Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (200 page)

“‘Wait till you’re shot,” said Father Dennis sweetly. “There’s a time for everything.”

Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a general heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had been lying down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and down the front of their companies.

This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise commandant of highly-strung troops allows them, in seasons of waiting, to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chaunting “Sam Hall,” to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to listen -

We’ll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea,
And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.

“Sing, boys,” said Father Dennis softly. “It looks as if we cared for their Afghan peas.”

Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence by Mulcahy - that Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the chill fear of death upon him.

Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are to herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in this place.

The Saxon in Heaven’s just balance is weighed,
His doom like Belshazzar’s in death has been cast,
And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.

They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A. are better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again. There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves thunderously, thus -

St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

“I’ll speak to you after all’s over,” said Father Dennis authoritatively in Dan’s ear. “What’s the use of confessing to me when you do this foolishness? Dan, you’ve been playing with fire! I’ll lay you more penance in a week than -”

“Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the move; they’ll let us go now!”

The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.

“You’ve got to do it,” said Dan grimly. “Do it decent, anyhow;” and the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope -

From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough
Shall roll to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the
Afghans, whom it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.

“They came down singing,” said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne from village to village the next day. “They continued to sing, and it was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed that there was magic in the aforesaid song.”

Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of
Mulcahy. Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion.
Twice he was heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the
unpaintable inferno of a hotly contested charge.

At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented, while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt, and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan, panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy’s charge.

“Mad,” said Horse Egan critically. “Mad with fear! He’s going straight to his death, an’ shouting’s no use.”

“Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we’ll hit him maybe.”

The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched forward almost before a shot from Dan’s rifle brought down the slayer and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their dead.

“He was given the point, and that was an easy death,” said Horse Egan, viewing the corpse. “But would you ha’ shot him, Danny, if he had lived?”

“He didn’t live, so there’s no sayin’. But I doubt I wud have bekaze of the fun he gave us - let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and we’ll bring him in. Perhaps ‘tis better this way.”

They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one of the younger subalterns said, “That was a good man!”

“Phew,” said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden. “I’m powerful dhry, and this reminds me there’ll be no more beer at all.”

“Fwhy not?” said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself for rest. “Are we not conspirin’ all we can, an’ while we conspire are we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would not let her son’s comrades perish of drouth - if she can be reached at the end of a letter.”

“You’re a janius,” said Horse Egan. “0’ coorse she will not. I wish this crool war was over, an’ we’d get back to canteen. Faith, the Commander-in-chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword- belt for makin’ us work on wather.”

The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan’s opinion. So they made haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was rewarded by unexpected peace. “ We can fight the sons of Adam,” said the tribesmen, “but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment never stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in.” They came in, and “this regiment” withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan Grady.

Excellent as a subordinate, Dan failed altogether as a chief-in- command - possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice of the only man in the regiment who could manufacture more than one kind of handwriting. The same mail that bore to Mulcahy’s mother in New York a letter from the colonel telling her how valiantly her son had fought for the Queen, and how assuredly he would have been recommended for the Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve to say, by that same colonel and all the officers of the regiment, explaining their willingness to do “anything which is contrary to the regulations and all kinds of revolutions” if only a little money could be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who “was unwell at this present time of writing.”

Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San Francisco, with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter. The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then the Second Conspirator - he who believed in “joining hands with the practical branches” - began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity said, “Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We’re left again. Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would, but” - here he laughed afresh - “I’d give considerable to know what was at the back of it all.”

His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady, discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York.

THE MAN WHO WAS

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.

Keep tally - on the gun-butt score
The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
For our dead comrade’s sake.

Ballad.

Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next.

Dirkovitch was a Russian - a Russian of the Russians - who appeared to get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty’s White Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who individually and collectively, with hot whiskey and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner - that foreigner is certain to be a superior man.

The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely - even more than among the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars were “My dear true friends,” “Fellow-soldiers glorious,” and “Brothers inseparable.” He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and the great mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her Majesty’s White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all - from Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines - beautiful Martini-Henry carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy’s camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver - seven and one half pounds’ weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them for family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon - Government must make it good - but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour’s fight, as well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the ground.