‘Don’t tell me the English can’t think as quick as the next man when it’s up to them! They lifted ‘em out o’ Flora’s Temple — reverent, but not wastin’ time — whilst I found out what had brought her down. One cylinder was misfirin’. I didn’t stop to fix it. My Renzalaer will hold up on six. We’ve proved that. If her crew had relied on my guarantees, they’d have been half-way home by then, instead of takin’ their seats with hangin’ heads like they was ashamed. They ought to have been ashamed too, playin’ gun-men in a British peer’s park! I took big chances startin’ her without controls, but ‘twas a dead still night an’ a clear run — you saw it — across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed she’d rise before she hit high timber. I set her all I dared for a quick lift. I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she’d be liable to up-end and flop. He didn’t want another inquest on his estate. No, sir! So I had to fix her up in the dark. Ya-as!
‘I took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and I worked her up to full power. My Renzalaer’s no ventilation-fan to pull against. But I climbed out just in time. I’d hitched the signallin’ lamp to her tail so’s we could track her. Otherwise, with my Rush Silencer, we might’s well have shooed an owl out of a barn. She left just that way when we let her go. No sound except the propellers — Whoo-oo-oo! Whoo-oo-oo! There was a dip in the ground ahead. It hid her lamp for a second — but there’s no such thing as time in real life. Then that lamp travelled up the far slope slow — too slow. Then it kinder lifted, we judged. Then it sure was liftin’. Then it lifted good. D’you know why? Our four naked perspirin’ souls was out there underneath her, hikin’ her heavens high. Yes, sir. We did it!... And that lamp kept liftin’ and liftin’. Then she side-slipped! My God, she side-slipped twice, which was what I’d been afraid of all along! Then she straightened up, and went away climbin’ to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got smaller and smaller till we couldn’t track it any more. Then we breathed. We hadn’t breathed any since their arrival, but we didn’t know it till we breathed that time — all together. Then we dug our finger-nails out of our palms an’ came alive again — in instalments.
‘Lundie spoke first. “We therefore commit their bodies to the air,” he says, an’ puts his cap on.
‘“The deep — the deep,” says Walen. “It’s just twenty-three miles to the Channel.”
‘“Poor chaps! Poor chaps!” says Mankeltow. “We’d have had ‘em to dinner if they hadn’t lost their heads. I can’t tell you how this distresses me, Laughton.”
‘“Well, look at here, Arthur,” I says. “It’s only God’s Own Mercy you an’ me ain’t lyin’ in Flora’s Temple now, and if that fat man had known enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin’, Lord Lundie and Walen would have been alongside us.”
‘“I see that,” he says. “But we’re alive and they’re dead, don’t ye know.”
‘“I know it,” I says. “That’s where the dead are always so damned unfair on the survivors.”
‘“I see that too,” he says. “But I’d have given a good deal if it hadn’t happened, poor chaps!”
‘“Amen!” says Lundie. Then? Oh, then we sorter walked back two an’ two to Flora’s Temple an’ lit matches to see we hadn’t left anything behind. Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the first man’s pistol which we’d forgot to return him, lyin’ on the stone bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it — he never touched the trigger — an’, bein’ an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off — spiteful as a rattler!
‘“Look out! They’ll have one of us yet,” says Walen in the dark. But they didn’t — the Lord hadn’t quit being our shepherd — and we heard the bullet zip across the veldt — quite like old times. Ya-as!
‘“Swine!” says Mankeltow.
‘After that I didn’t hear any more “Poor chap” talk.... Me? I never worried about killing my man. I was too busy figurin’ how a British jury might regard the proposition. I guess Lundie felt that way too.
‘Oh, but say! We had an interestin’ time at dinner. Folks was expected whose auto had hung up on the road. They hadn’t wired, and Peters had laid two extra places. We noticed ‘em as soon as we sat down. I’d hate to say how noticeable they were. Mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he’d caught a relaxed throat golfin’) sent for Peters and told him to take those empty places away — if you please. It takes something to rattle Peters. He was rattled that time. Nobody else noticed anything. And now...’
‘Where did they come down?’ I asked, as he rose.
‘In the Channel, I guess. There was nothing in the papers about ‘em. Shall we go into the drawin’-room, and see what these boys and girls are doin?’ But say, ain’t life in England interestin’?”
* * *
REBIRTH
If any God should say
“I will restore
The world her yesterday
Whole as before
My Judgment blasted it” — who would not lift
Heart, eye, and hand in passion o’er the gift?
