‘Ah! The Guadala. She have misconstrued you for a slaver possibly. How are the Guadala?’
‘Mistook a ship of Her Majesty’s navy for a slaver! You mistake any craft for a slaver. Bai Jove, sir, I’ve a good mind to hang you at the yard-arm!’
There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick in the rack of Judson’s cabin. The Governor, looked at the one mast and smiled a deprecating smile.
‘The position is embarrassment,’ he said. ‘Captain, do you think those illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give them beer.’
‘Never mind the traders, I want an explanation.’
‘Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain — in my country.’ His eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
‘What has that to do with — ’
‘Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But I,’ — here he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled — ’I am loyalist to pits of all my stomachs.’
‘Go on,’ said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
‘An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to collect of the taximent from the traders when she are come here necessarily. That was on account of political understandings with your country and mine. But to that arrangement there was no money also. Not one damn little cowrie! I desire damnably to extend all commercial things, and why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion — yes, I tell you — Republics in my country for to just begin. You do not believe? See some time how it exist. I cannot make this custom-houses and pay so the high-paid officials. The people too in my country they say the King she has no regardance into Honour of her nation. He throw away everything — Gladstone her all, you say, hey?’
‘Yes, that’s what we say,’ said Judson with a grin.
‘Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I — I am loyalist to all my hands’ ends. Captain, once I was attaché at Mexico. I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her stomach high. They desire — they desire — Oh, course for the bills.’
‘What on earth is that?’
‘The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for see bloody-row. Do I make my comprehension?’
‘A run for their money — is that what you mean? Gad, you’re a sporting Governor!’
‘So I say. I am loyalist too.’ He smiled more easily. ‘Now how can anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the Company’s mens she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is, quite correct. My army he says it will Republic and shoot me off upon walls if I have not give her blood. An army, Captain, are terrible in her angries — especialment when she are not paid. I know too,’ here he laid his hand on Judson’s shoulder, ‘I know too we are old friends. Yes! Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d’Onor — time ever since; and a little, little cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is good for my King. More sit her tight on throne behind, you see? Now,’ he waved his free hand round the decayed village, ‘I say to my armies, Fight! Fight the Company’s men when she come, but fight not so very strong that you are any dead. It is all in the raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No? Perhaps your father then? So you see no one are dead, and we fight a fight, and it is all in the raporta, to please the people in our country; and my armies they do not put me against the walls, you see?’
‘Yes; but the Guadala. She fired on us. Was that part of your game, my joker?’
‘The Guadala. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big fool. But I thought she have gone down the coast. Those your gunboats poke her nose and shove her oar in every place. How is Guadala?’
‘On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off.’
‘There are any deads?’
‘No.’
The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. ‘There are no deads here. So you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done. Captain, you talk to the Company’s mens. I think they are not pleased.’
‘Naturally.’
‘They have no senses. I thought to go backwards again they would. I leave her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay and come facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must conquer much in all these battles, or the King, he is kicked off her throne. Now we have won this battle — this great battle,’ he waved his arms abroad, ‘and I think you will say so that we have won, Captain. You are loyalist also? You would not disturb to the peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you this. Your Queen she know too. She would not fight her cousin. It is a — a hand-up thing.’
‘What?’
‘Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?’
‘Put-up job?’
‘Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta!’
Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
‘But look here, Governor,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve got to think of other things than your riots in Europe. You’ve fired on our flag.’
‘Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and also,’ he drew himself up to his full height, ‘we are both brave men of bravest countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,’ here he uncovered, ‘and of our Queen,’ here he bowed low. ‘Now, Captain, you shall shell my palace and I will be your prisoner.’
‘Skittles!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson. ‘I can’t shell that old hencoop.’
‘Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the best she manufac.’
He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the quarter-deck of a gunboat.
‘I’ll put my men to build him a custom-house,’ said the head of the Pioneers gasping. ‘We’ll make him one decent road at least. That Governor ought to be knighted. I’m glad now that we didn’t fight ‘em in the open, or we’d have killed some of them. So he’s won great battles, has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I’m coming to dinner. You haven’t such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven’t seen one for six months.’
That evening there was a dinner in the village — a general and enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor’s house, and whose tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson’s best Vanderhum, which is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange- peel and spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the flag of truce) the Governor had given the whole of his governorship and its appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson’s grandfather in the Peninsular War; and once to the head of the Pioneers, in consideration of that gentleman’s good friendship. After the negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the English arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of killed and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Governor from under his cocked hat, ‘the peace of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the Golden Hide. She shall go by the Guadala.’
‘Great Heavens!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, flushed but composed, ‘That reminds me that I’ve left that boat stuck on her broadside down the river. I must go down and soothe the commandante. He’ll be blue with rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A picnic, you understand.’
‘Ya — as: everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my prisoner, but I am a good gaoler. We shall picn
ic on the river, and we shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners.’
‘I do hope,’ said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah into the roaring village, ‘that my chaps won’t set the town alight by accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency, the most illustrious Governor!’
Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in their arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that they sang bade them, ‘Swing, swing together, their body between their knees’; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that they were anything but ‘steady from stroke to bow.’ His Excellency the Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.
‘Good-night and good-bye,’ said the head of the Pioneers to Judson. ‘I’d give you my card if I had it, but I’m so damned drunk I hardly know my own Club. Oh yes! It’s the Travellers. If ever we meet in town, remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We’re all right in the open, now. I s’pose you’ll return the Governor some time. This is a political crisis. Good-night.’
