Chapter IV: Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My Aunt! They’re goin’ to lock ’em up an’ send for Vidley,” Corkran whispered, as one of the captors hurried downhill in the direction of Appledore, and the prisoners were led into the barn.

“But they haven’t taken their names and numbers, anyhow,” said Corkran, who had fallen into the hands of the enemy more than once.

“But they’re bottled! Rather sickly for De Vitré,” said Beetle. “It’s one lickin’ anyhow, even if Vidley don’t hammer him. The Head’s rather hot about gate-liftin’, and poachin’, an’ all that sort of thing. He won’t care for cattle-liftin’ much.”

“It’s awfully bad for cows, too, to run ’em about in milk,” said McTurk, lifting one knee from a sodden primrose-tuft. “What’s the next move, Corky?”

“We’ll get into the old cartshed where we smoked. It’s next to the barn. We can cut across over while they’re inside and climb in through the window.”

“S’pose we’re collared?” said Beetle, cramming his house-cap into his pocket. Caps may tumble off, so one goes into action bare-headed.

“That’s just it. They’d never dream of any more chaps walkin’ bung into the trap. Besides, we can get out through the roof if they spot us. Keep your eye on your Uncle. Come on,” said Corkran.

A swift dash carried them to a huge clump of nettles, beneath the unglazed back window of the cartshed. Its open front, of course, gave on to the barnyard.

They scrambled through, dropped among the carts, and climbed up into the rudely boarded upper floor that they had discovered a week before when in search of retirement. It covered a half of the building and ended in darkness at the barn wall. The roof-tiles were broken and displaced. Through the chinks they commanded a clear view of the barnyard, half filled with disconsolate cattle, steaming sadly in the rain.

“You see,” said Corkran, always careful to secure his line of retreat, “if they bottle us up here, we can squeeze out between these rafters, slide down the roof, an’ bunk. They couldn’t even get out through the window. They’d have to run right round the barn. Now are you satisfied, you burbler?”

“Huh! You only said that to make quite sure yourself,” Beetle retorted.

“If the boards weren’t all loose, I’d kick you,” growled Corkran. “’No sense gettin’ into a place you can’t get out of. Shut up and listen.”

A murmur of voices reached them from the end of the attic. McTurk tiptoed thither with caution.

“Hi! It leads through into the barn. You can get through. Come along!” He fingered the boarded wall.

“What’s the other side?” said Corkran the cautious.

“Hay, you idiot.” They heard his boot-heels click on wood, and he had gone.

At some time or other sheep must have been folded in the cartshed, and an inventive farm-hand, sooner than take the hay round, had displaced a board in the barn-side to thrust fodder through. It was in no sense a lawful path, but twelve inches in the square is all that any boy needs.

“Look here!” said Beetle, as they waited for McTurk’s return. “The cattle are coming in out of the wet.”

A brown, hairy back showed some three feet below the half-floor, as one by one the cattle shouldered in for shelter among the carts below, filling the shed with their sweet breath.

“That blocks our way out, unless we get out by the roof, an’ that’s rather too much of a drop, unless we have to,” said Corkran. “They’re all bung in front of the window, too. What a day we’re havin’!”

“Corkran! Beetle!” McTurk’s whisper shook with delight. “You can see ’em; I’ve seen ’em. They’re in a blue funk in the barn, an’ the two clods are makin’ fun of ’em—horrid. Orrin’s tryin’ to bribe ’em an’ Parsons is nearly blubbin’. Come an’ look! I’m in the hayloft. Get through the hole. Don’t make a row, Beetle.”

Lithely they wriggled between the displaced boards into the hay and crawled to the edge of the loft. Three years’ skirmishing against a hard and unsympathetic peasantry had taught them the elements of strategy. For tactics they looked to Corkran; but even Beetle, notoriously absent-minded, held a lock of hay before his head as he crawled. There was no haste, no betraying giggle, no squeak of excitement. They had learned, by stripes, the unwisdom of these things. But the conference by a root-cutter on the barn floor was deep in its own affairs; De Vitré’s party promising, entreating, and cajoling, while the natives laughed like Inquisitors.

“Wait till Muster Vidley an’ Muster Toowey—yis, an’ the policemen come,” was their only answer. “’Tis about time to go to milkin’. What’ull us do?”

“Yeou go milk, Tom, an’ I’ll stay long o’ the young gentlemen,” said the bigger of the two, who answered to the name of Abraham. “Muster Toowey, he’m laike to charge yeou for usin’ his yard so free. Iss fai! Yeou’ll be wopped proper. ’Rackon yeou’ll be askin’ for junkets to set in this week o’ Sundays to come. But Muster Vidley, he’ll give ’ee the best leatherin’ of all. He’m passionful, I tal ’ee.”

Tom stumped out to milk. The barn doors closed behind him, and in the fading light a great gloom fell on all but Abraham, who discoursed eloquently on Mr. Vidley, his temper and strong arm.

