bramber way on the old Penn 
 estate." 
 
 "Ah!" said Puck, squatted by the windlass. "I remember 
 a piece about the Lees at Warminghurst, I do: 
 
 ' There was never a Lee to Warminghurst, 
 That wasn't a gipsy last and first.' 
 
 I reckon that's truth, Pharaoh."
 
 94 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Pharaoh laughed. "Admettin' that's true," he said, "my 
 gipsy blood must be wore pretty thin, for I've made and 
 kept a worldly fortune." 
 
 "By smuggling?" Dan asked. 
 
 "No, in the tobacco trade." 
 
 "You don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to 
 go and be a tobacconist?" Dan looked so disappointed they 
 all had to laugh. 
 
 "I'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists," Pharaoh 
 replied. "How far out, now, would you call that smack 
 with the patch on her foresail?" He pointed to the fishing- 
 boats. 
 
 "A scant mile," said Puck after a quick look. 
 
 "Just about. It's seven fathom under her clean sand. 
 That was where Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs 
 from Boulogne, and we fished 'em up and rowed 'em into 
 The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One thickish 
 night in January of '93, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came 
 over from Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle 
 Aurette and the L'Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in 
 their lugger with New Year's presents from mother's folk 
 in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she'd" sent me a fine 
 new red knitted cap which I put on then and there, for the 
 French was having their Revolution in those days, and red 
 caps was all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they 
 had cut off their King Louis's head, and, moreover, the- Brest 
 forts had fired on an English man-o'-war. The news wasn't 
 a week old. 
 
 "'That means war again, when we was only just getting 
 used to the peace/ says Dad. 'Why can't King George's 
 men and King Louis's men don their uniforms and fight it 
 out over our heads? ' 
 
 "'Me too, I wish that,' says Uncle Aurette. 'But they'll
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 95 
 
 be pressing better men than themselves to fight for 'em. 
 The press-gangs are out already on our side: you look out 
 for yours.' 
 
 "'I'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, 
 after I've run this cargo; but I do wish' Dad says, going 
 over the lugger's side with our New Year presents under his 
 arm and young L'Estrange holding the lantern 'I just do 
 wish that those folk which make war so easy had to run 
 one cargo a month all this winter. It 'ud show 'em what 
 honest work means.' 
 
 "'Well, I've warned ye,' says Uncle Aurette. 'I'll be slip- 
 ping off now before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my 
 love to sister and take care o' the kegs. It's trucking to 
 southward.' 
 
 "I remember him waving to us and young Stephen 
 L'Estrange blowing out the lantern. By the time we'd 
 fished up the kegs, the fog came down so thick Dad judged 
 it risky for me to row 'em ashore, even though we could 
 hear the ponies stamping on the beach. So he and Uncle 
 Lot took the dinghy and left me in the smack playing on my 
 fiddle to guide 'em back. 
 
 "Presently I heard guns. Two of 'em sounded mighty 
 like Uncle Aurette's three-pounders. He didn't go naked 
 about the seas after dark. Then come more, which I reckoned 
 was Captain Giddens in the Revenue cutter. He was open- 
 handed with his compliments, but he would lay his guns 
 himself. I stopped fiddling to listen, and I heard a whole 
 skyful o' French up in the fog and a high bow come down 
 on top o' the smack. I hadn't time to call or think. I 
 remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the 
 gunwale pushing against the ship's side as if I hoped to bear 
 her off. Then the square of an open port, with a lantern 
 in it, slid by in front of my nose. I kicked back on our
 
 96 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 gunwale as it went under and slipped through that port 
 into the French ship me and my fiddle." 
 
 " Gracious ! " said Una. "What an adventure ! " 
 
 "Didn't anybody see you come in?" said Dan. 
 
 "There wasn't any one there. I'd made use of an orlop- 
 deck port that's the next deck below the gun-deck, which 
 by rights it shouldn't have been open at all. The crew was 
 standing by their guns up above. I rolled on to a pile of 
 dunnage in the dark and I went to sleep. When I woke, 
 men was talking all round me, telling each other their names 
 and sorrows just like Dad told me pressed men used to talk 
 in the last war. Pretty soon I made out they'd all been hove 
 aboard together by the press-gangs, and left to sort 'emselves. 
 The ship she was the Embuscade, a thirty-six gun Republi- 
 can frigate, Captain Jean Baptiste Bompard, two days out 
 of Le Havre, going to the United States with a Republi- 
 can French Ambassador of the name of Genet. They had 
 been up all night clearing for action on account of hear- 
 ing guns in the fog. Uncle Aurette and Captain Giddens 
 must have been passing the time o' day with each other 
 off Newhaven, and the frigate had drifted past 'em. She 
 never knew she'd run down our smack. Seeing so many 
 aboard was total strangers to each other, I thought one 
 more mightn't be noticed; so I put Aunt Cecile's red cap 
 on the back of my head, and my hands in my pockets 
 like the rest, and, as we French say, I circulated till I 
 found the galley. 
 
 "'What! Here's one of 'em that isn't sick!' says a cook. 
 'Take his breakfast to Citizen Bompard.' 
 
 "I carried the tray to the cabin but I didn't call this 
 Bompard 'Citizen.' Oh, no! 'Mon Capitaine' was my little 
 word, same as Uncle Aurette used to answer in King Louis' 
 Navy. Bompard, he liked it; he took me on for cabin servant,
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 97 
 
 and after that no one asked questions; and thus I got good 
 victuals and light work all the way across to America. He 
 talked a heap of politics, and so did his officers; and when 
 this Ambassador Genet got rid of his land stomach and laid 
 down the law after dinner, a rook's parliament was nothing 
 compared to their cabin. I learned to know most of the men 
 which had worked the French Revolution, through waiting 
 at table and hearing talk about 'em. One of our forecas'le 
 six-pounders was called Danton and t'other Marat. I used 
 to play the fiddle between 'em, sitting on the capstan. Day 
 in and day out, Bompard and Monsieur Genet talked o' 
 what France had done, and how the United States was going 
 to join her to finish off the English in this war. Monsieur 
 GenSt said he'd just about make the United States fight 
 for France. He was a rude common man. But I liked listen- 
 ing. I always helped drink any healths that was proposed 
 specially Citizen Danton's, who'd cut off King Louis' head. 
 An all-Englishman might have been shocked but that's 
 where my French blood saved me. 
 
 "It didn't save me from getting a dose of ship's fever 
 though, the week before we put Monsieur Genet ashore at 
 Charleston; and what was left of me after bleeding and pills 
 took the dumb horrors from living 'tween decks. The 
 surgeon, Karaguen his name was, kept me down there to help 
 him with his plasters I was too weak to wait on Bompard. 
 I don't remember much of any account for the next few 
 weeks, till I smelled laylocks, and I looked out of the port, 
 and we was moored to a wharf-edge and there was a town 
 o' fine gardens and red-brick houses and all the green leaves 
 in God's world waiting for me outside. 
 
 "'What's this?' I said to the sick-bay man old Pierre 
 Tiphaigne he was. 'Philadelphia,' says Pierre. 'You've 
 missed it all. We're sailing next week.'
 
 98 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "I just turned round and cried for longing to be amongst 
 the laylocks. 
 
 "'If that's your trouble/ says old Pierre, 'you go straight 
 ashore. None'll hinder you. They're all gone mad on these 
 coasts French and American together. Tisn't my notion 
 o' war.' Pierre was an old King Louis man. 
 
 "My legs was pretty tottly, but I made shift to go on deck, 
 which it was like a fair. The frigate was crowded with fine 
 gentlemen and ladies pouring in and out. They sung and they 
 waved French flags, while Captain Bompard and his officers 
 yes, and some of the men speechified to all and sundry 
 about war with England. They shouted, 'Down with Eng- 
 land ! ' - ' Down with Washington ! ' Hurrah for France 
 and the Republic!' 7 couldn't make sense of it. I wanted 
 to get out from that crunch of swords and petticoats and sit 
 in a field. One of the gentlemen said to me, ' Is that a genuine 
 cap o' Liberty you're wearing?' 'Twas Aunt Cecile's red 
 one, and pretty near wore out. 'Oh, yes!' I says, 'straight 
 from France.' 'I'll give you a shilling for it,' he says, and 
 with that money in my hand and my fiddle under my arm 
 I squeezed past the entry-port and went ashore. It was like 
 a dream meadows, trees, flowers, birds, houses and people 
 all different! I sat me down in a meadow and fiddled a bit, 
 and then I went in and out the streets, looking and smelling 
 and touching, like a little dog at a fair 1 . Fine folk was setting 
 on the white stone doorsteps of their houses, and a girl 
 threw me a handful of laylock sprays, and when I said ' Merci ' 
 without thinking, she said she loved the French. They 
 was all the fashion in the city. I saw more tricolor flags in 
 Philadelphia than ever I'd seen in Boulogne, and every 
 one was shouting for war with England. A crowd o' folk 
 was cheering after our French ambassador that same 
 Monsieur Gene't which we'd left at Charleston. He was
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 99 
 
 a-horseback behaving as if the place belonged to him 
 and commanding all and sundry to fight the British. But I'd 
 heard that often. I got into a long straight street as wide 
 as the Broyle, where gentlemen was racing horses. I'm fond 
 o' horses. Nobody hindered 'em, and a man told me it was 
 called Race Street o' purpose for that. Then I followed 
 some black niggers, which I'd never seen close before; but 
 I left them to run after a great, proud, copper-faced man 
 with feathers in his hair and a red blanket trailing behind 
 him. A man told me he was a real Red Indian called Red 
 Jacket, and I followed him into an alley-way off Race Street 
 by Second Street, where there was a fiddle playing. I'm 
 fond o' fiddling. The Indian stopped at a baker's shop 
 Conrad Gerhard's it was and bought some sugary cakes. 
 Hearing what the price was I was going to have some too, 
 but the Indian asked me in English if I was hungry. 'Oh, 
 yes!' I says. I must have looked a sore scrattel. He opens 
 a door on to a staircase and leads the way up. We walked 
 into a dirty little room full of flutes and fiddles and a fat 
 man fiddling by the window, in a smell of cheese and medi- 
 cines fit to knock you down. I was knocked down too, for 
 the fat man jumped up and hit me a smack in the face. I 
 fell against an old spinet covered with pill-boxes, and the 
 pills rolled about the floor. The Indian never moved an 
 eyelid. 
 
 "'Pick up the pills! Pick up the pills!' the fat man 
 screeches. 
 
 "I started picking 'em up hundreds of 'em meaning 
 to run out under the Indian's arm, but I came on giddy all 
 over and I sat down. The fat man went back to his fiddling. 
 
 "'Toby!' says the Indian after quite a while. 'I brought 
 the boy to be fed, not hit.' 
 
 "'What?' says Toby. 'I thought it was Gert Schwank-
 
 TOO KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 felder.' He put down his fiddle and took a good look at me. 
 'Himmel!' he says. 'I have hit the wrong boy. It is not 
 the new boy. Why are you not the new boy? Why are you 
 not Gert Schwankfelder? ' 
 
 "'I don't know/ I said. 'The gentleman in the pink 
 blanket brought me.' 
 
 "Says the Indian, 'He is hungry, Toby. Christians always 
 feed the hungry. So I bring him.' 
 
 '"You should .have said that first,' said Toby. He pushed 
 plates at me and the Indian put bread and pork on them, 
 and a glass of Madeira wine. I told him I was off the French 
 ship, which I had joined on account of my mother being 
 French. That was true enough when you think of it, and 
 besides I saw that the French was all the fashion in Phila- 
 delphia. Toby and the Indian whispered and I went on pick- 
 ing up the pills. 
 
 "'You like pills eh?' says Toby. 
 
 "'No,' I says. 'I've seen our ship's doctor roll too many 
 of 'em.' 
 
 "'Ho!' he says and he shoves two bottles at me. 'What's 
 those?' 
 
 "'Calomel,' I says. 'And t'other's senna.' 
 
 "'Right,' he says. 'One week have I tried to teach Gert 
 Schwankfelder the difference between them, yet he cannot 
 tell. You like to fiddle?' he says. He'd just seen my kit 
 on the floor. 
 
 "'Oh, yes!' says I. 
 
 " 'Oho ! ' he says. 'What note is this?' drawing his bow acrost. 
 
 "He meant it for A, so I told him it was. 
 
 '"My brother,' he says to the Indian. 'I think this is 
 the hand of Providence! I warned that Gert if he went to 
 play upon the wharves any more he would hear from me. 
 Now look at this boy and say what you think.'
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 101 
 
 "The Indian looked me over whole minutes there was a 
 musical clock on the wall, and dolls came out and hopped while 
 the hour struck. He looked me over all the while they did it. 
 
 "'Good/ he says at last. 'This boy is good.' 
 
 "'Good, then,' says Toby. 'Now I shall play my fiddle 
 and you shall sing your hymn, brother. Boy, go down 
 to the bakery and tell them you are young Gert Schwank- 
 felder that was. The horses are in Davy Jones's locker. 
 If you ask any questions you shall hear from me.' 
 
 "I left 'em singing hymns and I went down to old Conrad 
 Gerhard. He wasn't at all surprised when I told him I was 
 young Gert Schwankfelder that was. He knew Toby. His 
 wife she walked me into the back yard without a word, and 
 she washed me and she cut my hair to the edge of a basin, 
 and she put me to bed, and oh ! how I slept how I slept 
 in that little room behind the oven looking on the flower 
 garden! I didn't know Toby went to the Embuscade that 
 night and bought me off Doctor Karaguen for twelve dollars 
 and a dozen bottles of Seneca Oil. Karaguen wanted a new 
 lace to his coat, and he reckoned I hadn't long to live; so 
 he put me down as 'discharged sick.'" 
 
 "I like Toby, "said Una. 
 
 "Who was he?" said Puck. 
 
 ' ' Apothecary Tobias Hirte, ' ' Pharaoh replied . ' ' One Hun- 
 dred and Eighteen, Second Street the famous Seneca Oil 
 man, that lived half of every year among the Indians. But 
 let me tell my tale my own way, same as his brown mare 
 used to go to Lebanon." 
 
 "Then why did he keep her in Davy Jones's locker?" 
 Dan asked. 
 
 "That was his joke. He kept her under David Jones's 
 hat shop in the 'Buck' tavern yard, and his Indian friends 
 kept their ponies there when they visited him. I looked
 
 102 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 after the horses, when I wasn't rolling pills on top of the old 
 spinet while he played his fiddle and Red Jacket sang hymns. 
 I liked it. I had good victuals, light work, a suit o' clean 
 clothes, a plenty music, and quiet, smiling German folk all 
 around that let me sit in their gardens. My first Sunday 
 Toby took me to his church in Moravian Alley; and that was 
 in a garden too. The women wore long-eared caps and hand- 
 kerchiefs. They came in at one door and the men at another, 
 and there was a brass chandelier you could see your face 
 in and a nigger-boy to blow the organ-bellows. I carried 
 Toby's fiddle and he played pretty much as he chose all against 
 the organ and the singing. He was the only one they let 
 do it, for they was a simple-minded folk. They used to 
 wash each other's feet up in the attic to keep 'emselves 
 humble: which Lord knows they didn't need." 
 
 "How very queer," said Una. 
 
 Pharaoh's eyes twinkled. "I've met many and seen much," 
 he said. "But I haven't yet found any better or quieter 
 or forbearinger people than the Brethren and Sistern of the 
 Moravian Church in Philadelphia. Nor will I ever forget 
 my first Sunday the service was in English that week 
 with the smell of the flowers coming in from Pastor Meder's 
 garden where the big peach tree is, and me looking at all the 
 clean strangeness and thinking of 'tween decks on the Embus- 
 cade only six days ago. Being a boy, it seemed to me it had 
 lasted forever, and was going on forever. But I didn't 
 know Toby then. As soon as the dancing clock struck 
 midnight that Sunday I was lying under the spinet I 
 heard Toby's fiddle. He'd just done his supper which he 
 always took late and heavy. 'Gert,' says he, 'get the horses. 
 Liberty and Independence for ever! The flowers appear 
 upon the earth and the time of the singing of birds is come. 
 We are going to my country seat in Lebanon.'
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 103 
 
 "I rubbed my eyes, and fetched 'em out of the 'Buck' 
 stable. Red Jacket was there saddling his, and when I'd 
 packed the saddle-bags we three rode up Race Street to the 
 Ferry by starlight. So we went traveling. It's a kindly, 
 softly country there, back of Philadelphia among the German 
 towns, Lancaster way. Little houses and bursting big 
 barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as Heaven 
 might be if they farmed there. Toby sold medicines out of 
 his saddle-bags, and gave the French war-news to folk along 
 the roads. Him and his long-hilted umberell was as well 
 known as the stage coaches. He took orders for that famous 
 Seneca Oil which he had the secret of from Red Jacket's 
 Indians, and he slept in friends' farmhouses, but he would 
 shut all the windows: so Red Jacket and me slept outside. 
 There's nothing to hurt except snakes and they slip away 
 quick enough if you thrash in the bushes." 
 
 "I'd have liked that!" said Dan. 
 
