Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (692 page)

“And he’d be so useful while he was rallying, wouldn’t he?” said the Friend shortly. “Imagine one hundred thousand chaps of your kidney introduced to the rifle for the first time, all loading and firing in your fashion! The hospitals wouldn’t hold ‘em!”

“Oh, there’d be time to get the general hang of the thing,” said Boy Jones cheerily.

“When that hour strikes,” the Friend replied, “it will already have struck, if you understand. There may be a few hours — perhaps ten or twelve — there will certainly not be more than a day and a night allowed us to get ready in.”

“There will be six months at least,” said Boy Jones confidently.

“Ah, you probably read that in a paper. I shouldn’t rely on it, if I were you. It won’t be like a county cricket match, date settled months in advance. By the way, are you playing for your county this season?”

Boy Jones seemed not to hear the last question. He had taken the Friend’s rifle, and was idly clicking the bolt.

“Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said the Marker to the Friend in an undertone, “but the Sergeant’s tryin’ a gentleman’s new rifle at nine hundred, and I’m waiting on for him. If you’d like to come into the trench?” — a discreet wink closed the sentence.

“Thanks awfully. That ‘ud be quite interesting,” said Boy Jones. The wind had dulled a little; the sun was still strong on the golden gorse; the Sergeant’s straight back grew smaller and smaller as it moved away.

“You go down this ladder,” said the Marker. They reached the raw line of the trench beneath the targets, the foot deep in the flinty chalk.

“Yes, sir,” he went on, “here’s where all the bullets ought to come. There’s fourteen thousand of ‘em this year, somewhere on the premises, but it don’t hinder the rabbits from burrowing, just the same.
They
know shooting’s over as well as we do. You come here with a shot-gun, and you won’t see a single tail; but they don’t put ‘emselves out for a rifle. Look, there’s the Parson!” He pointed at a bold, black rabbit sitting half-way up the butt, who loped easily away as the Marker ran up the large nine-hundred-yard bull. Boy Jones stared at the bullet-splintered framework of the targets, the chewed edges of the woodwork, and the significantly loosened earth behind them. At last he came down, slowly it seemed, out of the sunshine, into the chill of the trench. The marker opened an old cocoa box, where he kept his paste and paper patches.

“Things get mildewy down here,” he explained. “Mr. Warren, our sexton, says it’s too like a grave to suit
him
. But as I say, it’s twice as deep and thrice as wide as what
he
makes.”

“I think it’s rather jolly,” said Boy Jones, and looked up at the narrow strip of sky. The Marker had quietly lowered the danger flag. Something yowled like a cat with her tail trod on, and a few fragments of pure white chalk crumbled softly into the trench. Boy Jones jumped, and flattened himself against the inner wall of the trench. “The Sergeant is taking a sighting-shot,” said the Marker. “He must have hit a flint in the grass somewhere. We. can’t comb ‘;em all out. The noise you noticed was the nickel envelope stripping, sir.”

“But I didn’t hear his gun go off,” said Boy Jones.

“Not at nine hundred, with this wind, you wouldn’t,” said the Marker. “Stand on one side, please, sir. He’s begun.”

There was a rap overhead — a pause — down came the creaking target, up went the marking disc at the end of a long bamboo; a paper patch was slapped over the bullet hole, and the target slid up again, to be greeted with another rap, another, and another. The fifth differed in tone. “Here’s a curiosity,” said the Marker, pulling down the target. “The bullet must have ricochetted short of the butt, and it has key-holed, as we say. See!” He pointed to an ugly triangular rip and flap on the canvas target face. “If that had been flesh and blood, now,” he went on genially, “it would have been just the same as running a plough up you. . . . Now he’s on again!” The sixth rap was as thrillingly emphatic as one at a spiritualistic stance, but the seventh was followed by another yaa-ow of a bullet hitting a stone, and a tiny twisted sliver of metal fell at Boy Jones’s rigid feet. He touched and dropped it. “Why, it’s quite hot,” he said.

