The Light That Failed
The Light That Failed CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCopyright
The Light That Failed
Rudyard Kipling
CHAPTER I
So we settled it all when the
storm was done As comf'y as comf'y could
be; And I was to wait in the barn,
my dears, Because I was only
three; And Teddy would run to the
rainbow's foot, Because he was five and a
man; And that's how it all began,
my dears, And that's how it all
began. —Big Barn
Stories.'WHAT do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to
have it, you know,' said Maisie.'Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,' Dick answered,
without hesitation. 'Have you got the cartridges?''Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly.
Do pin-fire cartridges go off of their own accord?''Don't know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me
carry them.''I'm not afraid.' Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in
her pocket and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small
pin-fire revolver.The children had discovered that their lives would be
unendurable without pistol-practice. After much forethought and
self-denial, Dick had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price
of a badly constructed Belgian revolver. Maisie could only
contribute half a crown to the syndicate for the purchase of a
hundred cartridges. 'You can save better than I can, Dick,' she
explained; 'I like nice things to eat, and it doesn't matter to
you. Besides, boys ought to do these things.'Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and
made the purchase, which the children were then on their way to
test. Revolvers did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as
decreed for them by the guardian who was incorrectly supposed to
stand in the place of a mother to these two orphans. Dick had been
under her care for six years, during which time she had made her
profit of the allowances supposed to be expended on his clothes,
and, partly through thoughtlessness, partly through a natural
desire to pain,—she was a widow of some years anxious to marry
again,—had made his days burdensome on his young
shoulders.Where he had looked for love, she gave him first aversion and
then hate.Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave
him ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering
of her small house she devoted to what she called the home-training
of Dick Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own
intelligence and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her
in this matter. At such times as she herself was not personally
displeased with Dick, she left him to understand that he had a
heavy account to settle with his Creator; wherefore Dick learned to
loathe his God as intensely as he loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is
not a wholesome frame of mind for the young. Since she chose to
regard him as a hopeless liar, when dread of pain drove him to his
first untruth, he naturally developed into a liar, but an
economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the least
unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only
plausible, that might make his life a little easier. The treatment
taught him at least the power of living alone,—a power that was of
service to him when he went to a public school and the boys laughed
at his clothes, which were poor in quality and much mended. In the
holidays he returned to the teachings of Mrs. Jennett, and, that
the chain of discipline might not be weakened by association with
the world, was generally beaten, on one account or another, before
he had been twelve hours under her roof.The autumn of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a
long-haired, gray-eyed little atom, as self-contained as himself,
who moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks
spoke only to the goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and
lived in the back-garden. Mrs. Jennett objected to the goat on the
grounds that he was un-Christian,—which he certainly was. 'Then,'
said the atom, choosing her words very deliberately, 'I shall write
to my lawyer-peoples and tell them that you are a very bad woman.
Amomma is mine, mine, mine!' Mrs. Jennett made a movement to the
hall, where certain umbrellas and canes stood in a rack. The atom
understood as clearly as Dick what this meant. 'I have been beaten
before,' she said, still in the same passionless voice; 'I have
been beaten worse than you can ever beat me. If you beat me I shall
write to my lawyer-peoples and tell them that you do not give me
enough to eat. I am not afraid of you.' Mrs. Jennett did not go
into the hall, and the atom, after a pause to assure herself that
all danger of war was past, went out, to weep bitterly on Amomma's
neck.Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted
her profoundly, for he feared that she might interfere with the
small liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she
volunteered no friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps.
Long before the holidays were over, the stress of punishment shared
in common drove the children together, if it were only to play into
each other's hands as they prepared lies for Mrs. Jennett's use.
When Dick returned to school, Maisie whispered, 'Now I shall be all
alone to take care of myself; but,' and she nodded her head
bravely, 'I can do it. You promised to send Amomma a grass collar.
Send it soon.' A week later she asked for that collar by return of
post, and was not pleased when she learned that it took time to
make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she forgot to thank him
for it.Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had
grown into a lanky hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad
clothes. Not for a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care
of him, but the average canings of a public school—Dick fell under
punishment about three times a month—filled him with contempt for
her powers. 'She doesn't hurt,' he explained to Maisie, who urged
him to rebellion, 'and she is kinder to you after she has whacked
me.' Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in
soul, as the smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when
the spirit moved him he would hit them, cunningly and with science.