Corkran turned in the hay and retreated to the attic, followed by his army.

“No good,” was his verdict. “I’m afraid it’s all up with ’em. We’d better get out.”

“Yes, but look at these beastly cows,” said McTurk, spitting on to a heifer’s back. “It’ll take us a week to shove ’em away from the window, and that brute Tom’ll hear us. He’s just across the yard, milkin’.”

“Tweak ’em, then,” said Corkran. “Hang it, I’m sorry to have to go, though. If we could get that other beast out of the barn for a minute we might make a rescue. Well, it’s no good. Tweakons!”

He drew forth a slim, well-worn homemade catapult—the “tweaker” of those days—slipped a buckshot into its supple chamois leather pouch, and pulled to the full stretch of the elastic. The others followed his example. They only wished to get the cattle out of their way, but seeing the backs so near, they deemed it their duty each to choose his bird and to let fly with all their strength.

They were not prepared in the least for what followed. Three bullocks, trying to wheel amid six close-pressed companions, not to mention three calves, several carts, and all the lumber of a general-utility shed, do not turn end-for-end without confusion. It was lucky for the boys that they stood a little back on the floor, because one horned head, tossed in pain, flung up a loose board at the edge, and it came down lancewise on an amazed back. Another victim floundered bodily across the shafts of a decrepit gig, smashing these and oversetting the wheels. That was more than enough for the nerves of the assembly. With wild bellowings and a good deal of left-and-right butting, they dashed into the barnyard, tails on end, and began a fine free fight on the midden. The last cow out hooked down an old set of harness; it flapped over one eye and trailed behind her. When a companion trod on it, which happened every few seconds, she naturally fell on her knees; and, being a Burrows cow, with the interests of her calf at heart, attacked the first passer-by. Half-awed, but wholly delighted, the boys watched the outburst. It was in full flower before they even dreamed of a second shot. Tom came out from a byre with a pitchfork, to be chased in again by the harnessed cow. A bullock floundered on the muck-heap, fell, rose and bedded himself to the belly, helpless and bellowing. The others took great interest in him.

Corkran, through the roof, scientifically “tweaked” a frisky heifer on the nose, and it is no exaggeration to say that she danced on her hind legs for half a minute.

“Abram! Oh, Abram! They’m bewitched. They’m ragin’. ’Tes the milk fever. They’ve been drove mad. Oh, Abram! They’ll horn the bullock! They’ll horn _me_! Abram!”

“Bide till I lock the door,” quoth Abraham, faithful to his trust. They heard him padlock the barn door; saw him come out with yet another pitchfork. A bullock lowered his head, Abraham ran to the nearest pig-pen, where loud squeakings told that he had disturbed the peace of a large family.

“Beetle,” snapped Corkran. “Go in an’ get those asses out. Quick! We’ll keep the cows happy.”

A people sitting in darkness and the shadow of monumental lickings, too depressed to be angry with De Vitré, heard a voice from on high saying, “Come up here! Come on! Come up! There’s a way out.”

They shinned up the loft-stanchions without a word; found a boot-heel which they were bidden to take for guide, and squeezed desperately through a hole in darkness, to be hauled out by Corkran.

“Have you got your caps? Did you give ’em your names and numbers?”

“Yes. No.”

“That’s all right. Drop down here. Don’t stop to jaw. Over the cart—through that window, and bunk! Get _out_!”

De Vitré needed no more. They heard him squeak as he dropped among the nettles, and through the roof-chinks they watched four slight figures disappear into the rain. Tom and Abraham, from byre and pig-pen, exhorted the cattle to keep quiet.

“By gum!” said Beetle; “that _was_ stalky. How did you think of it?”

“It was the only thing to do. Anybody could have seen that.”

“Hadn’t we better bunk, too, now?” said McTurk uneasily.

“Why? _We_’re all right. _We_ haven’t done anything. I want to hear what old Vidley will say. Stop tweakin’, Turkey. Let ’em cool off. Golly! how that heifer danced! I swear I didn’t know cows could be so lively. We’re only just in time.”

“My Hat! Here’s Vidley—and Toowey,” said Beetle, as the two farmers strode into the yard.

“Gloats! oh, gloats! Fids! oh, fids! Hefty fids and gloats to us!” said Corkran.

These words, in their vocabulary, expressed the supreme of delight. “Gloats” implied more or less of personal triumph, “fids” was felicity in the abstract, and the boys were tasting both that day. Last joy of all, they had had the pleasure of Mr. Vidley’s acquaintance, albeit he did not love them. Toowey was more of a stranger, his orchards lying over-near to the public road.

Tom and Abraham together told a tale of stolen cattle maddened by overdriving; of cows sure to die in calving, and of milk that would never return; that made Mr. Vidley swear for three consecutive minutes in the speech of north Devon.

