TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES
By Rudyard Kipling
THE CAPTIVE
FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI)
Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him.
Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow
Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow,
Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded.
Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story;
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns--a miraculous weaving--
But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture--
Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture--
Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed;
But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for he was great-hearted!
THE CAPTIVE
"He that believeth shall not make haste."--_Isaiah_.
The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly
spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man,
rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between
the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the
beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war
bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose
those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat on Simonstown. Beneath them the
little _Barracouta_ nodded to the big _Gibraltar_, and the old _Penelope_,
that in ten years has been bachelors' club, natural history museum,
kindergarten, and prison, rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a
three-funnelled Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in
from the deep sea.
Said the sentry, assured of the visitor's good faith, "Talk to 'em? You
can, to any that speak English. You'll find a lot that do."
Here and there earnest groups gathered round ministers of the Dutch
Reformed Church, who doubtless preached conciliation, but the majority
preferred their bath. The God who Looks after Small Things had caused the
visitor that day to receive two weeks' delayed mails in one from a casual
postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a strap, he
dangled as bait. At the edge of the beach, cross-legged, undressed to his
sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on guard over a dozen
heaps of clothing. His eyes followed the incoming Atlantic boat.
"Excuse me, Mister," he said, without turning (and the speech betrayed his
nationality), "would you mind keeping away from these garments? I've been
elected janitor--on the Dutch vote."
The visitor moved over against the barbed-wire fence and sat down to his
mail. At the rustle of the newspaper-wrappers the ginger-coloured man
turned quickly, the hunger of a press-ridden people in his close-set iron-
grey eyes.
"Have you any use for papers?" said the visitor.
"Have I any use?" A quick, curved forefinger was already snicking off the
outer covers. "Why, that's the New York postmark! Give me the ads. at the
back of _Harper's_ and _M'Clure's_ and I'm in touch with God's Country
again! Did you know how I was aching for papers?"
The visitor told the tale of the casual postman.
"Providential!" said the ginger-coloured man, keen as a terrier on his
task; "both in time and matter. Yes! ... The _Scientific American_ yet
once more! Oh, it's good! it's good!" His voice broke as he pressed his
hawk-like nose against the heavily-inked patent-specifications at the end.
"Can I keep it? I thank you--I thank you! Why--why--well--well! The
_American Tyler_ of all things created! Do you subscribe to that?"
"I'm on the free list," said the visitor, nodding.
He extended his blue-tanned hand with that air of Oriental spaciousness
which distinguishes the native-born American, and met the visitor's grasp
expertly. "I can only say that you have treated me like a Brother (yes,
I'll take every last one you can spare), and if ever--" He plucked at the
bosom of his shirt. "Psha! I forgot I'd no card on me; but my name's
Zigler--Laughton G. Zigler. An American? If Ohio's still in the Union, I
am, Sir. But I'm no extreme States'-rights man. I've used all of my native
country and a few others as I have found occasion, and now I am the
captive of your bow and spear. I'm not kicking at that. I am not a coerced
alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an adventurer on the
instalment plan. _I_ don't tag after our consul when he comes around,
expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o' this by the slack of my
pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian Territory and shot up his
surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that _she's_ any sort of weapon,
but I take her for an illustration), he'd be strung up quicker'n a
snowflake 'ud melt in hell. No ambassador of yours 'ud save him. I'm my
neck ahead on this game, anyway. That's how I regard the proposition.
"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.
"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.'
"'He that believeth,' says the General, 'shall not make haste. That's in
Isaiah. We believe we're going to win, and so we don't make haste. As far
as I'm concerned I'd like this war to last another five years. We'd have
an army then. It's just this way, Mr. Zigler,' he says, 'our people are
brimfull of patriotism, but they've been born and brought up between
houses, and England ain't big enough to train 'em--not if you expect to
preserve.'
"'Preserve what?' I says. 'England?'
"'No. The game,' he says; 'and that reminds me, gentlemen, we haven't
drunk the King and Foxhunting.'
"So they drank the King and Fox-hunting. I drank the King because there's
something about Edward that tickles me (he's so blame British); but I
rather stood out on the Fox-hunting. I've ridden wolves in the cattle-
country, and needed a drink pretty bad afterwards, but it never struck me
as I ought to drink about it--he-red-it-arily.
"'No, as I was saying, Mr. Zigler,' he goes on, 'we have to train our men
in the field to shoot and ride. I allow six months for it; but many
column-commanders--not that I ought to say a word against 'em, for they're
the best fellows that ever stepped, and most of 'em are my dearest
friends--seem to think that if they have men and horses and guns they can
take tea with the Boers. It's generally the other way about, ain't it, Mr.