 "I'd no fault to find with those days. In the cool o' the 
 morning the catbird sings. He's something to listen to. 
 And there's a smell of wild grape-vine growing in damp 
 hollows which you drop into, after long rides in the heat, 
 which is beyond compare for sweetness. So's the puffs out 
 of the pine woods of afternoons. Come sundown, the frogs 
 strike up, and later on the fireflies dance in the corn. Oh, me, 
 the fireflies in the corn! We were a week or ten days on the 
 road, tacking from one place to another such as Lancaster, 
 Bethlehem-Ephrata ' thou Bethlehem-Ephrata' no odds 
 I loved the going about: and so we jogged into dozy little 
 Lebanon by the Blue Mountains where Toby had a cottage 
 and a garden of all fruits. He came north every year for this 
 wonderful Seneca Oil the Seneca Indians made for him. 
 They'd never sell to any one else, and he doctored 'em with 
 von Swieten pills which they valued more than their own
 
 io 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 oil. He could do what he chose with them, and, of course, 
 he tried to make them Moravians. The Senecas are a 
 seemly, quiet people, and they'd had trouble enough from 
 white men Americans and English during the wars to 
 keep 'em in that walk. They lived on a Reservation by 
 themselves, away off on the lake. Toby took me up there, 
 and they treated me as if I was their own blood brother. 
 Red Jacket said the mark of my bare feet in the dust was 
 just like an Indian's and my style of walking was similar. 
 I know I took to their ways all over." 
 
 "Maybe the gipsy drop in your blood helped you?" said 
 Puck. 
 
 "Sometimes I think it did," Pharaoh went on. "Anyhow 
 Red Jacket and Cornplanter, the other Senaca chief, they 
 let me be adopted into the tribe. It's only a compliment, 
 of course, but Toby was angry when I showed up with my 
 face painted. They gave me a side-name which means 
 'Two Tongues' because, d'ye see, I talked French and 
 English. 
 
 "They had their own opinions (7've heard 'em) about 
 the French and the English, and the Americans. They'd 
 suffered from all of 'em during the wars, and they only 
 wished to be left alone. But they thought a heap of the 
 President of the United States. Cornplanter had had dealings 
 with him in some French wars out West when General 
 Washington was only a lad. His being President afterward 
 made no odds to 'em. They always called him Big Hand, 
 for he was a large-fisted man, and he was all of their notion 
 of a white chief. Cornplanter 'ud sweep his blanket round 
 him, and after I'd filled his pipe he'd begin 'In the old 
 days, long ago, when braves were many and blankets were 
 few, Big Hand said- If Red Jacket agreed to the 
 
 say-so he'd trickle a little smoke out of the corners of his
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 105 
 
 mouth. If he didn't he'd blow through his nostrils. Then 
 Cornplanter 'ud stop and Red Jacket 'ud take on. Red 
 Jacket was the better talker of the two. I've laid and listened 
 to 'em for hours. Oh! they knew General Washington 
 well. Cornplanter used to meet him at Epply's the great 
 dancing place in the city before District Marshal William 
 Nichols bought it. They told me he was always glad to see 
 'em, and he'd hear 'em out to the end if they had anything 
 on their minds. They had a good deal in those days. I 
 came at it by degrees, after I was adopted into the tribe. 
 The talk up in Lebanon and everywhere else that summer 
 was about the French war with England and whether the 
 United States 'ud join in with France or make a peace treaty 
 with England. Toby wanted peace so as he could go about 
 the Reservation buying his oils.. But most of the white 
 men wished for war, and they was angry because the President 
 wouldn't give the sign for it. The newspaper said men was 
 burning Guy Fawkes images Of General Washington and 
 yelling after him in the streets of Philadelphia. You'd have 
 been astonished what those two fine old chiefs knew of the 
 ins and outs of such matters. The little I've learned of 
 politics I picked up from Cornplanter and Red Jacket on the 
 Reservation. Toby used to read the Aurora newspaper. 
 He was what they call a 'Democrat,' though our Church is 
 against the Brethren concerning themselves with politics." 
 
 "I hate politics, too," said Una, and Pharaoh laughed. 
 
 "I might ha' guessed it," he said. "But here's something 
 that isn't politics. One hot evening late in August Toby 
 was reading the newspaper on the stoop and Red Jacket 
 was smoking under a peach tree and I was fiddling. Of 
 a sudden Toby drops his Aurora. 
 
 "'I am an oldish man, too fond of my own comforts,' he 
 says. 'I will go to the church which is in Philadelphia.
 
 io6 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 My brother, lend me a spare pony. I must be there to-morrow 
 night.' 
 
 "'Good!' says Red Jacket, looking at the sun. 'My 
 brother shall be there. I will ride with him and bring back 
 the ponies.' 
 
 "I went to pack the saddle-bags. Toby had cured me of 
 asking questions. He stopped my fiddling, if I did. Besides, 
 Indians don't ask questions much, and I wanted to be like 
 'em. 
 
 "When the horses were ready I jumped up. 
 
 "'Get off,' says Toby. 'Stay and mind the cottage till 
 I come back. The Lord has laid this on me. not on vou. 
 I wish He hadn't.' 
 
 "He powders off down the Lancaster road, and I sat on 
 the doorstep wondering after him. When I picked up the 
 paper to wrap his fiddle-strings in I spelled out a piece about 
 the yellow fever being in Philadelphia so dreadful every one 
 was running away. I was scared, for I was fond of Toby. 
 We never said much to each other, but we fiddled together; 
 and music's as good as talking to them that understand." 
 
 "Did Toby die of yellow fever?" Una asked. 
 
 "Not him! There's justice left in the world still! He 
 went down to the city and bled 'em well again in heaps. 
 He sent back word by Red Jacket that, if there was war, 
 or he died, I was to bring the oils along to the city, but till 
 then I was to go on working in the garden and Red Jacket 
 was to see me do it. Down at heart, all Indians reckon 
 digging a squaw's business, and neither him nor Cornplanter, 
 when he relieved watch, was a hard task-master. We hired 
 a nigger-boy to do our work, and a lazy, grinning runagate 
 he was. When I found Toby didn't die the minute he reached 
 town, why, boylike, I took him off my mind and went with 
 my Indians again. Oh, those days up north at Canasedago,
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 107 
 
 running races and gambling with the Senecas, or bee-hunting 
 in the woods, or fishing in the lake!" Pharaoh sighed and 
 looked across the water. "But it's best," he went on sud- 
 denly, "after the first frosts. You roll out o' your blanket 
 and find every leaf left green over night, turned red and 
 yellow, not by trees at a time, but hundreds and hundreds 
 of miles of 'em, like sunsets splattered upside down. On 
 one of such days the maples was flaming scarlet and gold, 
 and the sumach bushes were redder Cornplanter and Red 
 Jacket came out in full war-dress, making the very leaves 
 look silly. Feathered war-bonnets, yellow doe-skin leggings, 
 fringed and tasseled, red horse-blankets, and their bridles 
 feathered and shelled and beaded no bounds. I thought 
 it was war against the British till I saw their faces weren't 
 painted, and they only carried wrist-whips. Then I hummed 
 'Yankee Doodle' at 'em. They told me they was going to 
 visit Big Hand and find out for sure whether he meant to join 
 the French in fighting the English or make a peace treaty 
 with England. I reckon those two would ha' gone out on 
 the warpath at a nod from Big Hand, but they knew well, 
 if there was war 'twixt England and the United States, their 
 tribe 'ud catch it from both parties same as in all the other 
 wars. They asked me to come along and hold the ponies. 
 That puzzled me, because they always put their ponies 
 up at the 'Buck' or Epply's when they went to see General 
 Washington in the city, and horse-holding is a nigger's job. 
 Besides, I wasn't exactly dressed for it." 
 
 "D'you mean you were dressed like an Indian?" Dan 
 demanded. 
 
 Pharaoh looked a little abashed. "This didn't happen 
 at Lebanon," he said, "but a bit farther north, on the Reser- 
 vation; and at that particular moment of time, so far as 
 blanket, hair-band, moccasins and sunburn went, there wasn't
 
 io8 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 much odds 'twix me and a young Seneca buck. You may 
 laugh," he smoothed down his long-skirted brown coat. 
 "But I told you I took to their ways all over. I said nothing, 
 though I was bursting to let out the war-whoop like the 
 young men had taught me." 
 
 "No, and you don't let out one here, either," said Puck 
 before Dan could ask. "Go on, Brother Square-toes." 
 
 "We went on." Pharaoh's narrow dark eyes gleamed and 
 danced. "We went on forty, fifty miles a day, for days 
 on end we three braves. And how a great tall Indian 
 a-horseback can carry his war-bonnet at a canter through 
 thick timber without brushing a feather beats me! My silly 
 head was banged often enough by low branches, but they 
 slipped through like running elks. We had evening hymn- 
 singing every night after they'd blown their pipe-smoke 
 to the quarters of Heaven. Where did we go? I'll tell you, 
 but don't blame me if you're no wiser. We took the old 
 war-trail from the end of the Lake along the East Susquehanna 
 through the Nantego country, right down to Fort Shamokin 
 on the Senachse River. We crossed the Juniata by Fort 
 Granville, got into Shippensberg over the hills by the Ochwick 
 trail, and then to Williams Ferry (it's a bad one). From 
 Williams Ferry, across the Shanedore, over the Blue Moun- 
 tains, through Ashby's Gap, and so southeast by south 
 from there, till we found the President at the back of his own 
 plantations. I'd hate to be trailed by Indians in earnest. 
 They caught him like a partridge on a stump. After we'd 
 left our ponies, we scouted forward through a woody piece 
 and, creeping slower and slower, at last if my moccasins 
 even slipped Red Jacket 'ud turn and frown. I heard 
 voices Monsieur Genet's for choice long before I saw 
 anything, and we pulled up at the edge of a clearing where 
 some niggers in gray and red liveries were holding horses,
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES 109 
 
 and half-a-dozen gentlemen but one was Genet were 
 talking among felled timber. I fancy they'd come to see 
 Gene't a piece on his road, for his portmantle was with him. 
 I hid in between two logs as near to the company as I be 
 to that old windlass there. I didn't need anybody to show 
 me Big Hand. He stood up, very still, his legs a little apart, 
 listening to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had 
 more manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good 
 as ordering him to declare war on England at once. I had 
 heard that clack before on the Embuscade. He said he'd 
 stir up the whole United States to have war with England, 
 whether Big Hand liked it or not. 
 
 "Big Hand heard him out to the last end. I looked behind 
 me and my two chiefs had vanished like smoke. Says Big 
 Hand, 'That is very forcibly put, Monsieur Genet 
 'Citizen citizen!' the fellow spits in. '/, at least, am a 
 Republican!' 'Citizen Genet,' he says, 'you may be sure it 
 will receive my fullest consideration.' This seemed to take 
 Citizen Genet back a piece. He rode off grumbling, and never 
 gave his nigger a penny. No gentleman ! 
 
 "The others all assembled round Big Hand then, and, in 
 their way, they said pretty much what Genet had said. 
 They put it to him, here was France and England at war, 
 in a manner of speaking, right across the United States' 
 stomach, and paying no regards to any one. The French 
 was searching American ships on pretence they was helping 
 England, but really for to steal the goods. The English was 
 doing the same, only t'other way round; and besides, search- 
 ing, they was pressing American citizens into their navy to 
 help them fight France, on pretence that those Americans 
 was lawful British subjects. His gentlemen put this very 
 clear to Big Hand. It didn't look to them, they said, as 
 though the United States trying to keep out of the fight
 
 no KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 was any advantage to her, because she only catched it from 
 both French and English. They said that nine out of ten 
 good Americans was crazy to fight the English then and there. 
 They wouldn't say whether that was right or wrong, they 
 only wanted Big Hand to turn it over in his mind. He did - 
 for a while. I saw Red Jacket and Cornplanter watching 
 him from the far side of the clearing, and how they had 
 slipped round there was another mystery. Then Big Hand 
 drew himself up, and he let his gentlemen have it." 
 
 "Hit 'em? "Dan asked. 
 
 "No, nor yet was it what you might call swearing. He - 
 he blasted 'em with his natural speech. He asked them half 
 a dozen times over whether the United States had enough 
 armed ships for any shape or sort of war with any one. He 
 asked 'em, if they thought she had those ships, to give him 
 those ships, and they looked on the ground, as if they expected 
 to find 'em there. He put it to 'em whether, setting ships 
 aside, their country I reckon he gave 'em good reasons 
 whether the United States was ready or able to face a new 
 big war; she having but so few years back wound up one 
 against England, and being all holds full of her own troubles. 
 As I said, the strong way he laid it all before 'em blasted 
 'em, and when he'd done it was like a still in the woods after 
 a storm. A little man but they all looked little pipes 
 up like a young rook in a blowed-down nest, 'Nevertheless, 
 General, it seems you will be compelled to fight England.' 
 Quick Big Hand wheels on him, 'And is there anything in 
 my past which makes you think I am averse to fighting 
 Great Britain?' 
 
 "Everybody laughed except him. 'Oh, General, you mis- 
 take us entirely!' they says. 'I trust so/ he says. 'But I 
 know my duty. We must have peace with England.' 
 
 "'At any price?' says the man with the rook's voice.
 
 Then they made the sign which no Indian makes outside 
 of the Medicine Lodges."
 
 BROTHER SQUARE-TOES in 
 
 '"At any price,' says he word by word. 'Our ships will 
 be searched our citizens will be pressed, but 
 
 '"Then what about the Declaration of Independence?' 
 says one. 
 
 '"Deal with facts, not fancies,' says Big Hand. 'The 
 United States are in no position to fight England.' 
 
 "'But think of public opinion,' another one starts up. 
 'The feeling in Philadelphia alone is at fever heat.' 
 
 "He held up one of his big hands. ' Gentlemen,' he says 
 slow he spoke, but his voice carried far 'I have to think 
 of our country. Let me assure you that the treaty with 
 Great Britain will be made though every city in the Union 
 burn me in effigy.' 
 
 "'At any price?' the actor-like chap keeps on croaking. 
 
 "'The treaty must be made on Great Britain's own terms. 
 What else can I do? ' 
 
 "He turns his back on 'em and they looked at each other 
 and slinked off to the horses, leaving him alone: and then 
 I saw he was an old man. Then Red Jacket and Cornplanter 
 rode down the clearing from the far end as though they had 
 just chanced along. Back went Big Hand's shoulders, up 
 went his head and he stepped forward one single pace with a 
 great deep Hough ! so pleased he was. That was a state-lified 
 meeting to behold three big men, and two of 'em looking 
 like jeweled images among the spattle of gay-colored leaves. I 
 saw my chiefs' war-bonnets sinking together, down and down. 
 Then they made the sign which no Indian makes outside of the 
 Medicine Lodges a sweep of the right hand just clear of the 
 dust and an inbend of the left knee at the same time, and 
 those proud eagle feathers almost touched his boot-top." 
 
 "What did it mean?" said Dan. 
 
 "Mean!" Pharaoh cried. "Why it's what you what 
 we it's the Sachems' way of sprinkling the sacred corn-meal
 
 ii2 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 in front of Oh ! it's a piece of Indian compliment really, 
 and it signifies that you are a very big chief. 
 
 "Big Hand looked down on 'em. First he says quite softly, 
 'My brothers know it is not easy to be a chief.' Then his 
 voice grew. ' My children,' says he, 'what is in your minds? ' 
 
 "Says Cornplanter, 'We came to ask whether there will 
 be war with King George's men, but we have heard what 
 our Father has said to his chiefs. We will carry away that 
 talk in our hearts to tell to our people.' 
 
 "'No,' says Big Hand. 'Leave aU that talk behind it 
 was between white men only but take this message from 
 me to your people "There will be no war.'" 
 
 "His gentlemen were waiting so they didn't delay him; 
 only Cornplanter says, using his old side-name, 'Big Hand, 
 did you see us among the timber just now?' 
 
 "'Surely,' says he. 'You taught me to look behind trees 
 when we were both young.' And with that he cantered off. 
 
 "Neither of my chiefs spoke till we were back on our ponies 
 again and a half-hour along the home trail. Then Cornplanter 
 says to Red Jacket, 'We will have the corn dance this year. 
 There will be no war.' And that was all there was to it." 
 
 Pharaoh stood up as though he had finished. 
 
 "Yes," said Puck, rising too. "And what came out of 
 it in the long run?" 
 
 "Let me get at my story my own way," was the answer. 
 "Look! It's later than I thought. That Shoreham smack's 
 thinking of her supper." 
 
 The children looked across the. darkening Channel. A 
 smack had hoisted a lantern and slowly moved west where 
 Brighton pier lights ran out in a twinkling line. When they 
 turned round, The Gap was empty behind them. 
 
 "I expect they've packed our trunks by now," said Dan. 
 ''This time to-morrow we'll be home."
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 IF YOU'RE off to Philadelphia in the morning, 
 You mustn't take my stories for a guide. 
 There's little left, indeed, of the city you will read of, 
 And all the folk I write about have died. 
 Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand, 
 
 Or remember what his cunning and his skill did; 
 And the cabmen at the wharf do not know Count Zinnen- 
 
 dorf, 
 Nor the Church in Philadelphia he builded. 
 