“’Tes tu bad. ’Tes tu bad,” said Toowey, consolingly; “let’s ’ope they ’aven’t took no great ’arm. They be wonderful wild, though.”

“’Tes all well for yeou, Toowey, that sells them dom Collegers seventy quart a week.”

“Eighty,” Toowey replied, with the meek triumph of one who has under-bidden his neighbour on public tender; “but that’s no odds to me. Yeou’m free to leather ’em saame as if they was yeour own sons. On my barn floor shall ’ee leather ’em.”

“Generous old pig!” said Beetle. “De Vitré ought to have stayed for this.”

“They’m all safe an’ to rights,” said the officious Abraham, producing the key. “Rackon us’ll come in an’ hold ’em for yeou. Hey! The cows are fair ragin’ still. Us’ll have to run for it.”

The barn being next to the shed, the boys could not see that stately entry. But they heard.

“Gone an’ hided in the hay. Aie! They’m proper afraid,” cried Abraham.

“Rout un out! Rout un out!” roared Vidley, rattling a stick impatiently on the root-cutter.

“Oh, my Aunt!” said Corkran, standing on one foot.

“Shut the door. Shut the door, I tal ’ee. Rackon us can find un in the dark. Us don’t want un boltin’ like rabbits under our elbows.” The big barn door closed with a clang.

“My Gum!” said Corkran, which was always his War oath in time of action. He dropped down and was gone for perhaps twenty seconds.

“And _that’s_ all right,” he said, returning at a gentle saunter.

“Hwatt?” McTurk almost shrieked, for Corkran, in the shed below, waved a large key.

“Stalks! Frabjous Stalks! Bottled ’em! all four!” was the reply, and Beetle fell on his bosom. “Yiss. They’m so’s to say, like, locked up. If you’re goin’ to laugh, Beetle, I shall have to kick you again.”

“But I must!” Beetle was blackening with suppressed mirth.

“You won’t do it here, then.” He thrust the already limp Beetle through the cartshed window. It sobered him; one cannot laugh on a bed of nettles. Then Corkran stepped on his prostrate carcass, and McTurk followed, just as Beetle would have risen; so he was upset, and the nettles painted on his cheek a likeness of hideous eruptions.

“’Thought that ’ud cure you,” said Corkran, with a sniff.

Beetle rubbed his face desperately with dock-leaves, and said nothing. All desire to laugh had gone from him. They entered the lane.

Then a clamour broke from the barn—a compound noise of horse-like kicks, shaking of door-panels, and fivefold yells.

“They’ve found it out,” said Corkran. “How strange!” He sniffed again.

“Let ’em,” said Beetle. “No one can hear ’em. Come on up to Coll.”

“What a brute you are, Beetle! You only think of your beastly self. Those cows want milkin’. Poor dears! Hear ’em low,” said McTurk.

“Go back and milk ’em yourself, then.” Beetle danced with pain. “We shall miss call-over, hangin’ about like this; an’ I’ve got two black marks this week already.”

“Then you’ll have fatigue-drill on Monday,” said Corkran. “Come to think of it, I’ve got two black marks _aussi_. Hm! This is serious. This is hefty serious.”

“I told you,” said Beetle, with vindictive triumph. “An’ we want to go out after that hawk’s nest on Monday. We shall be swottin’ dum-bells, though. _All_ your fault. If we’d bunked with De Vitré at first——”

Corkran paused between the hedgerows. “Hold on a shake an’ don’t burble. Keep your eye on Uncle. Do you know, _I_ believe someone’s shut up in that barn. I think we ought to go and see.”

“Don’t be a giddy idiot. Come on up to Coll.” But Corkran took no notice of Beetle.

He retraced his steps to the head of the lane, and, lifting up his voice, cried as in bewilderment, “Hullo? Who’s there? What’s that row about? Who are you?”

“Oh, Peter!” said Beetle, skipping, and forgetting his anguish in this new development.

“Hoi! Hoi! ’Ere! Let us out!” The answers came muffled and hollow from the black bulk of the barn, with renewed thunders on the door.

“Now play up,” said Corkran. “Turkey, you keep the cows busy. ’Member that we’ve just discovered ’em. _We_ don’t know anything. Be polite, Beetle.”

They picked their way over the muck and held speech through a crack by the door-hinge. Three more genuinely surprised boys the steady rain never fell upon. And they were so difficult to enlighten. They had to be told again and again by the captives within.

“We’ve been ’ere for hours an’ hours.” That was Toowey. “An’ the cows to milk, an’ all.” That was Vidley. “The door she blewed against us an’ jammed herself.” That was Abraham.

“Yes, we can see that. It’s jammed on this side,” said Corkran. “How careless you chaps are!”

“Oppen un. Oppen un. Bash her oppen with a rock, young gen’elmen! The cows are milk-heated an’ ragin’. Haven’t you boys no sense?”

Seeing that McTurk from time to time tweaked the cattle into renewed caperings, it was quite possible that the boys had some knowledge of a sort. But Mr. Vidley was rude. They told him so through the door, professing only now to recognize his voice.