The same spirit made him more than once try to tease Maisie, but
the girl refused to be made unhappy. 'We are both miserable as it
is,' said she. 'What is the use of trying to make things worse?
Let's find things to do, and forget things.'The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be
used on the muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the
bathing-machines and pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort
Keeling. The tide ran out nearly two miles on that coast, and the
many-coloured mud-banks, touched by the sun, sent up a lamentable
smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and
Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma trotting patiently behind
them.'Mf!' said Maisie, sniffing the air. 'I wonder what makes the
sea so smelly? I don't like it!''You never like anything that isn't made just for you,' said
Dick bluntly. 'Give me the cartridges, and I'll try first shot. How
far does one of these little revolvers carry?''Oh, half a mile,' said Maisie, promptly. 'At least it makes
an awful noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I don't like those
jagged stick-up things on the rim. Dick, do be
careful.''All right. I know how to load. I'll fire at the breakwater
out there.'He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a
spurt of mud to the right of the wood-wreathed piles.'Throws high and to the right. You try, Maisie. Mind, it's
loaded all round.'Maisie took the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of
the mud, her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and left eye
screwed up.Dick sat down on a tuft of bank and laughed. Amomma returned
very cautiously. He was accustomed to strange experiences in his
afternoon walks, and, finding the cartridge-box unguarded, made
investigations with his nose. Maisie fired, but could not see where
the bullet went.'I think it hit the post,' she said, shading her eyes and
looking out across the sailless sea.'I know it has gone out to the Marazion Bell-buoy,' said
Dick, with a chuckle. 'Fire low and to the left; then perhaps
you'll get it. Oh, look at Amomma!—he's eating the
cartridges!'Maisie turned, the revolver in her hand, just in time to see
Amomma scampering away from the pebbles Dick threw after him.
Nothing is sacred to a billy-goat. Being well fed and the adored of
his mistress, Amomma had naturally swallowed two loaded pin-fire
cartridges. Maisie hurried up to assure herself that Dick had not
miscounted the tale.'Yes, he's eaten two.''Horrid little beast! Then they'll joggle about inside him
and blow up, and serve him right.... Oh, Dick! have I killed
you?'Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with.
Maisie could not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking
smoke separated her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the
pistol had gone off in his face. Then she heard him sputter, and
dropped on her knees beside him, crying, 'Dick, you aren't hurt,
are you? I didn't mean it.''Of course you didn't, said Dick, coming out of the smoke and
wiping his cheek. 'But you nearly blinded me. That powder stuff
stings awfully.' A neat little splash of gray led on a stone showed
where the bullet had gone. Maisie began to whimper.'Don't,' said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself.
'I'm not a bit hurt.''No, but I might have killed you,' protested Maisie, the
corners of her mouth drooping. 'What should I have done
then?''Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.' Dick grinned at the
thought; then, softening, 'Please don't worry about it. Besides, we
are wasting time.We've got to get back to tea. I'll take the revolver for a
bit.'Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick's
indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the
pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick
methodically bombarded the breakwater. 'Got it at last!' he
exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew from the wood.'Let me try,' said Maisie, imperiously. 'I'm all right
now.'They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly
shook itself to pieces, and Amomma the outcast—because he might
blow up at any moment—browsed in the background and wondered why
stones were thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber
floating in a pool which was commanded by the seaward slope of Fort
Keeling, and they sat down together before this new
target.'Next holidays,' said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled
revolver kicked wildly in his hand, 'we'll get another
pistol,—central fire,—that will carry farther.''There won't b any next holidays for me,' said Maisie. 'I'm
going away.''Where to?''I don't know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and
I've got to be educated somewhere,—in France, perhaps,—I don't know
where; but I shall be glad to go away.''I shan't like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look
here, Maisie, is it really true you're going? Then these holidays
will be the last I shall see anything of you; and I go back to
school next week. I wish——'The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking
grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow sea-poppy
nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats
and the milk-white sea beyond.'I wish,' she said, after a pause, 'that I could see you
again sometime.You wish that, too?''Yes, but it would have been better if—if—you had—shot
straight over there—down by the breakwater.'Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the
boy who only ten days before had decorated Amomma's horns with
cut-paper ham-frills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among
the public ways! Then she dropped her eyes: this was not the
boy.'Don't be stupid,' she said reprovingly, and with swift
instinct attacked the side-issue. 'How selfish you are! Just think
what I should have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I'm
quite miserable enough already.''Why? Because you're going away from Mrs.
