Chapter II: Part 2

The angry water, greedy of its prey, was hissing louder and louder between them.

‘One--two--_three_!--’ a double report and a hoarse, stifled cry. Mr Denver staggered back, and his hat, pierced through and through, fell from his head. Recovering himself, he threw one look over the pit to where Massinger lay motionless on his face, shot through the heart; the devil’s water creeping up and brimming over the edge, nearly touched his rigid body.

‘Wonder if the cuss is dead? Can’t leave him to be boiled alive.’ Dick sprang over the brimming, hissing gulf, and lifted the head.

‘As mutton,’ he said, dropping the lifeless mass. With a leap backwards, he gained the entrance, and, passing through, dashed down the hill. Once he paused, and looking back, saw a smoking jet shoot high into the moonlit sky. Some drops of boiling spray fell with a hiss on his face and hands,--Dick shivered and went on his way.

AN AFTERTHOUGHT

The first streaks of dawn were showing in the east. The long, low, white-verandahed hotel surrounded by a group of palms that wavered unsteadily in the half-light, like a group of ghostly sentinels, was still undisturbed by the coming day. A man standing back in the shadow muttered to himself, as, glancing over his shoulder, he caught the first glow of light on the horizon. Advancing softly, with a spring, he grasped the roof of the verandah, and swung himself up lightly and noiselessly. Climbing the balcony rails, he looked for a moment along the line of French windows opening outwards, then, creeping forward, he passed through one of them into a small empty room, with a larger one adjoining it. Pausing inside, he glanced through the open door into the other room. The night had been stiflingly hot, the windows were open, and from the bed standing in the far corner the mosquito-curtains were thrown back. As his eyes fell upon the bed, Dick Denver shivered, and stood thinking.

‘Better not’ he said to himself; ‘it’s kind of a skeery tale.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘No one saw us go up,’ he muttered, and grimly, ‘I guess no one saw us come down.’ He ran his eye over the paper.

‘“I bet Mr Dick Denver the sum of £200 that I visit with him a condemned hole called ‘La boîte du diable,’ and stay there as long or longer than he does.

‘“ Play or pay.

‘“Albert Massinger, October 9th, 188--.
Dick Denver.”’

So it ran. With a pencil he scribbled a line underneath:

‘Lost and paid. A. M. stays there for ever. Burn this.--D. D.’

He took out of his pocket a bundle of notes, then stole gently forward and pinned them both to the pillow of the bed where a white figure lay sleeping. Then he stood back and gazed with a wistful, yearning look in his eyes. The white-robed figure moved restlessly in its sleep, and a sigh that went straight to Dick’s heart came stealing across the room. The window faced east, and the dawning light fell softly on the sweet face resting on a bare white arm, and on the fair hair trailing across the pillow. A tiny puff of sea-air floated in, and ruffled the lace falling back from the delicate throat. A mad longing seized upon Dick; he took two steps forward, then stopped irresolutely and staggered back against the wall, as a far-off mountain cry of beast or bird was wafted in at the window, sounding in his ears like that other cry heard not long ago. It steadied him, and with a noiseless step he moved swiftly to the bed, and stooping, pressed his lips lightly to one fair tress that fell softly over neck and bosom; then he raised himself as swiftly. Without another look he passed through the window, and swinging himself over the rail, walked hurriedly through the morning mist in the direction of the pier.

Two hours afterwards, Mr Dick Denver leant against the side of the French packet ‘Belle Ile’ as she made steady way from the port of St Martin. His eyes were fixed on a fast-vanishing white building.

‘I’m best with a new hand; there was nothing _to_ that racket. But it just licks creation how I made tracks; it wasn’t in the programme, anyway. Why did I? Dick, my son, why did you?... We--ell, ’pears to me somehow I remembered a saying: “Ye cannot get figs from thistles”; I guess that’s right so,--and,’ exceeding bitterly, ‘who am I that I should lift my face to hers?’

ASHES

To the Inexorable, what need of incense-burning, when from the ashes of human life is ever rising a measured stream of smoke?

I, Paul Marylski, outcast and rolling stone, am sitting in my old arm-chair on this accursed English day of yours, the year of little grace 189-. Forty years have I rolled, and have gathered no moss. Body and soul am I like unto the battered old friend I sit in. In sooth, I think as I crouch here over my fire, that I am but as the dead, man without hope, without desire, without a future, without a present--can he live? Yes; for he is sitting here to-night like an old dog, with the same folds in the cheeks, and the same yearning in the eyes. A thousand curses on the Congo and its deathly fever!--but for that might I still be man with future before me, but who can stand against this devil’s gnawing that never ceases?--not I, for one. I have some friends, a sweet country family, such as you have in England; they interest themselves in me, in _me_. I am grateful. The ‘mother’ tells me--‘Cheer up; this life is but a stage; it will soon pass--then, think of the future, the glorious after-life.’ She believes in this firmly--why not? Temperament, dear lady, all temperament! I can no more believe it than I can still this clawing at my vitals. Why do I live? _Pardieu_, I know not, having had my day--and what a day! Do they not say, ‘Every dog must have his day’? _Tiens_, this dog has had his, and it is that, and that alone, which keeps him alive. Even now, as I sit watching the dying embers, what pictures can I not see through the smoke that wreathes from my cigarette.

Hark! What’s that? ‘Carmen!’ as I live, a battered hulk; ‘Carmen,’ and on a barrel-organ! Ah, ha! Good, for your dingy London streets--they help the picture for once.

* * * * *

I see a room, warm and light; the green blinds are drawn, the polished floor reflects the softly-shaded lights; in the centre a table loaded with things loved of the soul, and--is it the same thing, perhaps?--the palate; empty bottles--ay, even an _empty_ bottle was lovely then--betoken the end of a feast. Round the table, men, only men; but look well--ay, and look again, ye callow youths, and livers of the life of every day--not one but has his _future_ or his _past_--most have both. Look at him well who rises, glass in hand, to address the company. Did ye ever see such a born leader of men, a giant, slim and tall, with eye that flashes, and drooping black moustache? He waves his hand to the waiters to leave the room, and speaks:--‘_Messieurs_,’ he says--in French, for is he not Christophe de Barsac, first smuggler in Marseille (or out of it, for that matter)?--‘_Messieurs, le jeu est fait_,’ and he drains his glass to the dregs, everyone following suit. ‘It now only remains, _Messieurs_, to reckon the cost,’ and he sits down. A groan goes up from around the table. There rises a tall, fat--ah! fat--man, with the invincible smile of a Russian of the Russians. As such, I, the Pole, sitting opposite, hate him--but also, you know, I love him as a brother.