“Humour un if ’e can. I paid seven-an’-six for the padlock,” said Toowey. “Niver mind _him_. ’Tes only old Vidley.”

“Be yeou gwaine to stay a prisoneer an’ captive for the sake of a lock, Toowey? I’m shaamed of ’ee. Rowt un oppen, young gen’elmen! ’Twas a God’s own mercy yeou heard us. Toowey, yeou’m a borned miser.”

“It’ll be a long job,” said Corkran. “Look here. It’s near our call-over. If we stay to help you we’ll miss it. We’ve come miles out of our way already—after you.”

“Tell yeour master, then, what keeped ’ee—an arrand o’ mercy, laike. I’ll tal un tu when I bring the milk to-morrow,” said Toowey.

“That’s no good,” said Corkran; “we may be licked twice over by then. You’ll have to give us a letter.” McTurk, backed against the barn wall, was firing steadily and accurately into the brown of the herd.

“Yiss, yiss. Come down to my house. My missus shall write ’ee a beauty, young gen’elmen. She makes out the bills. I’ll give ’ee just such a letter o’ racommendation as I’d give to my own son, if only yeou can humour the lock!”

“Niver mind the lock,” Vidley wailed. “Let me get to me pore cows, ’fore they’m dead.”

They went to work with ostentatious rattlings and wrenchings, and a good deal of the by-play that Corkran always loved. At last—the noise of unlocking was covered by some fancy hammering with a young boulder—the door swung open and the captives marched out.

“Hurry up, Mister Toowey,” said Corkran; “we ought to be getting back. Will you give us that note, please?”

“Some of yeou young gentlemen was drivin’ my cattle off the Burrowses,” said Vidley. “I give ’ee fair warnin’, I’ll tell yeour masters. I know _yeou_!” He glared at Corkran with malignant recognition.

McTurk looked him over from head to foot. “Oh, it’s only old Vidley. Drunk again, I suppose. Well, we can’t help that. Come on, _Mister_ Toowey. We’ll go to your house.”

“Drunk, am I? I’ll drunk ’ee! How do I know yeou bain’t the same lot? Abram, did ’ee take their names an’ numbers?”

“What _is_ he ravin’ about?” said Beetle. “Can’t you see that if we’d taken your beastly cattle we shouldn’t be hanging round your beastly barn. ’Pon my Sam, you Burrows guv’nors haven’t any sense——”

“Let alone gratitude,” said Corkran. “I suppose he _was_ drunk, Mister Toowey; an’ you locked him in the barn to get sober. Shockin’! Oh, shockin’!”

Vidley denied the charge in language that the boys’ mothers would have wept to hear.

“Well, go and look after your cows, then,” said McTurk. “Don’t stand there cursin’ us because we’ve been kind enough to help you out of a scrape. Why on earth weren’t your cows milked before? _You_’re no farmer. It’s long past milkin’. No wonder they’re half crazy. Disreputable old bog-trotter, you are. Brush your hair, sir.... I _beg_ your pardon, Mister Toowey. ’Hope we’re not keeping you.”

They left Vidley dancing on the muck-heap, amid the cows, and devoted themselves to propitiating Mr. Toowey on their way to his house. Exercise had made them hungry; hunger is the mother of good manners; and they won golden opinions from Mrs. Toowey.

* * * * *

“Three-quarters of an hour late for Call-over, and fifteen minutes late for Lock-up,” said Foxy, the school Sergeant, crisply. He was waiting for them at the head of the corridor. “Report to your housemaster, please—an’ a nice mess you’re in, young gentlemen.”

“Quite right, Foxy. Strict attention to dooty does it,” said Corkran. “Now where, if we asked you, would you say that his honour Mister Prout might, at this moment of time, be found prouting—eh?”

“In ’is study—as usual, Mister Corkran. He took Call-over.”

“Hurrah! Luck’s with us all the way. Don’t blub, Foxy. I’m afraid you don’t catch us this time.”

* * * * *

“We went up to change, sir, before comin’ to you. That made us a little late, sir. We weren’t really very late. We were detained—by a——”

“An errand of mercy,” said Beetle, and they laid Mrs. Toowey’s laboriously written note before him. “We thought you’d prefer a letter, sir. Toowey got himself locked into a barn, and we heard him shouting—it’s Toowey who brings the Coll. milk, sir—and we went to let him out.”

“There were ever so many cows waiting to be milked,” said McTurk; “and of course, he couldn’t get at them, sir. They said the door had jammed. There’s his note, sir.”

Mr. Prout read it over thrice. It was perfectly unimpeachable; but it said nothing of a large tea supplied by Mrs. Toowey.

“Well, I don’t like your getting mixed up with farmers and potwallopers. Of course you will not pay any more—er—visits to the Tooweys,” said he.

