Books: The Light That Failed
R >>
Rudyard Kipling >> The Light That Failed
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16
'Not to-night though! Listen!' said Dick. A flight of heavy-handed bullets
was succeeded by yelling and shouts. The children of the desert valued
their nightly amusement, and the train was an excellent mark.
'Is it worth giving them half a hopper full?' the subaltern asked of the
engine, which was driven by a Lieutenant of Sappers.
'I should think so! This is my section of the line. They'll be playing old
Harry with my permanent way if we don't stop 'em.'
'Right O!'
'Hrrmph!' said the machine gun through all its five noses as the subaltern
drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the floor and the
smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate firing at
the rear of the train, and return fire from the darkness without and
unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself on the floor, wild with delight
at the sounds and the smells.
'God is very good--I never thought I'd hear this again. Give 'em hell,
men. Oh, give 'em hell!' he cried.
The train stopped for some obstruction on the line ahead and a party
went out to reconnoitre, but came back, cursing, for spades. The children
of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and twenty minutes
were lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress recommenced, to be
varied with more shots, more shoutings, the steady clack and kick of the
machine guns, and a final difficulty with a half-lifted rail ere the train
came under the protection of the roaring camp at Tanai-el-Hassan.
'Now, you see why it takes an hour and a half to fetch her through,' said
the subaltern, unshipping the cartridge-hopper above his pet gun.
'It was a lark, though. I only wish it had lasted twice as long. How superb
it must have looked from outside!' said Dick, sighing regretfully.
'It palls after the first few nights. By the way, when you've settled about
your mules, come and see what we can find to eat in my tent. I'm Bennil
of the Gunners--in the artillery lines--and mind you don't fall over my
tent-ropes in the dark.'
But it was all dark to Dick. He could only smell the camels, the hay-bales,
the cooking, the smoky fires, and the tanned canvas of the tents as he
stood, where he had dropped from the train, shouting for George. There
was a sound of light-hearted kicking on the iron skin of the rear trucks,
with squealing and grunting. George was unloading the mules.
The engine was blowing off steam nearly in Dick's ear; a cold wind of the
desert danced between his legs; he was hungry, and felt tired and
dirty--so dirty that he tried to brush his coat with his hands. That was a
hopeless job; he thrust his hands into his pockets and began to count over
the many times that he had waited in strange or remote places for trains
or camels, mules or horses, to carry him to his business. In those days he
could see--few men more clearly--and the spectacle of an armed camp at
dinner under the stare was an ever fresh pleasure to the eye. There was
colour, light, and motion, without which no man has much pleasure in
living. This night there remained for him only one more journey through
the darkness that never lifts to tell a man how far he has travelled. Then
he would grip Torpenhow's hand again--Torpenhow, who was alive and
strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had once made the
reputation of a man called Dick Heldar: not in the least to be confused
with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer to the same
name. Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the old life as
might be. Afterwards he would forget everything: Bessie, who had
wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; Beeton, who lived
in a strange unreal city full of tin-tacks and gas-plugs and matters that
no men needed; that irrational being who had offered him love and
loyalty for nothing, but had not signed her name; and most of all Maisie,
who, from her own point of view, was undeniably right in all she did, but
oh, at this distance, so tantalisingly fair.
George's hand on his arm pulled him back to the situation.
'And what now?' said George.
'Oh yes of course. What now? Take me to the camel-men. Take me to
where the scouts sit when they come in from the desert. They sit by their
camels, and the camels eat grain out of a black blanket held up at the
corners, and the men eat by their side just like camels. Take me there!'
The camp was rough and rutty, and Dick stumbled many times over the
stumps of scrub. The scouts were sitting by their beasts, as Dick knew
they would. The light of the dung-fires flickered on their bearded faces,
and the camels bubbled and mumbled beside them at rest. It was no part
of Dick's policy to go into the desert with a convoy of supplies. That
would lead to impertinent questions, and since a blind non-combatant is
not needed at the front, he would probably be forced to return to Suakin.
He must go up alone, and go immediately.
'Now for one last bluff--the biggest of all,' he said. 'Peace be with you,
brethren!' The watchful George steered him to the circle of the nearest
fire. The heads of the camel-sheiks bowed gravely, and the camels,
scenting a European, looked sideways curiously like brooding hens, half
ready to get to their feet.
'A beast and a driver to go to the fighting line to-night,' said Dick.
'A Mulaid?' said a voice, scornfully naming the best baggage-breed that
he knew.
'A Bisharin,' returned Dick, with perfect gravity. 'A Bisharin without
saddle-galls. Therefore no charge of thine, shock-head.'
Two or three minutes passed. Then--
'We be knee-haltered for the night. There is no going out from the camp.'
'Not for money?'
'H'm! Ah! English money?'
Another depressing interval of silence.
'How much?'
'Twenty-five pounds English paid into the hand of the driver at my
journey's end, and as much more into the hand of the camel-sheik here,
to be paid when the driver returns.'
This was royal payment, and the sheik, who knew that he would get his
commission on this deposit, stirred in Dick's behalf.
'For scarcely one night's journey--fifty pounds. Land and wells and good
trees and wives to make a man content for the rest of his days. Who
speaks?' said Dick.
'I,' said a voice. 'I will go--but there is no going from the camp.'
'Fool! I know that a camel can break his knee-halter, and the sentries do
not fire if one goes in chase. Twenty-five pounds and another twenty-five
pounds. But the beast must be a good Bisharin; I will take no
baggage-camel.'
Then the bargaining began, and at the end of half an hour the first
deposit was paid over to the sheik, who talked in low tones to the driver.