‘_Monsieur le President_, and gentlemen,’ he goes on in English, which his soul loves as only does the soul of the man who speaks it as badly. ‘We ’ave ’ad ze good time, ze time of ze own devil, as says our good friend Kerr--r;’ he rolls the r’s indefinitely, and indicates with his cigar a lean, sunburnt man on his left. ‘I ver’ moch regret ’zat I ’ave no more money to ’ave anoyzer time of ze own devil, and zat also you ’ave none to lend me, _mais, que voulez vous, vive Monte Carlo_!’ and he, too, sits down, with a supremely fatalistic shrug of those vast shoulders, and the still invincible smile. Only three men out of those nine understand English, yet a murmur of applause shows the appreciation felt for the speaker, and the sentiments conveyed in that vast and comprehensive shrug. When the applause has subsided, his neighbour, the sunburnt southerner and knight-errant, rises abruptly and says:

‘That’s all very well, but I guess this dinner’s got to be toted up and paid for. Le’ssee how this pans out,’ and he turns the contents of his pockets on to the table,--one franc twenty-five centimes. He drops them into a wine-glass, and passes it to his neighbour. Then follows a scene curious--nine men of good presence in evening dress, turning out the innermost recesses of their apparel into a wine-glass--and see, the result is handed to the President, who counts it anxiously, after adding his own mite of two sous--‘Six francs seventy-five centimes.’

At the least the dinner has cost fifteen louis. Another groan from the table.

‘_Tenez_,’ says the President, ‘_J’ai une idée: le petit n’a jamais joué; eh bien! Je donnerai les cinq francs au petit, et il jouera._’ Evidently _bonne idée_, for the room resounds as _le petit_ is surrounded and forced forward with many an encouraging pat.

_Bon Dieu!_ That was I! That beardless youth with the bright eyes and black hair, enjoying life as none but a Pole can enjoy, before his country has laid her curse of melancholy upon him. Twenty years is a good span of time, but it seems more than twenty hundred since De Barsac pressed those five francs into my indifferent hand, and bade me go forth and seek the price of that feast, eaten not wisely but too well. Yet even now is Gortchakow’s pat heavy upon my back.

Ah, well, there he goes! passing dreamily out of the busy café, with its garish lights and constant hum, into the ‘Place’--the immortal ‘Place.’ How well I remember it! Did not _her_ windows look on it? Every feature, graven on my brain, rises now before me. The living stream ever flowing from its four sides into those inexorable doors, the sweet scents wafted from the gardens on the left, the fantastic shadows of the palms, the strains of ‘Carmen’ from the band playing in the verandah, the feverish throb of humanity under those quiet and starry heavens. Who does not know the ‘Place’? and, once knowing, who forgets?

There he goes, dreamily threading his solitary way across to the rooms; yet are his thoughts not with those five poor francs; they are, with his eyes, fixed on a certain window in the hotel opposite, and wondering what is the earliest hour _she_ can be ‘_de retour_.’

But, heigh-ho! the portals are reached, and lo! one must think of that dinner. What is one five-franc piece? Truly not much, yet something in maiden hands. The rooms are full; it is the gambler’s noon. _Le petit_ finds himself wedged in between a swarthy Roumanian Jew, who is sowing louis broadcast ‘_en plein_’ and ‘_à cheval_,’ and an English lady, of undetermined age but determined spirit, who is shedding her weekly bill in five-franc pieces. The Roumanian soweth, but he reapeth not, and he rises with a scowl and a shrug, and _le petit_ slips into his seat.

He is _sitting_ down with one five-franc piece. _Mon petit!_ truly thou art--what one calls--very green. Yet he has watched the game before, this young bantling.

‘_Quatre premier_,’ he cries, and manfully throws down the fateful piece. The little white ball is already spinning with its merry rattle of life and death--it stops. ‘_Deux, noir, paire et manque._’ The ever-busy rake pushes over to him two louis. And now

‘_Trente-quatre, trente-six, deux louis, sil vous plait._’

The obliging croupier places them--once again the merry rattle.

‘_Trente-six_,’ says the sing-song voice.

‘Bravo, _mon petit_, here is the price of the dinner with interest.’ Prudence personified, he places fifteen louis out of the twenty-four in an inner pocket and prepares to do or die with the rest. Yes, yes, how well I remember the tall Englishman behind saying to his friend, ‘Sportsman, that young beggar! I shall follow him.’

_Le petit’s_ English has been picked up on a Straits Settlements trader, but the tall Englishman he understands and appreciates. He is playing on _rouge_ now. A run of four; already by his side are piled the louis mountains high.

‘_Messieurs, faites le jeu._’

‘_Cent louis, rouge._’

‘_Le jeu est fait--rouge_;’ again and again, and yet again comes red, and each time _le petit_ wins.

Now he is staking the limit, and winning still, the multitude wondering, with that rising murmur of praise and plaint that ever attends a big winner’s fortunes. Suddenly he looks up. Standing opposite to him is a tall woman with dark eyes, lovely to behold, and she is watching him with a curious look, not of pity, not of contempt, not of passion, yet with something of all three. He starts, half rising, and makes a motion to leave the table.

‘_Messieurs, faites le jeu_,’--the murmur grows.

‘Follow the run up; play your luck out, sir,’ says the big Englishman. _Le petit_ hurriedly counts out the limit and pushes it on to _rouge_--the ball stops. ‘_Noir_,’ drawls the croupier, in a triumphant sing-song; the run is broken, but _le petit_, sweeping the remains of his winnings into his pocket, is no longer in his seat.

