Rudyard Kipling

“ The red light poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the Tudor roses and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. An old eagle- topped convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart, distorting afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines into the curves of a ship. The day was shutting down in half a gale as the fog turned to stringy scud. Through the uncurtained mullions of the broad window I could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover against the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves. ”

“ It was a long afternoon crowded with mad episodes that rose and dissolved like the dust of our wheels; cross-sections of remote and incomprehensible lives through which we raced at right angles; and I went home in the dusk, wearied out, to dream of the clashing horns of cattle; round-eyed nuns walking in a garden of graves; pleasant tea-parties beneath shaded trees; the carbolic-scented, grey-painted corridors of the County Institute; the steps of shy children in the wood, and the hands that clung to my knees as the motor began to move. ”

“ Is there any Sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help?... God be thanked, here is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was servant to Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs!... ”

“ But the woman hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, "I am childless to-night because of thy perfidy, and my child was praised among men and loved among women. He would have begotten men—not animals. Thou hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater."
I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot's neck, and flung the end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. ”

“ Hereupon I told him my tale, and for proof, as we topped the hill, pointed out the little group round my car.
All supreme emotion is dumb. Kysh put on the brake and hugged me to his bosom till I groaned. Then, as I remember, he crooned like a mother returned to her suckling.
“Divine! Divine!” he murmured. “Command me.”
“Take charge of the situation,” I said. “You’ll find a Mr. Pyecroft on the quarter-deck. I’m altogether out of it.” ”

“ The women of the Boer-log are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own honour’s sake the Sahibs must say that the Boer-log are clever; but it is the Sahibs’ wonderful folly that has made the Boer-log. The Sahibs should have sent us into the game.
But the Durro Muts did well. They dealt faithfully with all that country thereabouts—not in any way as we of Hind should have dealt, but they were not altogether fools. ”

“ Indoors, Madden received me with professional courtesy, and kind inquiries for the health of the motor, which he would put under cover.
I waited in a still, nut-brown hall, pleasant with late flowers and warmed with a delicious wood fire—a place of good influence and great peace. (Men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.) A child’s cart and a doll lay on the black-and-white floor, where a rug had been kicked back. ”

“ Madden.'
I looked down into the hall whose only light was the dulled fire, and deep in the shadow I saw them at last. They must have slipped down while we were in the passages, and now thought themselves perfectly hidden behind an old gilt leather screen. By child's law, my fruitless chase was as good as an introduction, but since I had taken so much trouble I resolved to force them to come forward later by the simple trick, which children detest, of pretending not to notice them. They lay close, in a little huddle, no more than shadows except when a quick flame betrayed an outline. ”

“ Two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door, like babul bushes, covered with a golden coloured bloom, and the roof was all of thatch. Before the house was a valley of stones that rose to another bush-covered hill. There was an old man in the verandah—an old man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall young man deprived of understanding. ”

“ Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed—revolving in his orbit from the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room, conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll’s house of a foc’sle—learned in experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge, authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his play. ”

“ There were more than a hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the Boer-log in the valley while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. I saw three Boers drop in the open. Then they all hid again and fired heavily at the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show, but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns. So it fell stark dark, and Sikandar Khan found a deep old jackal’s earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of Kurban Sahib upright. ”

“ He had neglected to learn the outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the taxpayer, to go to infinite trouble to supplement his deficiencies.
"If you don’t believe me, come to Linghurst," was the burden of his almost national anthem.
"But I can’t run all over Sussex every time a blackmailer jumps up and says he is a policeman."
"Why, it’s quite close," he persisted.
"’Twon’t be—soon," said Hinchcliffe.
"None of the other people ever made any trouble. To be sure they was gentlemen," he cried. ”

“ A doll's house, its hooked front half open, faced a great dappled rocking-horse, from whose padded saddle it was but a child's scramble to the broad window-seat overlooking the lawn. A toy gun lay in a corner beside a gilt wooden cannon. ”

“ Here I caught the strains of the band, which Pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on ‘heef,’ but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in town.
“If we want anything more than drums and fifes on ‘heef’ we sing,” said Pigeon. “Singin’ helps the wind.”
I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection—and more. ”

