Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1094 page)

The thing that consoled them was the thought that they had not slowed down one single turn.

THE NAVAL ENGINEER

‘She’s a giddy little thing,’ said the Chief Engineer. ‘ Come down and have a look.’

I declined in suitable language. Some day, when I know more, I will write about engine-rooms and stokers’ accommodation — the manners and customs of Naval Engineers and their artificers. They are an amazing breed, these quiet, rather pale men, in whose hands lie the strength and power of the ship.

‘Just think what they’ve got to stand up to,’ says Twenty-One, with the beautiful justice of youth. ‘ Of course, they are trained at Keyham and all that; but fancy doing your work with an eight-inch steam-pipe in the nape of your neck, an’ a dynamo buzzin’ up your back, an’ the whole blessed shoot whizzin’ round in the pit of your stomach! Then we jump about an’ curse if they don’t give us enough steam. I swear I think they’re no end good men in the engine room!’

If you doubt this, descend by the slippery steel ladders into the bluish copper-smelling haze of hurrying mechanism all crowded under the protective deck; crawl along the greasy foot-plates, and stand with your back against the lengthwise bulkhead that separates the desperately whirling twin engines. Wait under the low-browed supporting- columns till the roar and the quiver has soaked into every nerve of you; till your knees loosen and your heart begins to pump. Feel the floors lift below you to the jar and batter of the defrauded propeller as it draws out of its element. Try now to read the dizzying gauge-needles or find a meaning in the rumbled signals from the bridge. Creep into the stoke-hold — a boiler blistering either ear as you stoop — and taste what tinned air is like for a while. Face the intolerable white glare of the opened furnace doors; get into a bunker and see how they pass coal along and up and down; stand for five minutes with slice and ‘ devil’ to such labour as the stoker endures for four hours.

HIS HOURLY RISK

The gentleman with the little velvet slip between the gold rings on his sleeve does his unnoticed work among these things. If anything goes wrong, if he overlooks a subordinate’s error, he will not be wigged by the Admiral in God’s open air. The bill will be presented to him down here, under the two-inch steel deck, by the Power he has failed to control. He will be peeled, flayed, blinded, or boiled. That is his hourly risk. His duty shifts him from one ship to another, to good smooth and accessible engines, to vicious ones with a long record of deviltry, to lying engines that cannot do their work, to impostors with mysterious heart-breaking weaknesses, to new and untried gear fresh from the contractor’s hands, to boilers that will not make steam, to reducing-valves that will not reduce, and auxiliary engines for distilling or lighting that often give more trouble than the main concern. He must shift his methods for, and project himself into the soul of, each; humouring, adjusting, bullying, coaxing, refraining, risking, and daring as need arises.

Behind him is his own honour and reputation; the honour of his ship and her imperious demands; for there is no excuse in the Navy. If he fails in any one particular he severs just one nerve of the ship’s life. If he fails in all the ship dies — a prisoner to the set of the sea — a gift to the nearest enemy.

And, as I have seen him, he is infinitely patient, resourceful, and unhurried. However it might have been in the old days, when men clung obstinately to sticks and strings and cloths, the newer generation, bred to pole-masts, know that he is the king-pin of their system. Our Assistant-Engineer had been with the engines from the beginning, and one night he told me their story, utterly unconscious that there was anything out of the way in the noble little tale

‘NO END GOOD MEN’

It was his business so to arrange that no single demand from the bridge should go unfulfilled for more than five seconds. To that ideal he toiled unsparingly with his Chief — a black sweating demon in his working hours, and a quiet student of professional papers in his scanty leisure.

‘An’ they come into the ward-room,’says Twenty- One, ‘ and you know they’ve been having a young hell of a time down below, but they never growl at us or get stuffy or anything. No end good men, I swear they are.’

‘Thank you, Twenty-One,’ I said. ‘I’ll let that stand for the whole Navy if you don’t mind ‘

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND

By Rudyard Kipling and C.R.L.Fletcher

Intended as a school text book, Kipling contributed twenty-two original poems to this volume. The book was published in July 1911 in two different formats. One was large and lavishly laid out and priced expensively, while the other was small and relatively cheap, with the different title
A School History of England
. The relative importance attached by Fletcher and Kipling to the two books can be seen from the initial print runs. Only 5000 copies of the expensive
A History of England
were printed, compared to 25,000 copies of the cheaper version which was intended for schools.  It is believed that the purpose of the text book was to persuade children to Fletcher’s particular view of England’s historical development and Kipling’s poems clearly support that view.  The whole text of the expensive version, with the original colour illustrations, are provided in this edition.

