Batman

“ Orders come in for artillery retaliation, and your guns begin to stamp the ground like stallions; in the darkness on every side you can see them snorting fire. Then stillness again, while Death counts his harvest; the white rockets grow fainter and less hysterical. For an hour there is blackness.
My batman consoles himself with singing,
"Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile."
There's a lot in his philosophy—it's best to go on smiling even when some one who was once your pal lies forever silent in his blanket on a stretcher. ”

“ The biggest nuisance on God’s earth is a [65] batman who spends all his spare moments getting drunk! Usually, however, he is a first-class batman during his sober moments! He will come in “plastered to the eyes” about eleven o’clock, and begin to hone your razors by the pallid rays of a candle, or else clean your revolver and see if the cartridges fit! In his cups he is equal to anything at all. Unless the case is really grave the man wins every time, for no one hates the idea of changing his servant more than an officer who has had the same man for a month or so and found him efficient. ”

“ He howled for his batman, and told the varlet that if there wasn't a drizzle-proof bivouac ready to enfold him by the time he had put the ponies to bye-byes, there would be no leave for ten years. The batman scratched his head, then slid softly away into the night. By the time the ponies were tilting the last drops out of their nosebags the faithful servant had scratched together a few sheets of corrugated, and piled them into a rough shelter. The Major wriggled beneath it and was presently putting up a barrage of snores terrible to hear. ”

“ I rolled out from under the hungry jaws, and just as I reached the ground I heard the angry growl of the baffled monster, followed by a shattering roar loud enough to waken the Seven Sleepers. As my senses came back to me, I found myself lying half on the ground, half on my low camp bed, my body bathed in perspiration, and trembling in every limb. Just then my batman put his head inside the tent-flap and asked me if I had heard the roar, adding that there was a tiger in the camp. ”

“ Batmen, the regular army type, are professionals. What they don’t know about cleaning brass, leather, steel, and general valeting simply isn’t worth knowing. They are super-servants, and they respect their position as reverently as an English butler respects his. With the new batman it is different. Usually the difficulty is not so much to discover what they do not know, as what they do! A new officer arrives at the front, or elsewhere, and he has to have a batman. ”

“ The Major's batman devoted the following day to the construction of a species of retiring-room at one end of the hut, wherein the modest members of the mess might bathe and splash at ease. The remainder of the servants went out armed and returned with (1) a zinc bath, (2) a stove, (3) a cuckoo clock, (4) a large mirror, (5) a warming-pan. "Once let us make a home for ourselves," we said, "and our energies will be free to finish the War." We devoted every cunning worker in the battery to this great end. ”

“ Batiste, ba-tēst′, n. usual French name for cambric: applied in commerce to a fine texture of linen and cotton. [Littré derives from Baptiste, the original maker; others from its use in wiping the heads of children after baptism.]
Batlet, bat′let, n. a wooden mallet used by laundresses for beating clothes. [Dim. of Bat.]
Batman, bat′man, baw′man, n. a man who has charge of a bathorse. ”

“ My batman is a man with a grievance. He squats outside my tent all day moodily burnishing my buttons and swears and sighs, sighs and swears. In the words of my groom and countryman, "Ye'd think there'd be a black dog atin' the hearrt in his shest the way he is, the poor scut."
I learn that he has given out that if he sees a crump coming he'll "Blinkin' well wait for it," that he presented his bosom chum with a black eye gratis, and is declining beer. All this sounds like love, but isn't. ”

“ Lucky is he who strikes on one of the former; only the man is sure to get killed, or wounded, or go sick! There is always a fly in the ointment somewhere. The best kind of batman to have is a kleptomaniac. Treat him well and he will never touch a thing of your own, but he will, equally, never leave a thing belonging to any one else! ”

“ They immediately put me as batman in their mess. Many a greasy dish of stew was accidentally spilled over them.
I would sooner fight than be a waiter, so when the order came through from headquarters calling for a draft of 250 reinforcements for France, I volunteered.
Then we went before the M. O. (Medical Officer) for another physical examination. This was very brief. He asked our names and numbers and said, "Fit," and we went out to fight.
We were put into troop trains and sent to Southampton, where we detrained, and had our trench rifles issued to us. ”