“ There wasn't anyone else. I only found out afterwards that other people did not see the Colours.'
She leaned against the tree-bole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked grass stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.
'Now I am sure you will never laugh at me,' she went on after a long silence. 'Nor at them.'
'Goodness! No! 'I cried, jolted out of my train of thought. 'A man who laughs at a child—unless the child is laughing too—is a heathen!'
'I didn't mean that, of course. ”

“ The fog was as dense as ever—we moved in the very womb of night—but I cannot recall that I took the faintest note of it as the dinghy, guided by the tow-rope, disappeared toward the Agatha, Pyecroft rowing. The bell began again on the starboard bow.
“We’re pretty near,” said Moorshed, slowing down. “Out with the Berthon. (We’ll sell ’em fish, too.) And if any one rows Navy-stroke, I’ll break his jaw with the tiller. Mr. Hinchcliffe (this down the tube) , “you’ll stay here in charge with Gregory and Shergold and the engine-room staff. Morgan stays, too, for signalling purposes.” ”

“ I saw Captain Malan turn to his senior.
“Come to my cabin!” said Panke gratingly, and led the way. Pyecroft and I stayed still.
“It’s all right,” said Pyecroft. “They daren’t leave us loose aboard for one revolution,” and I knew that he had seen what I had seen.
“You, too!” said Captain Malan, returning suddenly. We passed the sentry between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, I winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, brass-fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. ”

“ At the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by martello towers.
“Ain’t that Eastbourne yonder?” said our guest, reviving. “I’ve a aunt there—she’s cook to a J.P.—could identify me.”
“Don’t worry her for a little thing like that,” said Pyecroft; and ere he had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic service, the Downs rose between us and the sea, and the Long Man of Hillingdon lay out upon the turf. ”

“ I showed this to Kurban Sahib, for it was a house that had been spared—the people having many permits and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. I said to Kurban Sahib, "Send half a troop, Child, and finish that house. They signal to their brethren." And he laughed where he lay and said, "If I listened to my bearer Umr Singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land." I said, "What need to leave one? This is as it was in Burma. They are farmers to-day and fighters to-morrow. Let us deal justly with them." ”

“ And yet I must remember something, else how could I dream about colours. I see light in my dreams, and colours, but I never see them. I only hear them just as I do when I’m awake.”
“It’s difficult to see faces in dreams. Some people can, but most of us haven’t the gift,” I went on, looking up at the window where the child stood all but hidden. ”

“ They gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib’s glasses, and the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them, and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought coffee; and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses. Presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright water. Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood, and he laughed, saying, “Wounded men lie there. We shall yet get vengeance.” ”

“ Thus we floated in space as souls drift through raw time. Night added herself to the fog, and I laid hold on my limbs jealously, lest they, too, should melt in the general dissolution.
“Where’s that prevaricatin’ fishmonger?” said Pyecroft, turning a lantern on a scant yard of the gleaming wire-rope that pointed like a stick to my left. “He’s doin’ some fancy steerin’ on his own. No wonder Mr. Hincheliffe is blasphemious. The tow’s sheered off to starboard, Sir. He’ll fair pull the stern out of us.”
Moorshed, invisible, cursed through the megaphone into invisibility. ”

“ That car (now, thank Heaven, no more than an evil memory) never lit twice in the same fashion. This time she backfired superbly, and Pyecroft went out over the right rear wheel in a column of rich yellow flame.
"I’ve seen a mine explode at Bantry—once—prematoor," he volunteered.
"That’s all right," said Hinchcliffe, brushing down his singed beard with a singed forefinger. (He had been watching too closely.) "Has she any more little surprises up her dainty sleeve?"
"She hasn’t begun yet," said my engineer, with a scornful cough. "Some one ’as opened the petrol-supply-valve too wide." ”