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS

CHAPTER II

SAXON ENGLAND

CHAPTER III

THE NORMAN KINGS 1066-1154

CHAPTER IV

HENRY II TO HENRY III, 1154-1272: THE BEGINNINGS OF PARLIAMENT

CHAPTER V

THE THREE EDWARDS, 1272 — 1377

CHAPTER VI

THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES; RICHARD II TO RICHARD III, 1377-1485.

CHAPTER VII

THE TUDORS AND THE AWAKENING OF ENGLAND, 1485 — 1603

CHAPTER VIII

THE EARLY STUARTS AND THE GREAT CIVIL WAR, 1603-60

CHAPTER IX

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION, 1660-1688

CHAPTER X

WILLIAM III TO GEORGE II 1688-1760; THE GROWTH OF EMPIRE

CHAPTER XI

THE AMERICAN REBELLION AND THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 1760-1815; REIGN OF GEORGE III

CHAPTER XII

GEORGE III TO GEORGE V, 1815-1911

CHAPTER I

FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS

The River’s Tale

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew

Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young and the Thames was old,

And this is the tale that the River told:

I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go and I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I’d have you know that these waters of mine

Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the east I went
And England was joined to the Continent.

I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down

Through Regent’s Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way
When he pushed through the forest that

lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.

He was death to feather and fin and fur,
He trapped my beavers at Westminster,
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,

He killed my herons off Lambeth Pier;
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,

Flint or bronze, at my upper fords.

While down at Greenwich for slaves and tin

The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,

Flashed like dragon-flies Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul

and Greek.
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,

And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in —

And that’s where your history books begin!

This is to be a short history of all the people who have lived in the British Islands. I have just counted up over a hundred of these islands on the map, some of them mere rocks, some as big as small counties; besides England with Scotland, and Ireland. But when first there were men in Britain it was not a group of islands, but one stretch of land joining the great continent of Europe, which then reached out into the Atlantic Ocean more than fifty miles west of Ireland. The English Channel, the North Sea, and the Irish Sea were then land through which ran huge European rivers.
The land was covered with forests and swamps and full of wild beasts, some of which have now vanished from the earth, while others, such as the tiger and the elephant, have gone to warmer climates. As for wolves, the land was alive with them. Indeed, the last wolf in Scotland was killed only 240 years ago; the

last in Ireland about 180 years ago. The beaver was one of the commonest animals of those early times, and perhaps helped to make our flat meadows by the dams he built across the streams.

But we know almost nothing about the first men who lived here, except that they were naked and very hairy; they slept in trees and lived on raw flesh or fruit, or dug for roots with crooked branches. After a long while, probably thousands of years, the climate got gradually colder, and great sheets of ice covered all Northern Europe. Then these first men either died out or went away southward.
Again thousands of years passed, and the west end of Europe got freed of ice and sank several hundred feet, and the sea flooded over the lower parts. So Britain became an island or a group of islands.

Then the second race of men came, perhaps in some kind of boats made of skins stretched over bent poles. About this race we do know something. They were jolly, cunning, dark little fellows with long black hair. At first they lived high up on the hills, so that they could see their enemies from a distance. They could cook food, they dug out caves to live in, they made arrows and axes of sharp stones,
and so stood a very fair chance of fighting the wild beasts. Their brains, though perhaps small compared to ours, were worth all the strength of all the beasts that ever howled at night. No doubt they had still something of the beast in them; they could run very swiftly;could climb trees like monkeys; could smell their enemies and their prey far off. They grew up early and died young. Most of their children died in infancy. They clothed themselves in skins, and at first lived entirely by hunting and fishing. Their whole time was devoted to getting food for themselves and their families. But just think what a lot of things they had to make for themselves. How long it must have taken to polish a piece of flint until it was sharp enough to cut down a tree or to cut up a tough old wolf! How long to make a fish-hook or a needle of bone! How clever and hard-working these men must have been! No doubt there were a few sneaks and lazy wretches then, as there are now, who tried to beg from other people instead of fighting for themselves and their wives. But I fancy such fellows had a worse time of it then than they have now. A man who wouldn’t work very soon died.