Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (483 page)

“I coughed up that dirt.

“‘Hullo!’ says a man walking beside me. ‘You’ve spoke almost in time. Have a drink?’

“I don’t use rum as a rule, but I did then, because I needed it.

“‘What hit us?’I said.

“‘Me,’ he said. ‘I got you fair on the hopper as you pulled out of that donga; but I’m sorry to say every last round in the hopper’s exploded and your gun’s in a shocking state. I’m real sorry,’ he says. ‘I admire your gun, Sir.’

“‘Are you Captain Mankeltow?’ I says.

“‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I presoom you’re Mister Zigler. Your commanding officer told me about you.’

“‘Have you gathered in old man Van Zyl?’ I said.

“‘Commandant Van Zyl,’ he says very stiff, ‘was most unfortunately wounded, but I am glad to say it’s not serious. We hope he’ll be able to dine with us to-night; and I feel sure,’ he says, ‘the General would be delighted to see you too, though he didn’t expect,’ he says, ‘and no one else either, by Jove!’ he says, and blushed like the British do when they’re embarrassed.

“I saw him slide an Episcopalian Prayer-book up his sleeve, and when I looked over the edge of the stretcher there was half-a-dozen enlisted men — privates — had just quit digging and was standing to attention by their spades. I guess he was right on the General not expecting me to dinner; but it was all of a piece with their sloppy British way of doing business. Any God’s quantity of fuss and flubdub to bury a man, and not an ounce of forehandedness in the whole outfit to find out whether he was rightly dead. And I am a Congregationalist anyway!

“Well, Sir, that was my introduction to the British Army. I’d write a book about it if anyone would believe me. This Captain Mankeltow, Royal British Artillery, turned the doctor on me (I could write another book about
him
) and fixed me up with a suit of his own clothes, and fed me canned beef and biscuits, and give me a cigar — a Henry Clay and a whisky-and- sparklet. He was a white man.

“‘Ye-es, by Jove,’ he said, dragging out his words like a twist of molasses, ‘we’ve all admired your gun and the way you’ve worked it. Some of us betted you was a British deserter. I won a sovereign on that from a yeoman. And, by the way,’ he says, ‘you’ve disappointed me groom pretty bad.’

“‘Where does your groom come in?’ I said.

“‘Oh, he was the yeoman. He’s a dam poor groom,’ says my captain, ‘but he’s a way-up barrister when he’s at home. He’s been running around the camp with his tongue out, waiting for the chance of defending you at the court-martial.’

“‘What court-martial?’ I says.

“‘On you as a deserter from the Artillery. You’d have had a good run for your money. Anyway, you’d never have been hung after the way you worked your gun. Deserter ten times over,’ he says, ‘I’d have stuck out for shooting you like a gentleman.’

“Well, Sir, right there it struck me at the pit of my stomach — sort of sickish, sweetish feeling — that my position needed regularising pretty bad. I ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year’s standing; but Ohio’s my State, and I wouldn’t have gone back on her for a desertful of Dutchmen. That and my enthoosiasm as an inventor had led me to the existing crisis; but I couldn’t expect this Captain Mankeltow to regard the proposition that way. There I sat, the rankest breed of unreconstructed American citizen, caught red-handed squirting hell at the British Army for months on end. I tell
you
, Sir, I wished I was in Cincinnatah that summer evening. I’d have compromised on Brooklyn.

“‘What d’you do about aliens?’ I said, and the dirt I’d coughed up seemed all back of my tongue again.

“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘we don’t do much of anything. They’re about all the society we get. I’m a bit of a pro-Boer myself,’ he says, ‘but between you and me the average Boer ain’t over and above intellectual. You’re the first American we’ve met up with, but of course you’re a burgher.’

“It was what I ought to have been if I’d had the sense of a common tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad.

“‘Of course I am not,’ I says. ‘Would
you
be a naturalised Boer?’

