Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (408 page)

At last — they do not remember whether this was by day or by night — Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while; and they too danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all over; and when they woke, men said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work for two days, but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time to time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they heard him singing hymns.

Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third day’s idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters of the alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that, though the piston-rod was more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head — the thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides — had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower end of the piston-rod. He was going to forge and shrink a wrought-iron collar on the neck of the piston-rod where it joined the cross-head, and from the collar he would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron whose lower arms should be bolted into the cross-head. If anything more were needed, they could use up the last of the boiler-plate.

So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but hardly felt the pain. The finished connection was not beautiful, but it seemed strong enough — at least, as strong as the rest of the machinery; and with that job their labours came to an end. All that remained was to connect up the engines, and to get food and water. The skipper and four men dealt with the Malay boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle over the price of sago and dried fish. The others stayed aboard and replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-cover, cross-head, and bolts, with the aid of the faithful donkey-engine. The cylinder-cover was hardly steam-proof, and the eye of science might have seen in the connecting-rod a flexure something like that of a Christmas-tree candle which has melted and been straightened by hand over a stove, but, as Mr. Wardrop said, “She didn’t hit anything.”

As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the wheel and worm, by which some engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard. They nearly wrenched off the wheel, but it was evident to the blindest eye that the engines stirred. They did not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm, as good machines should; indeed, they groaned not a little; but they moved over and came to rest in a way which proved that they still recognised man’s hand. Then Mr. Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker bowels of the engine-room and the stoke-hole, and followed them with a flare-lamp. The boilers were sound, but would take no harm from a little scaling and cleaning. Mr. Wardrop would not have any one over-zealous, for he feared what the next stroke of the tool might show. “The less we know about her now,” said he, “the better for us all, I’m thinkin’. Ye’ll understand me when I say that this is in no sense regular engineerin’.”

As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair, they believed him. They did not ask too much of what they met, but polished and tallowed and scraped it to a false brilliancy.

“A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind,” said Mr. Wardrop, plaintively. “I know half the condenser-tubes are started; and the propeller-shaftin’’s God knows how far out of the true, and we’ll need a new air-pump, an’ the main-steam leaks like a sieve, and there’s worse each way I look; but — paint’s like clothes to a man, ‘an ours is near all gone.”

The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome green that they used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread it abroad lavishly to give the engines self-respect.

His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth continuously; but the crew, having worked under orders, did not feel as he did. The completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He would at the last have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone home without vengeance taken to show his engines to his brethren in the craft; but the others and the captain forbade him. They had not yet recovered their self-respect.

“It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but beggars mustn’t be choosers; an if the engines will go over to the hand-gear, the probability — I’m only saying it’s a probability — the chance is that they’ll hold up when we put steam on her.”

“How long will you take to get steam?” said the skipper.

“God knows! Four hours — a day — half a week. If I can raise sixty pound I’ll not complain.”

“Be sure of her first; we can’t afford to go out half a mile, and break down.”

“My soul and body, man, we’re one continuous breakdown, fore an’ aft! We might fetch Singapore, though.”

“We’ll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good,” was the answer, in a voice that did not allow argument. “She’s my boat, and — I’ve had eight months to think in.”

No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard her. She left at two in the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none of her crew’s pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering half-seas-over chanty that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he listened to the new song.

“She’s gibberin’ — she’s just gibberin’,” he whimpered. “Yon’s the voice of a maniac.”

And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was quite right. There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts of chattering laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned for the clear note, and torturing reduplications where there should have been one deep voice. Down the screw-shaft ran murmurs and warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter without told that the propeller needed re-keying.

“How does she make it?” said the skipper.

“She moves, but — but she’s breakin’ my heart. The sooner we’re at Pygang-Watai, the better. She’s mad, and we’re waking the town.”

“Is she at all near safe?”

“What do I care how safe she is? She’s mad. Hear that, now! To be sure, nothing’s hittin’ anything, and the bearin’s are fairly cool, but — can ye not hear?”

“If she goes,” said the skipper, “I don’t care a curse. And she’s my boat, too.”

She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her. From a slow two knots an hour she crawled up to a triumphant four. Anything beyond that made the struts quiver dangerously, and filled the engine-room with steam. Morning showed her out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had called it, there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark proa, hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged alongside and wished to know if the Haliotis were helpless. Ships, even the steamers of the white men, had been known to break down in those waters, and the honest Malay and Javanese traders would sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way. But this ship was not full of lady passengers and well-dressed officers. Men, white, naked and savage, swarmed down her sides — some with red-hot iron bars, and others with large hammers — threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring strangers, and, before any man could say what had happened, were in full possession of the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water overside. Half an hour later the proa’s cargo of sago and trepang, as well as a doubtful-minded compass, was in the Haliotis. The two huge triangular mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and booms, had followed the cargo, and were being fitted to the stripped masts of the steamer.

They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly laid over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an hour, and what better could men ask? But if she had been forlorn before, this new purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet-dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton, well-decked, once schooner-rigged cargo-boat as she staggered under her new help, shouting and raving across the deep. With steam and sail that marvellous voyage continued; and the bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt, unshorn, shamelessly clothed beyond the decencies.

At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai, whose harbour is the turning-point of a pearl sea-patrol. Here the gun-boats stay for a week ere they retrace their line. There is no village at Pygang-Watai; only a stream of water, some palms, and a harbour safe to rest in till the first violence of the southeast monsoon has blown itself out.

They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed coal ready for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the flagless flagstaff.

Next day there was no Haliotis — only a little proa rocking in the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.

Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper to the effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken her back at the mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full speed into a sunken wreck.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR: PART I

                  I have done one braver thing

                   Than all the worthies did;

                  And yet a braver thence doth spring,

                   Which is to keep that hid.

                                       The Undertaking.

“Is it officially declared yet?”

“They’ve gone as far as to admit ‘extreme local scarcity,’ and they’ve started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.”

“That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men and the rolling-stock. Shouldn’t wonder if it were as bad as the ‘78 Famine.”

“‘Can’t be,” said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.

“We’ve had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal report more than they know what to do with. They’ll be able to check it before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.”

Martyn picked the “Pioneer” from the table, read through the telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of weeks. Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens — from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes — or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters’ return. From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same white faces night after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful company.

“What are you going to do?” said Martyn, with a yawn. “Let’s have a swim before dinner.”

“Water’s hot. I was at the bath to-day.”

“Play you game o’ billiards — fifty up.”

“It’s a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don’t be so abominably energetic.”

A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider fumbling a leather pouch.

“Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa,” the man whined, handing down the newspaper extra — a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the press. It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between notices of ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.

Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. “It’s declared!” he cried. “One, two, three — eight districts go under the operations of the Famine Code ek dum. They’ve put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.”

“Good business!” said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had shown. “When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more bundobust than most men.”

“Jimmy’s a Jubilee Knight now,” said Martyn. “He’s a good chap, even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in — all ungas or rungas or pillays or polliums!”

A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his head. He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a Province of twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men: as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his office-hours ran variously from ten to twenty a day.

“Hi, Raines; you’re supposed to know everything,” said Martyn, stopping him. “How’s this Madras ‘scarcity’ going to turn out?”

“No one knows as yet. There’s a message as long as your arm coming in on the telephone. I’ve left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned she can’t manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting all the men he needs. Arbuthnot’s warned to hold himself in readiness.”

“‘Badger’ Arbuthnot?”

“The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay have been moved from the Northwest already, and they’ve taken half a dozen Bombay men, too. It’s pukka famine, by the looks of it.”