 It is gone, gone, gone with lost Atlantis 
 
 (Never say I didn't give you warning). 
 In Seventeen Ninety-three 'twas there for all to see, 
 
 But it's not in Philadelphia this morning. 
 
 If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning, 
 
 You mustn't go by everything I've said. 
 Bob Bicknell's Southern Stages have been laid aside for ages, 
 
 But the Limited will take you there instead. 
 Toby Hirte can't be seen at One Hundred and Eighteen, 
 
 North Second Street no matter when you call; 
 And I fear you'll search in vain for the wash-house down the 
 lane 
 
 Where Pharaoh played the riddle at the ball. 
 
 113
 
 ii4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 It is gone, gone, gone with Thebes the Golden 
 
 (Never say I didn't give you warning). 
 In Seventeen Ninety-four 'twas a famous dancing floor 
 
 But it's not in Philadelphia this morning. 
 
 If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning, 
 
 You must telegraph for rooms at some hotel. 
 You needn't try your luck at Epply's or the " Buck," 
 
 Though the Father of his Country liked them wjll. 
 It is not the slightest use to inquire for Adam Goos, 
 
 Or to ask where Pastor Meder has removed so 
 You must treat as out of date the story I relate, 
 
 Of the Church in Philadelphia he loved so. 
 
 He is gone, gone, gone with Martin Luther 
 
 (Never say I didn't give you warning). 
 In Seventeen Ninety-five he was (rest his soul!) alive 
 
 But he's not in Philadelphia this morning. 
 
 If you're off to Philadelphia this morning, 
 
 And wish to prove the truth of what I say, 
 I pledge my word you'll find the pleasant land behind 
 
 Unaltered since Red Jacket rode that way. 
 Still the pine- woods scent the noon; still the catbird sings 
 his tune; 
 
 Still autumn sets the maple-forest blazing. 
 Still the grape-vine through the dusk flings her soul-compelling 
 musk; 
 
 Still the fireflies in the corn make night amazing! 
 
 They are there, there, there with Earth immortal, 
 
 (Citizens, I give you friendly warning). 
 The things that truly last when men and times have passed, 
 
 They are all in Pennsylvania this morning!
 
 .007 
 
 A LOCOMOTIVE is, next to a marine engine, the most 
 sensitive thing man ever made, and No. .007, besides 
 being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly 
 dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like 
 a fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a hard- 
 wood-finish parlor. They had run him into the round-house 
 after his trial he had said good-bye to his best friend 
 in the shops, the overhead traveling-crane the big world 
 was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of 
 him. He looked at the semicircle of bold, unwinking head- 
 lights, heard the low purr and mutter of the steam mounting 
 in the gauges scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve 
 lifted a little and would have given a month's oil for leave 
 to crawl through his own driving-wheels into the brick ash-pit 
 beneath him. .007 was an eight-wheeled "American" loco, 
 slightly different from others of his type, and as he stood 
 he was worth ten thousand dollars on the Company's books. 
 But if you had bought him at his own valuation, after half 
 an hour's waiting in the darkish, echoing round-house, you 
 would have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents. 
 
 A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a 
 fire-box that came down within three inches of the rail, 
 began the impolite game, speaking to a Pittsburgh Consoli- 
 dation, who was visiting. 
 
 115
 
 n6 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 ''Where did this thing blow in from?" he asked, with a 
 dreamy puff of light steam. 
 
 "It's all I can do to keep track of our makes," was the 
 answer, ''without lookin' after your back-numbers. Guess 
 it's something Peter Cooper left over when he died." 
 
 .007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his 
 tongue. Even a hand-car knows what sort of locomotive 
 it was that Peter Cooper experimented upon in the far-away 
 Thirties. It carried its coal and water in two apple-barrels, 
 and was not much bigger than a bicycle. 
 
 Then up and spoke a small, newish switching engine, with 
 a little step in front of his bumper- timber, and his wheels 
 so close together that he looked like a broncho getting ready 
 to buck. 
 
 "Something's wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania 
 gravel-pusher tells us anything about our stock, I think. 
 That kid's all right. Eustis designed Mm, and Eustis designed 
 me. Ain't that good enough?" 
 
 .007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard 
 in his tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word 
 of consolation. 
 
 "We don't use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania," said the 
 Consolidation. "That er peanut-stand's old enough 
 and ugly enough to speak for himself." 
 
 "He hasn't bin spoken to yet. He's bin spoke at. Hain't 
 ye any manners on the Pennsylvania?" saicj the switching- 
 loco. 
 
 "You ought to be in the yard, Poney," said the Mogul, 
 severely. "We're all long-haulers here." 
 
 "That's what you think," the little fellow replied. "You'll 
 know more 'fore the night's out. I've bin down to Track 
 17, and the freight there oh, Christmas!" 
 
 "I've trouble enough in my own division," said a lean,
 
 .007 ii; 
 
 light suburban loco with very shiny brake-shoes. "My 
 commuters wouldn't rest till they got a parlor-car. They've 
 hitched it back of all, and it hauls worse'n a snow-plough. 
 I'll snap her off some day sure, and then they'll blame every 
 one except their foolselves. They'll be askin' me to haul 
 a vestibuled next!" 
 
 "They made you in New Jersey, didn't they?" said Poney. 
 "Thought so. Commuters and truck-wagons ain't any sweet 
 haulin', but I tell you they're a heap better 'n cuttin' out 
 refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I've hauled 
 
 "Haul! You?" said the Mogul, contemptuously. "It's 
 all you can do to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, 
 I" - he paused a little to let the words sink in "I handle 
 the Flying Freight e-leven cars worth just anything you 
 please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull out; and 
 I'm timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly perishable - 
 fragile immediate that's me ! Suburban traffic's only 
 but one degree better than switching. Express freight's 
 what pays." 
 
 "Well, I ain't given to blowing, as a rule," began the 
 Pittsburgh Consolidation. 
 
 "No? You was sent in here because you grunted on the 
 grade," Poney interrupted. 
 
 "Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was 
 saying, I don't blow much. Notwithstanding if you want 
 to see freight that is freight moved lively, you should see 
 me warbling through the Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore- 
 cars behind me, and my brakemen fightin' tramps so 's they 
 can't attend to my tooter. I have to do all the holdin' 
 back then, and, though I say it, I've never had a load get 
 away from me yet. No, sir. Haulin' 's one thing, but 
 judgment and discretion's another. You want judgment 
 in my business."
 
 n8 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "Ah! But but are you not paralyzed by a sense of 
 your overwhelming responsibilities?" said a curious, husky 
 voice from a corner. 
 
 "Who's that?" .007 whispered to the Jersey commuter. 
 
 "Compound experiment N. G. She's bin switchin' 
 in the B. & A. yards for six months, when she wasn't in the 
 shops. She's economical (7 call it mean) in her coal, but 
 she takes it out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you found 
 Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New York 
 season? " 
 
 "I am never so well occupied as when I am alone." The 
 Compound seemed to be talking from halfway up her smoke- 
 stack. 
 
 "Sure," said the irreverent Poney, under his breath. 
 "They don't hanker after her any in the yard." 
 
 "But, with my constitution and temperament my work 
 lies in Boston I find your outrecuidance 
 
 "Outer which? " said the Mogul freight. "Simple cylinders 
 are good enough for me." 
 
 "Perhaps I should have said faroucherie" hissed the 
 Compound. 
 
 "I don't hold with any make of papier-mache wheel," 
 the Mogul insisted. 
 
 The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more. 
 
 "Git 'em all shapes hi this world, don't ye?" said Poney. 
 "That's Mass'chusetts all over. They half start, an' then 
 they stick on a dead-center, an* blame it all on other folk's 
 ways o' treatin' them. Talkin' o' Boston, Comanche told 
 me, last night, he had a hot-box just beyond the Newtons, 
 Friday. That was why, he says, the Accommodation was 
 held up. Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did." 
 
 "If I'd heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for 
 repairs, I'd know 'twas one o' Comanche's lies," the New
 
 .007 i ig 
 
 Jersey commuter snapped. "Hot-box! Him! What hap- 
 pened was they'd put an extra car on, and he just lay down 
 on the grade and squealed. They had to send 127 to help 
 him through. Made it out a hot-box, did he? Time before 
 that he said he was ditched ! Looked me square in the head- 
 light and told me that as cool as as a water-tank in a cold 
 wave. Hot-box! You ask 127 about Comanche's hot-box. 
 Why, Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (he was just 
 about as mad as they make 'em on account o' being called 
 out at ten o'clock at night) took hold and snapped her into 
 Boston in seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! That's 
 what Comanche is." 
 
 Then .007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the 
 saying is, for he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be? 
 
 " Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher. 
 "Make me a surface-railroad loco with a hard- wood skirtin'- 
 board round my wheels. Break me up and cast me into 
 five-cent sidewalk-fakers' mechanical toys! Here's an eight- 
 wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a hot-box is! 
 Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't 
 know what ye carry jack-screws for? You're too innocent 
 to be left alone with your own tender. Oh, you you 
 flat-car!" 
 
 There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could 
 answer, and .007 nearly blistered his paint off with pure morti- 
 fication. 
 
 "A hot-box," began the Compound, picking and choosing 
 her words as though they were coal, "a hot-box is the penalty 
 exacted from inexperience by haste. Ahem!" 
 
 "Hot-box!" said the Jersey Suburban. "It's the price 
 you pay for going on the tear. It's years since I've had 
 one. It's a disease that don't attack short-haulers, as a rule." 
 
 "We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania," said
 
 120 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 the Consolidation. "They get 'em in New York same 
 as nervous prostration." 
 
 "Ah, go home on a ferry-boat," said the Mogul. "You 
 think because you use worse grades than our road Vd allow, 
 you're a kind of Alleghany angel. Now, I'll tell you what 
 you . . . Here's my folk. Well, I can't stop. See you 
 later, perhaps." 
 
 He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and 
 swung like a man-of-war in a tideway, till he picked up his 
 track. "But aS for you, you pea-green swivelin' coffee-pot 
 (this to .007), you go out and learn something before you 
 associate with those who've made more mileage in a wsek 
 than you'll roll up in a year. Costly perishable fragile 
 immediate that's me! S'long." 
 
 "Split my tubes if that's actin' polite to a new member 
 o' the Brotherhood," said Poney. "There wasn't any call 
 to trample on ye like that. But manners was left out when 
 Moguls was made. Keep up your fire, kid, an' burn your 
 own smoke. 'Guess we'll all be wanted in a minute." 
 
 Men were talking rather excitedly in the round-house. 
 One man, in a dingy jersey, said that he hadn't any locomo- 
 tives to waste on the yard. Another man, with a piece of 
 crumpled paper in his hand, said that the yard-master said 
 that he was to say that if the other man said anything, he 
 (the other man) was to shut his head. Then the other man 
 waved his arms, and wanted to know if he was expected to 
 keep locomotives in his hip-pocket. Then a man in a black 
 Prince Albert, without a collar, came up dripping, for it was 
 a hot August night, and said that what he said went; and 
 between the three of them the locomotives began to go 
 too first the Compound; then the Consolidation; then .007. 
 
 Now, deep down hi his fire-box, .0x37 had cherished a hope 
 that as soon as his trial was done, he would be led forth
 
 .007 I2i 
 
 with songs and shoutings, and attached to a green-and- 
 chocolate vestibuled flier, under charge of a bold and noble 
 engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over him, 
 and call him his Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where 
 he was built used to read wonderful stories of railroad life, 
 and .007 expected things to happen as he had heard.) But 
 there did not seem to be many vestibuled fliers in the roaring, 
 rumbling, electric-lighted yards, and his engineer only said: 
 
 "Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis 
 loaded on to this rig this time?" And he put the lever over 
 with an angry snap, crying: "Am I supposed to switch 
 with this thing, hey?" 
 
 The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, 
 in the present state of the yard and freight and a few other 
 things, the engineer would switch and keep on switching 
 till the cows came home. .007 pushed out gingerly, his heart 
 in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his own bell 
 almost made him jump the track. Lanterns waved, or danced 
 up and down before and behind him; and on every side, 
 six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings 
 of couplers and squeals of hand-brakes, were cars more 
 cars than .007 had dreamed of. There were oil-cars, and 
 hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and ore-cars, 
 and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the 
 middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping iced- water 
 on the tracks; ventilated fruit- and milk-cars; flat-cars with 
 truck- wagons full of market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers 
 and binders, all red and green and gilt under the sizzling 
 electric lights; flat-cars piled high with strong-scented hides, 
 pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles; flat-cars 
 creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons, and 
 rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds 
 and hundreds of box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked.
 
 122 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Men hot and angry crawled among and between and 
 under the thousand wheels; men took flying jumps through 
 his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot 
 as he went forward, and on his tender as he returned; and 
 regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside 
 him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying 
 curious things. 
 
 He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, 
 his rear drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; 
 jerked into a switch (yard-switches are very stubby and 
 unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D, or Merchant's 
 Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight 
 behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly 
 on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and .007 
 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the 
 brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the 
 whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy 
 with the vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting 
 forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his 
 cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth, and 
 the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust. 
 
 "'Tisn't so easy switching with a straight-backed tender," 
 said his little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot. 
 "But you're comin' on pretty fair. 'Ever seen a flyin' 
 switch? No? Then watch me." 
 
 Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Sud- 
 denly he shot away from them with a sharp "Whutt!" A 
 switch opened in the shadows ahead; he turned up it like 
 a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long line of twelve- 
 foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road- 
 loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl. 
 
 "My man's reckoned the smartest in the yard at that 
 trick," he said, returning. "Gives me cold shivers when
 
 .007 123 
 
 another fool tries it, though. That's where my short wheel- 
 base comes in. Like as not you'd have your tender scraped 
 off if you tried it." 
 
 .007 had no ambitions that way, and said so. 
 
 "No? Of course this ain't your regular business, but 
 say, don't you think it's interestin'? Have you seen the 
 yard-master? Well, he's the greatest man on earth, an' 
 don't you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, 
 it's always like this, day an' night Sundays an' week-days. 
 See that thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no, five tracks off? 
 She's all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight 
 trains. That's why we're cuttin' out the cars one by one." 
 He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound car as he spoke, 
 and started back with a little snort of surprise, for the car 
 was an old friend an M. T. K. box-car. 
 
 "Jack my drivers, but it's Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, 
 ain't there no gettin' you back to your friends? There's 
 forty chasers out for you from your road, if there's one. 
 Who's holdin' you now?" 
 
 "Wish I knew," whimpered Homeless Kate. "I belong 
 in Topeka, but I've bin to Cedar Rapids; I've bin to Winni- 
 peg; I've bin to Newport News; I've bin all down the old 
 Atlanta and West Point; an' I've bin to Buffalo. Maybe 
 I'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I've only bin out ten months, 
 but I'm homesick I'm just achin' homesick." 
 
 "Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the 
 battered old car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I 
 want to be in Kansas when the sunflowers bloom." 
 
 "Yard's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," 
 he explained to .007. "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out 
 seventeen months; an' one of ours was gone fifteen 'fore 
 ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. 
 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She's
 
 124 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next 
 boilerful she'll be held there to wait consignee's convenience, 
 and sent back to us with wheat in the fall." 
 
 Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the 
 head of a dozen cars. 
 
 "I'm goin' home," he said proudly. 
 
 "Can't get all them twelve on to the flat. Break 'em 
 in half, Dutchy!" cried Poney. But it was .007 who was 
 backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with 
 surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge 
 ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and 
 shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six 
 inches of the black, shiny tide. 
 
 After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where 
 he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, 
 trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, 
 a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, 
 turning, sweating, spark-striking horses. 
 
 "That's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin' trucks," 
 said the small engine, reverently. "But he don't care. 
 He lets 'em cuss. He's the Czar King Boss! He says 
 'Please,' and then they kneel down an' pray. There's three 
 or four strings o' to-day's freight to be pulled before he can 
 attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things 
 happen." 
 
 A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a 
 string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, 
 jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them 
 from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets 
 and they iron filings. 
 
 "Ki-yah!" shrieked little Poney. "Ain't it great?" 
 
 A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard- 
 master, and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master
 
 .007 125 
 
 never looked up from his bundle of freight receipts. He 
 crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red 
 shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman 
 under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, 
 on a hay-bale. 
 
 "Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought 
 ought three; nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought 
 twenty-one M. B.; and the ten west-bound. All straight 
 except the two last. Cut 'em off at the junction. An' that's 
 all right. Pull that string." The yard-master, with mild 
 blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the 
 waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed: 
 
 " All things bright and beautiful, 
 All creatures great and small, 
 All things wise and wonderful, 
 The Lawd Gawd He made all!" 
 
 .007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular 
 road-engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life 
 before. 
 
 "Curious, ain't it?" said Poney, puffing, on the next track. 
 "You an' me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we'd 
 work him into red waste an' not know what we'd done; 
 but up there with the steam hummin' in his boiler 
 that awful quiet way . . ." 
 
 "/ know," said .007. "Makes me feel as if I'd dropped my 
 fire an' was getting cold. He is the greatest man on earth." 
 
