G. B. Lancaster

“ Tarson grinned, softly beating the yellow mud from his hands. Well he knew that the wrath of men was ever dearer to little Cortiss than the kiss of woman. But the love of a man's game, such as would hurry the blood in clogging veins and put pride to the lagging step, was dearer yet. And the drought had taken all such from Polson's Camp when it came to knock away the scaffolding of habit and to strip each man naked to the character which he had been building up inside the scaffolding. ”

“ Garsia nodded. He had burrowed enough in these Gallipoli foothills to understand the wickedness of the sandy soil, and the unease of working under conditions which required careful disposition of it over the face of earth.
"The high explosives have been brought up to the mouth of the tunnel," he said. "You'll have to fix the business now, old man. I'm wanted back on the coast somewhere, worse luck!"
In the white moonlight he saw a sudden quiver run over Pat's white, earth-smudged face, and it made his heart jump. For a man who was just an ordinary good fellow, Pat had so far done well. ”

“ Budded moss was close underfoot, with threadlike ferns and glowing berries, and far up, in a red-topped tree, a moko-moko swung and sang, uncaring.
Harry gave his orders, curt and very clear. Then he left the men to cut and lay the green swathe of trees whereon they would later take their fire baptism, and called up Thompson.
"You'll take a couple of bullocks down with a sled," he said, "and bring back tea and damper. Whips of tea, and strong. Take the slushy back with you; he'll cut off someone's head if you don't. And look sharp. We'll be at it all night, without shifts." ”

“ I was saying that you could never write a report that was a report."
"No?" said Garsia reflectively. "When is a report not a report? When it's an explosion. When it's a miss-fire. When it's something written by an irresponsible person not at the Front for an irresponsible public at home. When it's the truth."
"Now you've got it," said Pat. "Murder will out, but truth won't. The whole energies of the Press throughout the War have been engaged in proving that. I'll bet you half-a-crown——"
"Taken," said Ursula. "I'm already ten pounds in debt on my last allowance, and every little helps." ”

“ God pity all women these times!"
An hour later Garsia roused to the understanding that not one word was written. The sun blazed on him, and someone had put bread and cold tea beside him. But Garsia was on a rack that left no time for corporeal comforts. Was it a laurel wreath that Ursula had asked for? Did she not remember that such is given to the dead in these days, and not to the living? A laurel wreath had men given to Pat already. Only Garsia could take it from him. Only Garsia believed of his chum what not one of the men had believed. Pat and Matheson were much of the same build. ”

“ In the clearing, on the track, across the logging-bank, the men dropped, exhausted and uncaring. Death was on all sides, but without Harry to flay them into understanding, this did not trouble them. Tarson looked at Cortiss where he stood, swaying on his feet. ”

“ If you can send another man——" Well, he couldn't send another man, and if Pat rotted, he didn't deserve to go back, anyway. Garsia pushed out of the sap, negotiated the dangerous angle of the trench, where the shells where now coming too often about the sand-bags and casements, and went to his work. A few hours after he had gone, the fort got the range of that trench corner with absolute exactitude, raining shell after shell into it until the startled night was filled with death and flying splinters of red-hot iron and columns of foul smoke and spouting earth. ”

“ Of course I should win. I only bet to win, otherwise it's a waste of money. I bet that Billy couldn't write a perfectly true and coherent report of anything, if peace with Germany depended on it. Why, he couldn't tell one, and he doesn't have to spell when he's talking, nor to put in the stops."
"I'm particularly good at stops," said Garsia, "and at spelling, too, after a day on those scrubby hills under a horrid, torrid, florid sun. Eh, Pat?"
From her vantage on the slope of the broad, close-shaven terrace Ursula looked on the two men stretched at her feet. ”

“ A sentence came clear-cut from the dusty scrub by the logging-track.
"If any chap wants to know what Polson's says o' Mercury—it's rotten!"
Mercury Bay lies very near the top of New Zealand, and the geography books do not generally say anything about it. But because every inhabited patch of God's earth must stand sponsor at the Last Day for the passions of the men it has bred, Mercury has a value of its own, and, without any doubt, there will be a mixed account for it to render.
Gearing pulled himself upright, smearing the dust from his flat, pallid face and blue eyes. ”

“ Because men in the bulk are more like a flock of sheep than the theorist will ever believe, each man will jump a straw on the ground if his leader jumps it. This fact has been responsible for the making and breaking of most empires. It was responsible for the following hours of stress, when the men worked, half naked and dripping, with hands that slipped and blistered on the axe-hafts and the saw-handles, and eyes that smarted and ran tears as the smoke began to drift softly through the bush, acrid, blinding, and drying to the throat. ”

“ Auntie and I have two calls to pay before tea."
"Just observe a woman's ragged way of doing business," remarked Pat. "Now, all my securities are paid in full. War Loans. Imagine having to pay calls at any odd minute! In bed, perhaps, or your bath, or the middle of a sermon, or of a proposal!"
His blue eyes met Ursula's with that challenging possessive pride which brought her blushes as she stood, hatless, under the broad swathe of sunlight along the terrace. ”

