Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (688 page)

“Just as they were gettin’ used to that, and they’d taught the Headman and his Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s your lady friend?’ they were embarked on a dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over the ocean and returned to the
Cormorang
, which, o’ course, had reported ‘em missing and dead months before. They had one final kick-up before returnin’ to duty. You see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in the Pelungas, and they were both in Pelungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they went aboard the
Cormorang
they weren’t recognized till they were half-way down to their cabins.”

“And then?” both Captains asked at once.

“That’s where Baxter breaks off — even though he’s writin’ to his own people. He’s so apologetic to ‘em for havin’ gone missin’ and worried ‘em, an’ he’s so sinful proud of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall songs, that he only said that they had ‘some reception aboard the
Cormorang
.’ It lasted till midnight.”

“It is possible. What about their machine?” said Jerry.

“The
Cormorang
ran down to the Pelungas and retrieved it all right. But
I
should have liked to have seen that reception. There is nothing I’d ha’ liked better than to have seen that reception. And it isn’t as if I hadn’t seen a reception or two either.”

“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the Quartermaster at the door.

“Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding, “I’m going to scratch the backs of swine for the next three days. G’wout!”

The well-trained servant was already fleeting along the edge of the basin with his valise.
Stephanotis
and
Phlox
returned to their own ships, loudly expressing envy and hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at his gangway rail to beckon to his torpedo-coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a peace-time sailor of mild and mildewed aspect who had followed Duckett’s shady fortunes for some years.

“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where
did
we get that new starboard fender of ours from?”

“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep when we came in,” said Wilkins through lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But our port one come orf the water-boat. We ‘ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last night, sir, and we — er — found it on ‘er.”

“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home fires burning,” and Lieutenant-in-Command H.R. Duckett sped after his servant in the direction of the railway-station. But not so fast that he could outrun a melody played aboard the
Phlox
on a concertina to which manly voices bore the burden:

When the enterprisin’ burglar ain’t aburglin’ — ain’t aburglin’,
    When the cut-throat is not occupied with crime — ’pied with crime.
He loves to hear the little brook agurglin’ —  —

Moved, Heaven knows whether by conscience or kindliness, Lieutenant Duckett smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard gates.

“Stalky”

“AND then,” it was a boy’s voice, curiously level and even, “De Vitré said we were beastly funks not to help, and
I
said there were too many chaps in it to suit us. Besides, there’s bound to be a mess somewhere or other, with old De Vitré in charge. Wasn’t I right, Beetle?”

“And, anyhow, it’s a silly biznai, bung through. What’ll they
do
with the beastly cows when they’ve got ‘em? You can milk a cow — if she’ll stand still. That’s all right, but drivin’ ‘em about —  — ”

“You’re a pig, Beetle.”

“No, I ain’t. What is the sense of drivin’ a lot of cows up from the Burrows to — to — where is it?”

“They’re tryin’ to drive ‘em up to Toowey’s farmyard at the top of the hill — the empty one, where we smoked last Tuesday. It’s a revenge. Old Vidley chivied De Vitré twice last week for ridin’ his ponies on the Burrows; and De Vitré’s goin’ to lift as many of old Vidley’s cattle as he can and plant ‘em up the hill. He’ll muck it, though — with Parsons, Orrin and Howlett helpin’ him. They’ll only yell, an’ shout, an’ bunk if they see Vidley.”

“
We
might have managed it,” said McTurk slowly, turning up his coat-collar against the rain that swept over the Burrows. His hair was of the dark mahogany red that goes with a certain temperament.