 They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a 
 switch-tower, looking down on the four-track way of the main 
 traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul .007 's string to 
 some far-away northern junction over an indifferent road- 
 bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six pound rails 
 of the B. & A.
 
 126 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "You're young; you're young," she coughed. "You don't 
 realize your responsibilities." 
 
 "Yes, he does," said Poney, sharply; "but he don't lie 
 down under 'em." Then, with a side-spurt of steam, exactly 
 like a tough spitting: "There ain't more than fifteen thou- 
 sand dollars' worth o' freight behind her anyway, and she 
 goes on as if 't were a hundred thousand same as the 
 Mogul's. Excuse me, madam, but you've the track. . . . 
 She's stuck on a dead-center again bein' specially designed 
 not to." 
 
 The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, 
 groaning horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow 
 in a snow-drift. There was a little pause along the yard 
 after her tail-lights had disappeared, switches locked crisply, 
 and every one seemed to be waiting. 
 
 "Now I'll show you something worth," said Poney. "When 
 the Purple Emperor ain't on time, it's about time to amend 
 the Constitution. The first stroke of twelve is 
 
 "Boom!" went the clock in the big yard- tower, and far 
 away .007 heard a full, vibrating "Yah! Yah! Yah!" 
 A headlight twinkled on the horizon like a star, grew an 
 overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming track 
 to the roaring music of a happy giant's song: 
 
 With a michnai ghignai shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! 
 Ein zwei drei Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah! 
 
 She climb upon der shteeple, 
 
 Und she frighten' all der people, 
 Singin' michnai ghignai shtingal! Yah! Yah! 
 
 The last defiant "yah! yah!" was delivered a mile and a 
 half beyond the passenger-depot; but .007 had caught one 
 glimpse of the superb six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, 
 wht> hauled the pride and glory of the road the gilt-edged
 
 .007 127 
 
 Purple Emperor, the millionaires' south-bound express, laying 
 the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a 
 soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar 
 of white light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of 
 nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear platform. 
 
 "OohF'said .007. 
 
 "Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, 
 I've heard; barber's shop; ticker; and a library and the rest 
 to match. Yes, sir; seventy-five an hour! But he'll talk 
 to you in the round-house just as democratic as I would. 
 And I cuss my wheel-base ! I'd kick clean off the track 
 at half his gait. He's the Master of our Lodge. Cleans 
 up at our house. I'll introdooce you some day. He's worth 
 knowin'! There ain't many can sing that song, either." 
 
 .007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not 
 hear a raging of telephone bells in the switch tower, nor the 
 man, as he leaned out and called to .007 's engineer: "Got 
 any steam?" 
 
 "'Nough to run her a hundred mile out o' this, if I could," 
 said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated 
 switching. 
 
 "Then get. The Flying Freight's ditched forty mile out, 
 with fifty rod o' track ploughed up. No; no one's hurt, 
 but both tracks are blocked. Lucky the wreckin'-car an' 
 derrick are this end of the yard. Crew'll be along in a minute. 
 Hurry! You've the track." 
 
 "Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self," said 
 Poney, as .oof was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and 
 grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools a flat-car and 
 a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing, and some are 
 another; but you 're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. 
 Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on 
 the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'.
 
 128 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' saw-edged 
 track that's liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half 
 out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'. You'll know it 
 by a farmhouse an' a windmill an' five maples in the 
 door-yard. Windmill's west o' the maples. An' there's an 
 eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o' that section with no 
 guardrails. See you later. Luck!" 
 
 Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying 
 up the track into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the 
 night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of 
 landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed 
 cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of 
 responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his 
 own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for his 
 first grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), 
 and his nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic 
 horse and a white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard 
 from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would jump 
 the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; 
 knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as 
 Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down 
 the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the windmill west of the 
 maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated 
 big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed 
 an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge 
 without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. 
 Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and 
 threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it 
 was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran 
 over it; and anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive 
 as it does an elephant. But the men behind seemed quite 
 calm. The wrecking crew were climbing carelessly from the 
 caboose to the tender even jesting with the engineer, for
 
 " He took the eighty foot bridge without the guard-rail 
 like a hunted cat on the top of a fence."
 
 .007 129 
 
 he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch 
 of a song, something like this: 
 
 " Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait, 
 And the Cannon-ball go hang! 
 
 When the West-bound's ditched, and the tool-car's hitched, 
 And it's way for the Breakdown Gang (Tara-ra!) 
 'Way for the Breakdown Gang!" 
 
 "Say! Eustis knew what he was doin' when he designed 
 this rig. She's a hummer. New, too." 
 
 "Snff! Phew! Shew new. That ain't paint. That's " 
 
 A burning pain shot through .007 's right rear driver a 
 crippling, stinging pain. 
 
 "This," said .007, as he flew, "is a hot-box. Now I know 
 what it means. I shall go to pieces, I guess. My first 
 road-run, too!" 
 
 "Het a bit, ain't she?" the fireman ventured to suggest 
 to the engineer. 
 
 "She'll hold for all we want of her. We're 'most there. 
 Guess you chaps back had better climb into your car," said 
 the engineer, his hand on the brake-lever. "I've seen men 
 snapped off - 
 
 But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no 
 wish to be jerked on to the track. The engineer half turned 
 his wrist, and .007 found his drivers pinned firm. 
 
 "Now it's come!" said .007, as he yelled aloud, and slid 
 like a sleigh. For the moment he fancied that he would 
 jerk bodily from off his underpinning. 
 
 "That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me 
 about," he gasped, as soon as he could think. "Hot-box 
 emergency -stop. They both hurt; but now I can talk back 
 in the round-house." 
 
 He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in th: rear of
 
 130 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 what doctors would call a compound-comminuted car. His 
 engineer was kneeling down among his drivers, but he did 
 not call .007 his "Arab steed," nor cry over him, as the 
 engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad- worded .007, 
 and pulled yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles, 
 and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had 
 packed it. Nobody else attended to him, for Evans, the 
 Mogul's engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry, 
 was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a 
 slim blue pig. 
 
 "'T weren't even a decent-sized hog," he said. "T were 
 a shote." 
 
 " Dangerousest beasts they are," said one of the crew. 
 "Get under the pilot an' sort o' twiddle ye off the track, 
 don't they?" 
 
 "Don't they?" roared Evans, who was a red-headed 
 Welshman. "You talk as if I was ditched by a hog every 
 fool-day o' the week. / ain't friends with all the cussed 
 half -f ed shotes in the State o' New York. No, indeed! Yes, 
 this is him an' look what he's done!" 
 
 It was not a bad night's work for one stray piglet. The 
 Flying Freight seemed to have flown in every direction, for 
 the Mogul had mounted the rails and run diagonally a few 
 hundred feet from right to left, taking with him such cars 
 as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their couplers 
 and lay down, while rear cars frolicked over them. In that 
 game, they had ploughed up and removed and twisted a good 
 deal of the left hand track. The Mogul himself had waddled 
 into a cornfield, and there he knelt fantastic wreaths of 
 green twisted round his crank-pins; his pilot covered with 
 solid clods of field, on which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire 
 put out with dirt (Evans had done that as soon as he recovered 
 his senses); and his broken headlight half full of half-burnt
 
 . 007 I3i 
 
 moths. His tender had thrown coal all over him, and he 
 looked like a disreputable buffalo who had tried to wallow 
 in a general store. For there lay scattered over the landscape, 
 from the burst cars, typewriters, sewing-machines, bicycles 
 in crates, a consignment of silver-plated imported harness, 
 French dresses and gloves, a dozen finely molded hard-wood 
 mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a solid brass 
 bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes and 
 microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some 
 gilt-edged dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, 
 a broken box of expensive toys, and a few hundred other 
 luxuries. A camp of tramps hurried up from nowhere, and 
 generously volunteered to help the crew. So the brakemen, 
 armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side 
 and the freight-conductor and the fireman patroled the other 
 with their hands in their hip-pockets. A long-bearded man 
 came out of the house beyond the cornfield, and told Evans 
 that if the accident had happened a little later in the year, 
 all his corn would have been burned, and accused Evans 
 of carelessness. Then he ran away, for Evans was at his 
 heels shrieking: "'T was his hog done it his hog done it! 
 Let me kill him! Let me kill him!" Then the wrecking- 
 crew laughed; and the farmer put his head out of a window 
 and said that Evans was no gentleman. 
 
 But .007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck 
 before, and it frightened him. The crew still laughed, but 
 they worked at the same time ; and .007 forgot horror in amaze- 
 ment at the way they handled the Mogul freight. They dug 
 round him with spades; they put ties in front of his wheels, 
 and jack-screws under him; they embraced him with the 
 derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while .007 was 
 hitched on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot 
 broke or the cars rolled clear of the track. By dawn thirty
 
 132 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 or forty men were at work, replacing and ramming down the 
 ties, gauging the rails and spiking them. By daylight all 
 cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco; 
 the track was freed for traffic; and .007 had hauled the old 
 Mogul over a small pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his 
 flanges bit the rail once more, and he settled down with a 
 clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was gone. 
 
 "'T weren't even a hog," he repeated dolefully; "'t were 
 a shote; and you you of all of 'em had to help me on." 
 
 "But how in the whole long road did it happen?" asked 
 .007, sizzling with curiosity. 
 
 "Happen! It didn't happen! It just come! I sailed 
 right on top of him around that last curve thought he was 
 a skunk. Yes; he was all as little as that. He hadn't more'n 
 squealed once 'fore I felt my bogies lift (he'd rolled right 
 under the pilot), and I couldn't catch the track again to save 
 me. Swiveled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling 
 himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin' driver, and, 
 oh, Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges 
 zippin' along the ties, an' the next I knew I was playin' 
 'Sally, Sally Waters' in the corn, my tender shuckin' coal 
 through my cab, an' old man Evans lyin' still an' bleedin' 
 in front o' me. Shook? There ain't a stay or a bolt or 
 rivet in me that ain't sprung to glory somewhere." 
 
 "Umm!" said .007. "What d'you reckon you weigh?" 
 
 "Without these lumps o' dirt I'm all of a hundred thousand 
 pound." 
 
 "And the shote?" 
 
 "Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. 
 He's worth about four 'n' a half dollars. Ain't it awful? 
 Ain't it enough to give you nervous prostration? Ain't it 
 paralyzin'? Why, I come just around that curve " and 
 the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.
 
 .007 133 
 
 "Well, it's all in the day's run, I guess," said .007, sooth- 
 ingly; "an' an' a cornfield's pretty soft fallin'." 
 
 "If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an' I could ha' slid off 
 into deep water an' blown up an' killed both men, same as 
 others have done, I wouldn't ha' cared; but to be ditched 
 by a shote an' you to help me out in a cornfield an' 
 an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin' me like as if I was 
 a sick truck-horse! . . . Oh, it's awful! Don't call me 
 Mogul! I'm a sewin'-machine. They'll guy my sand-box 
 off in the yard." 
 
 And .007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly 
 enlarged, hauled the Mogul freight slowly back to the round- 
 house. 
 
 "Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain't ye?" said the 
 irrepressible Poney, who had just come off duty. "Well, 
 I must say you look it. Costly perishable fragile 
 immediate that's you ! Go to the shops, take them vine- 
 leaves out o' your hair, an' git 'em to play the hose on 
 you." 
 
 "Leave him alone, Poney," said .007, severely, as he was 
 swung on the turn-table, "or I'll - 
 
 " Didn't know the old granger was any special friend o' 
 yours, kid. He wasn't over-civil to you last time I saw 
 him." 
 
 "I know it; but I've seen a wreck since then, and it has 
 about scared the paint off me. I'm not going to guy any 
 one as long as I steam not when they're new to the business 
 an' anxious to learn. And I'm not goin' to guy the old Mogul 
 either, though I did find him wreathed around with roastin'- 
 ears. 'T was a little bit of a shote not a hog just a 
 shote, Poney no bigger'n a lump of anthracite I saw 
 it that made all the mess. Anybody can be ditched, I 
 guess."
 
 i 3 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "Found that out already, have you? Well, that's a good 
 beginnin'." It was the Purple Emperor, with his high, 
 tight, plate-glass cab and green velvet cushion, waiting to 
 be cleaned for his next day's fly. 
 
 "Let me make you two gen'lemen acquainted," said 
 Poney. "This is our Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were 
 adrmrin' and, I may say, envyin' last night. This is a new 
 brother, worshipful sir, with most of his mileage ahead of him, 
 but, so far as a serving-brother can, I'll answer for him." 
 
 "'Happy to meet you," said the Purple Emperor, with a 
 glance round the crowded round-house. "I guess there are 
 enough of us here to form a full meetin'. Ahem! By virtue 
 of the authority vested in me as Head of the Road, I hereby 
 declare and pronounce No. .007 a full and accepted Brother 
 of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as 
 such entitled to all shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house 
 privileges throughout my jurisdiction, in the Degree of 
 Superior Flier, it bein' well known and credibly reported 
 to me that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in thirty- 
 nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted. 
 At a convenient time, I myself will communicate to you the 
 Song and Signal of this Degree whereby you may be recog- 
 nized in the darkest night. Take your stall, newly entered 
 Brother among Locomotives!" 
 
 Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor 
 said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freight-yard, 
 looking down upon the four- track way, at 2: 30 A. M., neither 
 before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow 
 from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vesti- 
 buled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes 
 the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, 
 and then, a hundred feet to each word:
 
 .007 i 3 5 
 
 "With a michnai ghignai shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! 
 Einzweidrei Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah! 
 
 She climb upon der shteeple, 
 
 Und she frighten all der people, 
 Singin' michnai ghignai shtingal! Yah! Yah! 
 
 That is .007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles 
 in two hundred and twenty-one minutes.
 
 THE EXPLORER 
 
 THERE'S no sense in going further it's the edge of 
 cultivation," 
 
 So they said, and I believed it broke my land 
 and sowed my crop 
 Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border 
 
 station 
 
 Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out 
 and stop. 
 
 Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes 
 On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated so : 
 "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind 
 
 the Ranges 
 Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for 
 
 you. Go!" 
 
 So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest 
 
 neighbors 
 Stole away with pack and ponies left 'em drinking in the 
 
 town; 
 And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help 
 
 my labors 
 As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading 
 
 down. 
 
 136
 
 THE EXPLORER 137 
 
 March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and 
 
 dodging shoulders, 
 
 Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass; 
 Till I camped above the tree-line drifted snow and naked 
 
 boulders 
 Felt free air astir to windward knew I'd stumbled on the 
 
 Pass. 
 
 'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the 
 
 Norther found me - 
 Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies: so I called the 
 
 camp Despair 
 (It's the Railway Gap to-day, though). Then my Whisper 
 
 waked to hound me : 
 "Something lost behind the Ranges. Over yonder. Go 
 
 you there!" 
 
 Then I knew, the while I doubted knew His Hand was 
 
 certain o'er me. 
 Still it might be self-delusion scores of better men 
 
 had died 
 I could reach the township living, but . . . He knows 
 
 what terrors tore me ... 
 But I didn't . . . but I didn't. I went down the other 
 
 side. 
 
 Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to 
 
 aloes, 
 And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream 
 
 ran by; 
 But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained 
 
 to shallows 
 And I dropped again on desert, blasted earth, and blasting 
 
 sky. . . .
 
 138 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by them; 
 I remember seeing faces, hearing voices through the smoke; 
 I remember they were fancy for I threw a stone to try 'em. 
 "Something lost behind the Ranges," was the only word 
 they spoke. 
 
 I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it 
 When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw. 
 Very full of dreams that desert: but my two legs took me 
 
 through it. . . . 
 And I used to watch 'em moving with the toes all black and raw. 
 
 But at last the country altered White man s country 
 
 past disputing 
 
 Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind 
 There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting, 
 Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered 
 
 on my find. 
 
 Thence I ran my first rough survey chose my trees and 
 
 blazed and ringed 'em 
 Week by week I pried and sampled week by week my 
 
 findings grew. 
 Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found 
 
 a kingdom ! 
 But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth 
 
 of two! 
 
 Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow- 
 slide shivers 
 
 Down and through the big fat marshes that tfre virgin 
 ore-bed stains, 
 
 Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers 
 
 And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!
 
 THE EXPLORER 139 
 
 'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 
 'em; 
 
 Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head 
 
 an hour; 
 Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-rip 
 
 woods that screen 'em 
 Saw the plant to feed a people up and waiting for the 
 
 power! 
 
 Well I know who'll take the credit all the clever chaps 
 
 that followed 
 Came, a dozen men together never knew my desert 
 
 fears; 
 Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water-holes 
 
 I'd hollowed. 
 They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the 
 
 Pioneers ! 
 
 They will find my sites of townships not the cities that 
 
 I set there. 
 
 They will rediscover rivers not my rivers heard at night. 
 By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how 
 
 to get there, 
 By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet 
 
 aright. 
 
 Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single 
 
 acre? 
 Have I kept one single nugget (barring samples)? No, 
 
 not I. 
 Because my price was paid me ten times over by my 
 
 Maker. 
 But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy.
 