Dick heard the latter say: 'A little way out only. Any baggage-beast will
serve. Am I a fool to waste my cattle for a blind man?'
'And though I cannot see'--Dick lifted his voice a little--'yet I carry that
which has six eyes, and the driver will sit before me. If we do not reach
the English troops in the dawn he will be dead.'
'But where, in God's name, are the troops?'
'Unless thou knowest let another man ride. Dost thou know? Remember
it will be life or death to thee.'
'I know,' said the driver, sullenly. 'Stand back from my beast. I am going
to slip him.'
'Not so swiftly. George, hold the camel's head a moment. I want to feel
his cheek.' The hands wandered over the hide till they found the branded
half-circle that is the mark of the Biharin, the light-built riding-camel.
'That is well. Cut this one loose. Remember no blessing of God comes on
those who try to cheat the blind.'
The men chuckled by the fires at the camel-driver's discomfiture. He had
intended to substitute a slow, saddle-galled baggage-colt.
'Stand back!' one shouted, lashing the Biharin under the belly with a
quirt. Dick obeyed as soon as he felt the nose-string tighten in his
hand,--and a cry went up, 'Illaha! Aho! He is loose.'
With a roar and a grunt the Biharin rose to his feet and plunged forward
toward the desert, his driver following with shouts and lamentation.
George caught Dick's arm and hurried him stumbling and tripping past a
disgusted sentry who was used to stampeding camels.
'What's the row now?' he cried.
'Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,' Dick answered, after
the manner of a common soldier.
'Go on, and take care your throat's not cut out side--you and your
dromedary's.'
The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a hillock,
and his driver had called him back and made him kneel down.
'Mount first,' said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and gently
screwing the pistol muzzle into the small of his companion's back, 'Go on
in God's name, and swiftly. Good-bye, George. Remember me to
Madame, and have a good time with your girl. Get forward, child of the
Pit!'
A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly broken by
the creaking of the saddle and the soft pad of the tireless feet. Dick
adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace, girthed
his belt tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was
conscious only of the sense of rapid progress.
'A good camel,' he said at last.
'He was never underfed. He is my own and clean bred,' the driver
replied.
'Go on.'
His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor of his
thoughts was broken because he was very sleepy. In the half doze in
seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett's. He
had committed some crime as bad as Sabbath-breaking, and she had
locked him up in his bedroom. But he could never repeat more than the
first two lines of the hymn--
When Israel of the Lord believed
Out of the land of bondage came.
He said them over and over thousands of times. The driver turned in the
saddle to see if there were any chance of capturing the revolver and
ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the butt, and
stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of
camel-thorn shouted as the camel toiled up rising ground. A shot was
fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep. Dick
could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to do more
than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and punching
the driver with the pistol.
'Is there a moon?' he asked drowsily.
'She is near her setting.'
'I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the
desert talk.'
The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of wind. It
rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some distance away and ceased. A
handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench and
crumbled softly to the bottom.
'Go on. The night is very cold.'
Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour before
the light lengthens itself into many eternities. It seemed to Dick that he
had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything at all
save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would finger the
nailheads on the saddle-front and count them all carefully. Centuries
later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his left and allow
the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe distance of London
he was watching himself thus employed,--watching critically. Yet
whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he might paint the
tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking moon, the black
shadow of a camel and the two bowed figures atop, that hand held a
revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collar-bone. Moreover,
he was in the dark, and could see no canvas of any kind whatever.
The driver grunted, and Dick was conscious of a change in the air.
'I smell the dawn,' he whispered.
'It is here, and yonder are the troops. Have I done well?'
The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down wind
the pungent reek of camels in the square.
'Go on. We must get there swiftly. Go on.'
'They are moving in their camp. There is so much dust that I cannot see
what they do.'
'Am I in better case? Go forward.'
They could hear the hum of voices ahead, the howling and the bubbling
of the beasts and the hoarse cries of the soldiers girthing up for the day.
Two or three shots were fired.
'Is that at us? Surely they can see that I am English,' Dick spoke angrily.
'Nay, it is from the desert,' the driver answered, cowering in his saddle.
'Go forward, my child! Well it is that the dawn did not uncover us an
hour ago.'
The camel headed straight for the column and the shots behind
multiplied. The children of the desert had arranged that most
uncomfortable of surprises, a dawn attack for the English troops, and
were getting their distance by snap-shots at the only moving object
without the square.
'What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!' said Dick. 'It's "just
before the battle, mother." Oh, God has been most good to me!?
Only'--the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an
instant--'Maisie . . .'
'Allahu! We are in,' said the man, as he drove into the rearguard and the
camel knelt.
'Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What's the strength of the
enemy behind that ridge? How did you get through?' asked a dozen
voices. For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt, and
shouted from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice,
'Torpenhow! Ohe, Torp! Coo-ee, Tor-pen-how.'
A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe moved
very swiftly towards that cry, as the rearguard, facing about, began to
fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually the
scattered white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked white
that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn before they turned over
wave-like and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square were
coughing and swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view, and
they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded camel leaped to its feet
and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one had cut
its throat to prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a man
receiving his death-wound from a bullet; then a yell of agony and
redoubled firing.
There was no time to ask any questions.
'Get down, man! Get down behind the camel!'
'No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.' Dick turned his face to
Torpenhow and raised his hand to set his helmet straight, but,
miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that his hair
was gray on the temples, and that his face was the face of an old man.
'Come down, you damned fool! Dickie, come off!'
And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways from the
Bisharin's saddle at Torpenhow's feet. His luck had held to the last, even
to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.
Torpenhow knelt under the lee of the camel, with Dick's body in his arms.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16