Zigler?'
"'To some extent, Sir,' I said.
"'I'm _so_ glad you agree with me,' he says. 'My command here I regard as
a training depot, and you, if I may say so, have been one of my most
efficient instructors. I mature my men slowly but thoroughly. First I put
'em in a town which is liable to be attacked by night, where they can
attend riding-school in the day. Then I use 'em with a convoy, and last I
put 'em into a column. It takes time,' he says, 'but I flatter myself that
any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in the rudiments of
their profession. Adrian,' he says, 'was there anything wrong with the men
who upset Van Bester's applecart last month when he was trying to cross
the line to join Piper with those horses he'd stole from Gabbitas?'
"'No, Generaal,' says Van Zyl. 'Your men got the horses back and eleven
dead; and Van Besters, he ran to Delarey in his shirt. They was very good,
those men. They shoot hard.'
"_'So_ pleased to hear you say so. I laid 'em down at the beginning of
this century--a 1900 vintage. _You_ remember 'em, Mankeltow?' he says.
'The Central Middlesex Buncho Busters--clerks and floorwalkers mostly,'
and he wiped his moustache. 'It was just the same with the Liverpool
Buckjumpers, but they were stevedores. Let's see--they were a last-century
draft, weren't they? They did well after nine months. _You_ know 'em, Van
Zyl? You didn't get much change out of 'em at Pootfontein?'
"'No,' says Van Zyl. 'At Pootfontein I lost my son Andries.'
"'I beg your pardon, Commandant,' says the General; and the rest of the
crowd sort of cooed over Adrian.
"'Excoose,' says Adrian. 'It was all right. They were good men those, but
it is just what I say. Some are so dam good we want to hands-up, and some
are so dam bad, we say, "Take the Vierkleur into Cape Town." It is not
upright of you, Generaal. It is not upright of you at all. I do not think
you ever wish this war to finish.'
"'It's a first-class dress-parade for Armageddon,' says the General. 'With
luck, we ought to run half a million men through the mill. Why, we might
even be able to give our Native Army a look in. Oh, not here, of course,
Adrian, but down in the Colony--say a camp-of-exercise at Worcester. You
mustn't be prejudiced, Adrian. I've commanded a district in India, and I
give you my word the native troops are splendid men.'
"'Oh, I should not mind them at Worcester,' says Adrian. 'I would sell you
forage for them at Worcester--yes, and Paarl and Stellenbosch; but
Almighty!' he says, 'must I stay with Cronje till you have taught half a
million of these stupid boys to ride? I shall be an old man.'
"Well, Sir, then and there they began arguing whether St. Helena would
suit Adrian's health as well as some other places they knew about, and
fixing up letters of introduction to Dukes and Lords of their
acquaintance, so's Van Zyl should be well looked after. We own a fair-
sized block of real estate--America does--but it made me sickish to hear
this crowd fluttering round the Atlas (oh yes, they had an Atlas), and
choosing stray continents for Adrian to drink his coffee in. The old man
allowed he didn't want to roost with Cronje, because one of Cronje's kin
had jumped one of his farms after Paardeberg. I forget the rights of the
case, but it was interesting. They decided on a place called Umballa in
India, because there was a first-class doctor there.
"So Adrian was fixed to drink the King and Foxhunting, and study up the
Native Army in India (I'd like to see 'em myself), till the British
General had taught the male white citizens of Great Britain how to ride.
Don't misunderstand me, Sir. I loved that General. After ten minutes I
loved him, and I wanted to laugh at him; but at the same time, sitting
there and hearing him talk about the centuries, I tell you, Sir, it scared
me. It scared me cold! He admitted everything--he acknowledged the corn
before you spoke--he was more pleased to hear that his men had been used
to wipe the geldt with than I was when I knocked out Tom Reed's two lead-
horses--and he sat back and blew smoke through his nose and matured his
men like cigars and--he talked of the everlastin' centuries!
"I went to bed nearer nervous prostration than I'd come in a long time.
Next morning me and Captain Mankeltow fixed up what his shrapnel had left
of my Zigler for transport to the railroad. She went in on her own wheels,
and I stencilled her 'Royal Artillery Mess, Woolwich,' on the muzzle, and
he said he'd be grateful if I'd take charge of her to Cape Town, and hand
her over to a man in the Ordnance there. 'How are you fixed financially?
You'll need some money on the way home,' he says at last.
"'For one thing, Cap,' I said, 'I'm not a poor man, and for another I'm
not going home. I am the captive of your bow and spear. I decline to
resign office.'