 1 40 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle; water- transit sure 
 
 and steady 
 (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron 
 
 at your doors. 
 God took care to hide that country till He judged His people 
 
 ready, 
 Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I've found it, and 
 
 it's yours! 
 
 Yes, your "Never-never country" yes, your "edge of 
 
 cultivation" 
 And "no sense in going further" till I crossed the range 
 
 to see. 
 God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our 
 
 nation. 
 Anybody might have found it but His Whisper came 
 
 to Me!
 
 THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 
 
 HAVE you ever seen an untouched land the face 
 of virgin Nature? It is rather a curious sight, because 
 the hills are choked with timber that has never known 
 an axe. and the storm has rent a way through this timber, 
 so that a hundred thousand trees lie matted together in 
 swathes; and, since each tree lies where it falls, you may behold 
 trunk and branch returning to the earth whence they sprang 
 exactly as the body of man returns each limb making 
 its own little grave, the grass climbing above the bark, till 
 at last there remains only the outline of a tree upon the 
 rank undergrowth. 
 
 Then we drove under a cliff of obsidian, which is black 
 glass, some two hundred feet high; and the road at its foot 
 was made of black glass that crackled. This was no great 
 matter, because half an hour before Tom had pulled up 
 in the woods that we might sufficiently admire a mou tain 
 who stood all by himself, shaking with laughter or rage. 
 
 The glass cliff overlooks a lake where the beavers built 
 a dam about a mile and a half long in a zigzag line, as their 
 necessities prompted. 
 
 We curved the hill and entered a forest of spruce, the 
 path serpentining between the tree-boles, the wheels running 
 silent on immemorial mould. There was nothing alive in 
 the forest save ourselves. Only a river was speaking angrily 
 somewhere to the right. For miles we drove till Tom bade 
 
 141
 
 142 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 us alight and look at certain falls. Wherefore we stepped 
 out of that forest and nearly fell down a cliff which guarded 
 a tumbled river and returned demanding fresh miracles. 
 If the water had run uphill, we should perhaps have taken 
 more notice of it; but 'twas only a waterfall, and I really 
 forget whether the water was warm or cold. There is a stream 
 here called Firehole River. It is fed by the overflow from 
 the various geysers and basins a warm and deadly river 
 wherein no fish breed. I think we crossed it a few dozen 
 times in the course of a day. 
 
 Then the sun began to sink, and there was a taste of frost 
 about, and we went swiftly from the forest into the open, 
 dashed across a branch of the Firehole River and found 
 a wood shanty, even rougher than the last, at which, after 
 a forty-mile drive, we were to dine and sleep. Half a mile 
 from this place stood, on the banks of the Firehole River, 
 a "beaver-lodge," and there were rumors of bears and other 
 cheerful monsters in the woods on the hill at the back of the 
 building. 
 
 In the cool, crisp quiet of the evening I sought that river, 
 and found a pile of newly gnawed sticks and twigs. The 
 beaver works with the cold-chisel, and a few clean strokes 
 suffice to level a four-inch bole. Across the water on the far 
 bank glimmered, with the ghastly white of peeled dead timber, 
 the beaver-lodge a mass of disheveled branches. The 
 inhabitants had dammed the stream lower down and spread 
 it into a nice little lake. The question was, would they come 
 out for their walk before it got too dark to see. They came 
 blessings on their blunt muzzles, they came as shadows 
 come, drifting down the stream, stirring neither foot nor 
 tail. There were three of them. One went down to investi- 
 gate the state of the dam; the other two began to look for 
 supper. There is only one thing more startling than the
 
 THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 143 
 
 noiseiessness of a tiger in the jungle, and that is the noiseless- 
 ness of a beaver in the water. The straining ear could catch 
 no sound whatever till they began to eat the thick green 
 river-scudge that they call beaver-grass. I, bowed among 
 the logs, held my breath and stared with all my eyes. They 
 were not ten yards from me, and they would have eaten 
 their dinner in peace so long as I had kept absolutely 
 still. 
 
 We drifted on up that miraculous valley. On either 
 side of us were hills from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet 
 high and wooded from heel to crest. As far as the eye could 
 range forward were columns of steam in the air, misshapen 
 lumps of lime, most like preadamite monsters, still pools 
 of turquoise blue, stretches of blue cornflowers, a river that 
 coiled on itself twenty times, boulders of strange colors, 
 and ridges of glaring, staring white. 
 
 The old lady from Chicago poked with her parasol at 
 the pools as though they had been alive. On one particu- 
 larly innocent-looking little puddle she turned her back 
 for a moment, and there rose behind her a twenty-foot column 
 of water and steam. Then she shrieked and protested that 
 "she never thought it would ha' done it," and the old man 
 chewed his tobacco steadily, and mourned for steam power 
 wasted. I embraced the whitened stump of a middle-sized 
 pine that had grown all too close to a hot pool's lip, and the 
 whole thing turned over under my hand as a tree would do 
 in a nightmare. From right and left came the trumpetings 
 of elephants at play. I stepped into a pool of old dried 
 blood rimmed with the noddin cornflowers; the blood changed 
 to ink even as I trod; and ink and blood were washed away 
 in a spurt of boiling sulphurous water spat out from the lee 
 of a bank of flowers. This sounds mad, doesn't it? 
 
 We rounded a low spur of hill, and came out upon a field
 
 i 4 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 of aching snowy lime, rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, 
 riven with rents and diamonds and stars, stretching for 
 more than half a mile in every direction. In this place of 
 despair lay most of the big geysers who know when there 
 is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a 
 cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are exhibited 
 to visitors under pretty and fanciful names. The first mound 
 that I encountered belonged to a goblin splashing in his tub. 
 I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, 
 crack his joints, and rub himself down with a towel; then he 
 let the water out of the bath, as a thoughtful man should; and 
 it all sank down out of sight till another goblin arrived. Yet 
 they called this place the Lioness and the Cubs. It lies 
 not very far from the Lion, which is a sullen, roaring beast, 
 and they say that when it is very active the other geysers 
 presently follow suit. After the Krakatoa eruption all the 
 geysers went mad together, spouting, spurting, and bellowing 
 till men feared that they would rip up the whole field. Mys- 
 terious sympathies exist among them, and when the Giantess 
 speaks (of her more anon) they all hold their peace. 
 
 I was watching a solitary spring, when, far across the 
 fields, stood up a plume of spun glass, iridescent and superb, 
 against the sky. "That," said the trooper, "is Old Faithful. 
 He goes off every sixty-five minutes to the minute, plays 
 for five minutes, and sends up a column of water a hundred 
 and fifty feet high. By the time you have looked at all the 
 other geysers he will be ready to play." 
 
 So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose 
 mouth is built up exactly like a hive; at the Turban (which 
 is not in the least like a turban); and at many, many other 
 geysers, hot holes, and springs. Some of them rumbled, 
 some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and others lay 
 still in sheets of sapphire and beryl.
 
 The Yellowstone Valley.
 
 THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 145 
 
 The Giantess is flat-lipped, having no mouth, she looks 
 like a pool, fifty feet long and thirty wide, and there is no 
 ornamentation about her. At irregular intervals she speaks, 
 and sends up a column of water over two hundred feet high 
 to begin with; then she is angry for a day and a half some- 
 times for two days. Owing to her peculiarity of going mad 
 in the night not many people have seen the Giantess at her 
 finest; but 'the clamor of her unrest, men say, shakes the 
 wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills. When 
 I saw her, trouble was brewing. The pool bubbled furiously, 
 and at five-minute intervals, sank a foot or two, then rose, 
 washed over the rim, and huge steam bubbles broke on the 
 top. Just before an eruption the water entirely disappears 
 from view. Whenever you see the water die down in a geyser- 
 mouth, get away as fast as you can. I saw a tiny little geyser 
 suck in its breath in this way, and instinct made me retire 
 while it hooted after me. 
 
 Leaving the Giantess to swear, and spit, and thresh 
 about, we went over to Old Faithful, who by reason of 
 his faithfulness has benches cl6se to him whence you may 
 comfortably watch. At the appointed hour we heard the 
 water flying up and down the mouth with the sob of 
 waves in a cave. Then came the preliminary gouts, then 
 a roar and a rush, and that glittering column of diamonds 
 rose, quivered, stood still for a minute. Then it broke, 
 and the rest was a confused snarl of water not thirty feet 
 high. 
 
 Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellow- 
 stone, its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully 
 adorned with pines. At the falls it comes round a corner, 
 green, solid, ribbed with a little foam and not more than 
 thirty yards wide. Then it goes over still green and rather 
 more solid than before. After a minute or two you, sitting
 
 146 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand 
 that something has occurred; that the river has jumped a 
 huge distance between solid cliff walls and what looks like 
 the gentle froth of ripples lapping the sides of the gorge 
 below is really the outcome of great waves. And the 
 river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the yells to 
 escape. 
 
 That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, 
 for it seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite 
 from under my feet. I followed with the others round 
 the corner to arrive at the brink of the canon: we had to 
 climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin with, for 
 the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine 
 woods fringe either lip of the gorge, which is the Gorge 
 of the Yellowstone. 
 
 All I can say is that without warning or preparation I 
 looked into a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep with eagles 
 and fish-hawks circling far below. And the sides of that 
 gulf were one wild welter of color crimson, emerald, cobalt, 
 ochre, amber, honey splashed with port-wine, snow-white, 
 vermilion, lemon, and silver-gray, in wide washes. The 
 sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time and water 
 and air into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs, men 
 and women of the old time. So far below that no sound 
 of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River ran a 
 finger-wide strip of jade-green. The sunlight took those 
 wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature 
 had already laid there. Once I saw the dawn break over 
 a lake in Rajputana and the sun set over the Oodey Sagar 
 amid a circle of Holman Hunt hills. This tune I was watch- 
 ing both performances going on below me upside down 
 you understand and the colors were real ! The canon 
 was burning like Troy town; but it would burn forever,
 
 THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 147 
 
 and, thank goodness, neither pen nor brush could ever 
 portray its splendors adequately. 
 
 Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the 
 full glory of the day flamed in that canon as we went out 
 very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock blood-red or pink 
 it was that overhung the deepest deeps of all. Now I 
 know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset. 
 Giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form; but the 
 sense of blinding color remained. When I reached the main- 
 land again I had sworn that I had been floating.
 
 THE COASTWISE LIGHTS 
 
 OUR brows are wreathed with spindrift and the weed 
 is on our knees; 
 
 Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, 
 smoking seas. 
 From reef and rock and skerry over headland, ness and 
 
 voe 
 
 The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England 
 go! 
 
 Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level 
 
 floors; 
 Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots 
 
 and roars 
 By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's 
 
 trail - 
 As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where 
 
 they hail. 
 
 We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a 
 
 care, 
 The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to 
 
 prayer; 
 From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning 
 
 chains 
 The lover from the sea-rim drawn his love in English lanes. 
 
 148
 
 THE COASTWISE LIGHTS 149 
 
 We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern 
 
 wool; 
 We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith and 
 
 Hull; 
 
 To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea 
 The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee ! 
 
 Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guardports 
 
 of the Morn! 
 
 Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn! 
 Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us main to 
 
 main, 
 The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back 
 
 again ! 
 
 Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your 
 
 plates; 
 
 Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights! 
 Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek, 
 The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye 
 
 speak.
 
 A TRIP ACROSS A CONTINENT * 
 
 Henry N. Cheyne, a spoiled darling, "perhaps fifteen years old," "an 
 American first, last, and all the time," had "staggered over the wet 
 decks to the nearest rail," after trying to smoke a " Wheeling stogie." 
 "He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship" tilted him 
 over the rail," where a " gray mother-wave tucked him under one arm." 
 He was picked up by the fishing schooner We^re Here, and after many 
 marvelous experiences among the sailors, arrived in port, a happier 
 and wiser fellow. His telegram to his father brings the following 
 result. 
 
 CHEYNE was flying to meet the only son, so miracu- 
 lously restored to him. The bear was seeking his 
 cub, not the bulls. Hard men who had their knives 
 drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons 
 and wished him God-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten 
 tin-pot roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful 
 things they would have done had not Cheyne buried the 
 hatchet. 
 
 It was a busy week-end among the wires; for, now that 
 their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to 
 accommodate. Los Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow 
 that the Southern California engineers might know and be 
 ready in their lonely round-houses; Barstow passed the word 
 to the Atlantic and Pacific; and Albuquerque flung it the 
 whole length of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe manage- 
 
 *A selection from "Captains Courageous," copyrighted by The Century 
 Company. 
 
 150
 
 A TRIP ACROSS A CONTINENT 151 
 
 ment, even into Chicago. An engine, combination-car with 
 crew, and the great and gilded "Constance" private car were 
 to be "expedited" over those two thousand three hundred 
 and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one 
 hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; 
 despatchers and crews of every one of those said trains must 
 be notified. Sixteen locomotives; sixteen engineers, and six- 
 teen firemen would be needed each and every one the 
 best available. Two and one-half minutes would be allowed 
 for changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. 
 "Warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; 
 for Harvey Cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry hurry," sang 
 the wires. "Forty miles an hour will be expected, and 
 division superintendents will accompany this special over 
 their respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth 
 Street, Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry! 
 oh, hurry!" 
 
 "It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San 
 Diego in the dawn of Sunday. "We're going to hurry, 
 mamma, just as fast as ever we can; but I really don't think 
 there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves 
 yet. You'd much better lie down and take your medicine. 
 I'd play you a game o' dominoes, but it's Sunday." 
 
 "I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only taking off 
 my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there." 
 
 "Try to sleep a little, mamma, and we'll be in Chicago 
 before you know." 
 
 "But it's Boston, father. Tell them to hurry." 
 
 The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San 
 Bernardino and the Mohave wastes, but this was no grade 
 for speed. That would come later. The heat of the desert 
 followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the 
 Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the
 
 152 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 utter drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. 
 Cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past 
 Ash Fork, toward Flagstaff, where the forests and quarries 
 are, under the dry, remote skies. The needle of the speed- 
 indicator flicked and wagged to and fro, the cinders rattled 
 on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling 
 wheels. The crew of the combination sat on their bunks, 
 panting in their shirt-sleeves, and Cheyne found himself 
 among them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that 
 every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. He told 
 them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, 
 and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked 
 after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if 
 the engineer "let her out a piece," and Cheyne thought she 
 could. Accordingly the great fire-horse was "let out" from 
 Flagstaff to Winslow, till a division superintendent protested. 
 
 But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the 
 French maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver 
 door-handle, only moaned a little and begged her husband 
 to bid them "hurry." And so they dropped the dry sands 
 and moon-struck rocks of Arizona behind them, and grilled 
 on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake- 
 hose told them they were at Coolidge by the Continental 
 Divide. 
 
 Three bold and experienced men cool, confident, and 
 dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when they 
 finished their trick at those terrible wheels swung her over 
 the great lift from Albuquerque to Glorietta and beyond 
 Springer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the State line, 
 whence they dropped rocking into La Junta, had sight of the 
 Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, 
 where Cheyne took comfort once again from setting his 
 watch an hour ahead.
 
 A TRIP ACROSS A CONTINENT 153 
 
 There was very little talk in the car. The secretary and 
 typewriter sat together on the stamped Spanish-leather 
 cushions by the plate-glass observation window at the rear 
 end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back 
 behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. 
 Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant 
 gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, 
 an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that 
 he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him. 
 
 At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace 
 of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging 
 on through the emptiness of abject desolation. Now they 
 heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of 
 a Chinaman, the clink-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp 
 steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear- 
 platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; 
 and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting 
 train. Now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle 
 purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out 
 half the stars. Now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back 
 to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke 
 into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains. 
 
 At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a 
 Kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with 
 Harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising 
 reporter, telegraphed on from Boston. The joyful journalese 
 revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed 
 Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her one word "hurry" was con- 
 veyed by the crews to the engineers at Nickerson, Topeka, 
 and Marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed 
 the Continent behind them. Towns and villages were close 
 together now, and a man could feel here that he moved 
 among people.
 
 154 
 
 "I can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. What are we 
 doing?" 
 
 "The very best we can, mamma. There's no sense in 
 getting in before the Limited. We'd only have to wait." 
 
 "I don't care. I want to feel we're moving. Sit down 
 and tell me the miles." 
 
 Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were 
 some miles which stand for records to this day), but the 
 seventy-foot car never changed its long steamer-like roll, 
 moving through the heat with the hum of a giant bee. Yet 
 the speed was not enough for Mrs. Cheyne; and the heat, 
 the remorseless August heat, was making her giddy; the 
 clockhands would not move, and when, oh, when would 
 they be in Chicago? 
 
 It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, 
 Cheyne passed over to the Amalgamated Brotherhood of 
 Locomotive Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable 
 them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. 
 He paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed 
 they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the 
 crews who had sympathized with him. It is on record that 
 the last crew took entire charge of switching operations 
 at Sixteenth Street, because "she" was in a doze at last, 
 and Heaven was to help any one who bumped her. 
 
 Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake 
 Shore and Michigan Southern Limited from Chicago to 
 Elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve 
 of being told how to back up to a car. None the less he 
 handled the "Constance" as if she might have been a load of 
 dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him they did it in 
 whispers and dumb show. 
 