Between two goddesses can no man stand, not even the maiden wooer of the great goddess Chance, when a greater than she has claimed him.

The woman with the dark eyes moved away, but _le petit_ is beside her.

‘’Léna, how long the day has been! But the night comes, ah, the night comes--at twelve?’ She gives him one look from unfathomable eyes, that provoke, yet answer, and passes on to a seat at the next table. _Le petit_, with bowed head and unsteady step, but with a flame in his eyes, passes out into the air to render an account of his stewardship.

* * * * *

Once more the softly-lighted room. The ghost of the feast has his clutches now upon the band of revellers; yea, a gloom is upon them; even wanes the smile of Gortchakow, prince of Russian philosophers.

‘_Enfin!_’ says the President, and at his voice all turn, to see _le petit_ come in at a side door, and stand silent in the shadow. All eyes are upon him--surely he looks depressed.

‘Zey ’ave plucked ’im, my children, zey ’ave plucked ’is one leetle feazer,’ is Gortchakow’s sorrowful but smiling comment.

‘What luck, my son?’ says the President, gravely. For answer, _le petit_ opens his coat, and before nine pairs of hungry eyes he pours forth what seems a never-ending stream of gold and notes on to the table. A howl of amaze and delight bursts forth, and _le petit_ is enveloped in several pairs of arms, until he wriggles out, and dives under the table, where he sits in comparative security, while the President pays the bill, divides the spoil, and delivers a homily upon ‘_le chance_,’ rendered palatable by bumpers of champagne.

Great God! And is it only twenty years since I sat under that table?--only twenty!!

* * * * *

Once more the ‘Place,’ but now the hum and throb has given place to the passion-fraught stillness of the Southern night. Closed are the rooms and the cafés; the last strains of the band have died away; the croak of belated frogs, an occasional laugh, and the snatch of a song from belated humans, are the only sounds that come to the ears of _le petit_ as he wends his cautious way to the longed-for meeting. A French window opening on to a balcony, ten feet from the ground,--what is this to a sailor, under cover of the night? Now he is up, and gazing with all his eyes through the half-open window into a dimly-lighted room.

Sights fair and horrible, many, have I seen in my tempest-driven life, ay, many, but never, by the gods, have I seen sight fairer, and yet more horrible, than that which met _le petit’s_ fascinated gaze through those half-drawn blinds.

The figure of the loved one is stretched on the couch, dreaming, with look of expectation and delight in the half-closed eyes.

Dark with all the passions, scowling malignant, a face glares from a shrouded corner of the room upon that white-robed form. Passionate love, passionate hate, passionate jealousy--who shall say what is in that face? Enough surely to bind _le petit_ with the spell of a nameless terror.

The figure moves forward noiselessly out of the shadow. Ah! One knows him now! This is he whom most she dreads; he who, not husband, nor lover accepted, pursues her with vows, with threats, with all that there is of jealous passion; to whom, despite of fear, repulsion, dread, some mysterious tie binds her. _Le petit_ gazes--so he is there, that ogre, ah! And certainly he knows, that monster, of the expected visitor--he has read it in the passion of her eyes, upon her dumb but parted lips.

It is destiny--so much the better; once for all we will end all this.

The figure creeps forward, with raised hand clenched.

_Le petit_ steps in from the balcony.

‘’Léna,’ he says, and with his finger points.

She rises at the sound of his voice, and turning sees; then with a little cry of terror she comes to his arms for protection. That was like her. Afterwards, when _le petit_ wanted those white arms that hung around his neck--wanted them sorely in his sick estate, nigh unto death,--did she bring them then? Bah! All women are alike! and yet not all--not all.

Is that a devil that rages before one, foaming at the mouth?--Ah! no, only Juan Costello, a very evil-looking person!

‘My compliments to you, Monsieur, but this lady and myself wish to talk _affaires_; will Monsieur have the kindness to withdraw?’

Truly he is _canaille_, with his villainous tongue and his villainous eyes--also he makes a great noise, until they come and take him away; altogether it is a very stupid and common affair, pah!--Well, well, it is a long time ago, and a little noise more or less doesn’t matter to me now.

Also _le petit_ goes forth; and there is rage--a bitter, black rage--in his heart.

How slowly wing the hours away till the morning light--those hours of disappointment and burning hate. That dog! One will kill him with the first light.--The little bay near Cabbé Roquebrune--that little bay that recalls so greatly the far-away lagoons of the blessed South Seas.

Too good a resting-place for such a hound--far too good--yet it will serve.

Up and down, up and down, never still through the long night hours, head awhirl, eyes aflame. Bad training, my child, for the morning’s meeting.

Who cares? It is fate--his death at my hands is written in those stars that shine so steadily, so inexorably, above, in that dome of destiny.

Ah! There it is at last, that streak of light--omen of wrath and blood, dull, and red, and angry streak. ‘_Tant mieux!_’ Certainly there will be sport.

At last the little bay--and at the water’s edge the little tideless waves are whispering joyfully, and they are as glad as _le petit_, for this is a scene they love.

There he comes! he is glad, too--good--everything goes well.

‘You know these things, my friend; tell me where shall I hit him to kill?’

‘I reckon you’re a kind of a spitfire. Take the cuss under the arm, as he stands sideways, and keep your own elbow low.’

Ah! My friend, thou art an artist, and valued as such, but, when the blood surges and sings in the head, words count for little.

So I can see his hated face glaring at me above his pistol, the flames from our eyes are meeting. Ah, me! goodness and strength are gone out of me with that glance--pity to spend so much good hatred on a cur like that.

Yet ’tis not for long! and now ... ’tis all over, and they are carrying _le petit_ back from the regretful waters. And some time--when was it? who knows?--he drags himself to sea again, and the page is closed. And what of the other, that hound? And of her? Again, who knows?--Ah, yes, I have still the pain of that wound, but not greatly.

Well! well! a long time ago,--and it was but a page. Come, turn over.

Nay, not even the strength for that; thou hast had thy dose of life for the day, and the barrel-organ is gone, and thou art tired, and the fire is low, and the cigarette--pouf--it is but ashes.

‘TALLY HO’--BUDMASH

‘As the egg, so the chicken.’