"'Skittles!' he says (that was a great word of his), 'you'll take parole,
and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle heavier in the
working parts--I would. We've got more prisoners than we know what to do
with as it is,' he says. 'You'll only be an additional expense to me as a
taxpayer. Think of Schedule D,' he says, 'and take parole.'
"'I don't know anything about your tariffs,' I said, 'but when I get to
Cape Town I write home for money, and I turn in every cent my board'll
cost your country to any ten-century-old department that's been ordained
to take it since William the Conqueror came along.'
"'But, confound you for a thick-headed mule,' he says, 'this war ain't any
more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you're going to play
prisoner till it's over?'
"'That's about the size of it,' I says, 'if an Englishman and an American
could ever understand each other.'
"'But, in Heaven's Holy Name, why?' he says, sitting down of a heap on an
anthill.
"'Well, Cap,' I says, 'I don't pretend to follow your ways of thought, and
I can't see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor prisoner o'
war on _his!_'
"'My dear fellow,' he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, 'I'll
apologise.'
"'But if you insist,' I says, 'there are just one and a half things in
this world I can't do. The odd half don't matter here; but taking parole,
and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving lectures on
my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of my beloved
country happens to be the one. We'll let it go at that, Cap.'
"'But it'll bore you to death,' he says. The British are a heap more
afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, I've noticed.
"'I'll survive,' I says, 'I ain't British. I can think,' I says.
"'By God,' he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of
fellowship, 'you ought to be English, Zigler!'
"It's no good getting mad at a compliment like that. The English all do
it. They're a crazy breed. When they don't know you they freeze up
tighter'n the St. Lawrence. When they _do_, they go out like an ice-jam in
April. Up till we prisoners left--four days--my Captain Mankeltow told me
pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and his
bad brother that was a trooper in some Colonial corps, and how his father
didn't get on with him, and--well, everything, as I've said. They're
undomesticated, the British, compared with us. They talk about their own
family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. 'Taint as if they
hadn't any shame, but it sounds like it. I guess they talk out loud what
we think, and we talk out loud what they think.
"I liked my Captain Mankeltow. I liked him as well as any man I'd ever
struck. He was white. He gave me his silver drinking-flask, and I gave him
the formula of my Laughtite. That's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the knowledge to use
it. No, I didn't tell him the money-value. He was English. He'd send his
valet to find out.
"Well, me and Adrian and a crowd of dam Dutchmen was sent down the road to
Cape Town in first-class carriages under escort. (What did I think of your
enlisted men? They are largely different from ours, Sir: very largely.) As
I was saying, we slid down south, with Adrian looking out of the car-
window and crying. Dutchmen cry mighty easy for a breed that fights as
they do; but I never understood how a Dutchman could curse till we crossed
into the Orange Free State Colony, and he lifted up his hand and cursed
Steyn for a solid ten minutes. Then we got into the Colony, and the rebs--
ministers mostly and schoolmasters--came round the cars with fruit and
sympathy and texts. Van Zyl talked to 'em in Dutch, and one man, a big
red-bearded minister, at Beaufort West, I remember, he jest wilted on the
platform.
"'Keep your prayers for yourself,' says Van Zyl, throwing back a bunch of
grapes. 'You'll need 'em, and you'll need the fruit too, when the war
comes down here. _You_ done it,' he says. 'You and your picayune Church
that's deader than Cronje's dead horses! What sort of a God have you been
unloading on us, you black _aas vogels_? The British came, and we beat
'em,' he says, 'and you sat still and prayed. The British beat us, and you
sat still,' he says. 'You told us to hang on, and we hung on, and our
farms was burned, and you sat still--you and your God. See here,' he says,
'I shot my Bible full of bullets after Bloemfontein went, and you and God
didn't say anything. Take it and pray over it before we Federals help the
British to knock hell out of you rebels.'
"Then I hauled him back into the car. I judged he'd had a fit. But life's
curious--and sudden--and mixed. I hadn't any more use for a reb than Van
Zyl, and I knew something of the lies they'd fed us up with from the
Colony for a year and more. I told the minister to pull his freight out of
that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come along and shook
hands with Van Zyl. He'd known him at close range in the Kimberley seige
and before. Van Zyl was well seen by his neighbours, I judge. As soon as
this other man opened his mouth I said, 'You're Kentucky, ain't you?' 'I
am,' he says; 'and what may you be?' I told him right off, for I was
pleased to hear good United States in any man's mouth; but he whipped his
hands behind him and said, 'I'm not knowing any man that fights for a
Tammany Dutchman. But I presoom you've been well paid, you dam gun-runnin'
Yank.'