Jennett?''No.''From me, then?'No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He
felt, though he did not know, all that the past four years had been
to him, and this the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put
his feelings in words.'I don't know,' she said. 'I suppose it is.''Maisie, you must know. I'm not supposing.''Let's go home,' said Maisie, weakly.But Dick was not minded to retreat.'I can't say things,' he pleaded, 'and I'm awfully sorry for
teasing you about Amomma the other day. It's all different now,
Maisie, can't you see? And you might have told me that you were
going, instead of leaving me to find out.''You didn't. I did tell. Oh, Dick, what's the use of
worrying?''There isn't any; but we've been together years and years,
and I didn't know how much I cared.''I don't believe you ever did care.''No, I didn't; but I do,—I care awfully now, Maisie,' he
gulped,—'Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.''I do, indeed I do; but it won't be any use.''Why?''Because I am going away.''Yes, but if you promise before you go. Only say—will you?' A
second 'darling' came to his lips more easily than the first. There
were few endearments in Dick's home or school life; he had to find
them by instinct. Dick caught the little hand blackened with the
escaped gas of the revolver.'I promise,' she said solemnly; 'but if I care there is no
need for promising.''And do you care?' For the first time in the past few minutes
their eyes met and spoke for them who had no skill in
speech....'Oh, Dick, don't! Please don't! It was all right when we said
good-morning; but now it's all different!' Amomma looked on from
afar.He had seen his property quarrel frequently, but he had never
seen kisses exchanged before. The yellow sea-poppy was wiser, and
nodded its head approvingly. Considered as a kiss, that was a
failure, but since it was the first, other than those demanded by
duty, in all the world that either had ever given or taken, it
opened to them new worlds, and every one of them glorious, so that
they were lifted above the consideration of any worlds at all,
especially those in which tea is necessary, and sat still, holding
each other's hands and saying not a word.'You can't forget now,' said Dick, at last. There was that on
his cheek that stung more than gunpowder.'I shouldn't have forgotten anyhow,' said Maisie, and they
looked at each other and saw that each was changed from the
companion of an hour ago to a wonder and a mystery they could not
understand. The sun began to set, and a night-wind thrashed along
the bents of the foreshore.'We shall be awfully late for tea,' said Maisie. 'Let's go
home.''Let's use the rest of the cartridges first,' said Dick; and
he helped Maisie down the slope of the fort to the sea,—a descent
that she was quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally
gravely Maisie took the grimy hand. Dick bent forward clumsily;
Maisie drew the hand away, and Dick blushed.'It's very pretty,' he said.'Pooh!' said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity.
She stood close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time
and fired over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head
that he was protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A
puddle far across the mud caught the last rays of the sun and
turned into a wrathful red disc. The light held Dick's attention
for a moment, and as he raised his revolver there fell upon him a
renewed sense of the miraculous, in that he was standing by Maisie
who had promised to care for him for an indefinite length of time
till such date as—— A gust of the growing wind drove the girl's
long black hair across his face as she stood with her hand on his
shoulder calling Amomma 'a little beast,' and for a moment he was
in the dark,—a darkness that stung. The bullet went singing out to
the empty sea.'Spoilt my aim,' said he, shaking his head. 'There aren't any
more cartridges; we shall have to run home.' But they did not run.
They walked very slowly, arm in arm. And it was a matter of
indifference to them whether the neglected Amomma with two pin-fire
cartridges in his inside blew up or trotted beside them; for they
had come into a golden heritage and were disposing of it with all
the wisdom of all their years.'And I shall be——' quoth Dick, valiantly. Then he checked
himself: 'I don't know what I shall be. I don't seem to be able to
pass any exams, but I can make awful caricatures of the masters.