“Of course not, sir. It was really on account of the cows, sir,” replied McTurk, glowing with philanthropy.

“And you came straight back?”

“We ran nearly all the way from the Cattle-gate,” said Corkran, carefully developing the unessential. “That’s one mile, sir. Of course, we had to get the note from Toowey first.”

“But it was because we went to change—we were rather wet, sir—that we were _really_ late. After we’d reported ourselves to the Sergeant, sir, and he knew we were in Coll., we didn’t like to come to your study all dirty.” Sweeter than honey was the voice of Beetle.

“Very good. Don’t let it happen again.” Their housemaster learned to know them better in later years.

They entered—not to say swaggered—into Number Nine form-room, where De Vitré, Orrin, Parsons, and Howlett, before the fire, were still telling their adventures to admiring associates. The four rose as one boy.

“What happened to _you_? We just saved Call-over. Did you stay on? Tell us! Tell us!”

The three smiled pensively. They were not distinguished for telling more than was necessary.

“Oh, we stayed on a bit and then we came away,” said McTurk. “That’s all.”

“You scab! You might tell a chap anyhow.”

“’Think so? Well, that’s awfully good of you, De Vitré. ’Pon my sainted Sam, that’s awfully good of you,” said Corkran, shouldering into the centre of the warmth and toasting one slippered foot before the blaze. “So you really think we might tell you?”

They stared at the coals and shook with deep, delicious chuckles.

“My Hat! We _were_ stalky,” said McTurk. “I swear we were about as stalky as they make ’em. Weren’t we?”

“It was a frabjous Stalk,” said Beetle. “’Much too good to tell you brutes, though.”

The form wriggled under the insult, but made no motion to avenge it. After all, on De Vitré’s showing, the three had saved the raiders from at least a public licking.

“It wasn’t half bad,” said Corkran. “Stalky _is_ the word.”

“_You_ were the really stalky one,” said McTurk, one contemptuous shoulder turned to a listening world. “By Gum! you _were_ stalky.”

Corkran accepted the compliment and the name together. “Yes,” said he; “keep your eye on your Uncle Stalky an’ he’ll pull you through.”

“Well, you needn’t gloat so,” said De Vitré, viciously; “you look like a stuffed cat.”

Corkran, henceforth known as Stalky, took not the slightest notice, but smiled dreamily.

“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he murmured. “Your Uncle Stalky—a doocid good name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I swear he is. De Vitré, you’re an ass—a putrid ass.”

De Vitré would have denied this but for the assenting murmurs from Parsons and Orrin.

“You needn’t rub it in, then.”

“But I do. I does. You are such a woppin’ ass. D’you know it? Think over it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige me by thinkin’ of it every half hour till further notice. Gummy! _What_ an ass you are! But your Uncle Stalky”—he picked up the form-room poker and beat it against the mantelpiece—“is a Great Man!”

“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk, who had fought under that general.

“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man, De Vitré? Speak the truth, you fat-headed old impostor.”

“Yes,” said De Vitré, deserted by all his band. “I—I suppose he is.”

“’Mustn’t suppose. _Is_ he?”

“Well, he is.”

“A Great Man?”

“A Great Man. _Now_ won’t you tell us?” said De Vitré pleadingly.

“Not by a heap,” said “Stalky” Corkran.

Therefore the tale has stayed untold till to-day.

THE HOUR OF THE ANGEL[19]

Sooner or late—in earnest or in jest—
(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel’s Hour
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
Of our sole unbacked competence and power
Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment—or beyond. But here we have
Prepared long since our garland or our grave.
For, at that hour, the sum of all our past,
Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast
In one addition, be it more or less,
And as that reading runs so shall we do;
Meeting, astounded, victory at the last,
Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to save!

“SARAH SANDS”

THE BURNING OF THE “SARAH SANDS”

_Men have sailed the seas for so many years, and have there done such amazing things in the face of danger, difficulty and death, that no one tale of heroism exists which cannot be equalled by at least scores of others. But since the behaviour of bodies of untried men under trying circumstances is always interesting, and since I have been put in possession of some facts not very generally known, I am trying to tell again the old story of the_ Sarah Sands, _as an example of long-drawn-out and undefeatable courage and cool-headedness._

She was a small four-masted, iron-built screw-steamer of eleven hundred tons, chartered to take out troops to India. That was in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, when anything that could sail or steer was in great demand; for troops were being thrown into the country as fast as circumstances allowed—which was not very fast.

Among the regiments sent out was the 54th of the Line, now the Second Battalion of the Dorset Regiment—a good corps, about a hundred years old, with a very fair record of service, but in no special way differing, so far as one could see, from many other regiments. It was despatched in three ships. The Head-quarters—that is to say, the Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regimental books, pay-chest, Band and Colours, which last represent the very soul of a Battalion—and some fourteen officers, three hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and perhaps a dozen women, left Portsmouth on the 15th of August all packed tight in the _Sarah Sands_.

