‘Could you make out where you were by then?’ Baeticus asked Quabil.
‘As soon as I saw the people on the beach – yes. They are my sort – a little removed. Phoenicians by blood. It was Malta – one day’s run from Syracuse, where I would have been safe! Yes, Malta and my wheat gruel. Good port-of-discharge, eh?’
They smiled, for Melita may mean ‘mash’ as well as ‘Malta’.
‘It puddled the sea all round us, while I was trying to get my bearings. But my lids were salt-gummed, and I hiccoughed like a drunkard.’
‘And drunk you most gloriously were, Red, half an hour later!’
‘Praise the Gods – and for once your pet Paul! That little man came to me on the fore-bitts, puffed like a pigeon, and pulled out a breastful of bread, and salt fish, and the wine – the good new wine. “Eat,” he said, “and make all your people eat, too. Nothing will come to them except another wetting. They won’t notice that, after they’re full. Don’t worry about your work either,” he said. “You can’t go wrong today. You are promised to me.” And then he went off to Sulinor.’
‘He did. He came to me with bread and wine and bacon – good they were! But first he said words over them, and then rubbed his hands with his wet sleeves. I asked him if he were a magician. “Gods forbid!” he said. “I am so poor a soul that I flinch from touching dead pig.” As a Jew, he wouldn’t like pork, naturally. Was that before or after our people broke into the store-room, Red?’
‘Had I time to wait on them?’ Quabil snorted. ‘I know they gutted my stores full-hand, and a double blessing of wine atop. But we all took that – deep. Now this is how we lay.’ Quabil smeared a ragged loop on the table with a wine-wet finger. ‘Reefs – see, my son – and overfalls to leeward here; something that loomed like a point of land on our right there; and, ahead, the blind gut of a bay with a Cyclops surf hammering it. How we had got in was a miracle. Beaching was our only chance, and meantime she was settling like a tired camel. Every foot I could lighten her meant that she’d take ground closer in at the last. I told Julius. He understood. “I’ll keep order,” he aid. “Get the passengers to shift the wheat as long as you judge it’s safe.” ’
‘Did those Alexandrian achatours21 really work?’ said Baeticus.
‘I’ve never seen cargo discharged quicker. It was time. The wind was taking off in gusts, and the rain was putting down the swells. I made out a patch of beach that looked less like death than the rest of the arena, and I decided to drive in on a gust under the spitfire-sprit – and, if she answered her helm before she died on us, to humour her a shade to starboard, where the water looked better. I stayed the foremast; set the spritsail fore and aft, as though we were boarding; told Sulinor to have the rudders down directly he cut the cables; waited till a gust came; squared away the sprit, and drove.’
Sulinor carried on promptly: –
‘I had two hands with axes on each cable, and one on each rudder-lift; and, believe me, when Quabil’s pipe went, both blades were down and turned before the cable-ends had fizzed under! She jumped like a stung cow! She drove. She sheared. I think the swell lifted her, and overran. She came down, and struck aft. Her stern broke off under my toes, and all the guts of her at that end slid out like a man’s paunched by a lion. I jumped forward, and told Quabil there was nothing but small kindlings abaft the quarter-hatch, and he shouted: “Never mind! Look how beautifully I’ve laid her!” ’
‘I had. What I took for a point of land to starboard, y’see, turned out to be almost a bridge-islet, with a swell of sea ’twixt it and the main. And that meeting-swill, d’you see, surging in as she drove, gave her four or five foot more to cushion on. I’d hit the exact instant.’
‘Luck of the Gods, I think! Then we began to bustle our people over the bows before she went to pieces. You’ll admit Paul was a help there, Red?’
‘I dare say he herded the old judies well enough; but he should have lined up with his own gang.’
‘He did that, too,’ said Sulinor. ‘Some fool of an under-officer had discovered that prisoners must be killed if they look like escaping; and he chose that time and place to put it to Julius – sword drawn. Think of hunting a hundred prisoners to death on those decks! It would have been worse than the Beasts!’
‘But Julius saw – Julius saw it,’ Quabil spoke testily. ‘I heard him tell the man not to be a fool. They couldn’t escape further than the beach.’