Ho! Ho!''Be an artist, then,' said Maisie. 'You're always laughing at
my trying to draw; and it will do you good.''I'll never laugh at anything you do,' he answered. 'I'll be
an artist, and I'll do things.''Artists always want money, don't they?''I've got a hundred and twenty pounds a year of my own. My
guardians tell me I'm to have it when I come of age. That will be
enough to begin with.''Ah, I'm rich,' said Maisie. 'I've got three hundred a year
all my own when I'm twenty-one. That's why Mrs. Jennett is kinder
to me than she is to you. I wish, though, that I had somebody that
belonged to me,—just a father or a mother.''You belong to me,' said Dick, 'for ever and
ever.''Yes, we belong—for ever. It's very nice.' She squeezed his
arm. The kindly darkness hid them both, and, emboldened because he
could only just see the profile of Maisie's cheek with the long
lashes veiling the gray eyes, Dick at the front door delivered
himself of the words he had been boggling over for the last two
hours.'And I—love you, Maisie,' he said, in a whisper that seemed
to him to ring across the world,—the world that he would to-morrow
or the next day set out to conquer.There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be
reported, when Mrs. Jennett would have fallen upon him, first for
disgraceful unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself
with a forbidden weapon.'I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,' said
Dick, when the powder-pocked cheek could no longer be hidden, 'but
if you think you're going to lick me you're wrong. You are never
going to touch me again.Sit down and give me my tea. You can't cheat us out of that,
anyhow.'Mrs. Jennett gasped and became livid. Maisie said nothing,
but encouraged Dick with her eyes, and he behaved abominably all
that evening. Mrs. Jennett prophesied an immediate judgment of
Providence and a descent into Tophet later, but Dick walked in
Paradise and would not hear. Only when he was going to bed Mrs.
Jennett recovered and asserted herself. He had bidden Maisie
good-night with down-dropped eyes and from a distance.'If you aren't a gentleman you might try to behave like one,'
said Mrs.Jennett, spitefully. 'You've been quarrelling with Maisie
again.'This meant that the usual good-night kiss had been omitted.
Maisie, white to the lips, thrust her cheek forward with a fine air
of indifference, and was duly pecked by Dick, who tramped out of
the room red as fire. That night he dreamed a wild dream. He had
won all the world and brought it to Maisie in a cartridge-box, but
she turned it over with her foot, and, instead of saying 'Thank
you,' cried—'Where is the grass collar you promised for Amomma? Oh,
how selfish you are!'
CHAPTER II
Then we brought the lances down,
then the bugles blew, When we went to Kandahar, ridin' two
an' two, Ridin', ridin', ridin', two an'
two, Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra, All the way to Kandahar, ridin' two
an' two. —Barrack-Room Ballad.'I'M NOT angry with the British public, but I wish we had a
few thousand of them scattered among these rooks. They wouldn't be
in such a hurry to get at their morning papers then. Can't you
imagine the regulation householder—Lover of Justice, Constant
Reader, Paterfamilias, and all that lot—frizzling on hot
gravel?''With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips.
Has any man here a needle? I've got a piece of
sugar-sack.''I'll lend you a packing-needle for six square inches of it
then. Both my knees are worn through.''Why not six square acres, while you're about it? But lend me
the needle, and I'll see what I can do with the selvage. I don't
think there's enough to protect my royal body from the cold blast
as it is. What are you doing with that everlasting sketch-book of
yours, Dick?''Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,'
said Dick, gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely
worn riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas
over the most obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the
vastness of the void developed itself.'Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the
sails for that whale-boat.'A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided
itself into exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down
again. The man of the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk
jacket and a gray flannel shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing,
while Dick chuckled over the sketch.Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was
dotted with English soldiery of half a dozen corps, bathing or
washing their clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes,
sugar-bags, and flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where
one of the whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a
regimental carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly
insufficient allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched
gaping seams of the boat herself.'First the bloomin' rudder snaps,' said he to the world in
general; 'then the mast goes; an' then, s' 'help me, when she can't
do nothin' else, she opens 'erself out like a cock-eyes Chinese
lotus.''Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are,' said
the tailor, without looking up. 'Dick, I wonder when I shall see a
decent shop again.'There was no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the
Nile as it raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a
rock-ridge half a mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight
of the river would drive the white men back to their own country.