“‘I’m fighting against ‘em,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘but it’s all a matter of opinion.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I’m a white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.’

“He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don’t lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America that made me mad all through.

“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand the alleged British joke. It is depressing.

“I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every blame one of ‘em grinned and asked me why I wasn’t in the Filipeens suppressing our war! And that was British humour! They all had to get it off their chests before they’d talk sense. But they was sound on the Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three months in the hope they’d capture it and let me go home. That tickled ‘em to death. They made me say it three times over, and laughed like kids each time. But half the British
are
kids; specially the older men. My Captain Mankeltow was less of it than the others. He talked about the Zigler like a lover, Sir, and I drew him diagrams of the hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. He asked the one British question I was waiting for, ‘Hadn’t I made my working-parts too light?’ The British think weight’s strength.

“At last — I’d been shy of opening the subject before — at last I said, ‘Gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal I’ve been hunting after. I guess you ain’t interested in any other gun-factory, and politics don’t weigh with you. How did it feel your end of the game? What’s my gun done, anyway?’

“‘I hate to disappoint you,’ says Captain Mankeltow, ‘because I know you feel as an inventor.’ I wasn’t feeling like an inventor just then. I felt friendly, but the British haven’t more tact than you can pick up with a knife out of a plate of soup.

“‘The honest truth,’ he says, ‘is that you’ve wounded about ten of us one way and another, killed two battery horses and four mules, and — oh, yes,’ he said, ‘you’ve bagged five Kaffirs. But, buck up,’ he said, ‘we’ve all had mighty close calls’ — shaves, he called ‘em, I remember. ‘Look at my pants.’

“They was repaired right across the seat with Minneapolis flour-bagging. I could see the stencil.

“‘I ain’t bluffing,’ he says. ‘Get the hospital returns, Doc.’

“The doctor gets ‘em and reads ‘em out under the proper dates. That doctor alone was worth the price of admission.

“I was right pleased right through that I hadn’t killed any of these cheerful kids; but none the less I couldn’t help thinking that a few more Kaffirs would have served me just as well for advertising purposes as white men. No, sir. Anywhichway you regard the proposition, twenty-one casualties after months of close friendship like ours was — paltry.

“They gave me taffy about the gun — the British use taffy where we use sugar. It’s cheaper, and gets there just the same. They sat around and proved to me that my gun was too good, too uniform — shot as close as a Mannlicher rifle.

“Says one kid chewing a bit of grass: ‘I counted eight of your shells, Sir, burst in a radius of ten feet. All of ‘em would have gone through one waggon-tilt. It was beautiful,’ he says. ‘It was too good.’

“I shouldn’t wonder if the boys were right. My Laughtite is too mathematically uniform in propelling power. Yes; she was too good for this refractory fool of a country. The training gear was broke, too, and we had to swivel her around by the trail. But I’ll build my next Zigler fifteen hundred pounds heavier. Might work in a gasoline motor under the axles. I must think that up.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’d hate to have been the death of any of you; and if a prisoner can deed away his property, I’d love to present the Captain here with what he’s seen fit to leave of my Zigler.’

“‘Thanks awf’ly,’ says my Captain. ‘I’d like her very much. She’d look fine in the mess at Woolwich. That is, if you don’t mind, Mr. Zigler.’

“‘Go right ahead,’ I says. ‘I’ve come out of all the mess I’ve any use for; but she’ll do to spread the light among the Royal British Artillery.’

“I tell you, Sir, there’s not much of anything the matter with the Royal British Artillery. They’re brainy men languishing under an effete system which, when you take good holt of it, is England — just all England. ‘Times I’d feel I was talking with real live citizens, and times I’d feel I’d struck the Beef Eaters in the Tower.

“How? Well, this way. I was telling my Captain Mankeltow what Van Zyl had said about the British being all Chamberlains when the old man saw him back from hospital four days ahead of time.