 "Pshaw!" said the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe men, 
 discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. Harvey
 
 A TRIP ACROSS A CONTINENT 155 
 
 Cheyne's wife, she was sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce 
 her. Come to think of it, our runnin' time from San Diego 
 to Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them Eastern 
 way-trains. When we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you 
 know." 
 
 To the Western man (though this would not please either 
 city) Chicago and Boston are cheek by jowl, and some 
 railroads encourage the delusion. The Limited whirled the 
 " Constance" into Buffalo and the arms of the New York 
 Central and Hudson River (illustrious magnates with white 
 whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded 
 her here to talk a little business to Cheyne), who slid her 
 gracefully into Albany, where the Boston and Albany com- 
 pleted the run from tide- water to tide-water total time, 
 eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, 
 fifteen hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.
 
 THE SONG OF THE DEAD 
 
 HEAR now the Song of the Dead in the North by 
 the torn berg-edges 
 
 They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their 
 hide-stripped sledges. 
 Song of the Dead in the South in the sun by their skeleton 
 
 horses, 
 
 Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust 
 of the sere river-courses. 
 
 Song of the Dead in the East in the heat-rotted jungle 
 
 hollows, 
 Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof in the brake of the 
 
 buffalo-wallows. 
 Song of the Dead in the West in the Barrens, the snow 
 
 that betrayed them, 
 Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and 
 
 the grave-mound they made them; Hear now the Song 
 of the Dead! 
 
 We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; 
 We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go 
 
 down. 
 Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with 
 
 the Need, 
 Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. 
 
 156
 
 " In the North by the torn berg-edges."
 
 THE SONG OF THE DEAD 157 
 
 As the deer breaks as the steer breaks from the herd 
 
 where they graze. 
 
 In the faith of little children we went on our ways. 
 Then the wood failed then the food failed then the last 
 
 water dried 
 
 In the faith of little children we lay down and died. 
 On the sand-drift on the veldt-side in the fern-scrub 
 
 we lay, 
 
 That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. 
 Follow after follow after! We have watered the root, 
 And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit! 
 Follow after we are waiting, by the trails that we lost, 
 For the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. 
 Follow after follow after for the harvest is sown : 
 By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! 
 
 When Drake went down to the Horn 
 And England was crowned thereby, 
 
 'Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed 
 Our Lodge our Lodge was born 
 (And England was crowned thereby!} 
 
 Which never shall close again 
 
 By day nor yet by night, 
 While man shall take his life to stake 
 
 At risk of shoal or main 
 
 (By day nor yet by night!) 
 
 But standeth even so 
 
 As now we witness here, 
 While men depart, of joyful heart. 
 
 Adventure for to know 
 
 (As now bear witness here!)
 
 158 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 II 
 
 We have fed our sea for a thousand years 
 
 And she calls us, still unfed, 
 Though there's never a wave of all her waves 
 
 But marks our English dead: 
 We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, 
 
 To the shark and the sheering gull. 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 
 Lord God, we ha' paid in full! 
 
 There's never a flood goes shoreward now 
 
 But lifts a keel we manned; 
 There's never an ebb goes seaward now 
 
 But drops our dead on the sand 
 But slinks our dead on the sands forlore, 
 
 From the Ducies to the Swin. 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 
 Lord God, we ha' paid it in ! 
 
 We must feed our sea for a thousand years, 
 
 . For that is our doom and pride, 
 As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind, 
 
 Or the wreck that struck last tide 
 Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef 
 
 Where the ghastly blue-lights flare. 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 If blood be the price of admiralty, 
 
 Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!
 
 THE NIGHT RIDE TO THE COW'S MOUTH 
 
 This is the tale of a night ride undertaken by Nicholas Tarvin, an 
 American adventurer in Rajputana, India, on the rumor that a cer- 
 tain diamond necklace called the Naulahka, was to be found in a 
 certain Hindu temple in a ruined city. From The Naulahka. 
 
 TARVIN threw back the loin-cloth as he came upon 
 Fibby drowsing in the afternoon sun behind the 
 rest-house. 
 
 "We're going for a little walk down-town, Fibby," he said. 
 
 The Kathiawar squealed and snapped. 
 
 "Yes; you always were a loafer, Fibby." 
 
 Fibby was saddled by his nervous native attendant, while 
 Tarvin took a blanket from his room and rolled up into 
 it an imaginative assortment of provisions. Fibby was to 
 find his rations where Heaven pleased. TKen he set out 
 as light-heartedly as though he were going for a canter round 
 the city. It was now about three in the afternoon. All 
 Fibby's boundless reserves of ill temper and stubborn obsti- 
 nacy Tarvin resolved should be devoted, by the aid of his 
 spurs, to covering the fifty-seven miles to Gunnaur in the 
 next ten hours, if the road were fair. If not, he should 
 be allowed another two hours. The return journey would 
 not require spurs. There was a moon that night, and Tarvin 
 knew enough of native roads in Gokral Seetarun, and rough 
 trails elsewhere, to be certain that he would not be confused 
 by cross-tracks. 
 
 159
 
 160 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 It being borne into Fibby's mind that he was required 
 to advance, not in three directions at once, but in one, he 
 clicked his bit comfortably in his mouth, dropped his head, 
 and began to trot steadily. Then Tarvin pulled him up, 
 and addressed him tenderly. 
 
 "Fib, my boy, we're not out for exercise you'll learn 
 that before sundown. Some galoot has been training you 
 to waste your time over the English trot. I'll be discussing 
 other points with you in the course of the campaign; but 
 we'll settle this now. We don't begin with crime. Drop 
 it, Fibby, and behave like a man-horse." 
 
 Tarvin was obliged to make further remarks on the same 
 subject before Fibby returned to the easy native lope, which 
 is also a common Western pace, tiring neither man nor beast. 
 By this he began to understand that a long journey was 
 demanded of him, and, lowering his tail, buckled down to it. 
 
 At first he moved in a cloud of sandy dust with the cotton- 
 wains and the country-carts that were creaking out to the 
 far distant railroad at Gunnaur. As the sun began to sink, 
 his gaunt shadow danced like a goblin across low-lying volcanic 
 rock tufted with shrubs, and here and there an aloe. 
 
 The carters unyoked their cattle on the roadside, and pre- 
 pared to eat their evening meal by the light of dull-red 
 fires. Fibby cocked one ear wistfully toward the flames, 
 but held on through the gathering shadows, and Tarvin 
 smelt the acrid juice of bruised camel's-thorn beneath his 
 horse's hoofs. The moon rose in splendor behind him, 
 and, following his lurching shadow, he overtook a naked 
 man who bore over his shoulder a stick loaded with jingling 
 bells, and fled panting and perspiring from one who followed 
 him armed with a naked sword. This was the mail-carrier 
 and his escort running to Gunnaur. The jingling died away 
 on the dead air, and Fibby was ambling between interim-
 
 NIGHT RIDE TO THE COW'S MOUTH 161 
 
 nable lines of thorn-bushes that threw mad arms to the stars, 
 and cast shadows as solid as themselves across the road. 
 Some beast of the night plunged through the thicket alongside, 
 and Fibby snorted in panic. Then a porcupine crossed 
 under his nose with a rustle of quills, and left an evil stench 
 to poison the stillness for a moment. A point of light 
 gleamed ahead, where a bullock-cart had broken down, 
 and the drivers were sleeping peacefully till daylight should 
 show the injury. Here Fibby stopped, and Tarvin, through 
 the magic of a rupee, representing fortune to the rudely 
 awakened sleepers, procured food and a little water for him, 
 eased the girths, and made as much of him as he was disposed 
 to permit. On starting again, Fibby found his second wind, 
 and with it there woke the spirit of daring and adventure 
 inherited from his ancestors, who were accustomed to take 
 their masters thirty leagues in a day for the sacking of a 
 town, to sleep by a lance driven into the earth as a picket, 
 and to return whence they had come before the ashes of the 
 houses had lost heat. So Fibby lifted his tail valiantly, 
 neighed, and began to move. 
 
 The road descended for miles, crossing the dry beds of 
 many water-courses and once a broad river, where Fibby 
 stopped for another drink, and would have lain down to roll 
 in a melon-bed but that his rider spurred him on up the 
 slope. The country grew more fertile at every mile, and 
 rolled in broader waves. Under the light of the setting 
 moon the fields showed silver-white with the opium-poppy, 
 or dark with sugar-cane. 
 
 Poppy and sugar ceased together, as Fibby topped a long, 
 slow ascent, and with distended nostrils snuffed for the wind 
 of the morning. He knew that the day would bring him 
 rest. Tarvin peered forward where the white line of the 
 road disappeared in the gloom of velvety scrub. He com-
 
 i62 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 manded a vast level plain flanked by hills of soft outline - 
 a plain that in the dim light seemed as level as the sea. 
 Like the sea, too, it bore on its breast a ship, like a gigantic 
 monitor with a sharp bow, cutting her way from north to 
 south; such a ship as man never yet has seen two miles 
 long, with three or four hundred feet free-board, lonely, 
 silent, mastless, without lights, a derelict of the earth. 
 
 "We are nearly there, Fib, my boy," said Tarvin, drawing 
 rein, and scanning the monstrous thing by the starlight. 
 "We'll get as close as we. can, and then wait for the daylight 
 before going aboard." 
 
 They descended the slope, which was covered with sharp 
 stones and sleeping goats. Then the road turned sharply 
 to the left, and began to run parallel to the ship. Tarvin 
 urged Fibby into a more direct path, and the good horse 
 blundered piteously across the scrub-covered ground, cut up 
 and channelled by the rains into a network of six-foot ravines 
 and gulches. 
 
 Here he gave out with a despairing grunt. Tarvin took 
 pity on him, and, fastening him to a tree, bade him think 
 of his sins till breakfast-time, and dropped from his back 
 into a dry and dusty water-hole. Ten steps farther, and 
 the scrub was all about him, whipping him across the brows, 
 hooking thorns into his jacket, and looping roots in front of 
 his knees as he pushed on up an ever-steepening incline.
 
 THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS 
 
 THE King has called for priest and cup, 
 The King has taken spur and blade, 
 To dub True Thomas a belted knight, 
 And all for the sake o' the songs he made. 
 
 They have sought him high, they have sought 
 him low, 
 
 They have sought him over down and lea; 
 They have found him by the milk-white thorn 
 
 That guards the gates o' Faerie. 
 
 'Twas bent beneath and blue above, 
 Their eyes were held that they might not see 
 
 The kine that grazed between the knowes, 
 Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie! 
 
 "Now cease your song," the King he said, 
 "Oh, cease your song and get you dight 
 
 To vow your vow and watch your arms, 
 For I will dub you a belted knight. 
 
 "For I will give you a horse o' pride, 
 Wi' blazon and spur and page and squire; 
 
 Wi' keep and tail and seizin and law, 
 And land to hold at your desire." 
 
 163
 
 164 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 True Thomas smiled above his harp, 
 And turned his face to the naked sky, 
 
 Where, blown before the wastrel wind, 
 The thistle-down she floated by. 
 
 "I ha' vowed my vow in another place, 
 
 And bitter oath it was on me, 
 I ha' watched my arms the lee-long night, 
 
 Where five-score fighting men would flee. 
 
 "My lance is tipped o' the hammered flame, 
 My shield is beat o' the moonlight cold; 
 
 And I won my spurs in the Middle World, 
 A thousand fathoms beneath the mould. 
 
 "And what should I make wi' a horse o' pride, 
 And what should I make wi' a sword so brown, 
 
 But spill the rings o' the Gentle Folk 
 And flyte my kin in the Fairy Town? 
 
 "And what should I make wi' blazon and belt, 
 Wi' keep and tail and seizin and fee, 
 
 And what should I do wi' page and squire 
 That am a king in my own countrie? 
 
 "For I send East and I send West, 
 And I send far as my will may flee, 
 
 By dawn and dusk and the drinking rain, 
 And syne my Sendings return to me. 
 
 "They come wi' news of the groanin' earth, 
 They come wi' news o' the roarin' sea, 
 
 Wi' word of Spirit and Ghost and Flesh, 
 And man that's mazed among the three."
 
 LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS 165 
 
 The King he bit his nether lip, 
 
 And smote his hand upon his knee: 
 "By the faith o' my soul, True Thomas," he said, 
 
 "Ye waste no wit in courtesie! 
 
 "As I desire, unto my pride, 
 
 Can I make Earls by three and three, 
 To run before and ride behind 
 
 And serve the sons o' my body." 
 
 "And what care I for your row-foot earls, 
 ' Or all the sons o' your body? 
 Before they win to the Pride o' Name, 
 I trow they all ask leave o' me. 
 
 "For I make Honor wi' muckle mouth, 
 
 As I make Shame wi' mincin' feet, 
 To sing wi' the priests at the market-cross, 
 
 Or run wi' the dogs in the naked street. 
 
 "And some they give me the good red gold, 
 And some they give me the white money, 
 
 And some they give me a clout o' meal, 
 For they be people o' low degree. 
 
 "And the song I sing for the counted gold 
 
 The same I sing for the white money, 
 But best I sing for the clout o' meal 
 
 That simple people given me." 
 
 The King cast down a silver groat, 
 
 A silver groat o' Scots' money, 
 "If I come with a poor man's dole," he said, 
 
 "True Thomas, will ye harp to me?"
 
 i66 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "Whenas I harp to the children small, 
 They press me close on either hand-: 
 
 And who are you," True Thomas said, 
 "That you should ride while they must stand? 
 
 "Light down, light down from your horse o' pride, 
 
 I trow ye talk too loud and hie, 
 And I will make you a triple word, 
 
 And syne, if ye dare, ye shall 'noble me." 
 
 He has lighted down from his horse o' pride. 
 
 And set his back against the stone. 
 "Now guard you well," True Thomas said, 
 
 "Ere I rax your heart from your breast-bone!" 
 
 True Thomas played upon his harp, 
 The fairy harp that couldna' lee, 
 
 And the first least word the proud King heard, 
 It harpit the salt tear out o' his ee. 
 
 "Oh, I see the love that I lost long syne, 
 I touch the hope that I may not see 
 
 And all that I did o' hidden shame, 
 Like little snakes they hiss at me. 
 
 "The sun is lost at noon at noon! 
 
 The dread o' doom has grippit me. 
 True Thomas, hide me under your cloak, 
 
 God wot, I'm little fit to dee!" 
 
 'Twas bent beneath and blue above 
 'Twas open field and running flood 
 
 Where, hot on heath and dyke and wall, 
 The high sun warmed the adder's brood.
 
 LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS 167 
 
 "Lie down, lie down," True Thomas said. 
 
 "The God shall judge when all is done; 
 But I will bring you a better word 
 
 And lift the cloud that I laid on." 
 
 True Thomas played upon his harp, 
 
 That birled and brattled to his hand, 
 And the next least word True Thomas made, 
 
 It garred the King take horse and brand. 
 
 "Oh, I hear the tread o' the fighting-men, 
 
 I see the sun on splent and spear! 
 I mark the arrow outen the fern! 
 
 That flies so low and sings so clear! 
 
 "Advance my standards to that war, 
 And bid my good knights prick and ride; 
 
 The gled shall watch as fierce a fight , 
 As e'er was fought on the Border side!" 
 
 'Twas bent beneath and blue above, 
 
 'Twas nodding grass and naked sky, 
 Where, ringing up the wastrel wind, 
 
 The eyass stooped upon the pye. 
 
 True Thomas sighed above his harp, 
 
 And turned the song on the midmost string 
 
 And the last least word True Thomas made 
 He harpit his dead youth back to the King. 
 
 "Now I am prince, and I do well 
 
 To love my love withouten fear: 
 To walk wi' man in fellowship, 
 
 And breathe my horse behind the deer.
 
 i68 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "My hounds they bay unto the death, 
 The buck has couched beyond the burn, 
 
 My love she waits at her window 
 To wash my hands when I return. 
 
 "For that I live am I content 
 
 (Oh! I have seen my true love's eyes!) 
 
 To stand wi' Adam in Eden-glade, 
 And run in the woods o' Paradise! 
 
 'Tivas blue above and bent below, 
 
 'Twas nodding grass and naked wind, 
 
 Where, checked against the open pass, 
 The red deer turned to wait the hind. 
 
 True Thomas laid his harp away, 
 And louted low at the saddle-side; 
 
 He has taken stirrup and hauden rein, 
 And set the King on his horse o' pride. 
 
 "Sleep ye or wake," True Thomas said, 
 "That sit so still, that muse so long; 
 
 Sleep ye or wake? till the latter sleep 
 I trow ye'll not forget my song. 
 
 "I ha' harpit a shadow out o' the sun 
 To stand before your face and cry; 
 
 I ha' armed the earth beneath your heel, 
 And over your head I ha' dusked the sky! 
 