Her crew, with the exception of the engineers and firemen, seem to have been foreigners and pier-head jumpers picked up at the last minute. They turned out bad, lazy and insubordinate.

The accommodation for the troops was generously described as “inferior,” and what men called “inferior” in 1857 would now be called unspeakable. Nor, in spite of the urgent need, was there any great hurry about the _Sarah Sands_. She took two long months to reach Capetown, and she stayed there five days to coal, leaving on the 20th of October. By this time, the crew were all but openly mutinous, and the troops, who must have picked up a little seamanship, had to work the ship out of harbour.

On the 7th of November, nearly three weeks later, a squall struck her and carried away her foremast; and it is to be presumed that the troops turned to and cleared away the wreckage. On the 11th of November the real trouble began, for, in the afternoon of that day, ninety days out from Portsmouth, a party of soldiers working in the hold saw smoke coming up from the after-hatch. They were then, maybe, within a thousand miles of the Island of Mauritius, in half a gale and a sea full of sharks.

Captain Castles, the master, promptly lowered and provisioned the boats; got them over-side with some difficulty and put the women into them. Some of the sailors—the engineers, the firemen and a few others behaved well—jumped into the long-boat, lowered it and kept well away from the ship. They knew she carried two magazines full of cartridges, and were taking no chances.

The troops, on the other hand, did not make any fuss, but under their officers’ orders cleared out the starboard or right-hand magazine, while volunteers tried to save the Regimental Colours. These stood at the end of the saloon, probably clamped against the partition behind the Captain’s chair, and the saloon was full of smoke. Two lieutenants made a dash thither but were nearly suffocated. A ship’s quartermaster—Richard Richmond was his name—put a wet cloth over his face, managed to tear down the Colours, and then fainted. A private—and his name was W. Wiles—dragged out both Richmond and the Colours, and the two men dropped senseless on the deck while the troops cheered. That, at least, was a good beginning; for, as I have said, the Colours are the soul of every body of men who fight or work under them.

The saloon must have been one of the narrow, cabin-lined, old-fashioned “cuddies,” placed above the screw, and all the fire was in the stern of the ship, behind the engine-room. It was blazing very close to the port or left-hand magazine, and, as an explosion there would have blown the _Sarah Sands_ out like a squib they called for more volunteers, and one of the lieutenants who had been choked in the saloon recovered, went down first and passed up a barrel of ammunition, which was at once hove overboard. After this example, work went on with regularity.

When the men taking out the ammunition fainted, as they did fairly often, they pulled them up with ropes. Those who did not faint, grabbed what explosives they could feel or handle in the smother, and brought them up, and an official and serene quartermaster-sergeant stood on the hatch and jotted down the number of barrels so retrieved in his notebook, as they were thrown into the sea. They pulled out all except two barrels which slid from the arms of a fainting man—there was a fair amount of fainting that evening—and rolled out of reach. Besides these, there were another couple of barrels of signalling powder for the ship’s use; but this the troops did not know, and were the more comfortable for their ignorance.

Then the flames broke through the after-deck, the light attracting shoals of sharks, and the mizzen-mast—the farthest aft of all the masts—flared up and went over-side with a crash. This would have veered the stern of the ship-head to the wind, in which case the flames must have swept forward; but a man with a hatchet—his name is lost—ran along the bulwarks and cut the wreck clear, while the boat full of women surged and rocked at a safe distance, and the sharks tried to upset it with their tails.

A Captain of the 54th—he was a jovial soul, and made jokes throughout the struggle—headed a party of men to cut away the bridge, the deck-cabins, and everything else that was inflammable—this in case of the flames sweeping forward again—while a provident lieutenant, with some more troops, lashed spars and things together for a raft, and other gangs pumped water desperately on to what was left of the saloon and the magazines.

One record says quaintly: “It was necessary to make some deviation from the usual military evolutions while the flames were in progress. The men formed in sections, counter-marched round the forward part of the ship, which may perhaps be better understood when it is stated that those with their faces to the after part where the fire raged were on their way to relieve their comrades who had been working below. Those proceeding ‘forward’ were going to recruit their exhausted strength and prepare for another attack when it came to their turn.”

No one seemed to have much hopes of saving the ship so long as the last of the powder was unaccounted for. Indeed, Captain Castles told an officer of the 54th that the game was up, and the officer replied, “We’ll fight till we’re driven overboard.” It seemed he would be taken at his word, for just then the signalling powder and the ammunition-casks went up, and the ship seen from midships aft looked like one floating volcano.

The cartridges spluttered like crackers, and cabin doors and timbers were shot up all over the deck, and two or three men were hurt. But—this is not in any official record—just after the roar of it, when her stern was dipping deadlily, and all believed the _Sarah Sands_ was settling for her last lurch, some merry jester of the 54th cried, “Lights out,” and the jovial captain shouted back, “All right! We’ll keep the old woman afloat yet.” Not one man of the troops made any attempt to get on to the rafts; and when they found the ship was still floating they all went back to work double tides.