“We should,” Corkran replied with equal confidence. “But they’ve gone into it as if it was a sort of spadger-hunt. I’ve never done any cattle-liftin’, but it seems to me-e-e that one might just as well be stalky about a thing as not.” The smoking vapours of the Atlantic drove in wreaths above the boys’ heads. Out of the mist to windward, beyond the grey bar of the Pebble Ridge, came the unceasing roar of mile-long Atlantic rollers. To leeward, a few stray ponies and cattle, the property of the Northam potwallopers, and the unwilling playthings of the boys in their leisure hours, showed through the haze. The three boys had halted by the Cattle-gate which marks the limit of cultivation, where the fields come down to the Burrows from Northam Hill. Beetle, shock-headed and spectacled, drew his nose to and fro along the wet top-bar; McTurk shifted from one foot to the other, watching the water drain into either print; while Corkran whistled through his teeth as he leaned against a sod-bank, peering into the mist.

A grown or sane person might have called the weather vile; but the boys at that School had not yet learned the national interest in climate. It was a little damp, to be sure; but it was always damp in the Easter term, and sea-wet, they held, could not give one a cold under any circumstances. Mackintoshes were things to go to church in, but crippling if one had to run at short notice across heavy country. So they waited serenely in the downpour, clad as their mothers would not have cared to see.

“I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his spectacles for the twentieth time, “if we aren’t going to help De Vitré, what are we here for?”

“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer. “Keep your eye on your Uncle and he’ll pull you through.”

“ It’s an awful biznai, driving cattle — in open country,” said McTurk, who, as the son of an Irish baronet, knew something of these operations. “They’ll have to run half over the Burrows after ‘em. ‘S’pose they’re ridin’ Vidley’s ponies?”

“De Vitré’s sure to be. He’s a dab on a horse. Listen! What a filthy row they’re making. They’ll be heard for miles.”

The air filled with whoops and shouts, cries, words of command, the rattle of broken golf-clubs, and a clatter of hooves. Three cows with their calves came up to the Cattle-gate at a milch-canter, followed by four wild-eyed bullocks and two rough-coated ponies. A fat and freckled youth of fifteen trotted behind them, riding bareback and brandishing a hedge-stake. De Vitré, up to a certain point, was an inventive youth, with a passion for horse-exercise that the Northam farmers did not encourage. Farmer Vidley, who could not understand that a grazing pony likes being galloped about, had once called him a thief, and the insult rankled. Hence the raid.

“Come on,” he cried over his shoulder. “Open the gate, Corkran, or they’ll all cut back again. We’ve had no end of bother to get ‘em. Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild 1”

Three boys on foot ran up, “shooing” the cattle in excited and amateur fashion, till they headed them into the narrow, high-banked Devonshire lane that ran uphill.

“Come on, Corkran. It’s no end of a lark,” pleaded De Vitré; but Corkran shook his head. The affair had been presented to him after dinner that day as a completed scheme, in which he might, by favour, play a minor part. And Arthur Lionel Corkran, No. 104, did not care for lieutenancies.

“You’ll only be collared,” he cried, as he shut the gate. “Parsons and Orrin are no good in a row. You’ll be collared sure as a gun, De Vitré.”

“Oh, you’re a beastly funk!” The speaker was already hidden by the fog.

“Hang it all,” said McTurk. “It’s about the first time we’ve ever tried a cattle-lift at the Coll. Let’s —  — ”

“Not much,” said Corkran firmly; “keep your eye on your Uncle.” His word was law in these matters, for experience had taught them that if they manœuvred without Corkran they fell into trouble.

“You’re wrathy because you didn’t think of it first,” said Beetle. Corkran kicked him thrice calmly, neither he nor Beetle changing a muscle the while.

“No, I ain’t; but it isn’t stalky enough for me.”

“Stalky,” in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and “stalkiness “was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.

“‘Same thing,” said McTurk. “You think you’re the only stalky chap in the Coll.”

Corkran kicked him as he had kicked Beetle; and even as Beetle, McTurk took not the faintest notice. By the etiquette of their friendship, this was no more than a formal notice of dissent from a proposition.

“They haven’t thrown out any pickets,” Corkran went on (that school prepared boys for the Army). “You ought to do that — even for apples. Toowey’s farmyard may be full of farmchaps.”

“‘Twasn’t last week,” said Beetle, “when we smoked in that cart-shed place. It’s a mile from any house, too.”