‘And how did your philosopher take that?’ said Baeticus.
‘As usual,’ said Sulinor. ‘But, you see, we two had dipped our hands in the same dish for weeks; and, on the River, that makes an obligation between man and man.’
‘In my country also,’ said Baeticus, rather stiffly.
‘So I cleared my dirk – in case I had to argue. Iron always draws iron with me. But he said: “Put it back. They are a little scared.” I said: “Aren’t you?” “What?” he said; “of being killed, you mean? No. Nothing can touch me till I’ve seen Caesar.” Then he carried on steadying the ironed men (some were slavering-mad) till it was time to unshackle them by fives, and give ’em their chance. The natives made a chain through the surf, and snatched them out breast-high.’
‘Not a life lost! Like stepping off a jetty,’ Quabil proclaimed.
‘Not quite. But he had promised no one should drown.’
‘How could they – the way I had laid her – gust and swell and swill together?’
‘And was there any salvage?’
‘Neither stick nor string, my son. We had time to look, too. We stayed on the island till the first spring ship sailed for Port of Rome. They hadn’t finished Ostia breakwater that year.’
‘And, of course, Caesar paid you for your ship?’
‘I made no claim. I saw it would be hopeless; and Julius, who knew Rome, was against any appeal to the authorities. He said that was the mistake Paul was making. And, I suppose, because I did not trouble them, and knew a little about the sea, they offered me the Port Inspectorship here. There’s no money in it – if I were a poor man. Marseilles will never be a port again. Narbo has ruined her for good.’
‘But Marseilles is far from under-Lebanon,’22 Baeticus suggested.
‘The further the better. I lost my boy three years ago in Foul Bay, off Berenice, with the Eastern Fleet. He was rather like you about the eyes, too. You and your circumcised apes!’
‘But – honoured one! My Master! Admiral! – Father mine – how could I have guessed?’
The young man leaned forward to the other’s knee in act to kiss it. Quabil made as though to cuff him, but his hand came to rest lightly on the bowed head.
‘Nah! Sit, lad! Sit back. It’s just the thing the Boy would have said himself. You didn’t hear it, Sulinor?’
‘I guessed it had something to do with the likeness as soon as I set eyes on him. You don’t so often go out of your way to help lame ducks.’
‘You can see for yourself she needs undergirting, Mango!’
‘So did that Tyrian tub last month. And you told her she might bear up for Narbo or bilge for all of you! But he shall have his working-party tomorrow, Red.’
Baeticus renewed his thanks. The River man cut him short.
‘Luck of the Gods,’ he said. ‘Five – four – years ago I might have been waiting for you anywhere in the Long Puddle with fifty River men – and no moon.’
Baeticus lifted a moist eye to the slip-hooks on his yard-arm, that could hoist and drop weights at a sign.
‘You might have had a pig or two of ballast through your benches coming alongside,’ he said dreamily.
‘And where would my overhead-nettings have been?’ the other chuckled.
‘Blazing – at fifty yards. What are fire-arrows for?’
‘To fizzle and stink on my wet seaweed blindages. Try again.’
They were shooting their fingers at each other, like the little boys gambling for olive-stones on the quay beside them.
‘Go on – go on, my son! Don’t let that p
irate board,’ cried Quabil.
Baeticus twirled his right hand very loosely at the wrist.
‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘I should have fallen back on my fosterkin – my father’s island horsemen.’
Sulinor threw up an open palm.
‘Take the nuts,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true that those infernal Balearic slingers of yours can turn a bull by hitting him on the horns?’
‘On either horn you choose. My father farms near New Carthage. They come over to us for the summer to work. There are ten in my crew now.’
Sulinor hiccoughed and folded his hands magisterially over his stomach.
‘Quite proper. Piracy must be put down! Rome says so. I do so,’ said he.
‘I see,’ the younger man smiled. ‘But tell me, why did you leave the slave – the Euxine trade, O Strategos?’
‘That sea is too like a wine-skin. Only one neck. It made mine ache. So I went into the Egyptian run with Quabil here.’
‘But why take service in the Fleet? Surely the Wheat pays better?’
‘I intended to. But I had dysentery at Malta that winter, and Paul looked after me.’