The flat-iron went down-stream through the dark. The Governor slept on deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and why he did not run into each bank many times, that officer does not remember. Mr. Davies did not note anything unusual, for there are two ways of taking too much, and Judson was only ward-room, not fo’c’s’le drunk. As the night grew colder the Governor woke up, and expressed a desire for whisky and soda. When that came they were nearly abreast of the stranded Guadala, and His Excellency saluted the flag that he could not see with loyal and patriotic strains.
‘They do not see. They do not hear,’ he cried. ‘Ten thousand saints! They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!’
He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded, pulled the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the full charge behind a common shell. That shell, mercifully, just missed the stern of the Guadala, and burst on the bank. ‘Now you shall salute your Governor,’ said he, as he heard feet running in all directions within the iron skin. ‘Why you demand so base a quarter? I am here with all my prisoners.’
In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his reassurances were not heard.
‘Captain,’ said a grave voice from the ship, ‘we have surrendered. Is it the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship?’
‘Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You shall be ate by wild ants — flog and drowned! Throw me a balcony. It is I, the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson of my soul, ascend her inside, and send me a bed, for I am sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple time kill that captain!’
‘Oh!’ said the voice in the darkness, ‘I begin to comprehend.’ And a rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with Judson at his heels.
‘Now we will enjoy executions,’ said the Governor on the deck. ‘All these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not drunk, why are so sloping the boards which do not support?’
The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency sat down, slid to leeward, and fell asleep again.
The captain of the Guadala bit his moustache furiously, and muttered in his own tongue ‘“This land is the father of great villains and the step-father of honest men.” You see our material, Captain. It is so everywhere with us. You have killed some of the rats, I hope?’
‘Not a rat,’ said Judson genially.
‘That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men, but our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank through your English treachery.’
‘Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size without a word of warning when you knew that the countries were at peace is treachery enough in a small way.’
‘If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the bottom, all of you. I would have taken the risk with my Government. By that time it would have been — ’
‘A Republic. So you really did mean fighting on your own hook! You’re rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like yours. Well, what are you going to do now?’
‘Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken cat’ — he pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept — ’is here. I must take him back to his hole.’
‘Very good. I’ll tow you off at daylight if you get steam up.’
‘Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you.’
‘Humbug! You’ll have lunch with me, and then you’ll take the Governor up the river.’
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: ‘Let us drink. What must be, must be, and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsular. You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a mud-dredger?’
‘Oh, we’ll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.’
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing off the Guadala began. With the help of her own engines, and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud bank sideways into deep water, the flat-iron immediately under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the captain’s cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor. He was uneasily conscious that he might perhaps have exceeded his powers, and the captain of the Guadala, in spite of all his patriotic sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between the two countries. He did not need the Governor’s repeated reminders that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.
‘We have satisfied our honour,’ said the Governor in confidence. ‘Our army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! He is a boy. He will call this a — a — Judson of my soul, how you say this is — all this affairs which have transpirated between us?’
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead. ‘Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat’s all right, captain. When will you come to lunch?’
‘I told you,’ said the Governor, ‘it would be a larque to him.’
‘Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?’ said the captain. ‘We shall be happy to come when you will. Indeed, we have no other choice,’ he added bitterly.
‘Not at all,’ said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four shot blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. ‘It is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency’s guns knocked us about.’
‘Senor Capitan,’ said the Governor pityingly, ‘that is very sad. You are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?’
‘You couldn’t spare us a little paint, could you? I’d like to patch up a little after the — action,’ said Judson meditatively, fingering his upper lip to hide a smile.
‘Our storeroom is at your disposition,’ said the captain of the Guadala, and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray paint make a big show.
‘Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare — to spare, remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our freeboard tint.’
‘Oh yes. I’ll spare them,’ said Mr. Davies savagely. ‘I don’t understand this how-d’you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop of the other, in a manner o’ speaking! By all rights, they’re our lawful prize, after a manner o’ sayin’.’
The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer them, but what he had was given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a little warmed — the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive — he explain
ed quite casually over the opening of a bottle that it would not be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave fashion.
‘When my decks are cut up’ (there was one groove across four planks), ‘and my plates buckled’ (there were five lead patches on three plates), ‘and I meet such a boat as the Guadala, and a mere accident saves me from being blown out of the water — ’
‘Yes. Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal buoy has been lost,’ said the captain of the Guadala.
‘Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but go away — if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the sea- voyage. It is very sad.’ Judson had compromised on what he knew of the French tongue as a medium of communication.
‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, waving a generous hand. ‘Judson of my soul, the coal is yours and you shall be repaired — yes, repaired all over, of your battle’s wounds. You shall go with all the honours of all the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall beat. Your, ah! — jolly-boys shall spoke their bayonets! Is it not so, Captain?’
‘As you say, Excellency. But those traders in the town. What of them?’
The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite remember what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him overnight. Judson interrupted swiftly: ‘His Excellency has set them to forced works on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a custom-house. When that is done they will be released, I hope, Excellency.’
‘Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my heart.’ Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns, while Mr. Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank and the shot-marks on the deck and the bowplates.
‘Oh, this is too bad,’ said Judson when they went on deck. ‘That idiot has exceeded his instructions, but — but you must let me pay for this!’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 265