Up went one of Corkran’s light eyebrows. “Oh, Beetle, I
am
so tired o’ kickin’ you! Does that mean it’s empty now? They ought to have sent a fellow ahead to look. They’re simply bound to be collared. An’ where’ll they bunk to if they have to run for it? Parsons has only been here two terms.
He
don’t know the lie of the country. Orrin’s a fat ass, an’ Howlett bunks from a guv’nor” [vernacular for any native of Devon engaged in agricultural pursuits] “as far as he can see one. De Vitré’s the only decent chap in the lot, an’ — an.’
I
put him up to usin’ Toowey’s farmyard.”

“Well, keep your hair on,” said Beetle. “What are we going to do? It’s hefty damp here.”

“Let’s think a bit.” Corkran whistled between his teeth and presently broke into a swift, short double-shuffle. “We’ll go straight up the hill and see what happens to ‘em. Cut across the fields; an’ we’ll lie up in the hedge where the lane comes in by the barn — where we found that dead hedgehog last term. Come on!”

He scrambled over the earth bank and dropped on to the rain-soaked plough. It was a steep slope to the brow of the hill where Toowey’s barns stood. The boys took no account of stiles or footpaths, crossing field after field diagonally, and where they found a hedge, bursting through it like beagles. The lane lay on their right flank, and they heard much lowing and shouting in that direction.

“Well, if De Vitré isn’t collared,” said McTurk, kicking off a few pounds of loam against a gate-post, “he jolly well ought to be.”

“We’ll get collared, too, if you go on with your nose up like that. Duck, you ass, and stalk along under the hedge. We can get quite close up to the barn,” said Corkran. “There’s no sense in not doin’ a thing stalkily while you’re about it.”

They wriggled into the top of an old hollow double hedge less than thirty yards from the big black-timbered barn with its square outbuildings. Their ten-minutes’ climb had lifted them a couple of hundred feet above the Burrows. As the mists parted here and there, they could see its great triangle of sodden green, tipped with yellow sand-dunes and fringed with white foam, laid out like a blurred map below. The surge along the Pebble Ridge made a background to the wild noises in the lane.

“What did I tell you?” said Corkran, peering through the stems of the quickset which commanded a view of the farmyard. “Three farm-chaps — getting out dung — with pitchforks. It’s too late to head off De Vitré. We’d be collared if we showed up. Besides, they’ve heard ‘em. They couldn’t help hearing. What asses!”

The natives, brandishing their weapons, talked together, using many times the word “Colleger.” As the tumult swelled, they disappeared into various pens and byres. The first of the cattle trotted up to the yard-gate, and De Vitré felicitated his band.

“That’s all right,” he shouted. “Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild! Open the gate, Orrin, an’ whack ‘em through. They’re pretty warm.”

“So’ll you be in a minute,” muttered McTurk as the raiders hurried into the yard behind the cattle. They heard a shout of triumph, shrill yells of despair; saw one Devonian guarding the gate with a pitchfork, while the others, alas! captured all four boys.

“Of all the infernal, idiotic, lower-second asses!” said Corkran. “They haven’t even taken off their house-caps.” These dainty confections of primary colours were not issued, as some believe, to encourage House-pride or
esprit de corps
, but for purposes of identification from afar, should the wearer break bounds or laws. That is why, in time of war, any one but an idiot wore his inside out.

“Aie! Yeou young rascals. We’ve got ‘e! Whutt be doin’ to Muster Vidley’s bullocks?”

“Oh, we found ‘em,” said De Vitré, who bore himself gallantly in defeat. “Would you like ‘em.?”

“Found ‘em! They bullocks drove like that — all heavin’ an’ penkin’ an’ hotted! Oh! Shameful. Yeou’ve nigh to killed the cows — lat alone stealin’ ‘em. They sends pore boys to jail for half o’ this.”

“That’s a lie,” said Beetle to McTurk, turning on the wet grass.

“I know; but they always say it. ‘Member when they collared us at the Monkey Farm that Sunday, with the apples in your topper?”