‘Too much muttering and laying-on of hands for me,’ said Quabil; himself muttering about some Thessalian jugglery with a snake23 on the island.
‘You weren’t sick, Quabil. When I was getting better, and Paul was washing me off once, he asked if my citizenship were in order. He was a citizen himself. Well, it was and it was not. As second of a wheat-ship I was ex officio Roman citizen – for signing bills and so forth. But on the beach, my ship perished, he said I reverted to my original shtay – status – of an extra-provinshal Dacian by a Sich – Sish – Scythian – I think she was – mother. Awkward – what? All the Middle Sea echoes like a public bath if a man is wanted.’
Sulinor reached out again and filled. The wine had touched his huge bulk at last.
‘But, as I was saying, once in the Fleet nowadays one is a Roman with authority – no waiting twenty years for your papers. And Paul said to me: “Serve Caesar. You are not canvas I can cut24 to advantage at present. But if you serve Caesar you will be obeying at least some sort of law.” He talked as though I were a barbarian. Weak as I was, I could have snapped his back with my bare hands. I told him so. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But that is neither here nor there. If you take refuge under Caesar at sea, you may have time to think. Then I may meet you again, and we can go on with our talks. But that is as The God wills. What concerns you now is that, by taking service, you will be free from the fear that has ridden you all your life.” ’
‘Was he right?’ asked Baeticus after a silence.
‘He was. I had never spoken to him of it, but he knew it. He knew! Fire – sword – the sea – torture even – one does not think of them too often. But not the Beasts! Aie! Not the Beasts! I fought two dog-wolves for the life on a sand-bar when I was a youngster. Look!’
Sulinor showed his neck and chest.
‘They set the sheep-dogs on Paul at some place or other once – because of his philosophy! And he was going to see Caesar – going to see Caesar! And he – he had washed me clean after dysentery!’
‘Mother of Carthage, you never told me that!’ said Quabil.
‘Nor should I now, had the wine been weaker.’
Notes
In compiling these notes, I have frequently consulted The New Reader’s Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling (abbreviated as NRG), general editor, John Radcliffe (http://www.kipling.org.uk/): and E. W. Martindell’s Bibliography of the Works of Rudyard Kipling 1881–1923 (Bodley Head, 1923). For the early stories, I have also used Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell (eds.), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases (1886; repr. 1996) a useful guide for Anglo-Indian terms of Kipling’s time in India. I am also deeply grateful to John Walker, librarian of the Kipling Society, for his help.
THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS
First published in the Civil and Military Gazette, 26 September 1884; collected in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
1. pice: Smallest Indian coin: one-quarter of an anna, one-sixty-fourth of a rupee (Hobson-Jobson); equivalent to about 3p today.
2. Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste: A Eurasian of Portuguese descent.
3. the Mosque of Wazir Khan: A seventeenth-century mosque near Delhi Gate, Lahore.
4. pukka: Substantial, first-class (from Hindi pakka; Hobson-Jobson).
5. chandoo-khanas: Opium dens, from chandoo: extract or preparation of opium; khana house or room (NRG).
6. Joss: Idol or household god (pidgin, from Portuguese Deus;Hobson-Jobson).
7. Babus: ‘Baboo: a native clerk who writes English’ (Hobson-Jobson).
8. bazar-woman: Prostitute.
9. MacSomebody: McIntosh Jelulladin, who appears in ‘To Be Filed For Reference’ (Plain Tales from the Hills).
10. ‘first-chop’: Best quality (pidgin; Hobson-Jobson).
IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
First published in the Civil and Military Gazette, 30 April 1886; collected in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
1. Churel: The malignant ghost of a woman who died in childbed.
2. ghoul: Goblin or man-devouring demon (Hobson-Jobson).
3. Taksali Gate: Gate in the West Wall of Lahore (NRG).
4. seal-cutting: Engraving signet rings and seals.
5. Bareilly: Town 150 miles east of Delhi (NRG).
6. adulterator: Man who dilutes goods with something inferior.
7. ekka: Unsprung cart pulled by one pony (Hobson-Jobson).