 "I ha' harpit ye up to the Throne o' God, 
 I ha' harpit your secret soul in three; 
 
 I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell, 
 And ye would make a Knight o' me ! "
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 
 
 
 
 IT WAS her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo- 
 steamer of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very 
 best of her kind, the outcome of forty years of experiments 
 and improvements in framework and machinery; and her 
 designers and owner thought as much of her as though she had 
 been the Lucania. Any one can make a floating hotel that 
 will pay expenses, if he puts enough money into the saloon, 
 and charges for private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; 
 but in these days of competition and low freights every square 
 inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness, great hold- 
 capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was, perhaps, 
 two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, 
 with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her 
 main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her 
 great glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away 
 in her holds. Her owners they were a very well-known 
 Scotch firm came round with her from the north, where she 
 had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, 
 where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner's 
 daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, 
 admiring the new paint and the brass work, and the patent 
 winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which 
 she had cracked a bottle of champagne when she named the 
 steamer the Dimbula. It was a beautiful September after- 
 noon, and the boat in all her newness she was painted 
 
 169
 
 170 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 lead-color with a red funnel looked very fine indeed. Her 
 house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time 
 acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she 
 was new to the High and Narrow Seas and wished to make 
 her welcome. 
 
 "And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, 
 "she's a real ship, isn't she? It seems only the other day 
 father gave the order for her, and now and now isn't she 
 a beauty!" The girl was proud of the firm, and talked as 
 though she were the controlling partner. 
 
 "Oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously. 
 "But I'm sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' 
 a ship. In the nature o' things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, 
 she's just irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a 
 ship. She has to find herself yet." 
 
 "I thought father said she was exceptionally well found." 
 
 "So she is," said the skipper, with a laugh. "But it's this 
 way wi' ships, Miss Frazier. She's all here, but the parrts of 
 her have not learned to work together yet. They've had no 
 chance." 
 
 "The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them." 
 
 "Yes, indeed. But there's more than engines to a ship. 
 Every inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and 
 made to work wi' its neighbor sweetenin' her, we call it, 
 technically." 
 
 "And how will you do it?" the girl asked. 
 
 "We can no more than drive and steer her, and so forth; 
 but if we have rough weather this trip it's likely she'll 
 learn the rest by heart! For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss 
 Frazier, is in no sense a reegid body closed at both ends. She's 
 a highly complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, 
 wi' tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her per- 
 sonal modulus of elasteecity." Mr. Buchanan, the chief
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 171 
 
 engineer, was coming toward them. "I'm sayin' to Miss 
 Frazier, here, that our little Dimbula has to be sweetened yet, 
 and nothin' but a gale will do it. How's all wi' your engines, 
 Buck?" 
 
 "Well enough true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but 
 there's no spontaneeity yet." He turned to the girl. "Take 
 my word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; 
 even after a pretty girl's christened a ship it does not follow 
 that there's such a thing as a ship under the men that work 
 her." 
 
 "I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan," the skipper 
 interrupted. 
 
 "That's more metaphysical than I can follow," said Miss 
 Frazier, laughing. 
 
 "Why so? Ye're good Scotch, an' I knew your mother's 
 father, he was fra' Dumfries ye've a vested right in meta- 
 pheesics, Miss Frazier, just as ye have in the Dimbula," the 
 engineer said. 
 
 "Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn 
 Miss Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin 
 for tea?" said the skipper. "We'll be in dock the night, and 
 when you're goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' 
 her down an' drivin' her forth all for your sake." 
 
 In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons' 
 dead weight into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liver- 
 pool. As soon as she met the lift of the open water, she 
 naturally began to talk. If you lay your ear to the side of the 
 cabin next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds 
 of little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and 
 whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and 
 squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. 
 Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels 
 throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and
 
 172 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 thousands of rivets. The Dimbula was very strongly built, 
 and every piece of her had a letter or number, or both, to 
 describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged, or 
 rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and 
 rattle of the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece 
 had its own separate voice in exact proportion to the amount 
 of trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as a rule, says very little; 
 but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs and beams 
 that have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk con- 
 tinuously. Their conversation, of course, is not half as wise 
 as our human talk, because they are all, though they do not 
 know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, 
 where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what 
 will overtake them next. 
 
 As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast a sullen gray- 
 headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her 
 straight bows, and sat down on her steam-capstan used for 
 hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine that 
 drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, 
 nobody likes being ducked. 
 
 "Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through 
 the teeth of his cogs. "Hi! Where's the fellow gone? " 
 
 The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; 
 but "Plenty more where he came from," said a brother- wave, 
 and went through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly 
 to an iron plate on the iron deck-beams below. 
 
 "Can't you keep still up there?" said the deck-beams. 
 "What's the matter with you? One minute you weigh 
 twice as much as you ought to, and the next you 
 don't!" 
 
 "It isn't my fault," said the capstan. "There's a green 
 brute outside that comes and hits me on the head." 
 
 "Tell that to the shipwrights. You've been in position
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 173 
 
 for months and you've never wriggled like this before. If 
 you aren't careful you'll strain us." 
 
 "Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, 
 "are any of you fellows you deck-beams, we mean 
 aware that those exceedingly ugly knees of yours happens to 
 be riveted into our structure ours? " 
 
 "Who might you be?" the deck-beams inquired. 
 
 "Oh, nobody in particular," was the answer. "We're 
 only the port and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you 
 persist in heaving and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly 
 compelled to take steps." 
 
 Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to 
 speak, that run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep 
 the iron frames (what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in 
 place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck-beams, which 
 go from side to side of the ship. Stringers always consider 
 themselves most important, because they are so long. 
 
 "You will take steps will you? " This was a long echoing 
 rumble. It came from the frames scores and scores of 
 them, each one about eighteen inches distant from the next, 
 and each riveted to the stringers in four places. "We think 
 you will have a certain amount of trouble in that;" and 
 thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held every- 
 thing together whispered: "You will. You will! Stop 
 quivering and be quiet. Hold on, brethren! Hold on! 
 Hot Punches! What's that?" 
 
 Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; 
 but they did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship 
 from stern to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's 
 mouth. 
 
 An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted 
 the big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was 
 spinning round in a kind of soda-water half sea and half
 
 174 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 air going much faster than was proper, because there was 
 no deep water for it to work in. As it sank again, the engines 
 
 and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a row 
 snorted through all their three pistons. "Was that a joke, 
 you fellow outside? It's an uncommonly poor one. How are 
 we to do our work if you fly off the handle that way?" 
 
 "I didn't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling 
 huskily at the end of the screw-shaft. "If I had, you'd have 
 been scrap-iron by this time. The sea dropped away from 
 under me, and I had nothing to catch on to. That's all." 
 
 "That's all, d'you call it?" said the thrust-block whose 
 business it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had 
 nothing to hold it back it would crawl right into the engine- 
 room. (It is the holding back of the screwing action that 
 gives the drive to a ship.) "I know I do my work deep down 
 and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I ask 
 for is bare justice. Why can't you push steadily and evenly 
 instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under 
 all my collars." The thrust-block had six collars, each faced 
 with brass, and he did not wish to get them heated. 
 
 All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft 
 as it ran to the stern whispered : "Justice give us justice. 
 
 "I can only give you what I can get," the screw answered. 
 ' ' Look out ! It's coming again ! ' ' 
 
 He rose with a roar as the Dimbula plunged, and "whack 
 
 flack whack whack" went the engines, furiously, for 
 they had little to check them. 
 
 "I'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity Mr. 
 Buchanan says so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder. 
 "This is simply ridiculous!" The piston went up savagely, 
 and choked, for half the steam behind it was mixed with dirty 
 water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I'm chok- 
 ing," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime invention
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 175 
 
 has such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. And 
 if I go, who's to drive the ship?" 
 
 "Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of course, 
 had been to sea many times before. He used to spend. his 
 leisure ashore in a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a 
 thunder-storm, or anywhere else where water was needed. 
 "That's only a little priming, a little carrying-over, as 
 they call it. It'll happen all night, on and off. I don't 
 say it's nice, but it's the best we can do under the circum- 
 stances." 
 
 "What difference can circumstances make? I'm here to 
 do my work on clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" 
 the cylinder roared. 
 
 "The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've 
 worked on the North Atlantic run a good many tunes it's 
 going to be rough before morning." 
 
 "It isn't distressingly calm now," said the extra-strong 
 frames they were called web-frames in the engine-room. 
 "There's an upward thrust that we don't understand, and 
 there's a twist that is very bad for our brackets and diamond- 
 plates, and there's a sort of west-north-westerly pull that 
 follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention 
 this because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and 
 we feel sure that the owner would not approve of our being 
 treated in this frivolous way." 
 
 "I'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hands for the 
 present," said the Steam, slipping into the condenser. "You're 
 left to your own devices till the weather betters." 
 
 "I wouldn't mind the weather," said a flat bass voice 
 below; "it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart. 
 I'm the garboard-strake, and I'm twice as thick as most of 
 the others, and I ought to know something." 
 
 The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a
 
 176 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 ship, and the Dimbula's garboard-strake was nearly three- 
 quarters of an inch mild steel. 
 
 "The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have ex- 
 pected," the strake grunted, "and the cargo pushes me down, 
 and between the two, I don't know what I'm supposed to do." 
 
 "When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the Steam, making 
 head in the boilers. 
 
 "Yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down 
 here; and how do I know whether the other plates are doing 
 their duty? Those bulwark-plates up above, I've heard, 
 ain't more than five-sixteenths of an inch thick scandalous, 
 I call it." 
 
 "I agree with you," said a huge web-frame by the main 
 cargo-hatch. He was deeper and thicker than all the others, 
 and curved halfway across the ship in the shape of half an 
 arch, to support the deck where deck beams would have been 
 in the way of cargo coming up and down. "I work entirely 
 unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of this 
 vessel, so far as my vision extends. The responsibility, I 
 assure you, is enormous. I believe the money-value of the 
 cargo is over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think 
 of that!" 
 
 "And every pound of it is dependent on my personal ex- 
 ertions." Here spoke a sea- valve that communicated directly 
 with the water outside, and was seated not very far from 
 the garboard-strake. "I rejoice to think that I am a Prince- 
 Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents 
 cover me I mention this without pride five separate and 
 several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I 
 am screwed fast. Should I open, you would immediately be 
 swamped. This is incontrovertible!" 
 
 Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is 
 a trick that they pick up from their inventors.
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 177 
 
 "That's news," said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. "I had 
 an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things 
 with. At least, I've used you for that more than once. 
 I forget the precise number, in thousands, of gallons which 
 I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you, my 
 complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I 
 alone am capable of clearing any water that may find its way 
 here. By my Biggest Deliveries, we pitched then!" 
 
 The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead 
 westerly gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green 
 sky, narrowed on all sides by fat, gray clouds; and the wind 
 bit like pincers as it fretted the spray into lacework on the 
 flanks of the waves. 
 
 "I tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down its 
 wire-stays. "I'm up here,, and I can take a dispassionate view 
 of things. There's an organized conspiracy against us. I'm 
 sure of it, because every single one of these waves is heading 
 directly for our bows. The whole sea is concerned in it 
 and so's the wind. It's awful!" 
 
 "What's awful?" said a wave, drowning the capstan for 
 the hundredth time. 
 
 "This organized conspiracy on your part," the capstan 
 gurgled, taking his cue from the mast. 
 
 "Organized bubbles and spindrift! There has been a 
 depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!" He leaped 
 overside; but his friends took up the tale one after another. 
 
 "Which has advanced - That wave hove green water 
 
 over the funnel. 
 
 "As far as Cape Hatteras He drenched the bridge. 
 
 "And is now going out to sea to sea to sea!" The 
 third went free in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, 
 which turned bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs 
 alongside, while the broken falls whipped the davits.
 
 178 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "That's all there is to it," seethed the white water roaring 
 through the scuppers. " There's no animus in our proceedings. 
 We're only meteorological corollaries." 
 
 "Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor, 
 chained down to the deck, where he could only breathe once 
 in five minutes. 
 
 "Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by mid- 
 night. Thanks awfully. Good-bye." 
 
 The wave that spoke so politely had traveled some distance 
 aft, and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, 
 which was a well-deck sunk between high bulwarks. One of 
 the bulwark-plates, which was hung on hinges to open outward, 
 had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to the 
 sea again with a clean smack. 
 
 "Evidently that's what I'm made for," said the plate, 
 closing again with a sputter of pride. " Oh, no, you don't, my 
 friend!" 
 
 The top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, 
 but as the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated 
 water spurted back. 
 
 "Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark- 
 plate. "My work, I see, is laid down for the night;" and it 
 began opening and shutting, as it was designed to do, with 
 the motion of the ship. 
 
 "We are not what you might call idle," groaned all the 
 frames together, as the Dimbula climbed a big wave, lay on 
 her side at the top, and shot into the next hollow, twisting 
 in the descent. A huge swell pushed up exactly under her 
 middle, and her bow and stern hung free with nothing to sup- 
 port them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, 
 and another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk 
 away from under her just to see how she would like it; so 
 she was held up at her two ends only, and the weight of the
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 179 
 
 cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and 
 bilge-stringers. 
 
 "Ease off! Ease off, there!" roared the garboard-strake. 
 "I want one-eighth of an inch fair play. D'you hear me, 
 you rivets!" 
 
 "Ease off! Ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers. "Don't 
 hold us so tight to the frames!" 
 
 "Ease off!" grunted the deck-beams, as the Dimbula rolled 
 fearfully. "You've cramped our knees into the stringers, 
 and we can't move. Ease off, you flat-headed little nui- 
 sances.' 
 
 Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, 
 and fell away in torrents of streaming thunder. 
 
 "Ease off!" shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. "I 
 want to crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. 
 Ease off, you dirty little forge-filings. Let me breathe ! " 
 
 All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, 
 and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, 
 for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each 
 plate, according to its position, complained against the rivets. 
 
 "We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured in 
 reply. "We're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it; 
 you never pull us twice in the same direction. If you'd say 
 what you were going to do next, we'd try to meet your views." 
 
 "As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and 
 that was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was 
 pushing or pulling in opposite directions. Now, what's the 
 sense of that? My friends, let us all pull together." 
 
 "Pull any way you please," roared the funnel, "so long 
 as you don't try your experiments on me. I need fourteen 
 wire ropes, all pulling in different directions, to hold me 
 steady. Isn't that so? " 
 
 "We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel-stays
 
 i8o KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 through their clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind 
 from the top of the funnel to the deck. 
 
 "Nonsense! We must all pull together," the decks re- 
 peated. "Pull lengthways." 
 
 "Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing side- 
 ways when you get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore 
 and aft, and curve in at the ends as we do." 
 
 "No no curves at the end! A very slight workmanlike 
 curve from side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and 
 little pieces welded on," said the deck-beams. 
 
 "Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. 
 "Who ever heard of curves. Stand up straight; be a per- 
 fectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight 
 like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the deck above, 
 and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load. 
 
 "Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames, who 
 ran that way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also 
 expand yourselves sideways. Expansion is the law of life, 
 children. Open out! open out!'" 
 
 " Come back! " said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward 
 heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back 
 to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!" 
 
 "Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!" thumped the engines. 
 "Absolute, unvarying rigidity rigidity!" 
 
 "You see!" whined the rivets, in chorus. "No two of you 
 will ever pull alike, and and you blame it all on us. We 
 only know how to go through a plate and bite down on both 
 sides so that it can't, and mustn't, and shan't move." 
 
 "I've got one-fraction of an inch play, at any rate," said 
 the garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the 
 bottom of the ship felt the easier for it. 
 
 "Then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets. "We 
 were ordered we were ordered never to give; and we've
 
 given, and the sea will come in, and we'll all go to the 
 bottom together! First we're blamed for everything un- 
 pleasant, and now we haven't the consolation of having done 
 our work." 
 
 "Don't say I told you," whispered the Steam, consolingly; 
 "but, between you and me and the last cloud I came from, it 
 was bound to happen sooner or later. You had to give a 
 fraction, and you've given without knowing it. Now, hold 
 on as before." 
 
 "What's the use? " a few hundred rivets chattered. "We've 
 given we've given; and the sooner we confess that we can't 
 keep the ship together, and go off our little heads, the easier 
 it will be. No rivet forged can stand this strain." 
 
 "No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you," 
 the Steam answered. 
 
 "The others can have my share. I'm going to pull out," 
 said a rivet in one of the forward plates. 
 
 " If you go, others will follow," hissed the Steam. "There's 
 nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew 
 a little chap like you he was an eighth of an inch fatter, 
 though on a steamer to be sure, she was only twelve 
 hundred tons, now I come to think of it in exactly the same 
 place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, 
 not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the 
 same butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, 
 and I had to climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat 
 went down." 
 
 "Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fat- 
 ter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? 
 Reedy little peg! I blush for the family, sir." He settled 
 himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the Steam 
 chuckled. 
 
 "You see," he went on, quite gravely, "a rivet, and espe-
 
 1 82 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 cially a rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable 
 part of the ship." 
 
 The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very same 
 thing to every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense 
 in telling too much truth. 
 
 And all that while the little Dimbula pitched and chopped, 
 and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going 
 to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw 
 her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she 
 dipped; for the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in 
 spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top 
 everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could 
 not see your hand before your face. This did not make much 
 difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast 
 a good deal. 
 