The indescribable scent of Nile mud in the air told that the stream
was falling and the next few miles would be no light thing for the
whale-boats to overpass. The desert ran down almost to the banks,
where, among gray, red, and black hillocks, a camel-corps was
encamped. No man dared even for a day lose touch of the slow-moving
boats; there had been no fighting for weeks past, and throughout
all that time the Nile had never spared them. Rapid had followed
rapid, rock rock, and island-group island-group, till the rank and
file had long since lost all count of direction and very nearly of
time. They were moving somewhere, they did not know why, to do
something, they did not know what. Before them lay the Nile, and at
the other end of it was one Gordon, fighting for the dear life, in
a town called Khartoum. There were columns of British troops in the
desert, or in one of the many deserts; there were yet more columns
waiting to embark on the river; there were fresh drafts waiting at
Assioot and Assuan; there were lies and rumours running over the
face of the hopeless land from Suakin to the Sixth Cataract, and
men supposed generally that there must be some one in authority to
direct the general scheme of the many movements. The duty of that
particular river-column was to keep the whale-boats afloat in the
water, to avoid trampling on the villagers' crops when the gangs
'tracked' the boats with lines thrown from midstream, to get as
much sleep and food as was possible, and, above all, to press on
without delay in the teeth of the churning Nile.With the soldiers sweated and toiled the correspondents of
the newspapers, and they were almost as ignorant as their
companions. But it was above all things necessary that England at
breakfast should be amused and thrilled and interested, whether
Gordon lived or died, or half the British army went to pieces in
the sands. The Soudan campaign was a picturesque one, and lent
itself to vivid word-painting. Now and again a 'Special' managed to
get slain,—which was not altogether a disadvantage to the paper
that employed him,—and more often the hand-to-hand nature of the
fighting allowed of miraculous escapes which were worth
telegraphing home at eighteenpence the word. There were many
correspondents with many corps and columns,—from the veterans who
had followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo in
'82, what time Arabi Pasha called himself king, who had seen the
first miserable work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up
nightly and the scrub swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked
into the business at the end of a telegraph-wire to take the places
of their betters killed or invalided.Among the seniors—those who knew every shift and change in
the perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest,
weediest Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria,
who could talk a telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the
ruffled vanity of a newly appointed staff-officer when press
regulations became burdensome—was the man in the flannel shirt, the
black-browed Torpenhow. He represented the Central Southern
Syndicate in the campaign, as he had represented it in the Egyptian
war, and elsewhere. The syndicate did not concern itself greatly
with criticisms of attack and the like. It supplied the masses, and
all it demanded was picturesqueness and abundance of detail; for
there is more joy in England over a soldier who insubordinately
steps out of square to rescue a comrade than over twenty generals
slaving even to baldness at the gross details of transport and
commissariat.He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a
recently abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a
clump of shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.'What are you for?' said Torpenhow. The greeting of the
correspondent is that of the commercial traveller on the
road.'My own hand,' said the young man, without looking up. 'Have
you any tobacco?'Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he
had looked at it said, 'What's your business here?''Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be
doing something down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else
I'm in charge of the condenser on one of the water-ships. I've
forgotten which.''You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with,' said
Torpenhow, and took stock of the new acquaintance. 'Do you always
draw like that?'The young man produced more sketches. 'Row on a Chinese
pig-boat,' said he, sententiously, showing them one after
another.—'Chief mate dirked by a comprador.—Junk ashore off
Hakodate.—Somali muleteer being flogged.—Star-shelled bursting over
camp at Berbera.—Slave-dhow being chased round Tajurrah
Bah.—Soldier lying dead in the moonlight outside Suakin.—throat cut
by Fuzzies.''H'm!' said Torpenhow, 'can't say I care for
Verestchagin-and-water myself, but there's no accounting for
tastes. Doing anything now, are you?''No. I'm amusing myself here.'Torpenhow looked at the sketches again, and nodded. 'Yes,
you're right to take your first chance when you can get
it.'He rode away swiftly through the Gate of the Two War-Ships,
rattled across the causeway into the town, and wired to his
syndicate, 'Got man here, picture-work. Good and cheap. Shall I
arrange? Will do letterpress with sketches.'The man on the redoubt sat swinging his legs and murmuring,
'I knew the chance would come, sooner or later. By Gad, they'll
have to sweat for it if I come through this business
alive!'In the evening Torpenhow was able to announce to his friend
that the Central Southern Agency was willing to take him on trial,
paying expenses for three months. 'And, by the way, what's your
name?' said Torpenhow.'Heldar. Do they give me a free hand?''They've taken you on chance. You must justify the choice.