8. Ranjit Singh’s Tomb: Outside Lahore fort (NRG).
9. Huzuri Bagh: Garden nearby (NRG).
10. Sirkar: Government of India (NRG).
11. the Empress of India: Queen Victoria.
12. jadoo: Conjuring (Hobson-Jobson).
13. between one hundred and two hundred rupees: A substantial sum, about six months’ pay for a house servant. Kipling’s starting salary on the Civil and Military Gazette was 150 rupees per month.
14. hookahs: Water-cooled tobacco pipes (Hobson-Jobson).
15. a thermantidote-paddle: Blade of a rotating fan fitted in a window-opening and encased in wet cloths, used in British India to drive in a current of cooled air.
16. Poe’s account of the voice that came from the mesmerised dying man: See Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar’ (1845).
17. teraphim: Idols and images: objects of reverence or divination.
18. Lazarus: Dead man brought to life by Jesus (John 11: 1–46).
19. bunnia: Money-lender (banyan, Hobson-Jobson).
THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES
First published in Quartette, a ‘Christmas annual’ supplement of work by Kipling, his parents and sister, in the Civil and Military Gazette, December 1885; collected in The Phantom ’Rickshaw, no.5 of the Indian Railway Library series (1888), and in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (1895).
1. Bikanir: Rajput state, much of which is desert.
2. C-spring barouches: Luxurious sprung carriages.
3. Minton tiles: An expensive brand of ceramic tiles manufactured by the firm of Minton, Stoke-on-Trent.
4. Pakpattan: Capital of a small province in the Punjab, now part of Pakistan (NRG).
5. Mubarakpur: City in Uttar Pradesh, India (NRG).
6. in terrorem: ‘In order to frighten’: to warn (Latin).
7. persuaders: Spurs.
8. cob: A short-legged, stout horse.
9. antlion: Insect of the genus Myrmelon, whose larva hunts by digging a pit in sand and waiting there for ants to fall in.
10. terra firma: firm ground, dry land (Latin).
11. Martini-Henry ‘picket’: Long bullet fired by breech-loading ‘Martini-Henry’ rifle, used by the British Army from 1871 to 1888.
12. fakirs: Ascetic beggar-priests (Hobson-Jobson).
13. Sahib: Lord, Master: honorific used by colonial Indians to address Europeans.
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14. a Deccanee Brahmin: Member of a priestly caste, from the south (Hobson-Jobson).
15. Caste-mark: Mark on the forehead indicating caste.
16. continuations: Trousers (slang).
17. ghat: Hindu funeral pyre (Hobson-Jobson).
18. Okara Station: City in the Punjab, now Pakistan (NRG).
19. tiffin: Light luncheon (Hobson-Jobson).
20. Rs.9-8-5: Equivalent to £33.37 today. A rupee was a silver coin, the equivalent of one shilling in Victorian England, worth £3.50 or $ US 5 in contemporary currency. The anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee; a pie (pl. pice) one-quarter of an anna.
21. as bakshish: For tipping.
22. chapatti: Flat Indian bread.
23. nausea of the Channel passage: Seasickness when crossing the English Channel, which can be very rough.
24. women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves: In Greek mythology, the Fates were represented as old women.
25. videlicet: Namely (Latin).
26. canon: Law.
27. The crew of the ill-fated Mignonette: In July 1884 the three-man crew of the wrecked yacht Mignonette, having escaped in a dinghy without water, cut the cabin-boy’s throat and drank his blood. They were later convicted of murder.
28. bents: Reeds.
29. greatest good of greatest number is political maxim: ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation’: Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher (1748–1832).
30. Feringhi: A derogatory term for an European in India (Hobson-Jobson).
31. Vishnu: ‘The Preserver’; Hindu deity, second in the triad Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, representing the supreme spirit.
32. punkah-ropes: A punkah was a large swinging fan suspended from a ceiling, pulled by a coolie.
LISPETH
First published in Civil and Military Gazette, 29 November 1886; collected in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
1. Kotgarh: Town 30 miles east of Simla on the Tibet road (NRG).
2. pahari: Mountainous or hilly, sometimes ‘hard’ (NRG).
3. Moravian missionaries: The Moravians were a Protestant sect from Saxony, responsible for the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement.
The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling Page 76