“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he says, as serious as the Supreme Court. ‘It’s too bad,’ he says. ‘Johanna must have misunderstood me, or else I’ve got the wrong Dutch word for these blarsted days of the week. I told Johanna I’d be out on Friday. The woman’s a fool. Oah, da-am it all!’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t have sold old Van Zyl a pup like that,’ he says. ‘I’ll hunt him up and apologise.’

“He must have fixed it all right, for when we sailed over to the General’s dinner my Captain had Van Zyl about half-full of sherry and bitters, as happy as a clam. The boys all called him Adrian, and treated him like their prodigal father. He’d been hit on the collarbone by a wad of shrapnel, and his arm was tied up.

“But the General was the peach. I presume you’re acquainted with the average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his left hand, and he talked like — like the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. J’ever read that paper? It’s refined, Sir — and innocuous, and full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying my stay in their midst. Then he thanked me for the interesting and valuable lessons that I’d given his crowd — specially in the matter of placing artillery and rearguard attacks. He’d wipe his long thin moustache between drinks — lime-juice and water he used — and blat off into a long ‘a-aah,’ and ladle out more taffy for me or old man Van Zyl on his right. I told him how I’d had my first Pisgah-sight of the principles of the Zigler when I was a fourth-class postmaster on a star-route in Arkansas. I told him how I’d worked it up by instalments when I was machinist in Waterbury, where the dollar-watches come from. He had one on his wrist then. I told him how I’d met Zalinski (he’d never heard of Zalinski!) when I was an extra clerk in the Naval Construction Bureau at Washington. I told him how my uncle, who was a truck-farmer in Noo Jersey (he loaned money on mortgage too, for ten acres ain’t enough now in Noo Jersey), how he’d willed me a quarter of a million dollars, because I was the only one of our kin that called him down when he used to come home with a hard-cider jag on him and heave ox-bows at his nieces. I told him how I’d turned in every red cent on the Zigler, and I told him the whole circus of my coming out with her, and so on, and so following; and every forty seconds he’d wipe his moustache and blat, ‘How interesting. Really, now? How interesting.’

“It was like being in an old English book, Sir. Like
Bracebridge Hall
. But an American wrote
that!
I kept peeking around for the Boar’s Head and the Rosemary and Magna Charta and the Cricket on the Hearth, and the rest of the outfit. Then Van Zyl whirled in. He was no ways jagged, but thawed — thawed, Sir, and among friends. They began discussing previous scraps all along the old man’s beat — about sixty of ‘em — as well as side- shows with other generals and columns. Van Zyl told ‘im of a big beat he’d worked on a column a week or so before I’d joined him. He demonstrated his strategy with forks on the table.

“‘There!’ said the General, when he’d finished. ‘That proves my contention to the hilt. Maybe I’m a bit of a pro-Boer, but I stick to it,’ he says, ‘that under proper officers, with due regard to his race prejudices, the Boer’ud make the finest mounted infantry in the Empire. Adrian,’ he says, ‘you’re simply squandered on a cattle-run. You ought to be at the Staff College with De Wet.’

“‘You catch De Wet and I come to your Staff College — eh,’ says Adrian, laughing. ‘But you are so slow, Generaal. Why are you so slow? For a month,’ he says, ‘you do so well and strong that we say we shall hands-up and come back to our farms. Then you send to England and make us a present of two — three — six hundred young men, with rifles and wagons and rum and tobacco, and such a great lot of cartridges, that our young men put up their tails and start all over again. If you hold an ox by the horn and hit him by the bottom he runs round and round. He never goes anywhere. So, too, this war goes round and round. You know that, Generaal!’

“‘Quite right, Adrian,’ says the General; ‘but you must believe your
Bible.’

“‘Hooh!’ says Adrian, and reaches for the whisky. ‘I’ve never known a
Dutchman a professing Atheist, but some few have been rather active
Agnostics since the British sat down in Pretoria. Old man Van Zyl — he told
me — had soured on religion after Bloemfontein surrendered. He was a Free
Stater for one thing.’