Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (482 page)

“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? I am sorry. I could have surprised you. Apart from my gun, my tale don’t amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don’t use any tobacco you’d be likely to carry… Bull Durham?
Bull Durham!
I take it all back — every last word. Bull Durham — here! If ever you strike Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war’s over, remember you’ve Laughton O. Zigler in your vest pocket. Including the city of Akron. We’ve a little club there…. Hell! What’s the sense of talking Akron with no pants?

“My gun? … For two cents I’d have shipped her to our Filipeens. ‘Came mighty near it too; but from what I’d read in the papers, you can’t trust Aguinaldo’s crowd on scientific matters. Why don’t I offer it to our army? Well, you’ve an effete aristocracy running yours, and we’ve a crowd of politicians. The results are practically identical. I am not taking any U.S. Army in mine.

“I went to Amsterdam with her — to this Dutch junta that supposes it’s bossing the war. I wasn’t brought up to love the British for one thing, and for another I knew that if she got in her fine work (my gun) I’d stand more chance of receiving an unbiassed report from a crowd of dam-fool British officers than from a hatful of politicians’ nephews doing duty as commissaries and ordnance sharps. As I said, I put the brown man out of the question. That’s the way
I
regarded the proposition.

“The Dutch in Holland don’t amount to a row of pins. Maybe I misjudge ‘em.
Maybe they’ve been swindled too often by self-seeking adventurers to know
a enthusiast when they see him. Anyway, they’re slower than the Wrath o’
God. But on delusions — as to their winning out next Thursday week at 9
A.M. — they are — if I may say so — quite British.

“I’ll tell you a curious thing, too. I fought ‘em for ten days before I could get the financial side of my game fixed to my liking. I knew they didn’t believe in the Zigler, but they’d no call to be crazy-mean. I fixed it — free passage and freight for me and the gun to Delagoa Bay, and beyond by steam and rail. Then I went aboard to see her crated, and there I struck my fellow-passengers — all deadheads, same as me. Well, Sir, I turned in my tracks where I stood and besieged the ticket-office, and I said, ‘Look at here, Van Dunk. I’m paying for my passage and her room in the hold — every square and cubic foot.’ ‘Guess he knocked down the fare to himself; but I paid. I paid. I wasn’t going to deadhead along o’
that
crowd of Pentecostal sweepings. ‘Twould have hoodooed my gun for all time. That was the way I regarded the proposition. No, Sir, they were not pretty company.

“When we struck Pretoria I had a hell-and-a-half of a time trying to interest the Dutch vote in my gun an’ her potentialities. The bottom was out of things rather much just about that time. Kruger was praying some and stealing some, and the Hollander lot was singing, ‘If you haven’t any money you needn’t come round,’ Nobody was spending his dough on anything except tickets to Europe. We were both grossly neglected. When I think how I used to give performances in the public streets with dummy cartridges, filling the hopper and turning the handle till the sweat dropped off me, I blush, Sir. I’ve made her to do her stunts before Kaffirs — naked sons of Ham — in Commissioner Street, trying to get a holt somewhere.

“Did I talk? I despise exaggeration — ’tain’t American or scientific — but as true as I’m sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, Teddy Roosevelt’s Western tour was a maiden’s sigh compared to my advertising work.

“‘Long in the spring I was rescued by a commandant called Van Zyl — a big, fleshy man with a lame leg. Take away his hair and his gun and he’d make a first-class Schenectady bar-keep. He found me and the Zigler on the veldt (Pretoria wasn’t wholesome at that time), and he annexed me in a somnambulistic sort o’ way. He was dead against the war from the start, but, being a Dutchman, he fought a sight better than the rest of that ‘God and the Mauser’ outfit. Adrian Van Zyl. Slept a heap in the daytime — and didn’t love niggers. I liked him. I was the only foreigner in his commando. The rest was Georgia Crackers and Pennsylvania Dutch — with a dash o’ Philadelphia lawyer. I could tell you things about them would surprise you. Religion for one thing; women for another; but I don’t know as their notions o’ geography weren’t the craziest. ‘Guess that must be some sort of automatic compensation. There wasn’t one blamed ant-hill in their district they didn’t know
and
use; but the world was flat, they said, and England was a day’s trek from Cape Town.

