Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (209 page)

The Colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared very forlorn and unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome.

“Well!” said the Colonel, recognising them. “Are you going to pull me down in the open? I’m sure I never interfere with you, even though” - he sniffed suspiciously - “you have been smoking.”

It was time to strike while the iron was hot. Their hearts beat tumultuously.

“Beg y’ pardon, Sir,” began Jakin. “The Reg’ment’s ordered on active service, Sir?”

“So I believe,” said the Colonel courteously.

“Is the Band goin’, Sir?” said both together. Then, without pause,
“We’re goin’, Sir, ain’t we?”

“You!” said the Colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two small figures. “You! You’d die in the first march.”

“No, we wouldn’t, Sir. We can march with the Reg’ment anywheres - p’rade an’ anywhere else,” said Jakin.

“If Tom Kidd goes ‘e’ll shut up like a clasp-knife,” said Lew.
“Tom ‘as very-close veins in both ‘is legs, Sir.”

“Very how much?”

“Very-close veins, Sir. That’s why they swells after long p’rade,
Sir. If ‘e can go, we can go, Sir.”

Again the Colonel looked at them long and intently.

“Yes, the Band is going,” he said as gravely as though he had been addressing a brother officer. “Have you any parents, either of you two?”

“No, Sir,” rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. “We’re both orphans,
Sir. There’s no one to be considered of on our account, Sir.”

“You poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the Front with the Regiment, do you? Why?”

“I’ve wore the Queen’s Uniform for two years,” said Jakin. “It’s very ‘ard, Sir, that a man don’t get no recompense for doin’ of ‘is dooty, Sir.”

“An’- an’ if I don’t go, Sir,” interrupted Lew, “the Bandmaster ‘e says ‘e’ll catch an’ make a bloo - a blessed musician o’ me, Sir. Before I’ve seen any service, Sir.”

The Colonel made no answer for a long time. Then he said quietly: “If you’re passed by the Doctor I dare say you can go. I shouldn’t smoke if I were you.”

The boys saluted and disappeared. The Colonel walked home and told the story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. The Colonel was well pleased. If that was the temper of the children, what would not the men do?

Jakin and Lew entered the boys’ barrack-room with great stateliness, and refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten minutes. Then, bursting with pride, Jakin drawled: “I’ve bin intervooin’ the Colonel. Good old beggar is the Colonel. Says I to ‘im, ‘Colonel,’ says I, ‘let me go to the Front, along o’ the Reg’ment. - ‘To the Front you shall go,’ says ‘e, ‘an’ I only wish there was more like you among the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin’ drums.’ Kidd, if you throw your ‘courtrements at me for tellin’ you the truth to your own advantage, your legs’ll swell.”

None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the barrack-room, for the boys were consumed with envy and hate, and neither Jakin nor Lew behaved in conciliatory wise.

“I’m goin’ out to say adoo to my girl,” said Lew, to cap the climax. “Don’t none o’ you touch my kit because it’s wanted for active service; me bein’ specially invited to go by the Colonel.”

He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the Married Quarters till Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken, Lew began to explain the situation.

“I’m goin’ to the Front with the Reg’ment,” he said valiantly.

“Piggy, you’re a little liar,” said Cris, but her heart misgave her, for Lew was not in the habit of lying.

“Liar yourself, Cris,” said Lew, slipping an arm round her. “I’m goin’. When the Reg’ment marches out you’ll see me with ‘em, all galliant and gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it.”

“If you’d on’y a-stayed at the Depot - where you ought to ha’ bin - you could get as many of ‘em as - as you dam please,” whimpered Cris, putting up her mouth.

“It’s ‘ard, Cris. I grant you it’s ‘ard, But what’s a man to do?
If I’d a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn’t think anything of me.”

“Like as not, but I’d ‘ave you with me, Piggy. An’ all the thinkin’ in the world isn’t like kissin’.”

“An’ all the kissin’ in the world isn’t like ‘avin’ a medal to wear on the front o’ your coat.”

“You won’t get no medal.”

“Oh, yus, I shall though. Me an’ Jakin are the only acting- drummers that’ll be took along. All the rest is full men, an’ we’ll get our medals with them.”

“They might ha’ taken anybody but you, Piggy. You’ll get killed - you’re so venturesome. Stay with me, Piggy darlin’, down at the Depot, an’ I’ll love you true, for ever.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to do that now, Cris? You said you was.”

“0’ course I am, but th’ other’s more comfortable. Wait till you’ve growed a bit, Piggy. You aren’t no taller than me now.”

“I’ve bin in the Army for two years, an’ I’m not goin’ to get out of a chanst o’ seein’ service, an’ don’t you try to make me do so. I’ll come back, Cris, an’ when I take on as a man I’ll marry you - marry you when I’m a Lance.”