--Free translation of a native proverb.

Two figures stood on the edge of the stream of traffic which flows unceasingly along Piccadilly in the dusty forenoons of the season. They stood with their eyes blinking watchfully in the sun that glared with a friendly and altogether satisfying glare upon the stone pavement. The one was the figure of a small boy; his legs were planted firmly apart, and a wide-brimmed straw hat was set sturdily on the very back of his head. A very small, very brown-faced boy was he, with round blue eyes, and hair fair almost to whiteness; rising a stout five, and his name--for the purposes of this chronicle--was ‘Tally Ho.’ The other was the presentment of a silent and melancholy Hindu, with a black beard, and turbaned head of a dusky mahogany; lean, and white-clothed, he stood slightly behind, in an attitude of respectful protection.

They gazed curiously at the changing, throbbing flow of Western energy, and ever and again the flow glanced over its shoulder in its ceaseless, and apparently objectless, quest, to wonder in its turn at those two strange figures from an unknown and far-off land, washed up high and dry on the edge of the stream.

‘De big fire is velly hot,’--Tally Ho always called the sun the big fire--‘as hot as Inja, doesn’t ’oo tink, Kotah Lal?’

‘If Tally Ho Sahib say, then so it is; yet it is in his servant’s mind that in India there were even days when Tally Ho Sahib called that they should put the big fire out, and greatly pull the punkah, and, as the Sahib knows, there be no punkahs this side of the big water.’

‘My mislemembers,’ said Tally Ho. ‘What do ’ose memsahibs goin’ lound on de wheels, dey’re velly ugly, dey makle my’s head ache--tell dem to ’top, Kotah Lal,’ and he indicated with a stumpy brown forefinger two dashing young females on the inevitable bicycle.

‘They go thus because after them comes a big bad god, and so perchance they will escape,’ said Kotah Lal, with a glimmer of a smile on his impassive features.

‘For why are deir leggies one on each side?’ said the irrepressible Tally Ho loudly, as another dame flew by; ‘it is not so in my country; are de wheels alive, Kotah Lal?’

‘It may be so; thy servant is a stranger in this land, Sahib, where all men seem possessed of devils, so fast they run to do naught all the day long. But the Doctor Sahib on the big ship did tell me that in this country there be a great and bad spirit called Indi-Gesti-Un, who pursues men to their undoing, so that they run ever faster to escape.’

‘Where does he live, Kotah Lal?’ said Tally Ho, concernedly.

Kotah Lal placed his hand upon the regions of his middle, and smiled mournfully. This seemed to supply Tally Ho with a fresh idea.

‘Kotah Lal,’ he said suddenly, thrusting his small brown fists deeply into the pockets of his holland knickers, ‘what is dere for my’s tiffin? Is dere cully and lice, allee samee as on de big ship?’

‘The Sahib commanded and the order has gone forth; without doubt there be these things for the Sahib’s lunch.’

‘Velly dood, my tinks my’s empty.’ Tally Ho withdrew one hand from his pocket, and passed it meditatively over his small stomach. ‘Which is de way, Kotah Lal?’

‘It will be necessary to walk down the market of the dried grasses, and through the square where are the four great lions that the Sahib looked upon with favour yesterday, to where the trains run in the smokey black hole under the ground. So said the Sahib in the blue clothes of whom I asked anon.’

‘Turn on,’ said Tally Ho; ‘my’s _velly_ empty, my wiss Foo Ching was in Ingeliland; he made exkullent dood chow-chow; my loves Foo Ching, Kotah Lal.’

Foo Ching, the Chinese cook of the steamer which had two days before achieved the honour of safely bearing from India, and landing one ‘Tally Ho,’ baptismally known as Geoffrey Standing Blount, was that young man’s latest bosom friend, and at that time mainly responsible for the eccentricities of his speech.

‘My wiss my was corpington (corpulent), like Foo Ching; Foo Ching was velly nice and corpington, and my’s _velly_ empty.’

Tally Ho, who usually carried his head loftily, drooped it to contemplate mournfully his small person, and in so doing butted it into the stomach of an elderly commercial hurrying to his mid-day meal.

‘My begs ’oor pardon,’ said Tally Ho, pained but polite, raising his hat and rubbing his snub nose. The commercial, with soul intent on the undercut, paid no attention, but hurried on. ‘Oos a lude man,’ said Tally Ho, indignantly; ‘a velly lude man.’ He stared reproachfully after him up the street till the stream had swallowed him up.

In time, and by dint of much circuitous marching and counter-marching, escaping with many a dodge and device the rumbling onslaught of ’busses, and the ‘scorching’ attack of bicycles, they reached the black hole known to the Westerns as Charing Cross Station. The interview between Kotah Lal and the ticket clerk ended satisfactorily in his obtaining tickets for not more than two stations further than their destination. Armed with these, the Hindu secured Tally Ho by the arm, and descended gravely to the platform.

‘Dlefful ’tuffy,’ commented Tally Ho, with a sniff of disgust; ‘my wantee tum scent on my’s hankeychoo.’

‘Let the Sahib abide but a moment in patience--here cometh the panting one with the fiery eye.’

A train drew up, they got into an empty carriage, and, as Tally Ho remarked, ‘de Injun blewed its nose,’ and ‘shaking its head,’ went on its way towards the west. Now it is not to be peculiarly remembered against Kotah Lal that upon this stifling afternoon he was inclined to doze, bearing in mind that for two nights, being cumbered with the duties of arrival, he had not slept,--moreover, the fact that within two minutes of entering the train he fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, he himself has since been heard to explain as a particular and malicious visitation of the Evil One.

Before Westminster Bridge was reached Tally Ho had exhausted the fascinations of the carriage, and was become unfeignedly bored.

‘My will wait till de tlain ’tops,’ he thought, ‘and ask Kotah Lal if my may det down and ’peak to Blown.’

Brown, a particular friend of his, was an engine-driver on the little one-horse line that ran past his home in the North-West Provinces. The train pulled up with a jerk at the station, and Tally Ho turned to proffer his request, but a gently ecstatic snore from the turbaned head in the opposite corner warned him that his protector was far away in the Land of Nod.