If any God should will
To wipe from mind
The memory of this ill
Which is mankind
In soul and substance now — who would not bless
Even to tears His loving-tenderness?
If any God should give
Us leave to fly
These present deaths we live,
And safely die
In those lost lives we lived ere we were born —
What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?
For we are what we are —
So broke to blood
And the strict works of war —
So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.
Yet we were what we were,
And, fashioned so,
It pleases us to stare
At the far show
Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
In our own likeness, on the edge of it.
* * *
The Horse Marines
(1911)
The Rt. Hon. R.B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War, was questioned in the House of Commons on April 8th about the rocking-horses which the War Office is using for the purpose of teaching recruits to ride. Lord Ronaldshay asked the War Secretary if rocking-horses were to be supplied to all the cavalry regiments for teaching recruits to ride. ‘The noble Lord,’ replied Mr. Haldane, ‘is doubtless alluding to certain dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory results.’... The mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing tail. It is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. The recruit leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. The rocking-horses are being made at Woolwich. They are quite cheap.
— Daily Paper.
Now Viscount Haldane of Cloan.
My instructions to Mr. Leggatt, my engineer, had been accurately obeyed. He was to bring my car on completion of annual overhaul, from Coventry via London, to Southampton Docks to await my arrival; and very pretty she looked, under the steamer’s side among the railway lines, at six in the morning. Next to her new paint and varnish I was most impressed by her four brand-new tyres.
‘But I didn’t order new tyres,’ I said as we moved away. ‘These are Irresilients, too.’
‘Treble-ribbed,’ said Leggatt. ‘Diamond-stud sheathing.’
‘Then there has been a mistake.’
‘Oh no, sir; they’re gratis.’
The number of motor manufacturers who give away complete sets of treble-ribbed Irresilient tyres is so limited that I believe I asked Leggatt for an explanation.
‘I don’t know that I could very well explain, sir,’ was the answer. ‘It ‘ud come better from Mr. Pyecroft. He’s on leaf at Portsmouth — staying with his uncle. His uncle ‘ad the body all n
ight. I’d defy you to find a scratch on her even with a microscope.’
‘Then we will go home by the Portsmouth road,’ I said.
And we went at those speeds which are allowed before the working-day begins or the police are thawed out. We were blocked near Portsmouth by a battalion of Regulars on the move.
‘Whitsuntide manoeuvres just ending,’ said Leggatt. ‘They’ve had a fortnight in the Downs.’
He said no more until we were in a narrow street somewhere behind Portsmouth Town Railway Station, where he slowed at a green-grocery shop. The door was open, and a small old man sat on three potato-baskets swinging his feet over a stooping blue back.
‘You call that shinin’ ‘em?’ he piped. ‘Can you see your face in ‘em yet? No! Then shine ‘em, or I’ll give you a beltin’ you’ll remember!’
‘If you stop kickin’ me in the mouth perhaps I’d do better,’ said Pyecroft’s voice meekly.
We blew the horn.
Pyecroft arose, put away the brushes, and received us not otherwise than as a king in his own country.
‘Are you going to leave me up here all day?’ said the old man.
Pyecroft lifted him down and he hobbled into the back room.
‘It’s his corns,’ Pyecroft explained. ‘You can’t shine corny feet — and he hasn’t had his breakfast.’
‘I haven’t had mine either,’ I said.
‘Breakfast for two more, uncle,’ Pyecroft sang out.
‘Go out an’ buy it then,’ was the answer, ‘or else it’s half-rations.’
Pyecroft turned to Leggatt, gave him his marketing orders, and despatched him with the coppers.
‘I have got four new tyres on my car,’ I began impressively.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Pyecroft. ‘You have, and I will say’ — he patted my car’s bonnet — ’you earned ‘em.’
‘I want to know why — ,’ I went on.
‘Quite justifiable. You haven’t noticed anything in the papers, have you?’
‘I’ve only just landed. I haven’t seen a paper for weeks.’
‘Then you can lend me a virgin ear. There’s been a scandal in the Junior Service — the Army, I believe they call ‘em.’
A bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. ‘Roast that,’ said the uncle from within.
Pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while I took down the shutters, and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one soft orange.
‘Sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain’t it?’ said Pyecroft.
‘What about my new tyres?’ I insisted.
‘Oh, any amount. But the question is’ — he looked at me steadily — ’is this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?’
