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Traffics and Discoveries

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> Traffics and Discoveries




"Still selling 'em fish, I suppose. He's a darling! But I wish I could get
this filthy paint off my hands. Hallo! What the deuce is the _Cryptic_
signalling?"

A pale masthead light winked through the last of the fog. It was answered
by a white pencil to the southward.

"Destroyer signalling with searchlight." Pyecroft leaped on the stern-
rail. "The first part is private signals. Ah! now she's Morsing against
the fog. 'P-O-S-T'--yes, 'postpone'--'D-E-P-' (go on)! 'departure--till--
further--orders--which--will--be com" (he's dropped the other m)
"'unicated--verbally. End,'." He swung round. "_Cryptic_ is now answering:
'Ready--proceed--immediately. What--news--promised--destroyer--
flotilla?'"

"Hallo!" said Moorshed. "Well, never mind, They'll come too late."

"Whew! That's some 'igh-born suckling on the destroyer. Destroyer signals:
'Care not. All will be known later.' What merry beehive's broken loose
now?"

"What odds! We've done our little job."

"Why--why--it's Two Six Seven!"

Here Pyecroft dropped from the rail among the fishy nets and shook the
_Agatha_ with heavings. Moorshed cast aside his cigarette, looked over the
stern, and fell into his subordinate's arms. I heard the guggle of
engines, the rattle of a little anchor going over not a hundred yards
away, a cough, and Morgan's subdued hail. ... So far as I remember, it was
Laughton whom I hugged; but the men who hugged me most were Pyecroft and
Moorshed, adrift among the fishy nets.

There was no semblance of discipline in our flight over the _Agatha's_
side, nor, indeed, were ordinary precautions taken for the common safety,
because (I was in the Berthon) they held that patent boat open by hand for
the most part. We regained our own craft, cackling like wild geese, and
crowded round Moorshed and Hinchcliffe. Behind us the _Agatha's_ boat,
returning from her fish-selling cruise, yelled: "Have 'ee done the trick?
Have 'ee done the trick?" and we could only shout hoarsely over the stern,
guaranteeing them rum by the hold-full.

"Fog got patchy here at 12:27," said Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, growing
clearer every instant in the dawn. "Went down to Brixham Harbour to keep
out of the road. Heard whistles to the south and went to look. I had her
up to sixteen good. Morgan kept on shedding private Red Fleet signals out
of the signal-book, as the fog cleared, till we was answered by three
destroyers. Morgan signalled 'em by searchlight: 'Alter course to South
Seventeen East, so as not to lose time,' They came round quick. We kept
well away--on their port beam--and Morgan gave 'em their orders." He
looked at Morgan and coughed.

"The signalman, acting as second in command," said Morgan, swelling, "then
informed destroyer flotilla that _Cryptic_ and _Devolution_ had made good
defects, and, in obedience to Admiral's supplementary orders (I was afraid
they might suspect that, but they didn't), had proceeded at seven knots at
11:23 p. M. to rendezvous near Channel Islands, seven miles N.N.W. the
Casquet light. (I've rendezvoused there myself, Sir.) Destroyer flotilla
would therefore follow cruisers and catch up with them on their course.
Destroyer flotilla then dug out on course indicated, all funnels sparking
briskly."

"Who were the destroyers?"

"_Wraith, Kobbold, Stiletto_, Lieutenant-Commander A. L. Hignett, acting
under Admiral's orders to escort cruisers received off the Dodman at 7 P.
M. They'd come slow on account of fog."

"Then who were you?"

"We were the _Afrite_, port-engine broke down, put in to Torbay, and there
instructed by _Cryptic_, previous to her departure with _Devolution_) to
inform Commander Hignett of change of plans. Lieutenant-Commander Hignett
signalled that our meeting was quite providential. After this we returned
to pick up our commanding officer, and being interrogated by _Cryptic_,
marked time signalling as requisite, which you may have seen. The _Agatha_
representing the last known rallying-point--or, as I should say, pivot-
ship of the evolution--it was decided to repair to the _Agatha_ at
conclusion of manoeuvre."