‘Poo’ah Kotah Lal,’ said Tally Ho compassionately, ‘he’s velly sleepy, my will not wakle him up.’ This he said consideringly, having in his small mind the semi-conviction that it might be better _not_ to ask for his protector’s leave in this matter. ‘My tinks,’ pursued Tally Ho, ‘Blown will be wanting my.’

He moved towards the door, but at this moment the train resumed its grimy way, and burrowed once more into the bowels of the city. Tally Ho paused, his small fist on the handle.

‘My will wait,’ he said, ‘till de silly tlain ’tops again.’

He amused himself by turning and returning the handle, putting his whole soul into the operation, and missing being projected into a murky space by the dispensation of a merciful Providence, and the skin of his tiny white teeth. The train emerged into the light, and pulled up again in the open space just eastward of St James’s Park Station. Kotah Lal snored peacefully.

‘My’s velly good not to wakle him,’ mused Tally Ho, as he slid out of the carriage and bumped on his little seat to the ground. ‘My will ’peak clossly to Blown--dis is a baddy tlain.’

He frowned as he picked himself up, and, shaking himself, took his grubby way almost under the train towards the engine. The engine-driver was looking ahead and turning on steam as Tally Ho caught him in profile.

‘_It’s not Blown_,’ he gasped, astonished, and the train moved on past a gaping atom of humanity.

‘’Top, ’top, you baddy tlain, my says ’top!’ But the train stopped not, and went on its way rejoicing into the cleaner parts of the city, bearing with it an unconsciously slumbering Hindu.

Now the word ‘tears’ had not been in Tally Ho’s vocabulary this many a day.

‘Baddy tlain,’ he said, ‘’t has runned away wid my’s Kotah Lal,’ forgetting, perchance, that it was Tally Ho that had first deserted the train, and not the train Tally Ho. ‘My will catchee it!’

His small legs twinkled rapidly down the line of the train. But the train had the start, and was flourishing out of St James’s Park Station at the one end as Tally Ho trotted into it at the other. He laboured up the steep incline on to the platform as the tail light was swallowed up in the opposite blackness. Tally Ho stopped, at a loss what to do.

‘Velly baddy tlain,’ he panted, ‘my--’ here a small mustard Dandie Dinmont sniffed at his legs. ‘Oh! _what_ a nice doggie!’ said Tally Ho, with characteristic irrelevance, and stooped to pat it. A whistle sounded, the Dandie trotted away obediently, and Tally Ho trotted after in hot pursuit. The platform was disgorging a stream of passengers, and Tally Ho, his mind and eye fixed on the dog, passed the ticket collector, unchecked, at the skirt of a stout middle-aged female.

‘Hi,’ said the collector, ‘hi, lydy,--ticket for the youngster, please.’

‘What youngster?’ said the indignant lady.

‘That there youngster of yourn, in the holland breeks.’

The owner thereof was now well up the staircase, and twinkling over the bridge in pursuit of the Dandie.

‘You impident person!’ said the choleric dame, ‘holland breeks indeed!’

‘Now then, ma’am, don’t you give me none of your bluff--holland breeks it is, and a smudgy seat at that,--py up please, if you y’nt got no ticket.’

‘But I tell you I haven’t got any children; I’m a single woman; you must be intoxicated, collector.’

‘Go it, breeks!’ came a voice from the half-amused and half-impatient crowd.

‘That’ll do, ma’am, that’ll do,’ said the collector, majestically; ‘your name and address, if _you_ please.’

‘Certainly,’ bellowed the now infuriated female, ‘certainly. Maria James, 4 Smith Square; and I’ll take good care you’re not a collector of this company for long. Holland breeks indeed!’

‘You see,’ mused the collector to the crowd, as he took the remaining tickets, ‘it tykes ’em this w’y sometimes--these ’ere _single_ femyles.’

Now in the meantime the ‘disturber of traffic,’ having said to himself, ‘my wants to pat that doggie,’ had to his great disgust only arrived at seeing the object of his desires lifted into a cab, and whirled from before his eyes, at the gates of St James’s Park. This was enough to damp the spirits of a hero. Tally Ho entered the park with a momentarily dejected step, and wandered on to the bridge; but there his dejection ceased, for below him, swimming in circles, in semi-circles, in parabolas, in zig-zags, were ducks--ducks more sleek and beautiful than any he had ever beheld, and fat--words could not describe the nature of their fatness. Tally Ho sank on his knees, stuck his head through the girders, and gazed. His affections particularly rivetted themselves on two small bronze-green ducks taking first lessons in diving from an attentive parent.

‘My wantles _dem_,’ said Tally Ho, joyfully and loudly, through the girders, to the intense astonishment of a military-looking old gentleman, from between whose legs the words arose.

‘Gawd bless me! What’s that?’

‘My wantles ’oo for each of my’s tlowser’s pottets,’ bellowed Tally Ho across the water to the ducks.

‘Gawd bless me! It’s the ducks the boy wants,’ commented the ancient warrior, stepping with much care clear of Tally Ho, and noting the direction of his gestures. At this precise instant Tally Ho withdrew his head from between the girders and scrambled on to his feet, and as he did so his eye lighted on the stranger whose elderly but martial form he had been doing his level best to upset.

‘Salaam, Genelal Sahib,’ he said, saluting affably and without embarrassment, ‘my is Tally Ho--my wantles dose ducks.’

The General saluted in turn, screwed a gold-rimmed eyeglass carefully into his eye, stroked his grizzled moustache, and gazed curiously at his interlocutor.

‘Tan my have dose two nickle gleeny-blown ducks?’ said Tally Ho, pointing into the water, and pulling abstractedly at the General’s grey frock coat.

‘’Tenshun,’ said the latter, and Tally Ho dropped his hands mechanically to his side, and drew himself up with his feet at a correct 45 degrees. ‘Now, then, what d’ye want the ducks for, heh?’

The ‘heh’ was rather alarming, but Tally Ho passed it by unconcernedly.