“That’s due to arrested motion,” said the F.R.G.S. “Isn’t it a funking noise, though?”

A pause of several minutes followed, during which they could hear the wind and the sea and the creaking of the Marker’s braces.

“He said he’d finish off with a magazine full,” the Marker volunteered. “I expect he’s waiting for a lull in the wind. Ah! here it comes!”

It came — eleven shots slammed in at three-second intervals; a ricochet or two; one on the right-hand of the target’s framework, which rang like a bell; a couple that hammered the old railway ties just behind the bull; and another that kicked a clod into the trench, and key-holed up the target. The others were various and scattering, but all on the butt.

“Sergeant can do better than that,” said the Marker critically, overhauling the target. “It was the wind put him off, or (he winked once again), or . . . else he wished to show somebody something.”

“ I heard ‘em all hit,” said Boy Jones. “But I never heard the gun go off. Awful, I call it!”

“Well,” said his friend, “it’s the kind of bowling you’ll have to face at forty-eight hours’ notice —
if
you’re lucky.”

“It’s the key-holing that I bar,” said Boy Jones, following his own line of thought. The Marker put up his flag and ladder, and they climbed out of the trench into the sunshine.

“For pity’s sake, look!” said the Marker, and stopped. “Well, well! If I ‘adn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have credited it. You poor little impident fool. The Sergeant
will
be vexed.”

“What has happened?” said Boy Jones, rather shrilly.

“He’s killed the Parson, sir!” The Marker held up the still kicking body of a glossy black rabbit. One side of its head was not there.

“Talk of coincidence!” the Marker went on. “I know Sergeant ‘ll pretend he aimed for it. The poor little fool! Jumpin’ about after his own businesses and thinking he was safe; and then to have his head fair mashed off him like this. Just look at him! Well! Well!”

It was anything but well with Boy Jones. He seemed sick.

.     .     .     .     .

A week later the Friend nearly stepped on him in the miniature-rifle shed. He was lying at length on the dusty coir matting, his trousers rucked half-way to his knees, his sights set as for two hundred, deferentially asking Milligan the cripple to stand behind him and tell him whether he was canting.

“No, you aren’t now,” said Milligan patronizingly, “but you were.”

A Departure

SINCE
first the White Horse Banner blew free,
    By Hengist’s horde unfurled,
Nothing has changed on land or sea
    Of the things that steer the world.
(As it was when the long-ships scudded through the gale
    So it is where the Liners go.)
Time and Tide, they are both in a tale
    ”Woe to the weaker — woe!”

No charm can bridle the hard-mouthed wind
    Or smooth the fretting swell.
No gift can alter the grey Sea’s mind,
    But she serves the strong man well.
(As it is when her uttermost deeps are stirred
    So it is where the quicksands show,)
All the waters have but one word —
    ”Woe to the weaker — woe!”

The feast is ended, the tales are told,
    The dawn is overdue,
And we meet on the quay in the whistling cold
    Where the galley waits her crew.
Out with the torches, they have flared too long,
    And bid the harpers go.
Wind and warfare have but one song —
    ”Woe to the weaker — woe!”

Hail to the great oars gathering way,
    As the beach begins to slide!
Hail to the war-shields’ click and play
    As they lift along our side!
Hail to the first wave over the bow —
    Slow for the sea-stroke! Slow! —
All the benches are grunting now: —
    ”
Woe to the weaker — woe!
”

The Bold ‘Prentice

YOUNG
Ottley’s father came to Calcutta in 1857 as fireman on the first locomotive ever run by the D.I.R., which was then the largest Indian railway. All his life he spoke broad Yorkshire, but young Ottley, being born in India, naturally talked the clipped sing-song that is used by the half-castes and English-speaking natives. When he was fifteen years old the D.I.R. took him into their service as an apprentice in the Locomotive Repair Department of the Ajaibpore workshops, and he became one of a gang of three or four white men and nine or ten natives.