“Promise, Piggy.”

Lew reflected on the future as arranged by Jakin a short time previously, but Cris’s mouth was very near to his own.

“I promise, s’elp me Gawd!” said he.

Cris slid an arm round his neck.

“I won’t ‘old you back no more, Piggy. Go away an’ get your medal, an’ I’ll make you a new button-bag as nice as I know how,” she whispered.

“Put some o’ your ‘air into it, Cris, an’ I’ll keep it in my pocket so long’s I’m alive.”

Then Cris wept anew, and the interview ended. Public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch, and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy’s age - fourteen - but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the Front - which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. The Band which was to accompany the Regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men, the surplus returning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were attached to the Band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being company buglers.

“Don’t matter much,” said Jakin after the medical inspection. “Be thankful that we’re ‘lowed to go at all. The Doctor ‘e said that if we could stand what we took from the Bazar-Sergeant’s son we’d stand pretty nigh anything.”

“Which we will,” said Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill- made housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling “L” upon the cover.

“It was the best I could,” she sobbed. “I wouldn’t let mother nor the Sergeant’s tailor ‘elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an’ remember I love you true.”

They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its noble self black in the face.

“A nice level lot,” said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command as they watched the first four companies entraining.

“Fit to do anything,” said the Second-in-Command enthusiastically. “But it seems to me they’re a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. It’s bitter cold up at the Front now.”

“They’re sound enough,” said the Colonel. “We must take our chance of sick casualties.”

So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of camels, armies of camp-followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, Babus sweated, and Commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the night, amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand steers.

“Hurry up - you’re badly wanted at the Front,” was the message that greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages told the same tale.

“Tisn’t so much the bloomin’ fightin’,” gasped a headbound trooper of Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. “Tisn’t so much the bloomin’ fightin’, though there’s enough o’ that. It’s the bloomin’ food an’ the bloomin’ climate. Frost all night ‘cept when it hails, and b’iling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I got my ‘ead chipped like a egg; I’ve got pneumonia too, an’ my guts is all out o’ order. ‘Tain’t no bloomin’ picnic in those parts, I can tell you.”

“Wot are the niggers like?” demanded a private.

“There’s some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an’ look at ‘em. They’re the aristocracy o’ the country. The common folk are a dashed sight uglier. If you want to know what they fight with, reach under my seat an’ pull out the long knife that’s there.”

They dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone- handled, triangular Afghan knife. It was almost as long as Lew.

“That’s the thing to j’int ye,” said the trooper feebly. “It can take off a man’s arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. I halved the beggar that used that un, but there’s more of his likes up above. They don’t understand thrustin’, but they’re devils to slice.”

The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the Afghan prisoners. They were unlike any “niggers” that the Fore and Aft had ever met - these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men stared the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes.

“My eyes! Wot awful swine!” said Jakin, who was in the rear of the procession. “Say, ole man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kiswasti you wasn’t hanged for your ugly face, hey?”

The tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons clanking at the movement, and stared at the boy. “See!” he cried to his fellows in Pushto. “They send children against us. What a people, and what fools!”

“Hya.” said Jakin, nodding his head cheerily. “You go down- country. Khana get, peenikapanee get - live like a bloomin’ Raja ke marfik. That’s a better bandobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-bye, ole man. Take care o’ your beautiful figure- ‘ead, an’ try to look kushy.”

The men laughed and fell in for their first march, when they began to realise that a soldier’s life is not all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call “Paythans,” and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march said, “they lived like pigs.” They learned the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and developed a few cases of dysentery in their study.

At the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. In the daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. At night there were distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent but not war.

Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against the sharpshooters of the country-side. Its duty was to go forward and make connectioon with the Scotch and Goorkha troops with which it was brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment Thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps - with the wicked little Goorkhas, whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers - with the terrible big men dressed in women’s clothes, who could be heard praying to their God in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount of “sniping” could shake - or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white regiment was different - quite different. It slept like a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at anything that moved - even a driven donkey - and when they had once fired, could be scientifically “rushed “ and laid out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely.

Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the Regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft. All the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point was the “two o’clock in the morning courage”; and, so far, they had only succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep.

Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and unclean, the Fore and Aft joined their Brigade.

“I hear you had a tough time of it coming up,” said the Brigadier.
But when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell.

“This is bad,” said he to himself. “They’re as rotten as sheep.” And aloud to the Colonel - “I’m afraid we can’t spare you just yet. We want all we have, else I should have given you ten days to recover in.”

The Colonel winced. “On my honour, Sir,” he returned, “there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us. My men have been rather mauled and upset without a fair return. They only want to go in somewhere where they can see what’s before them.”