"Well, Sir, I wasn't looking for that, and it near knocked me over, while
old man Van Zyl started in to explain.
"'Don't you waste your breath, Mister Van Zyl,' the man says. 'I know this
breed. The South's full of 'em.' Then he whirls round on me and says,
'Look at here, you Yank. A little thing like a King's neither here nor
there, but what _you've_ done,' he says, 'is to go back on the White Man
in six places at once--two hemispheres and four continents--America,
England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Don't open your
head,' he says. 'You know well if you'd been caught at this game in our
country you'd have been jiggling in the bight of a lariat before you could
reach for your naturalisation papers. Go on and prosper,' he says, 'and
you'll fetch up by fighting for niggers, as the North did.' And he threw
me half-a-crown--English money.
"Sir, I do not regard the proposition in that light, but I guess I must
have been somewhat shook by the explosion. They told me at Cape Town one
rib was driven in on to my lungs. I am not adducing this as an excuse, but
the cold God's truth of the matter is--the money on the floor did it.... I
give up and cried. Put my head down and cried.
"I dream about this still sometimes. He didn't know the circumstances, but
I dream about it. And it's Hell!
"How do you regard the proposition--as a Brother? If you'd invented your
own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her--and had paid your
own expenses from the word 'go'? An American citizen has a right to choose
his own side in an unpleasantness, and Van Zyl wasn't any Krugerite ...
and I'd risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man's address from
Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him the facts. But
he never answered. Guess he thought I lied.... Damned Southern rebel!
"Oh, say. Did I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in
Cape Town, and he fixed things so's I could lie up a piece in his house? I
was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged
into the lung--here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of
the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any
American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He
said the British soldier had failed in every point except courage. He said
England needed a Monroe Doctrine worse than America--a new doctrine,
barring out all the Continent, and strictly devoting herself to developing
her own Colonies. He said he'd abolish half the Foreign Office, and take
all the old hereditary families clean out of it, because, he said, they
was expressly trained to fool around with continental diplomats, and to
despise the Colonies. His own family wasn't more than six hundred years
old. He was a very brainy man, and a good citizen. We talked politics and
inventions together when my lung let up on me.
"Did he know my General? Yes. He knew 'em all. Called 'em Teddie and
Gussie and Willie. They was all of the very best, and all his dearest
friends; but he told me confidentially they was none of 'em fit to command
a column in the field. He said they were too fond of advertising. Generals
don't seem very different from actors or doctors or--yes, Sir--inventors.
"He fixed things for me lovelily at Simons-Town. Had the biggest sort of
pull--even for a Lord. At first they treated me as a harmless lunatic; but
after a while I got 'em to let me keep some of their books. If I was left
alone in the world with the British system of bookkeeping, I'd reconstruct
the whole British Empire--beginning with the Army. Yes, I'm one of their
most trusted accountants, and I'm paid for it. As much as a dollar a day.
I keep that. I've earned it, and I deduct it from the cost of my board.
When the war's over I'm going to pay up the balance to the British
Government. Yes, Sir, that's how I regard the proposition.
"Adrian? Oh, he left for Umballa four months back. He told me he was going
to apply to join the National Scouts if the war didn't end in a year.
'Tisn't in nature for one Dutchman to shoot another, but if Adrian ever
meets up with Steyn there'll be an exception to the rule. Ye--es, when the
war's over it'll take some of the British Army to protect Steyn from his
fellow-patriots. But the war won't be over yet awhile. He that believeth
don't hurry, as Isaiah says. The ministers and the school-teachers and the
rebs'll have a war all to themselves long after the north is quiet.
"I'm pleased with this country--it's big. Not so many folk on the ground
as in America. There's a boom coming sure. I've talked it over with
Adrian, and I guess I shall buy a farm somewhere near Bloemfontein and
start in cattle-raising. It's big and peaceful--a ten-thousand-acre farm.
I could go on inventing there, too. I'll sell my Zigler, I guess. I'll
offer the patent rights to the British Government; and if they do the
'reelly-now-how-interesting' act over her, I'll turn her over to Captain
Mankeltow and his friend the Lord. They'll pretty quick find some Gussie,
or Teddie, or Algie who can get her accepted in the proper quarters. I'm
beginning to know my English.
"And now I'll go in swimming, and read the papers after lunch. I haven't
had such a good time since Willie died." He pulled the blue shirt over his
head as the bathers returned to their piles of clothing, and, speaking
through the folds, added:
"But if you want to realise your assets, you should lease the whole
proposition to America for ninety-nine years."