“ Just a wicked, red eye in the cut fern, but all men saw it, and they halted, as though at a given word. Then Gearing shrank back with blank terror in his eyes, dropped his winger, and fled down the track.
This was Harry's hour. He laughed, tripping Gearing on his face.
"There's always one rotter in a camp," he said. "Now we know him. Get down to it, men. We didn't sweat here since noon to be bested at the end."
Kefford jumped the fallen Gearing.
"Smeller!" he said, and trampled out the red eye with great, cowhide boots. Forward, Cortiss was chuckling as he swung his axe. ”

“ Then, when the bushes were black and mysterious, and the night creatures scampered noiseless, and the last lark dropped silent to its nest, he came back, purged of the spirit that had gone out with him. ”

“ No man could have explained why he laboured there, dumb, blind, and aching. No man could have explained why the fire had become to him a personal enemy, to be hated and trapped and slain before rest could take him again. ”

“ But Garsia had taught his men and himself to suit man to circumstance, and this was not the thing which troubled him as he crawled out of the tunnel and met Pat on hands and knees in the scrub oak.
"How long now?" he said. "We've been running reinforcements along the sap for the last couple of hours."
"Should be up before midnight. But it's only a one-man job, you know, and this earth has been heated for centuries. ”

“ Respect, honour, love—all that a man has were gone. Let power go with the rest. And—there remained yet three bottles of brandy under his bunk.
He crossed the logging-bank, kicked up the dust of the bush-track beyond, passed into the clearing—where great hinaus made a bank to block out the air, and the smell of burnt fat from the eating-whare half choked him—went into his tent, and dropped the flap behind. ”

“ Then he moved with an oath, came to his knees, and groped in the stamped tussock of the floor for the bottles.
It is the devil in man which fits him to become a god in some future existence. This because only through sin overcome can a soul rise to godhood. The soul in Harry was divided, as is the soul of every man who has lived fully. By day and month and year it forced him to fight and to fall and to fight again. But it is not good for any man that there should be none to say "Well done!" ”

“ If damning a dead man's name would have given him Ursula to-morrow, he would not have taken her. It was Pat's right to be mourned, and hers to mourn him. Her right! And it could be her pride. Who was Matheson, anyway? A lonely man who never got any letters—a dour man. And Pat . ... Garsia began to write in curt, chopped-up sentences. There was no room for verbiage here. Who was Matheson? A man with a name of his own. A common man who had done what his superior in blood and training dared not do. A man with rights still, blown to fragments though he was. A man. ”

“ What? Yes. They had got most of the stuff in, working like mad, for they knew what a doing we were getting. Then a bullet from somewhere struck the last box in the scrub. Oh, Heavens!"
"Where's Venables?" repeated Garsia for the fiftieth time.
"T-the explosion brought down the face of the lead. Blocked it. Venables must have known. But he—they—must have run straight on. Didn't wait for the chance of being dug out. He knew that, if they wiped out much more of the trench, we couldn't hold the line. So he didn't even make a time-fuse of it. Just blew up the fort and himself. Oh, don't talk! ”

“ Gearing gasped as Kefford slouched across to his team, cowed and sullen.
"Tell him," he murmured, falling into line. "You bet I'll tell him—what'll put a kink inter them straight eyebrows o' his."
The last sled crawled off the logging-bank, and Tarson paused with his hand on the haulage chain.
"You won't do that too many times more," he said. "Every mother's son of 'em is ready to kick. Can't you feel it in the air, Harry?"
Harry lifted his shoulders a little, his lips yet curved with a smile.
"Kick," he said. "They'll kick every day and all day until they bust the whole show up. ”

“ We may save the kauri spur, Tarson, but we're going to shake the dry-rot out of Polson's, anyway."
Harry was an engineer as well as a bushman and a drunkard. It is always necessary for a Colonial to be several things, although the last is not indispensable. He knew exactly what could be done at this present, and—what was more valuable—he knew how to make the men do it. Polson held the only bit of kauri timber along the river, and in hard cash it was worth many men's lives. ”

“ Bill, we'll do it. I've got 'bout half a regiment in that sap now—hour shifts. Human flesh won't stand it longer in this heat, though the merry blighters will try. Can you rake up another detachment from somewhere, and we'll get on to it right away."
He gave back the cigarette case, and, where the sleeve drew up, Garsia saw a slender circlet of twisted bronze wires clipped round the forearm, Pat laughed, noting the look.
"Ursula sent it," he said. "Came in my mail last night. She says it's a charm to keep me from harm, and bring me fame instead of shame. ”

“ Why don't yer up an' tell Harry yer goin' ter cut it? That's what I'm goin' ter do."
Cortiss knew New Zealand from her head to her feet, and he knew his fellows in like degree. He rolled out of a flax bush, with his moist, peaky face upturned.
"Hare yer, me auntylope wi' the shinin' 'ead?" he said. "Hand what's 'Arry goin' ter say, are yer thinkin'? There ain't much meat as 'e can't make inter 'ash when he 'as a mind to. Hand you won't need much seasonin', Westall."
Westall was not over nice in his habits, and the camp approved Cortiss with a generosity that brought Westall upright swiftly. ”