Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (629 page)

     (All round the Sands!)

     ‘If there’s a risk which you can make

     That’s worse than he was used to take

     Nigh every week in the way of his business;

     (All round the Sands!)

     ‘If there’s a trick that you can try

     Which he hasn’t met in time gone by,

     Not once or twice, but ten times over;

     (All round the Sands!)

     ‘If you can teach him aught that’s new,

       (A-hay O!  To me O!)

     I’ll give you Bruges and Niewport too,

     And the ten tall churches that stand between ‘em.’

     Storm along, my gallant Captains!

       (All round the Horn!)

THE TREE OF JUSTICE

The Ballad of Minepit Shaw

     About the time that taverns shut

       And men can buy no beer,

     Two lads went up by the keepers’ hut

       To steal Lord Pelham’s deer.

     Night and the liquor was in their heads —

       They laughed and talked no bounds,

     Till they waked the keepers on their beds,

       And the keepers loosed the hounds.

     They had killed a hart, they had killed a hind,

       Ready to carry away,

     When they heard a whimper down the wind

       And they heard a bloodhound bay.

     They took and ran across the fern,

       Their crossbows in their hand,

     Till they met a man with a green lantern

       That called and bade ‘em stand.

     ‘What are you doing, O Flesh and Blood,

       And what’s your foolish will,

     That you must break into Minepit Wood

       And wake the Folk of the Hill?’

     ‘Oh, we’ve broke into Lord Pelham’s park,

       And killed Lord Pelham’s deer,

     And if ever you heard a little dog bark

       You’ll know why we come here!’

     ‘We ask you let us go our way,

       As fast as we can flee,

     For if ever you heard a bloodhound bay,

       You’ll know how pressed we be.’

     ‘Oh, lay your crossbows on the bank

       And drop the knife from your hand,

     And though the hounds are at your flank

       I’ll save you where you stand!’

     They laid their crossbows on the bank,

       They threw their knives in the wood,

     And the ground before them opened and sank

       And saved ‘em where they stood.

     ‘Oh, what’s the roaring in our ears

       That strikes us well-nigh dumb?’

     ‘Oh, that is just how things appears

       According as they come.’

     ‘What are the stars before our eyes

       That strike us well-nigh blind?’

     ‘Oh, that is just how things arise

       According as you find.’

     ‘And why’s our bed so hard to the bones

       Excepting where it’s cold?’

     ‘Oh, that’s because it is precious stones

       Excepting where ‘tis gold.

     ‘Think it over as you stand

       For I tell you without fail,

     If you haven’t got into Fairyland

       You’re not in Lewes Gaol.’

     All night long they thought of it,

       And, come the dawn, they saw

     They’d tumbled into a great old pit,

       At the bottom of Minepit Shaw.

     And the keepers’ hound had followed ‘em close

       And broke her neck in the fall;

     So they picked up their knives and their cross-bows

       And buried the dog.  That’s all.

     But whether the man was a poacher too

       Or a Pharisee so bold —

     I reckon there’s more things told than are true,

       And more things true than are told.

The Tree of Justice

It was a warm, dark winter day with the Sou’-West wind singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months’ job in the Rough at the back of Pound’s Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf Still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of Pound’s Wood, and heard a horse’s feet just as they came to the beech where Ridley the keeper hangs up the vermin. The poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches — some perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips.

‘Three more owls,’ said Dan, counting. ‘Two stoats, four jays, and a kestrel. That’s ten since last week. Ridley’s a beast.’

‘In my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.’ Sir Richard Dalyngridge reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind them. [This is the Norman knight they met the year before in PUCK OF POOK’S HILL. See ‘Young Men at the Manor,’ ‘The Knights of the Joyous Venture,’ and ‘Old Men at Pevensey,’ in that book.] ‘What play do you make?’he asked.

‘Nothing, Sir. We’re looking for old Hobden,’Dan replied.’He promised to get us a sleeper.’

‘Sleeper? A DORMEUSE, do you say?’

‘Yes, a dormouse, Sir.’ ‘I understand. I passed a woodman on the low grounds. Come!’ He wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old Hobden would turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before spring. The old man was as busy as a beaver.

Something laughed beneath a thorn, and Puck stole out, his finger on his lip.

‘Look!’ he whispered. ‘Along between the spindle-trees. Ridley has been there this half-hour.’

The children followed his point, and saw Ridley the keeper in an old dry ditch, watching Hobden as a cat watches a mouse.

‘Huhh!’ cried Una. ‘Hobden always ‘tends to his wires before breakfast. He puts his rabbits into the faggots he’s allowed to take home. He’ll tell us about ‘em tomorrow.’