You'd better stick to me. I'm going up-country with a column, and
I'll do what I can for you. Give me some of your sketches taken
here, and I'll send 'em along.' To himself he said, 'That's the
best bargain the Central southern has ever made; and they got me
cheaply enough.'So it came to pass that, after some purchase of horse-flesh
and arrangements financial and political, Dick was made free of the
New and Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all
possess the inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and
getting as much for it as Providence and their owners shall please.
To these things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the
power of glib speech that neither man nor woman can resist when a
meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of
a cook, the constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich,
and an infinite adaptability to all circumstances. But many die
before they attain to this degree, and the past-masters in the
craft appear for the most part in dress-clothes when they are in
England, and thus their glory is hidden from the
multitude.Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to
lead him, and between the two they managed to accomplish some work
that almost satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any
way, and under its influence the two were drawn very closely
together, for they ate from the same dish, they shared the same
water-bottle, and, most binding tie of all, their mails went off
together. It was Dick who managed to make gloriously drunk a
telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second Cataract, and,
while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed himself of some
laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded by a
confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful
duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who
said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an
excellent descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of
words. It was Torpenhow who—but the tale of their adventures,
together and apart, from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi
and Muella, would fill many books. They had been penned into a
square side by side, in deadly fear of being shot by over-excited
soldiers; they had fought with baggage-camels in the chill dawn;
they had jogged along in silence under blinding sun on
indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had floundered on
the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in which they had
found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her
bottom-planks.Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats
were bringing up the remainder of the column.'Yes,' said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into
his over-long-neglected gear, 'it has been a beautiful
business.''The patch or the campaign?' said Dick. 'Don't think much of
either, myself.''You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract,
don't you? and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite
satisfied with my breeches.' He turned round gravely to exhibit
himself, after the manner of a clown.'It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack.
G.B.T. Government Bullock Train. That's a sack from
India.''It's my initials,—Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the
cloth on purpose.What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?'
Torpenhow shaded his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn
gravel.A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to
their arms and accoutrements.'"Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,"' remarked Dick,
calmly.'D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all
beginners copy it. That scrub's alive with enemy.'The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to
them, and a hoarse shouting down the river showed that the
remainder of the column had wind of the trouble and was hastening
to take share in it. As swiftly as a reach of still water is
crisped by the wind, the rock-strewn ridges and scrub-topped hills
were troubled and alive with armed men.Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time,
to shout and gesticulate joyously. One man even delivered himself
of a long story. The camel-corps did not fire. They were only too
glad of a little breathing-space, until some sort of square could
be formed. The men on the sand-bank ran to their side; and the
whale-boats, as they toiled up within shouting distance, were
thrust into the nearest bank and emptied of all save the sick and a
few men to guard them. The Arab orator ceased his outcries, and his
friends howled.'They look like the Mahdi's men,' said Torpenhow, elbowing
himself into the crush of the square; 'but what thousands of 'em
there are! The tribes hereabout aren't against us, I
know.''Then the Mahdi's taken another town,' said Dick, 'and set
all these yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us your
glass.''Our scouts should have told us of this. We've been trapped,'
said a subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry
up, you men!'There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves
panting against the sides of the square, for they had good reason
to know that whoso was left outside when the fighting began would
very probably die in an extremely unpleasant fashion. The little
hundred-and-fifty-pound camel-guns posted at one corner of the
square opened the ball as the square moved forward by its right to
get possession of a knoll of rising ground. All had fought in this
manner many times before, and there was no novelty in the
entertainment; always the same hot and stifling formation, the
smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of the enemy, the
same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of hand-to-hand
scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only by the
yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to pursue.