“They could fight in their own way, and don’t you forget it. But I guess you will not. They fought to kill, and, by what I could make out, the British fought to be killed. So both parties were accommodated.

“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir. The position has its obligations — on both sides. You could not be offensive or partisan to me. I cannot, for the same reason, be offensive to you. Therefore I will not give you my opinions on the conduct of your war.

“Anyway, I didn’t take the field as an offensive partisan, but as an
inventor. It was a condition and not a theory that confronted me. (Yes,
Sir, I’m a Democrat by conviction, and that was one of the best things
Grover Cleveland ever got off.)

“After three months’ trek, old man Van Zyl had his commando in good shape and refitted off the British, and he reckoned he’d wait on a British General of his acquaintance that did business on a circuit between Stompiesneuk, Jackhalputs, Vrelegen, and Odendaalstroom, year in and year out. He was a fixture in that section.

“‘He’s a dam’ good man,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He’s a friend of mine. He sent in a fine doctor when I was wounded and our Hollander doc. wanted to cut my leg off. Ya, I’ll guess we’ll stay with him.’ Up to date, me and my Zigler had lived in innocuous desuetude owing to little odds and ends riding out of gear. How in thunder was I to know there wasn’t the ghost of any road in the country? But raw hide’s cheap and lastin’. I guess I’ll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though.

“Well, Sir, we struck the General on his beat — Vrelegen it was — and our crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. Van Zyl shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, ‘Now we shall be quite happy, Mr. Zigler. No more trekking. Joost twelve miles a day till the apricots are ripe.’

“Then we hitched on to his outposts, and vedettes, and cossack-picquets, or whatever they was called, and we wandered around the veldt arm in arm like brothers.

“The way we worked lodge was this way. The General, he had his breakfast at 8:45 A.M. to the tick. He might have been a Long Island commuter. At 8:42 A.M. I’d go down to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry to meet him — I mean I’d see the Zigler into position at two thousand (I began at three thousand, but that was cold and distant) — and blow him off to two full hoppers — eighteen rounds — just as they were bringing in his coffee. If his crowd was busy celebrating the anniversary of Waterloo or the last royal kid’s birthday, they’d open on me with two guns (I’ll tell you about them later on), but if they were disengaged they’d all stand to their horses and pile on the ironmongery, and washers, and typewriters, and five weeks’ grub, and in half an hour they’d sail out after me and the rest of Van Zyl’s boys; lying down and firing till 11:45 A.M. or maybe high noon. Then we’d go from labour to refreshment, resooming at 2 P.M. and battling till tea-time. Tuesday and Friday was the General’s moving days. He’d trek ahead ten or twelve miles, and we’d loaf around his flankers and exercise the ponies a piece. Sometimes he’d get hung up in a drift — stalled crossin’ a crick — and we’d make playful snatches at his wagons. First time that happened I turned the Zigler loose with high hopes, Sir; but the old man was well posted on rearguards with a gun to ‘em, and I had to haul her out with three mules instead of six. I was pretty mad. I wasn’t looking for any experts back of the Royal British Artillery. Otherwise, the game was mostly even. He’d lay out three or four of our commando, and we’d gather in four or five of his once a week or thereon. One time, I remember, long towards dusk we saw ‘em burying five of their boys. They stood pretty thick around the graves. We wasn’t more than fifteen hundred yards off, but old Van Zyl wouldn’t fire. He just took off his hat at the proper time. He said if you stretched a man at his prayers you’d have to hump his bad luck before the Throne as well as your own. I am inclined to agree with him. So we browsed along week in and week out. A war-sharp might have judged it sort of docile, but for an inventor needing practice one day and peace the next for checking his theories, it suited Laughton O. Zigler.

“And friendly? Friendly was no word for it. We was brothers in arms.