There were scores of such gangs, each with its hoisting and overhead cranes, jack-screws, vices and lathes, as separate as separate shops, and their work was to mend locomotives and make the apprentices behave. But the apprentices threw nuts at one another, chalked caricatures of unpopular foremen on buffer-bars and, discarded boilers, and did as little work as they possibly could.

They were nearly all sons of old employees, living with their parents in the white bungalows of Steam Road or Church Road or Albert Road — on the broad avenues of pounded brick bordered by palms and crotons and bougainvilleas and bamboos which made up the railway town of Ajaibpore. They had never seen the sea or a steamer; half their speech was helped out with native slang; they were all volunteers in the D.I.R.’s Railway Corps — grey with red facings — and their talk was exclusively about the Company and its affairs.

They all hoped to become engine-drivers earning six or eight hundred a year, and therefore they despised all mere sit-down clerks in the Store, Audit and Traffic departments, and ducked them when they met at the Company’s swimming baths.

There were no strikes or tie-ups on the D.I.R. in those days, for the reason that the ten or twelve thousand natives and two or three thousand whites were doing their best to turn the Company’s employment into a caste in which their sons and relatives would be sure of positions and pensions. Everything in India crystallizes into a caste sooner or later — the big jute and cotton mills, the leather, harness and opium factories, the coal-mines and the dockyards, and, in years to come, when India begins to be heard from as one of the manufacturing countries of the world, the labour Unions of other lands will learn something about the beauty of caste which will greatly interest them.

Those were the days when the D.I.R. decided that it would be cheaper to employ native drivers as much as possible, and the “Sheds,” as they called the Repair Department, felt the change acutely; for a native driver could misuse his engine, they said, more curiously than any six monkeys. The Company had not then standardized its rolling-stock, and this was very good for apprentices anxious to learn about machines, because there were, perhaps, twenty types of locomotives in use on the road. They were Hawthornes; E types; O types; outside cylinders; Spaulding and Cushman double-enders and shortrun Continental-built tank engines, and many others. But the native drivers burned them all out impartially, and the apprentices took to writing remarks in Bengali on the cabs of the repaired ones where the next driver would be sure to see them.

Young Ottley worked at first as little as the other apprentices, but his father, who was then a pensioned driver, taught him a great deal about the insides of locomotives; and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede who ran the Government Mail, the big Thursday express, from Serai Rajgara to Guldee Haut, was a great friend of the Ottley family, and dined with them every Friday night.

Olaf was an important person, for besides being the best of the mail-drivers, he was Past Master of the big railway Masonic Lodge, “St. Duncan’s in the East,” Secretary of the Drivers’ Provident Association, a Captain in the D.I.R. Volunteer Corps, and, which he thought much more of, an Author; for he had written a book in a language of his own which he insisted upon calling English, and had printed it at his own expense at the ticket-printing works.

Some of the copies were buff and green, and some were pinkish and blue, and some were yellow and brown; for Olaf did not believe in wasting money on high-class white paper. Wrapping-paper was good enough for him, and besides, he said the colours rested the eyes of the reader. It was called “The Art of Road-Locos Repair or The Young Driver’s Vademecome,” and was dedicated in verse to a man of the name of Swedenborg.

It covered every conceivable accident that could happen to an engine on the road; and gave a rough-and-ready remedy for each; but you had to understand Olaf’s written English, as well as all the technical talk about engines, to make head or tail of it, and you had also to know personally every engine on the D.I.R., for the “Vademecome” was full of what might be called “locomotive allusions,” which concerned the D.I.R. only. Otherwise, it would, as some great locomotive designer once said, have been a classic and a text-book.

Olaf was immensely proud of it, and. would pin young Ottley in a corner and make him learn whole pages — it was written all in questions and answers — by heart.

“Never mind what she
means
,” Olaf would shout. “You learn her word-perfect, and she will help you in the Sheds. I drive the Mail, —
the
mail of all India, — and what I write and say is true.”