‘Oos velly like my Daddy,’ he remarked with condescension; ‘but my wantles dose ducks to takle home in my’s pottets,’ he continued, reverting to business.

‘Bless the boy! But you can’t have those ducks; they belong to the Queen!’

‘Dod bless her!’ said Tally Ho, raising his hat abstractedly, for his attention had wandered to the stick with the skull handle in the General’s hand. ‘Velly plitty ‘tick,’ he murmured to himself, ‘my will walkle wid ’oo, if ’oos not tired,’ he added aloud considerately to the stranger.

‘Gawd bless me!’ said the dumfoundered General. ‘He’d take command of a division for two pins! Gentleman though--Indian--know the breed. Wonder who he is--seems lost--never mind, take him along--pump him--no fool. Come along Mr--Tally Ho, Sir; eyes front, quick march.’

Tally Ho made one manful endeavour to compass the General’s stride, and then relapsed philosophically into a regular two for one. He had quite forgotten the ducks, he wanted that stick so badly to carry over his shoulder like a rifle. After completing the length of the bridge, side by side with the General, and cogitating silently, Tally Ho saluted, and said:

‘_Ettafakhan_ de Genelal Sahib finds de ’tick velly heavy.’

‘Gawd bless me! Persian! Very talented boy, great diplomatist--_Ettafakhan_,’ he continued aloud to Tally Ho (the which is the Persian for ‘peradventure’), and without another word transferred the stick to his small and grubby fist. The latter, too well bred to show the transports of joy swelling in his small bosom, halted, salaamed profoundly, and after hugging the stick, which was at least as tall as himself, heaved it over his shoulder, and marched manfully on. The General was an old man; he stooped slightly and walked slowly, and his eyes, that looked like those of an old dog, gazed curiously ever and anon from under his shaggy eyebrows at the small brown urchin tramping at his side. They reached the gates of the park before he had in the least made up his mind what course to pursue with this strange little mortal. As they were crossing the Mall towards St James’s Palace, a new idea struck Tally Ho; he halted suddenly, stuck the stick into the ground, and leaning on it, looked around him with a self-satisfied air.

‘My’s losted,’ he announced.

The General, in rapt amazement at the calmness of this remark, halted also, and a hansom, sweeping by, nearly ran over his toes, and knocked off Tally Ho’s hat with the edge of its wheel.

‘Damned scoundrels!’ muttered the exasperated warrior below his breath, ‘plucky boy, though--near thing.... All right, heh?’--this to Tally Ho, who was contemplating a large splash of mud on the crown of his hat.

‘My’s noo ’at!’ he said, ruefully.

‘Never mind your hat s’long’s _you’re_ all right, heh? That’s it! Come along.’ A bright idea struck him. ‘Are you hungry? Course he is, all boys hungry. Gawd bless me! what was I thinking of? Come and have some tiffin at my club, Mr--Tally Ho, sir.’

‘Tank’oo, my will be _dee_lighted, my’s _velly_ empty,’ said Tally Ho, frankly and cheerfully.

‘Course you are. Come along, sir, come along.’

As the oddly assorted couple took their way down Pall Mall, the passers-by turned to stare. The sentries at Marlborough House saluted--Tally Ho appropriated and returned the salutes with a pre-occupied air--he was thinking now of the General’s white hat, and of how he desired it greatly to keep his mongoose ‘Bengy’ in--he was sure he had seen little windows in the top of it. ‘Perhaps the Genelal Sahib will takle it off again, and sclatchle his head as Blown does sometimes, den my will see,’ he reflected.

Now they had arrived at the corner of St James’s Square, and the sweet-faced old sweeper at the crossing had made her double-barrelled bob to the sunburnt, white-haired veteran and the sun-browned, white-haired child. At the steps of a great service club the General halted, and took off his hat to mop his brow, for the day was hot, and his mind was perplexed.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said aloud to himself, ‘boy’s hungry--tiffin first, pump afterwards. Gawd bless me! What’s that?’ For Tally Ho, swelling with joy of verification, was threading his thumbs through the vent-holes of the white hat, and saying to himself with subdued emphasis:

‘My will makle two mores, _eke oper eke_’ (one upon the top of the other).

‘Devil you will!’ said the General, and feeling from the absorption of his guest’s eye that no time was to be lost, he hastily replaced his hat, and extended two fingers to assist Tally Ho up the steps.

‘No t’ank ’oo,’ said the latter; ‘my will runle up.’ He proceeded to mount the stairs on all-fours, and sat on the top step at the feet of the hall porter, awaiting the arrival of his distinguished but disconcerted host.

‘Gawd bless me! regular young budmâsh (rogue)--fine fellow, though--very fine fellow! Heh! Wilkins!’ he said, with a perplexed twirl of his moustache, to the unmoved janitor.

‘New member, General, or friend of yours only, sir? What name shall I enter, General?’

‘This gentleman will tiffin with me, Wilkins. Name, heh! what?--Quite so. Mr--Tally Ho, sir,’ he said, turning to Tally Ho, who with his hat off was examining the tape machine in the hall with an interested eye, ‘the servant wishes to know your name, so that he may put it in the visitors’ book. What shall I tell him?’

‘Geoffley Standin’ Blount,’ returned Tally Ho. His knees were grubby, his hat was torn, his seat was dusty, but he looked very much of a gentleman.

‘Mr Geoffrey Standing Blount, Wilkins,’ said the General with dignity. The smile flickering into Wilkins’ eye flickered out again, and he turned to the visitors’ book. The General led the way to the lavatory past a group of younger men in the hall, who greeted him with respectful if amused recognition. Tally Ho, smiling affably, followed him. Arrived at the lavatory, he looked with a pleased anticipation at the row of basins, for though of tender years, soap and water were after his heart. He was feeling hot and dusty, the taps ran so nicely, and--that was all, alas!--impossible to reach those basins, those nicely flowing taps--so he stood in the middle and waited while the General washed, politely silent, but feeling his inches, or want of inches, keenly. At last he said, ‘My’s nickle, but my’s growin’!’ An apology for his host’s want of thought was in the last words.