At this point in the story we come across Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, who, like most of his countrymen, had been holding his trump-card in reserve. He knew the _Sarah Sands_ was built with a water-tight bulkhead behind the engine-room and the coal-bunkers; and he proposed to cut through the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also, he pointed out that it would be well to remove the coal in the bunkers, as the bulkhead behind was almost red-hot, and the coal was catching light.

So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, each man for the minute or two he could endure it, and shovelled away the singeing, fuming fuel, and other volunteers were lowered into the bonfire aft, and when they could throw no more water on it they were pulled up half roasted.

Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though every particle of wood in the after part of her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung over the red-hot iron beams and ties, and the sea for miles about looked like blood under the glare, as they pumped and passed water in buckets, flooding the stern, sluicing the engine-room bulkhead and damping the coal beyond it all through the long night. The very sides of the ship were red-hot, so that they wondered when her plates would buckle and wrench out the rivets and let the whole affair down to the sharks.

The foremast had carried away on the squall of the 7th of November; the mizzen-mast, as you know, had gone in the fire; the main-mast, though wrapped round with wet blankets, was alight, and everything abaft the main-mast was one red furnace. There was the constant danger of the ship, now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling off before the heavy wind, and leading the flames forward again. So they hailed the boats to tow and hold her head to wind; but only the gig obeyed the order. The others had all they could do to keep afloat; one of them had been swamped, though all her people were saved; and as for the long-boat full of mutinous seamen, she behaved infamously. One record says that “She not only held aloof, but consigned the ship and all she carried to perdition.” So the _Sarah Sands_ fought for her own life alone, with the sharks in attendance.

About three on the morning of the 12th of November, pumping, bucketing, sluicing and damping, they began to hope that they had bested the fire. By nine o’clock they saw steam coming up from her insides instead of smoke, and at mid-day they called in the boats and took stock of the damage. From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing that you could call ship except just the mere shell of her. It was all one steaming heap of scrap-iron with twenty feet of black, greasy water flooding across the bent and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all four huge water-tanks rolled to and fro, thundering against the naked sides.

Moreover,—this they could not see till things had cooled down—the powder explosions had blown a hole right through her port quarter, and every time she rolled the sea came in there green. Of the four masts only one was left; and the rudder-head stuck up all bald, black and horrible among the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photograph of the wreck looks exactly like that of a gutted theatre after the flames and the firemen have done their worst.

They spent the whole of the 12th of November pumping water out as zealously as they had pumped it in. They lashed up the loose, charging tanks as soon as they were cool enough to touch. They plugged the hole at the stern with hammocks, sails, and planks, and a sail over all. Then they rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the rudder-head. Six men sat on planks on one side and six at the other over the empty pit beneath, hauling on to the bar with ropes and letting go as they were told. That made the best steering-gear that they could devise.

On the 13th of November, still pumping, they spread one sail on their solitary mast—it was lucky that the _Sarah Sands_ had started with four of them—and took advantage of the trade winds to make for Mauritius. Captain Castles, with one chart and one compass, lived in a tent where some cabins had once been; and at the end of twelve more days he sighted land. Their average run was about four knots an hour; and, it is no wonder that as soon as they were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, wished to start his engines and enter port professionally. The troops looked down into the black hollow of the ship when the shaft made its first revolution, shaking the hull horribly; and if you can realize what it means to be able to see a naked screw-shaft at work from the upper deck of a liner, you can realize what had happened to the _Sarah Sands_. They waited outside Port Louis for the daylight, and were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. Then the gutted, empty steamer came in—very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred that they hardly dared to take them off, and very hungry; but without having lost one single life. Port Louis gave them all a public banquet in the market place, and the French inhabitants were fascinatingly polite as only the French can be.

But the records say nothing of what befell the sailors who “consigned the ship to perdition.” One account merely hints that “this was no time for retribution”; but the troops probably administered their own justice during the twelve days’ limp to port. The men who were berthed aft, the officers and the women, lost everything they had; and the companies berthed forward lent them clothes and canvas to make some sort of raiment.

On the 20th of December they were all re-embarked on the _Clarendon_. It was poor accommodation for heroes. She had been condemned as a coolie-ship, was full of centipedes and other animals picked up in the Brazil trade; her engines broke down frequently; and her captain died of exposure and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was the 25th of January before she reached the mouth of the Hugli.