They had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and
the square slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then
came the attack of three thousand men who had not learned from
books that it is impossible for troops in close order to attack
against breech-loading fire.A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few
horsemen led, but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad
with rage, and armed with the spear and the sword. The instinct of
the desert, where there is always much war, told them that the
right flank of the square was the weakest, for they swung clear of
the front. The camel-guns shelled them as they passed and opened
for an instant lanes through their midst, most like those
quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when the train
races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the
opportune moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No
civilised troops in the world could have endured the hell through
which they came, the living leaping high to avoid the dying who
clutched at their heels, the wounded cursing and staggering
forward, till they fell—a torrent black as the sliding water above
a mill-dam—full on the right flank of the square.Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert
sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on
the heated ground and the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters
of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and
recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their
way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any
concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, the enemy might be
attempting all four sides of the square at once. Their business was
to destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet in the back those
who passed over them, and, dying, to drag down the slayer till he
could be knocked on the head by some avenging
gun-butt.Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress
grew unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the
attack was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards
the weakest side of the square. There was a rush from without, the
short hough-hough of the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse,
followed by thirty or forty others, dashed through, yelling and
hacking. The right flank of the square sucked in after them, and
the other sides sent help. The wounded, who knew that they had but
a few hours more to live, caught at the enemy's feet and brought
them down, or, staggering into a discarded rifle, fired blindly
into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the
square.Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across
his helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black,
foam-flecked face which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to
a face, and that Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had
tried to 'collar low,' and was turning over and over with his
captive, feeling for the man's eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture
with a bayonet, and a helmetless soldier fired over Dick's
shoulder: the flying grains of powder stung his cheek. It was to
Torpenhow that Dick turned by instinct. The representative of the
Central Southern Syndicate had shaken himself clear of his enemy,
and rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The Arab, both hands to
his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched up his spear and rushed
at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick's revolver.
Dick fired twice, and the man dropped limply. His upturned face
lacked one eye. The musketry-fire redoubled, but cheers mingled
with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were flying. If the
heart of the square were shambles, the ground beyond was a
butcher's shop. Dick thrust his way forward between the maddened
men. The remnant of the enemy were retiring, as the few—the very
few—English cavalry rode down the laggards.Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab
spear cast aside in the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and
beyond this again the illimitable dark levels of the desert. The
sun caught the steel and turned it into a red disc. Some one behind
him was saying, 'Ah, get away, you brute!' Dick raised his revolver
and pointed towards the desert. His eye was held by the red splash
in the distance, and the clamour about him seemed to die down to a
very far-away whisper, like the whisper of a level sea. There was
the revolver and the red light.... and the voice of some one
scaring something away, exactly as had fallen somewhere before,—a
darkness that stung. He fired at random, and the bullet went out
across the desert as he muttered, 'Spoilt my aim. There aren't any
more cartridges. We shall have to run home.' He put his hand to his
head and brought it away covered with blood.'Old man, you're cut rather badly,' said Torpenhow. 'I owe
you something for this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can't
be ill here.'Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the
whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the
sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead,—was
dead,—was dead,—that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile
outside the city, and that of all their crews there remained not
one; and Khartoum was dead,—was dead,—was dead!But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called
aloud to the restless Nile for Maisie,—and again
Maisie!'Behold a phenomenon,' said Torpenhow, rearranging the
blanket. 'Here is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of
one woman only. And I've seen a good deal of delirium, too.—Dick,
here's some fizzy drink.''Thank you, Maisie,' said Dick.
CHAPTER III
So he thinks he shall take to the
sea again For one more cruise with his
buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of
Spain, And capture another Dean of
Jaen And sell him in Algiers.—A Dutch
Picture.—Longfellow
THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick's broken head had been some
months ended and mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had
paid Dick a certain sum on account for work done, which work they
were careful to assure him was not altogether up to their standard.
Dick heaved the letter into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the draft in
the same town, and bade a warm farewell to Torpenhow at the
station.