“ It lay on the earth, ripe and purple, and when night had fallen, and the Bat-King walked abroad, he saw what he took to be a spray of plums lying tossed at the foot of a tree. He ate one, and, finding it delicious, did not stop till he had devoured the whole.
That night the Bats rushed up and down the forest in dismay, for they could not think what had happened to their monarch. He would suffer none to approach him. No one could do his bidding fast enough to escape his wrath; no one was fit to stand in his presence; no one could make a low enough obeisance as he passed. ”

“ The Bat-King has millions of subjects, and he has only to sign to them to put you to death should you attempt it.”
They went out, and on the ramparts her chariot waited her. The King could not tell what it was made of, but it looked like one of those clouds that cross the setting sun before a stormy night; six enormous owls were harnessed to it and stood ready for a flight, their yellow eyes fixed on space. A servant handed a long scourge of plaited twigs to the Enchantress. When she and the King had seated themselves, the car rose into the air, and they were soon rushing across the sky. ”

“ Some day the Bat would slip and falter; then they would have him. But the weeks passed into months and still the Bat flew free, solitary, untamed, and deadly. At last even his own kind turned upon him; the underworld is like the upper in its fear and distrust of genius that flies alone. But when they turned against him, they turned against a spook—a shadow. ”

“ Do you know that frayed sparrow that comes and sits on your window ledge and waits for some one? Do you know that lightness that steals over your heart of a morning when you seat yourself at your desk amid the smell of dusty lawbooks? Well, there comes a time when the breeze and the sparrow and the leap of the heart unite to tell you that something is happening to old Mother Earth—and at the same time something happened to Bat. ”

“ From a thousand sources now the clamor arose—press, police, and public alike crying out for the capture of the master criminal of a century—lost voices hounding a specter down the alleyways of the wind. And still the meshes broke and the quarry slipped away before the hounds were well on the scent—leaving behind a trail of shattered safes and rifled jewel cases—while ever the clamor rose higher to “Get him—get him—get—”
Get whom, in God’s name—get what? Beast, man, or devil? A specter—a flying shadow—the shadow of a Bat. ”

“ At last they reached a place where some trees stood round a grassy circle; in the centre of it were two figures.
“See,” said the Bat-King, “here are my prisoners. In the night, when my people are awake, they are watched on all sides, and in the day, while we sleep, one touch of my spear raises such a wall of bush and brier that they may try for ever to get through it in vain.”
His eyes gleamed with malice. “Stand, woman!” he cried, “stand up and let the Enchantress see you!” ”

“ We fully enjoyed the rural privilege, and the old clock in the corner had rung out its warning many times unheeded, when our games were broken up, as far as the ladies were concerned, by the entrance of a bat, for there are few things they are more genuinely afraid of than a little leather-wing. Like the eyes of a well executed portrait, the bat seems to follow you wherever you crouch in the room, and dips with regular precision and nicety of distance at your head, however low you bow it. ”

“ Is the greatest monarch on earth to walk like the lowest of his people?”
The Bats disappeared in all directions, for the Bat-King had kept the horse tied up in a distant spot; in their alarm they strayed all over the forest, but at last some of them got to the place where he was tethered.
The Princess watched eagerly for her favourite. “Dear Amulet,” she whispered to him when he arrived, “have no fear and we shall yet escape. I have sent for you that I may free you. Do all you are bid, for he who you think is the Bat-King is our friend who has come all the way with us.” ”

“ In tawdrily gorgeous apartments, where gathered the larger figures, the proconsuls of the world of crime, cold, conscienceless brains dissected the work of a colder and swifter brain than theirs, with suave and bitter envy. Evil's Four Hundred chattered, discussed, debated—sent out a thousand invisible tentacles to clutch at a shadow—to turn this shadow and its distorted genius to their own ends. The tentacles recoiled, baffled—the Bat worked alone—not even Evil's Four Hundred could bend him into a willing instrument to execute another's plan. ”