“ Kysh was letting her down this chute in brakeful spasms.
"Water dead ahead, Sir. Stack o’ brushwood on the starboard beam, and—no road," sang Pyecroft.
"Cr-r-ri-key!" said Hinchcliffe, as the car on a wild cant to the left went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the pond. "If she only had two propellers, I believe she’d talk poetry. She can do everything else."
"We’re rather on our port wheels now," said Kysh ; "but I don’t think she’ll capsize. This road isn’t used much by motors."
"You don’t say so,’ said Pyecroft. "What a pity!" ”

“ I had only slid the chair a little farther back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.
'No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin.' She turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him—his plea for the new cow-shed at his landlady's expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year's rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. ”

“ Have I gone gunning against the British? To a certain extent, I presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism—I don’t care what it is. Laughtite’s immense; so’s the Zigler automatic. It’s me. It’s fifteen years of me. You are not a gun-sharp? ”

“ Right atop of us! The blighter ’as pouched half the tow, like a shark!” A long pause filled with soft Devonian bleatings. Then Pyecroft, solo arpeggio: “Rum? Rum? Rum? Is that all? Come an’ try it, uncle.”
I lifted my face to where once God’s sky had been, and besought The Trues I might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles, but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as happy as I was happy. I prayed and I waited, and we went slow—slow as the processes of evolution—till the boat-hook rasped again. ”

“ Moorshed was at the wheel, and another man worked the whistle.
“This fog is the best thing could ha’ happened to us,” said Moorshed. “It gives us our chance to run in on the quiet.... Hal-lo!”
A cracked bell rang. Clean and sharp (beautifully grained, too) , a bowsprit surged over our starboard bow, the bobstay confidentially hooking itself into our forward rail.
I saw Pyecroft’s arm fly up; heard at the same moment the severing of the tense rope, the working of the wheel, Moorshed’s voice down the tube saying, “Astern a little, please, Mr. Hinchcliffe!” ”

“ Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I knew, and he said, “We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.” Remember, Kurban Sahib was squadron-leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and I was Umr Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, “Thou art a groom and I am a grass-cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?” At this he laughed, saying, “It is the way to better things. Have patience, Father.” (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) “This war ends not to-morrow nor the next day. ”

“ Evidently a butler solicitous for the honour of his house, and interested, probably through a maid, in the nursery.
Once beyond the signposts at the cross-roads I looked back, but the crumpled hills interlaced so jealously that I could not see where the house had lain. When I asked its name at a cottage along the road, the fat woman who sold sweet-meats there gave me to understand that people with motor cars had small right to live—much less to 'go about talking like carriage folk.' They were not a pleasant-mannered community. ”

“ The doves on the roof cooed to the cooing water; but between the two notes I caught the utterly happy chuckle of a child absorbed in some light mischief.
The garden door—heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the wall—opened further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly on the time-hollowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf. I was forming some apology when she lifted up her head and I saw that she was blind.
'I heard you,' she said. 'Isn't that a motor car?'
"I'm afraid I've made a mistake in my road. I should have turned off up above—I never dreamed———' I began. ”

“ All the people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth, was all the Boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform to make a loincloth. A fool’s war from first to last; for it is manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in one hand and a purwana in the other, as did all these people. ”

“ Dark, tall men, most excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war as war, and drinking tea as a sandhill drinks water. Thieves? A little, Sahib. Sikander Khan swore to me; and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations; he swore a Pathan was a babe beside a Durro Mut in regard to horse-lifting. The Durro Muts cannot walk on their feet at all. They are like hens on the high road. Therefore they must have horses. Very proper men, with a just lust for the war. Aah—“No fee-ah,” say the Durro Muts. They saw the worth of Kurban Sahib. ”

“ You take my seat and keep the big sailor in order. He’s too drunk to do much. I’ll change places with the other one. Only be quick; I want to pay my fine and get it over.”
“That’s the way to look at it,” he said, dropping into the left rear seat. “We’re making quite a lot out o’ you motor gentry.” He folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under Hinchcliffe’s stealthy hand.
“But you aren’t driving?” he cried, half rising.
“You’ve noticed it?” said Pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda-like left arm.
“Don’t kill him,” said Hinchcliffe briefly. ”