‘We had the same breed in my day,’ Sir Richard replied, and moved off quietly, Puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the close-trimmed beech stuff.

‘What did you do to them?’ said Dan, as they repassed Ridley’s terrible tree.

‘That!’ Sir Richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls.

‘Not he!’ said Puck. ‘There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.’

‘I — I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?’ He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He walked as though all the woods belonged to him. ‘I have often told my friends,’ he went on, ‘that Red William the King was not the only Norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.’

‘D’you mean William Rufus?’said Dan.

‘Yes,’ said Puck, kicking a clump of red toad-stools off a dead log.

‘For example, there was a knight new from Normandy,’ Sir Richard went on, ‘to whom Henry our King granted a manor in Kent near by. He chose to hang his forester’s son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to pleasure the King.’

‘Now when would that be?’ said Puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully.

‘The summer of the year King Henry broke his brother Robert of Normandy at Tenchebrai fight. Our ships were even then at Pevensey loading for the war.’

‘What happened to the knight?’Dan asked.

‘They found him pinned to an ash, three arrows through his leather coat. I should have worn mail that day.’

‘And did you see him all bloody?’Dan continued.

‘Nay, I was with De Aquila at Pevensey, counting horseshoes, and arrow-sheaves, and ale-barrels into the holds of the ships. The army only waited for our King to lead them against Robert in Normandy, but he sent word to De Aquila that he would hunt with him here before he set out for France.’

‘Why did the King want to hunt so particularly?’ Una demanded.

‘If he had gone straight to France after the Kentish knight was killed, men would have said he feared being slain like the knight. It was his duty to show himself debonair to his English people as it was De Aquila’s duty to see that he took no harm while he did it, But it was a great burden! De Aquila, Hugh, and I ceased work on the ships, and scoured all the Honour of the Eagle — all De Aquila’s lands — to make a fit, and, above all, a safe sport for our King. Look!’

The ride twisted, and came out on the top of Pound’s Hill Wood. Sir Richard pointed to the swells of beautiful, dappled Dallington, that showed like a woodcock’s breast up the valley. ‘Ye know the forest?’ said he.

‘You ought to see the bluebells there in Spring!’ said Una. ‘I have seen,’ said Sir Richard, gazing, and stretched out his hand. ‘Hugh’s work and mine was first to move the deer gently from all parts into Dallington yonder, and there to hold them till the King came. Next, we must choose some three hundred beaters to drive the deer to the stands within bowshot of the King. Here was our trouble! In the mellay of a deer-drive a Saxon peasant and a Norman King may come over-close to each other. The conquered do not love their conquerors all at once. So we needed sure men, for whom their village or kindred would answer in life, cattle, and land if any harm come to the King. Ye see?’

‘If one of the beaters shot the King,’ said Puck, ‘Sir Richard wanted to be able to punish that man’s village. Then the village would take care to send a good man.’

‘So! So it was. But, lest our work should be too easy, the King had done such a dread justice over at Salehurst, for the killing of the Kentish knight (twenty-six men he hanged, as I heard), that our folk were half mad with fear before we began. It is easier to dig out a badger gone to earth than a Saxon gone dumb-sullen. And atop of their misery the old rumour waked that Harold the Saxon was alive and would bring them deliverance from us Normans. This has happened every autumn since Santlache fight.’

‘But King Harold was killed at Hastings,’said Una.

‘So it was said, and so it was believed by us Normans, but our Saxons always believed he would come again. That rumour did not make our work any more easy.’

Sir Richard strode on down the far slope of the wood, where the trees thin out. It was fascinating to watch how he managed his long spurs among the lumps of blackened ling.

‘But we did it!’ he said. ‘After all, a woman is as good as a man to beat the woods, and the mere word that deer are afoot makes cripples and crones young again. De Aquila laughed when Hugh told him over the list of beaters. Half were women; and many of the rest were clerks — Saxon and Norman priests.

‘Hugh and I had not time to laugh for eight days, till De Aquila, as Lord of Pevensey, met our King and led him to the first shooting-stand — by the Mill on the edge of the forest. Hugh and I — it was no work for hot heads or heavy hands — lay with our beaters on the skirts of Dallington to watch both them and the deer. When De Aquila’s great horn blew we went forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers dusting the under-growth with their staves; and, like as not, between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the sport.’ ‘Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah! Sa-how-ah!’ Puck bellowed without warning, and Swallow bounded forward, ears cocked, and nostrils cracking.

‘Hal-lal-lal-lal-la-hai-ie!’ Sir Richard answered in a high clear shout.

The two voices joined in swooping circles of sound, and a heron rose out of a red osier-bed below them, circling as though he kept time to the outcry. Swallow quivered and swished his glorious tail. They stopped together on the same note.