‘Strictly a post-mortem,’ said I.
‘That being so,’ said Pyecroft, ‘we can rapidly arrive at facts. Last Thursday — the shutters go behind those baskets — last Thursday at five bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty A.M., your Mr. Leggatt was discovered on Westminster Bridge laying his course for the Old Kent Road.’
‘But that doesn’t lead to Southampton,’ I interrupted.
‘Then perhaps he was swinging the car for compasses. Be that as it may, we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as Jules and me was ong route for Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships — or Navies I should say. Jules was a permissionaire, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a French cassowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party of her trusty and well-beloved petty officers ‘ad been seeing London, chaperoned by the R.C. Chaplain. Jules ‘ad detached himself from the squadron and was cruisin’ on his own when I joined him, in company of copious lady-friends. But, mark you, your Mr. Leggatt drew the line at the girls. Loud and long he drew it.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ I said.
‘You may be. He adopted the puristical formation from the first. “Yes,” he said, when we was annealing him at — but you wouldn’t know the pub — ”I am going to Southampton,” he says, “and I’ll stretch a point to go via Portsmouth; but,” says he, “seeing what sort of one hell of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I do not feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin’ on that kind of ballast as well.” I assure you he considered your interests.’
‘And the girls?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I left that to Jules. I’m a monogomite by nature. So we embarked strictly ong garçong. But I should tell you, in case he didn’t, that your Mr. Leggatt’s care for your interests ‘ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. She was all swathed up like an I-talian baby.’
‘He is careful about his paint-work,’ I said.
‘For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal on the subject. If we’d been Marines he couldn’t have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. However, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth. I’d seldom rejoined my vaisseau ong automobile, avec a fur coat and goggles. Nor ‘ad Jules.’
‘Did Jules say much?’ I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster.
‘That’s where I pitied the pore beggar. He ‘adn’t the language, so to speak. He was confined to heavings and shruggin’s and copious Mong Jews! The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves. And then our Mr. Leggatt drove. He drove.’
‘Was he in a very malleable condition?’
‘Not him! We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. He hadn’t a chance to get more than moist at the edges. After which we went to sleep; and now we’ll go to breakfast.’
We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome. The uncle had added sausages and piles of buttered toast to the kippers. The coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation.
Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. He minded shop while we ate. Pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap in the door. The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man’s commands as he has never jumped to mine.
‘To resoom the post-mortem,’ said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. ‘My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your Mr. Leggatt.’
‘I — I — ’ Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.
‘When you’re wanted aft you’ll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,’ said Pyecroft amiably. ‘It’s clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.’
‘“You count ten,” he says.
‘“Very good, Boy Jones,” I says, “count ‘em,” and I hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he passed, lying face down tryin’ to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. I ought to ‘ave killed him; because he began signalling — rapid and accurate — in a sou’westerly direction. Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.’s little pets take to signallin’. Make a note o’ that! Three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by Scouts — up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots! The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin’ ‘em off his cap, was thanking Heaven he’d covered up the new paint-work with mats. An ‘eroic soul!’
‘Not a scratch on her body,’ said Leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds.
‘And Jules?’ said I.
‘Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him.
‘You told me to bring the mackintosh,’ Leggatt whispered to me.
‘And when I ‘ad ‘em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming dow
n to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off. Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn’t speaking the truth. Eddy said I was tryin’ to sneak into Portsmouth unobserved — unobserved mark you! — and join hands with the enemy. It trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin’ forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn’t count ten points to them in the fray, that they’d have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire — also in short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!’
Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. ‘That umpire,’ he said suddenly, ‘was our Mr. Morshed — a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already made and profited by, if I mistake not.’
‘Their Lawful Occasions,’ Traffics and Discoveries.
‘Oh, was the Navy in it too?’ I said; for I had read of wild doings occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy, Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.
‘The Navy was in it. I was the only one out of it — for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin’ winks at ‘im behind your goggles didn’t arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin’ him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered on the instant. I’ve never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. “Go and guard your blessed road,” he says to the Fratton Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed — ”Pyecroft,” he says, still sotte voce, “what in Hong-Kong are you doing with this dun-coloured sampan?”
‘It was your Mr. Leggatt’s paint-protective matting which caught his eye. She did resemble a sampan, especially about the stern-works. At these remarks I naturally threw myself on ‘is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was quite pleased. “His car!” he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. “I owe ‘im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I’ll keep the car.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 496