 "Now it's all finished," he said dismally. "The conspiracy 
 is too strong for us. There is nothing left but to - 
 
 "Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!" roared the Steam through 
 the fog-horn, till the decks quivered. "Don't be frightened, 
 below. It's only me, just throwing out a few words, in case 
 any one happened to be rolling round to-night." 
 
 "You don't mean to say there's any one except us on the 
 sea in such weather?" said the funnel in a husky snuffle. 
 
 "Scores of 'em," said the Steam, clearing its throat, 
 "Rrrrrraaa! Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It's a trifle windy up here; 
 and, Great Boilers! how it rains!" 
 
 "We're drowning," said the scuppers. They had been 
 doing nothing else all night, but this steady thrash of rain 
 above them seemed to be the end of the world. 
 
 "That's all right. We'll be easier in an hour or two. First 
 the wind and then the raini Soon you may make sail again 
 Grrraaaaaah! Drrrraaaa! Drrrpl I have a notion that the 
 sea is going down already. If it does you'll learn something
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 183 
 
 about rolling. We've only pitched till now. By the way, 
 aren't you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?" 
 
 There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but 
 it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship 
 quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, 
 but gave with a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced 
 golf-club. 
 
 "We have made a most amazing discovery," said the 
 stringers, one after another. "A discovery that entirely 
 changes the situation. We have found, for the first time 
 in the history of shipbuilding, that the inward pull of the 
 deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, 
 as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure 
 a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of 
 marine architecture." 
 
 The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog- 
 horn. "What massive intellects you great stringers have," 
 he said softly, when he had finished. 
 
 "We also," began the deck-beams, "are discoverers and 
 geniuses. We are of opinion that the support of the hold- 
 pillars materially helps us. We find that we lock up on them 
 when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea 
 above." 
 
 Here the Dimbula shot down a hollow, lying almost on her 
 side righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm. 
 
 "In these cases are you aware of this, Steam? the 
 plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern we would 
 also mention the floors beneath us help us to resist any 
 tendency to spring." The frames spoke, in the solemn, awed 
 voice which people use when they have just come across 
 something entirely new for the very first time. 
 
 "I'm only a poor puffy little flutterer," said the Steam, 
 "but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business.
 
 1 84 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 It's all tremendously interesting. Tell us some more. You 
 fellows are so strong." 
 
 "Watch us and you'll see," said the bow-plates, proudly. 
 " Ready, behind there! Here's the Father and Mother of 
 Waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!" A great sluicing 
 comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and confusion 
 the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as 
 the various strains took them cries like these: "Easy, 
 now easy! Now push for all your strength! Hold out! 
 Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove crossways! 
 Mind the strain at the ends! Grip, now! Bite tight! Let 
 the water get away from under and there she goes!" 
 
 The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, "Not bad, 
 that, if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship 
 throbbed to the beat of the engines inside her. All three 
 cylinders were white with the salt spray that had come down 
 through the engine-room hatch; there was white fur on the 
 canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep 
 below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned 
 to make the most of steam that was half water, and were 
 pounding along cheerfully. 
 
 "How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting 
 it?" said the Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room. 
 
 "Nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the cylinders 
 answered, as though they had been working for centuries, 
 "and precious little for seventy-five pounds' head. We've 
 made two knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather 
 humiliating for eight hundred horsepower, isn't it? " 
 
 "Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. You 
 seem rather less how shall I put it? stiff in the back than 
 you were." 
 
 "If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you 
 wouldn't be stiff iff iff, either. Theoreti retti retti
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 185 
 
 cally, of course, rigidity is the thing. Purrr purr 
 practically, there has to be a little give and take. We found 
 that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a stretch 
 chch chh. How's the weather?" 
 
 "Sea's going down fast," said the Steam. 
 
 ' ' Good business, ' ' said the high-pressure cylinder. ' ' Whack 
 her up, boys. They've given us five pounds more steam;" 
 and he began humming the first bars of "Said the Young 
 Obadiah to the Old Obadiah," which, as you may have noticed, 
 is a pet tune among engines not built for high speed. Racing- 
 liners with twin-screws sing "The Turkish Patrol," and the 
 overture to the "Bronze Horse," and "Madame Angot," till 
 something goes wrong, and then they render Gounod's 
 "Funeral March of a Marionette," with variations. 
 
 "You'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the 
 Steam, as he flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow. 
 
 Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and 
 the Dimbula began to roll from side to side till every inch of 
 iron in her was sick and giddy. But luckily they did not all 
 feel ill at the same time : otherwise she would have opened out 
 like a wet paper box. 
 
 The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his busi- 
 ness: it is in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows 
 heavy sea that most of the accidents happen, for then every- 
 thing thinks that the worst is over and goes off guard. So 
 he orated and chattered till the beams and frames and floors 
 and stringers and things had learned how to lock down and 
 lock up on one another, and endure this new kind of strain. 
 
 They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen 
 days at sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles 
 of New York. The Dimbula picked up her pilot and came 
 in covered with salt and red rust. Her funnel was dirty gray 
 from top to bottom; two boats had been carried away; three
 
 1 86 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight with the police; 
 the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house that 
 covered the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; 
 there was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room almost as 
 long as the screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into 
 bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars; and the 
 steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its bed. Alto- 
 gether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general average." 
 
 ''But she's soupled," he said to Mr. Buchanan. "For all 
 her dead weight she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last 
 blow off the Banks? I am proud of her, Buck." 
 
 "It's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking along 
 the disheveled decks. "Now, a man judgin' superfeecially 
 would say we were a wreck, but we know otherwise by 
 experience." 
 
 Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened with 
 pride, and the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead 
 who are pushing creatures, begged the Steam to warn the Port 
 of New York of their arrival. "Tell those big boats all about 
 us," they said. "They seem to take us quite as a matter of 
 course." 
 
 It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single 
 file, with less than half a mile between each, their bands 
 playing and their tugboats shouting and waving handker- 
 chiefs, were the Majestic, the Paris, the Touraine, the Servia, 
 the Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the Werkendam, all statelily 
 going out to sea. As the Dimbula shifted her helm to give 
 the great boats clear way, the Steam (who knows far too much 
 to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) 
 shouted : 
 
 "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of 
 the High Seas ! Know ye by these presents, we are the 
 Dimbula, fifteen days nine hours from Liverpool, having
 
 THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF 187 
 
 crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the 
 first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are 
 here. 'Eer! 'Eer! We are not disabled. But we have had 
 a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of shipbuilding! 
 Our decks were swept ! We pitched; we rolled! We thought 
 we were going to die! Hi! Hi! But we didn't. We wish to 
 give notice that we have come to New York all the way across 
 the Atlantic through the worst weather in the world; and we 
 are the Dimbula! We are arr ha ha ha-r-r-r ! " 
 
 The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the 
 procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic 
 say, "Hmph!" and the Paris grunted, "How!" and the 
 Touraine said, "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; 
 and the Servia said, "Haw!" and the Kaiser and the Wer ken- 
 dam said, "Hoch!" Dutch fashion and that was absolutely 
 all. 
 
 "I did my best," said the Steam, gravely, "but I don't 
 think they were much impressed with us, somehow. Do 
 you?" 
 
 "It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "They 
 might have seen what we've been through. There isn't a 
 ship on the sea that has suffered as we have is there, now? " 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the Steam, "be- 
 cause I've worked on some of those boats, and sent them 
 through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we've had, 
 in six days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand 
 tons, I believe. Now I've seen the Majestic, for instance, 
 ducked from her bows to her funnel; and I've helped the 
 Arizona, I think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with 
 one dark night; and I had to run out of the Paris' s engine- 
 room, one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. 
 Of course, I don't deny - The Steam shut off suddenly, 
 
 as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a brass band,
 
 i88 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 that had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe, crossed 
 their bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence that 
 reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the propeller- 
 blades of the Dimbula. 
 
 Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the 
 owner had just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have 
 made a fool of myself." 
 
 The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a 
 ship finds herself, all the talking of separate pieces ceases 
 and melts into one voice, which is the soul of the ship. 
 
 "Who are you?" he said, with a laugh. / 
 
 "I am the Dimbula, of course. I've never been anything 
 else except that and a fool!" 
 
 The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, 
 got away just in time, its band playing clashily and brassily a 
 popular but impolite air: 
 
 In the days of old Rameses are you on? 
 
 In the days of old Rameses are you on? 
 
 In the days of old Rameses, 
 
 That story had paresis, 
 
 Are you on are you on are you on? 
 
 "Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the Steam. 
 "To tell the truth I was a little tired of talking to all those 
 ribs and stringers. Here's Quarantine. After that we'll 
 go to out wharf and clean up a little, and next month we'll 
 do it all over again."
 
 THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST 
 
 (1889) 
 
 OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain 
 shall meet, 
 Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great 
 
 Judgment Seat; 
 
 But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, 
 When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the 
 ends of the earth! 
 
 Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Borderside, 
 
 And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's 
 
 pride : 
 He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and 
 
 the day, 
 
 And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away. 
 Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the 
 
 Guides : 
 "Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal 
 
 hides?" 
 Then up and spoke Mohammed Khan, the son of the Res- 
 
 saldar: 
 "If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where 
 
 his pickets are. 
 
 189
 
 190 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "At dusk he harries the Abazai at dawn he is into Bonair, 
 "But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare; 
 " So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, 
 "By the favor of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the 
 
 Tongue of Jagai. 
 "But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn 
 
 ye then, 
 "For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown 
 
 with Kamal's men. 
 "There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean 
 
 thorn between, 
 "And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is 
 
 seen." 
 The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun 
 
 was he, 
 With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head 
 
 of a gallows-tree. 
 
 The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat 
 Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his 
 
 meat. 
 
 He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly, 
 Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue 
 
 of Jagai, 
 Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her 
 
 back, 
 And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol 
 
 crack. 
 He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball 
 
 went wide. 
 "Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said. "Show now if ye 
 
 can ride." 
 
 It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go, 
 The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.
 
 BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST 191 
 
 The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above, 
 But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden 
 
 plays with a glove. 
 There was rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean 
 
 thorn between, 
 And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was 
 
 seen. 
 They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs 
 
 drum up the dawn, 
 
 The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new- 
 roused fawn. 
 
 The dun he fell at a water-course in a woeful heap fell he, 
 And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider 
 
 free. 
 He has knocked the pistol out of his hand small room was 
 
 there to strive, 
 "Twas only by favor of mine/' quoth he "ye rode so long 
 
 alive: 
 "There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump 
 
 of tree, 
 "But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on 
 
 his knee. 
 
 "If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, 
 "The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row: 
 " If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, 
 "The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she 
 
 could not fly." 
 Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "Do good to bird and 
 
 beast, 
 "But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest 
 
 a feast. 
 "If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones 
 
 away,
 
 192 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 "Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief 
 
 could pay. 
 "They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men 
 
 on the garnered grain, 
 "The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the 
 
 cattle are slain. 
 "But if thou thinkest the price be fair thy brethren wait to 
 
 sup, 
 "The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn howl, dog, and call 
 
 them up! 
 "And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and 
 
 stack, 
 " Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way 
 
 back!" 
 
 Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. 
 "No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray 
 
 wolf meet. 
 
 " May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath; 
 "What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn 
 
 with Death?" 
 Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of 
 
 my clan: 
 "Take up the mare for my father's gift by God, she has 
 
 carried a man!" 
 The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against 
 
 his breast; 
 "We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth 
 
 the younger best. 
 "So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded 
 
 rein, 
 "My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups 
 
 'twain.' 
 The Colonel's son a pistol drew, and held it muzzle-end,
 
 BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST 193 
 
 "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he; "will ye take 
 
 the mate from a friend?" 
 "A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk 
 
 of a limb. 
 
 "Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!" 
 With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a 
 
 mountain-crest 
 He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a 
 
 lance in rest. 
 "Now here is thy master," Kamal said, "who leads a troop 
 
 of the Guides, 
 "And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder 
 
 rides. 
 "Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and 
 
 bed, 
 
 "Thy life is his thy fate, it is to guard him with thy head. 
 "So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes 
 
 are thine, 
 "And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the 
 
 Border-line 
 "And thou must make a trooper tougn, and hack thy way to 
 
 power 
 " Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in 
 
 Peshawur." 
 They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they 
 
 found no fault, 
 They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened 
 
 bread and salt: 
 They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and 
 
 fresh-cut sod, 
 On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Won 
 
 drous Names of God.
 
 i 9 4 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy 
 
 the dun, 
 And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went 
 
 forth but one. 
 And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty 
 
 swords flew clear 
 There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of 
 
 the mountaineer. 
 "Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son. "Put up the 
 
 steel at your sides! 
 "Last night ye had struck at a Border thief to-night 'tis 
 
 a man of the Guides!" 
 
 Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall 
 
 meet, 
 Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment 
 
 Seat; 
 But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor 
 
 Birth, 
 When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from 
 
 the ends of the earth!
 
 RECESSIONAL 
 
 GOD of our fathers, known of old, 
 Lord of our far-flung battle-line, 
 Beneath whose awful Hand we hold 
 Dominion over palm and pine - 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget lest we forget ! 
 
 The tumult and the shouting dies; 
 
 The captains and the kings depart: 
 Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
 
 An humble and a contrite heart. 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget lest we forget! 
 
 Far-called, our navies melt away; 
 
 On dune and headland sinks the fire: 
 Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
 
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 
 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
 Lest we forget lest we forget! 
 
 195
 
 196 KIPLING READER FOR UPPER GRADES 
 
 If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, 
 
 Such boastings as the Gentiles use, 
 Or lesser breeds without the Law - 
 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget lest we forget ! 
 
 For heathen heart that puts her trust 
 In reeking tube and iron shard, 
 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
 And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, 
 
 For frantic boast and foolish word 
 
 Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! 
 
 Amen. 
 
 THE END
 
 THREE STORIES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE 
 
 The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone. 
 
 By MARGARET A. MC!NTYRE. Illustrated. i2mo. 
 Cloth, 40 cents. 
 
 The Cave Boy is one of a series of stories for Primary Grades 
 that teems with interest for children from beginning to end. To 
 learn how our forbears long, long ago lived in rock caverns or rude 
 huts of earth, how they hunted the wild beasts of the forests and 
 prepared the meat for eating, is a matter of particular charm for 
 boys and girls. The book is valuable both from a geographical and 
 historical standpoint, and abounds in interesting illustrations. 
 
 Lodrix, the Little Lake Dweller. 
 
 By BELLE WILEY and GRACE WILLARD EDICK. 
 Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, 30 cents. 
 
 A charming story of a people who lived in lake houses hidden 
 fast among the thick forests of the mountain-sides. While hunting 
 one day little Lodrix strays far from his people and is carried away 
 by a hostile land tribe. The story of his rescue and the portrayal 
 of the life of these simple primitive people form a delightful 
 narrative as well as a valuable addition to supplementary readers 
 for the primary grades. 
 
 Children of the Cliff. 
 
 By the same authors. Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, 
 30 cents. 
 
 This story holds an equally irresistible charm for the boy or 
 girl who loves a tale of adventure. Little Teni and Mavo belonged 
 to a family of the Bear tribe, who lived high up on rocky cliffs in a 
 land where there were no trees and nothing but rocks and sand. 
 These two little children were lost, but fell into the hands of a 
 friendly neighboring tribe, from whom they learned many novel and 
 interesting things before they were restored to their parents. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO
 
 INSPIRING WELL-GRADED ATTRACTIVE 
 
 The Carroll and Brooks Readers 
 
 By CLARENCE F. CARROLL, Superintendent of 
 Schools, Rochester, New York, and SARAH C. 
 BROOKS, Principal of the Teachers' Training 
 School, Baltimore, Maryland. 
 
 THE FIVE-BOOK SERIES : A First Reader, 30 cents ; 
 A Second Reader, 35 cents; A Third Reader, 40 cents; A 
 Fourth Reader, 65 cents; A Fifth Reader, 75 cents. 
 
 THE EIGHT-BOOK SERIES: A First Reader, 30 cents ; 
 A Second Reader, 35 cents; A Third Reader, 40 cents; A Reader 
 for the Fourth Grade, 45 cents ; A Reader for the Fifth Grade, 
 45 cents ; A Reader for the Sixth Grade, 50 cents ; A Reader 
 for the Seventh Grade, 50 cents ; A Reader for the Eighth 
 Grade, 50 cents. 
 
 There are certain accepted particulars according to which 
 every series of basal readers must be judged, namely, Author- 
 ship, Point of View, Subject Matter, Method, Vocabulary, 
 Grading, Illustration, and Typography, THE CARROLL AND 
 BROOKS READERS measure up to the highest standard in all 
 these particulars because they 
 
 Are the work of authors of experience and well- 
 earned standing. 
 
 Teach reading by making a direct appeal to the 
 child's instincts and enlisting his interest. 
 
 Present a wide variety of good reading, carefully 
 balanced in amount. 
 
 Introduce new words gradually, repeat them system- 
 atically', and review them carefully. 
 
 Are artistically and pertinently illustrated in color 
 and in black-and-white. 
 
 Coincide with the natural growth of the child and 
 meet his developing needs. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 457e
 
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 Return this material to the library 
 
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