‘Gawd bless me--boy’s too small--can’t reach--never thought of that--dear, dear!’ He tugged at his moustache in great concern. ‘Hi! you boot-boy,’ he shouted, ‘bring a chair, two chairs, help the gentleman up, hi! you fool, hold the slack of the gentleman’s trousers, can’t you, while he washes;’ for Tally Ho in a transport of joy was taking a header into the basin. The remainder of his toilet was carefully attended to by the boot-boy, under the General’s anxious supervision.

When it was completed, and Tally Ho was once more presentable, they ascended to the dining-room--Tally Ho for once on his two feet, and conducting himself with a vast propriety. It was a little after the ordinary luncheon hour when the General finally anchored his guest, contrary to all laws and precedents, in the club dining-room. An old crony of his was finishing his lunch in one of the windows; next to him the General, greatly in want of support, took his stand, and having caused his guest to be lifted into his seat, abstractedly handed him a menu card. Tally Ho perused it gravely after the manner of a man accustomed to these things, and handing it to the waiter, remarked:

‘My will have cully and lice,’--he paused, debating gravely, ‘and plummers,’ he added, with a note of triumph in his voice.

The General twirled his moustache.

‘Curry and rice for this gentleman, plums afterwards--fried sole for me. Boy of decision,’ he continued, approvingly to himself. ‘Knows his own mind.’ He looked at the card. ‘Gawd bless me! not on the menu, either of them--’course, can’t read--how should he?--never mind, finer fellow than I thought--man of resource.’ He turned to the crony. ‘How do, ’Morant?’ he said--‘married man, just the man I want--stand by to support me, heh?’ He nodded imperceptibly in the direction of Tally Ho.

‘Certainly, my dear fellow,’ said the intelligent crony, ‘make me known.’

‘Colonel Morant--Mr Geoffrey Standing Blount.’

Tally Ho, whose round blue eyes were fixed immovably on the face of the waiter, greatly to the discomfiture of that youthful but solemn personage, turned and twinkled friendlily at his new acquaintance, but his mind was too agitated by the question then troubling it for more than a passing attention to other matters.

‘For why isn’t he black?’ he said in a loudly audible but awestricken whisper to the General, pointing with his chin at the unfortunate. ‘My foughted all club waiters was black.’

‘This is England, sir, not India; here they’re red, you know,’ said the General, blandly, with a chuckle. ‘It’s like lobsters, red in hot water; ain’t it, Morant?’

His eyes followed the vanishing form of the young waiter flying to hide the blushes spreading over his disconcerted countenance.

‘Oh!’ said Tally Ho, polite but unconvinced.

‘The point,’ said the General, after a pause, turning to his supporter. ‘The point is this--given small boy--gentleman--lost--name Geoffrey Standing Blount--new to England.’

‘Dat’s my,’ said Tally Ho to himself softly in parenthesis.

‘Guest of mine,’ continued the General, ‘don’t want to pump him--point is, how to find his belongings, heh?’ He wound up abruptly.

‘Where was he met with?’ said the crony. He was head of a county constabulary, and great on detective detail. ‘The time and place?’ Mechanically he took out a pocket-book.

‘Ducks--St James’s Park--one thirty.’

Tally Ho stared from one to the other; were they talking of him? He inclined to think so.

‘My’s losted,’ he said to the crony; ‘my’s Daddy’s Number One mud-and-water soldier in de Deyra Dhun.’

At this precise moment his curry arrived, and no further information did he volunteer, for, as he had remarked, he was ‘velly empty.’

‘I have it,’ said the crony, ‘waiter! fetch me an Army List. Number One mud-and-water soldier is pigeon-English for commanding engineer. Here you are,’ he continued, triumphantly, ‘R.E. Majors, Blount, F. Standing. India.’

‘India,’ said the General, ‘hum. Large place--and this is England.’

‘His bankers,’ said the crony, ‘probably Cox’s; waiter, fetch me a commissionaire, we’ll send him round and find out.’

‘Bravo,’ said the General, ‘invaluable fellow, brilliant idea--that’s it, young man,’ he turned approvingly to Tally Ho, ‘wire in.’

‘Exkullent dood chow-chow, nearly as dood as Foo Ching’s,’ responded Tally Ho. He was again oblivious of the fact that he was in process of being found, and was devoting himself in the intervals of luncheon to smiling sweetly at the waiter, whose feelings he was innocently conscious had been in some sort wounded. ‘Are ’oo feelin’ all light again?’ he said sympathetically, ‘’oo ’tant help not bein’ black, tan ’oo?’

The waiter cast one beseeching look around him, and fled precipitately, leaving a trail of blushes behind.

‘Poor mans,’ said Tally Ho, ‘perwaps de big fire has strokled him; he _is_ velly led, isn’t he, Genelal Sahib?’

‘All right, my boy, all right,’ said the General, choking. He turned to the crony, who was smiling gravely. ‘Wonderful boy,’ he said, _sotto voce_, ‘make fine soldier--splendid touch--considers feelings of his men.’

‘Rather a curious way of doing so,’ said the crony, glancing with a twinkle in his eye at the door through which the waiter had disappeared.

‘All same--good intention,’ said the General.

But Tally Ho had entirely forgotten waiter, lunch, and hosts, in the contemplation of a new problem connected with the giant fireplace, which was crammed with plants.

‘It’s all tommy lot,’ he said abruptly to himself, climbing down from his chair and walking straight up to the fireplace. ‘Kotah Lal said dere was allerways fires in Ingeliland, but dere isn’t, and dere never wasn’t, ’cos dese would be burntled.’

‘Gawd bless me!’ said the General, ‘wonderful!--splendid soldier he’ll make--good reasonin’ power--fine forcible vocabulary.’

‘I should apply for a commission for him to-morrow if I were you,’ said the crony, drily.

‘So I will,’ said the General, ‘hum--well--not quite yet--but keep my eye on him.’

Tally Ho came back to the table, and stood waiting at attention. The two men rose.

‘Has ’oo finished?’ said Tally Ho, ’tum along, my wantles my’s cigar.’

‘It seems that your protégé has his vices as well,’ said the crony, as they went downstairs. In the hall the commissionaire handed him an address. He looked at it triumphantly. ‘Major Blount’s London reference,’ he said.