“Why, I knew those two guns of the Royal British Artillery as well as I used to know the old Fifth Avenoo stages.
They
might have been brothers too.

“They’d jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough and prize ‘emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till I could have wept, Sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up to these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines. One of ‘em — I called her Baldy — she’d a long white scar all along her barrel — I’d made sure of twenty times. I knew her crew by sight, but she’d come switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells like — like a hen from under a buggy — and she’d dip into a gully, and next thing I’d know ‘ud be her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin’ for us. Her runnin’ mate had two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood wheel repainted, and a whole raft of rope-ends trailin’ around. ‘Jever see Tom Reed with his vest off, steerin’ Congress through a heat-wave? I’ve been to Washington often — too often — filin’ my patents. I called her Tom Reed. We three ‘ud play pussy-wants-a-corner all round the outposts on off-days — cross-lots through the sage and along the mezas till we was short-circuited by canons. O, it was great for me and Baldy and Tom Reed! I don’t know as we didn’t neglect the legitimate interests of our respective commanders sometimes for this ball-play. I know
I
did.

“‘Long towards the fall the Royal British Artillery grew shy — hung back in their breeching sort of — and their shooting was way — way off. I observed they wasn’t taking any chances, not though I acted kitten almost underneath ‘em.

“I mentioned it to Van Zyl, because it struck me I had about knocked their
Royal British moral endways.

“‘No,’ says he, rocking as usual on his pony. ‘My Captain Mankeltow he is sick. That is all.’

“‘So’s your Captain Mankeltow’s guns,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to make ‘em a heap sicker before he gets well.’

“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He has had the enteric a little. Now he is better, and he was let out from hospital at Jackhalputs. Ah, that Mankeltow! He always makes me laugh so. I told him — long back — at Colesberg, I had a little home for him at Nooitgedacht. But he would not come — no! He has been sick, and I am sorry.’

“‘How d’you know that?’ I says.

“‘Why, only to-day he sends back his love by Johanna Van der Merwe, that goes to their doctor for her sick baby’s eyes. He sends his love, that Mankeltow, and he tells her tell me he has a little garden of roses all ready for me in the Dutch Indies — Umballa. He is very funny, my Captain Mankeltow.’

“The Dutch and the English ought to fraternise, Sir. They’ve the same notions of humour, to my thinking.’

“‘When he gets well,’ says Van Zyl, ‘you look out, Mr. Americaan. He comes back to his guns next Tuesday. Then they shoot better.’

“I wasn’t so well acquainted with the Royal British Artillery as old man Van Zyl. I knew this Captain Mankeltow by sight, of course, and, considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, I thought he’d done right well against my Zigler. But nothing epoch-making.

“Next morning at the usual hour I waited on the General, and old Van Zyl come along with some of the boys. Van Zyl didn’t hang round the Zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day.

“He was peeking through his glasses at the camp, and I was helping pepper, the General’s sow-belly — just as usual — when he turns to me quick and says, ‘Almighty! How all these Englishmen are liars! You cannot trust one,’ he says. ‘Captain Mankeltow tells our Johanna he comes not back till Tuesday, and to-day is Friday, and there he is! Almighty! The English are all Chamberlains!’

“If the old man hadn’t stopped to make political speeches he’d have had his supper in laager that night, I guess. I was busy attending to Tom Reed at two thousand when Baldy got in her fine work on me. I saw one sheet of white flame wrapped round the hopper, and in the middle of it there was one o’ my mules straight on end. Nothing out of the way in a mule on end, but this mule hadn’t any head. I remember it struck me as incongruous at the time, and when I’d ciphered it out I was doing the Santos-Dumont act without any balloon and my motor out of gear. Then I got to thinking about Santos-Dumont and how much better my new way was. Then I thought about Professor Langley and the Smithsonian, and wishing I hadn’t lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at Washington. Then I quit thinking for quite a while, and when I resumed my train of thought I was nude, Sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my mouth was full of fine dirt all flavoured with Laughtite.