By this time—many of the men probably considered this quite as serious as the fire—the troops were out of tobacco, and when they came across the American ship _Hamlet_, Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the way up the river to Calcutta, the officers rowed over to ask if there was any tobacco for sale. They told the skipper the history of their adventures, and he said: “Well, I’m glad you’ve come to me, because I have some tobacco. How many are you?” “Three hundred men,” said the officers. Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four hundred pounds of best Cavendish as well as one thousand Manilla cigars for the officers, and refused to take payment on the grounds that Americans did not accept anything from shipwrecked people. They were not shipwrecked at the time, but evidently they had been shipwrecked quite enough for Captain Lecran, because when they rowed back a second time and insisted on paying, he only gave them grog, “which,” says the record, “caused it to be dark when we returned to our ship.” After this “our band played ‘Yankee-Doodle,’ blue lights were burned, the signal-gun fired”—that must have been a lively evening at Kedgeree—“and everything in our power was had recourse to so as to convey to our American cousins our appreciation of their kindness.”

Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief issued a general order to be read at the head of every regiment in the Army. He was pleased to observe that “the behaviour of the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, and by its result must render manifest to all the advantage of subordination and strict obedience to orders under the most alarming and dangerous circumstances in which soldiers can be placed.”

This seems to be the moral of the tale.

THE LAST LAP

How do we know, by the bank-high river,
Where the mired and sulky oxen wait,
And it looks as though we might wait for ever,
How do we know that the floods abate?
There is no change in the current’s brawling—
Louder and harsher the freshet scolds;
Yet we can feel she is falling, falling,
And the more she threatens the less she holds.
Down to the drift, with no word spoken,
The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue.
Steady! The back of the worst is broken.
And—lash your leaders!—we’re through—we’re through!

How do we know, when the port-fog holds us
Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier,
And the week-long summer smother enfolds us—
How do we know it is going to clear?
There is no break in the blind-fold weather,
But, one and another, around the bay,
The unseen capstans clink together,
Getting ready to up and away.
A pennon whimpers—the breeze has found us—
A headsail jumps through the thinning haze.
The whole hull follows, till—broad around us—
The clean-swept ocean says:—“Go your ways!”

How do we know, when the long fight rages,
On the old, stale front that we cannot shake;
And it looks as though we were locked for ages,
How do we know they are going to break?
There is no lull in the level firing,
Nothing has shifted except the sun.
Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring.
Yet we can tell they are ripe to run.
Something wavers, and, while we wonder,
Their center trenches are emptying out,
And, before their useless flanks go under,
Our guns have pounded retreat to rout!

THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES

_This tale was written several years before the War, as you can see for yourselves. It is founded on fact, and it is meant to show that one ought to try to recognize facts, even when they are unpleasant and inconvenient._

The long shed of the Village Rifle Club reeked with the oniony smell of smokeless powder, machine-oil, and creosote from the stop-butt, as man after man laid himself down and fired at the miniature target sixty feet away. The Instructor’s voice echoed under the corrugated iron roof.

“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking your shoulder won’t help the bullet.... Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the left.... Hold your breath when the sights come on.... Fenwick, was that a bull? Then it’s only a fluke, for your last at two o’clock was an outer. You don’t know where you’re shooting.”

“I call this monotonous,” said Boy Jones, who had been brought by a friend to look at the show. “Where does the fun come in?”

“Would you like to try a shot?” the Instructor asked.

“Oh—er—thanks,” said Jones. “I’ve shot with a shot-gun, of course, but this”—he looked at the miniature rifle—“this isn’t like a shot-gun, is it?”

“Not in the least,” said the Friend. The Instructor passed Boy Jones a cartridge. The squad ceased firing and stared. Boy Jones reddened and fumbled.

“Hi! The beastly thing has slipped somehow!” he cried. The tiny twenty-two cartridge had dropped into the magazine-slot and stuck there, caught by the rim. The muzzle travelled vaguely round the horizon. The squad with one accord sat down on the dusty cement floor.

“Lend him a hair-pin,” whispered the jobbing gardener.

“Muzzle _up_, please,” said the Instructor (it was drooping towards the men on the floor). “I’ll load for you. Now—keep her pointed towards the target—you’re supposed to be firing at two hundred yards. Have you set your sights? Never mind, I’ll set ’em. _Please_ don’t touch the trigger till you shoot.”

Boy Jones was glistening at the edges as the Instructor swung him in the direction of the little targets fifty feet away. “Take a fine sight! The bull’s eye should be just sitting on the top of the fore-sight,” the Instructor cautioned. “Ah!”

Boy Jones, with a grunt and a jerk of the shoulder, pulled the trigger. The right-hand window of the shed, six feet above the target, starred and cracked.

The boy who cleans the knives at the Vicarage buried his face in his hands; Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, tied up his bootlace; the Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society looked at the roof; the village barber whistled softly. When one is twenty-two years old, and weighs twelve-stone-eight in hard condition, one does not approve of any game that one cannot play very well.

“I call this silly piffle,” said Boy Jones, wiping his face.

“Oh, not so bad as that,” said the Instructor. “We’ve all got to begin somehow. Try another?” But Boy Jones was not practising any more that afternoon. He seemed to need soothing.

“Come over to the big range,” said the Friend. “You’ll see the finished article at work down there. This is only for boys and beginners.”