“ The glow-worms were shining and the Bats going about again with open eyes when the owl-chariot was seen. The old man took a dark cloak which had belonged to the Bat-King, and, muffling his head and face with it, went to meet the Enchantress. As she stepped out of her car he cried: “Alas, lady! I have bad news. The old man is dead, and the pleasure of slaying one of these wretches is lost. ”

“ Since you have evinced, by the most practical means within your power, the undoubted preference which you cherish for the form of a bat, a bat you shall remain for ever, and, once for all, quit that human shape which you have so foolishly despised. ”

“ This was a windfall for Bat,—a glorious occasion for making much of himself. Up he marched to the woman, as though he was going to attack an entrenchment, and crossing her ould yellow hand with the copper,—the best his pocket could afford,—he desired she'd say what would happen him. “Speak bouldly,” says he, “for Bat Muggleburgh isn't the man that's to be frightened by a bulrush.”
“Man,” says she, looking up to him, “you've been a soldier.” ”

“ Bat herself, and if you could only have peeped beneath one of her wings you might have seen the dearest little mite of a bat, with eyes of jet, clinging close to its mother's breast as she folded it tenderly beneath her wing. There the helpless little creature stayed, close to its mother, until it became older and stronger, for among all the tiny, fur-bearing animals there is no little mother more considerate of her young than the bat. ”

“ Know you not, O venerable bat, that the smooth perfection of the one you serve would shine dazzling through a beaten mask of tempered steel? Her matchless hair, glossier than a starling's wing, floats like an autumn cloud. ”

“ And if I weren’t so damn old, I’d go after the slippery devil myself and let you sit here and watch me get brought in with an infernal paper bat pinned where my shield ought to be. The Bat’s supernatural, Anderson. You haven’t a chance in the world but it does me good all the same to shake hands with a man with brains and nerve,” and he solemnly wrung Anderson’s hand in an iron grip. ”

“ After a while, as the fight went on, the Birds began to have the best of it, and then away flew the Bat to their side. “What Beast comes here?” said the Birds.
“I am not a Beast,” said the Bat; [100] “I am a Bird. Look at my wings. This is my battle as truly as it is yours.”
But the Birds would have nothing to do with him. And to this day the Bat seems ashamed to show himself in the daytime but hides in lonely places, away from all other creatures, and only flits about noiselessly in the dark, when both Birds and Beasts are asleep. ”

“ She read it aloud. "We must cease combing the criminal world for the Bat and look higher. He may be a merchant—a lawyer—a doctor—honored in his community by day and at night a bloodthirsty assassin——" The print blurred before her eyes—she could read no more for the moment. ”

“ How many Americans among those who have been under the spell of the realistic action of “The Bat” have thought of the fact that the characters were at all times moving about in rooms with only three walls, that darkness was symbolized by lights carried by the actors, that the attic in the country home of the astute spinster was lighted by footlights, and that an actor who had been killed appeared a moment later for a curtain call? ”

“ Of course the two ridiculous fur balls were just the bat family. The smaller, more timorous bat, soon followed her mate from behind the web curtain and joined him upon the broad beam. But so clumsy and half awake was she that the very first thing she did was to make a misstep and go pitching off the high beam into space. She landed upon the hay, fortunately, and then began the funniest sight. Did you ever chance to see a bat when it attempted to walk? They seldom use their feet, and when they do it is a droll sight. ”

“ No sooner had the poor man heard the name bat, which recalled the humour he was suffering under, than he cried out at the top of his voice: "He says true—he says true; the bat's the thing—the bat's the thing!" ”

“ I replied that when I attentively considered the several creatures that fly, and thought of effecting by art what they do by the force of nature, I did not find one so fit to imitate as the bat. As soon as the poor man heard mention made of a bat, he cried out aloud, 'It is very true! a bat is the thing.' He then addressed himself to me, and said, 'Benvenuto, if you had the opportunity, would you have the heart to make an attempt to fly?' I answered that if he would give me leave, I had courage enough to attempt to fly by means of a pair of wings waxed over. ”