‘Capital,’ said the General, ‘I’ll send round at once--sure to know all about him there.’

He did so, then ordered coffee and cigars, and settled himself and his guest in armchairs. Tally Ho’s feet, when he sat back, just reached the edge of the chair.

‘My’s daddy,’ he said, ‘dives my one puffle of his cigars--Kotah Lal, my’s _sais_, ’mokes, but my doesn’t takle puffles from a _sais_,’ he added, proudly.

The General twinkled all over his war-worn face, took his cigar from his mouth and handed it to Tally Ho. The latter grasped it gingerly between his small brown finger and thumb, and applied it to his mouth, which it completely filled. Holding it firmly, and sitting well back, with his chair tilted up, he took one long diligent draw, then with his cheeks puffed out he gave it solemnly back to the General. Slowly and rapturously he let the smoke escape, and watched it curl up to the ceiling in little puffs and rings. When it was all expended, he snuggled his small fair head back amongst the cushions.

‘It allerways makles my sleepy,’ he said apologetically, and his head was nodding already. ‘Dood night, ‘tank de Number One up aloft Sahib for my’s goody day--but my wantled dose gleeny-blown ducks baddy.’ Here he heaved a serene little sigh, and snuggled still further into the recesses of the chair. ‘My’s lost-ed,’ he murmured contentedly, as his chin fell on to his chest, and he slept. A sunbeam flitted in through the blinds on to his dusty flaxen pate. The General leant forward.

‘All serene, my young friend,’ he said softly, ‘before you wake again we’ll have that careless beggar of a _sais_ of yours by the heels, and you’ll be “losted” no more. And mark my words, Morant,’ he went on, flicking the ash off his cigar, ‘when we’re done for, and stacked with the majority, that tow-headed young budmâsh’ll be as great, ay, a greater soldier than either of us; we shan’t know it--stacked, heh?--but the country will. One of us goes, but there’s always another fellow ready to take his place, thank the Lord.’

‘_Eke oper eke_,’ muttered Tally Ho in his dreams.

THE DOLDRUMS

‘The breeze would have savéd him, you know,’ said the mate.

Out of a cloudless sky,
Into a sapphire sea,
To the tune of a windless sigh,
That is drawn in the tops’les three,
The sun sinks fast thro’ a burning haze
To the heart of the sapphire sea.

Over the shadowed deep,
Topped with an oily swell,
To the hours of the night asleep
In the chime of her muffled bell
The spent ship prays--and her spirit fails,
On the heave of the sullen swell.

* * * * *

Fanning the crimson flare
Lit by the coming dawn,
Thro’ the hush in the breathless air
Of the night that is past and gone,
The wind speeds swift to the weary sails,
In a song of the coming morn.

But away from the stifled ship,
Fleeter than any wind,
With a kiss on the twisted lip
Of the face that she leaves behind,
A breath steals forth--and the wind but plays
On a mask that is left behind.

Six bells clanged the dawning of the last hour in the midnight watch. I dropped my cards, for it was the peculiar custom to stop whist just as the bell sounded.

‘Time up!’ said the Captain regretfully, mopping his brow, ‘How do we stand, Jenny?’

His wife’s voice--‘Eight and three eleven, and four’--rose in a vinegary triumph of addition from across the saloon table, to culminate in an emphatic ‘Fifteen points.’

‘Good! I rather think that’s the best night yet, sir.--Bed, Jenny. Good-night, gentlemen. A hot night, an’t it?’

‘Good-night, Captain! Good-night, Mrs Cape! Coming on deck, Jaques?’

‘No!’ said my partner, ‘bed for this child, g’night;’ and murmuring a disgusted ‘Fifteen points--and the vinegar--and the heat--phew!’ he shut his cabin door with a jerk.

I climbed the stern hatchway, and joined the three men lounging against the skylight on the poop. The moon hung hazily between the softly flapping sails of the idling ship. Out of the deadly calm waters a little purposeless heave rocked her ever and anon to this side and that, and the old shellback at the useless wheel whistled softly to himself, as he looked vainly for the ship’s wake in the oily tropical ocean.

The Southern Cross dipped afar on the port quarter, and innumerable stars spangled the stilly depths of the dark heavens. The curiously dissonant miaul of the focs’le cat hit the ear, through the sultry stifling air, with a sense of the relieved ridiculous.

‘Dosé fallows you know’ (he pronounced it ‘gnau’), said the mate in his slightly nasal, foreign accent, evidently resuming, ‘it’s very curious you know, dey rrãally haven’t anny feelings.’

‘Do you mean, they feel no emotions, as we understand the word?’ said young Raymond impatiently, his intolerance of human beings so constituted ringing in the high-pitched tones of his clear voice.

‘Not a blessed one!’ said a third voice from the ship’s side, shrill and worn, ‘Yellow devils! Yellow devils! they’ve only one virtue.’

‘And that, Doctor?’

‘Opium, sirree. They’re tolerable, when they’re opium drunk.’

The mate looked up sharply, and with his brown, almond-shaped Slav eyes scrutinized keenly the dim figure of the speaker, and his mouth, between the close-trimmed pointed beard and drooping moustaches, took a more than usually cynical and mournful curve.

‘You are severe, Doctor,’ he said; but the other, without answering, turned away, and leaned over the bulwark wearily.

‘Ah! that is bad, you know,’ I heard the mate say to himself under his breath.

‘Yes,’ said the shrill voice presently from the darkness, ‘you may have seen ’em and you may talk about ’em, but you don’t _know_ them. You’ve not worked in China Town amongst John Chinaman, as I’ve worked. I guess you’ve not seen ’em born, and die, and marry, as I’ve seen them. Ugh! devils--devils--hog-skinned, slit-eyed devils!’

‘It is all tempérrament, you know,’ said the mate, ‘dosé fallows, you know, they are different all through, it is not a question of degree. A white man will never understand how their minds wōrrk. Will you have a cigarette, Doctor?’ He watched the thin face and trembling hand closely, and shook his head, as the Doctor turned back with his lighted cigarette to the ship’s side.