"Is there such a thing as one fine big drink aboard this one fine big
battleship?" "Can do, sir," said Pyecroft, and got it. Beginning with Mr.
Moorshed and ending with myself, junior to the third first-class stoker,
we drank, and it was as water of the brook, that two and a half inches of
stiff, treacly, Navy rum. And we looked each in the other's face, and we
nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss.

Moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a
captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke
over the green-bedded villas of Torquay to show us the magnitude of our
victory. There lay the cruisers (I have reason to believe that they had
made good their defects). They were each four hundred and forty feet long
and sixty-six wide; they held close upon eight hundred men apiece, and
they had cost, say, a million and a half the pair. And they were ours, and
they did not know it. Indeed, the _Cryptic_, senior ship, was signalling
vehement remarks to our address, which we did not notice.

"If you take these glasses, you'll get the general run o' last night's
vaccination," said Pyecroft. "Each one represents a torpedo got 'ome, as
you might say."

I saw on the _Cryptic's_ port side, as she lay half a mile away across the
glassy water, four neat white squares in outline, a white blur in the
centre.

"There are five more to starboard. 'Ere's the original!" He handed me a
paint-dappled copper stencil-plate, two feet square, bearing in the centre
the six-inch initials, "G.M."

"Ten minutes ago I'd ha' eulogised about that little trick of ours, but
Morgan's performance has short-circuited me. Are you happy, Morgan?"

"Bustin'," said the signalman briefly.

"You may be. Gawd forgive you, Morgan, for as Queen 'Enrietta said to the
'ousemaid, _I_ never will. I'd ha' given a year's pay for ten minutes o'
your signallin' work this mornin'."

"I wouldn't 'ave took it up," was the answer. "Perishin' 'Eavens above!
Look at the _Devolution's_ semaphore!" Two black wooden arms waved from
the junior ship's upper bridge. "They've seen it."

"_The_ mote _on_ their neighbour's beam, of course," said Pyecroft, and
read syllable by syllable: "'Captain Malan to Captain Panke. Is--sten--
cilled frieze your starboard side new Admiralty regulation, or your Number
One's private expense?' Now _Cryptic_ is saying, 'Not understood.' Poor
old _Crippy_, the _Devolute's_ raggin' 'er sore. 'Who is G.M.?' she says.
That's fetched the _Cryptic_. She's answerin': 'You ought to know. Examine
own paintwork.' Oh, Lord! they're both on to it now. This is balm. This is
beginning to be balm. I forgive you, Morgan!"

Two frantic pipes twittered. From either cruiser a whaler dropped into the
water and madly rowed round the ship: as a gay-coloured hoist rose to the
_Cryptic's_ yardarm: "Destroyer will close at once. Wish to speak by
semaphore." Then on the bridge semaphore itself: "Have been trying to
attract your attention last half hour. Send commanding officer aboard at
once."

"Our attention? After all the attention we've given 'er, too," said
Pyecroft. "What a greedy old woman!" To Moorshed: "Signal from the
_Cryptic_, Sir."

"Never mind that!" said the boy, peering through his glasses. "Our dinghy
quick, or they'll paint our marks out. Come along!"

By this time I was long past even hysteria. I remember Pyecroft's bending
back, the surge of the driven dinghy, a knot of amazed faces as we skimmed
the _Cryptic's_ ram, and the dropped jaw of the midshipman in her whaler
when we barged fairly into him.

"Mind my paint!" he yelled.

"You mind mine, snotty," said Moorshed. "I was all night putting these
little ear-marks on you for the umpires to sit on. Leave 'em alone."

We splashed past him to the _Devolution's_ boat, where sat no one less
than her first lieutenant, a singularly unhandy-looking officer.

"What the deuce is the meaning of this?" he roared, with an accusing
forefinger.

"You're sunk, that's all. You've been dead half a tide."

"Dead, am I? I'll show you whether I'm dead or not, Sir!"

"Well, you may be a survivor," said Moorshed ingratiatingly, "though it
isn't at all likely."

The officer choked for a minute. The midshipman crouched up in stern said,
half aloud: "Then I _was_ right--last night."

"Yesh," I gasped from the dinghy's coal-dust. "Are you member Torquay
Yacht Club?"

"Hell!" said the first lieutenant, and fled away. The _Cryptic's_ boat was
already at that cruiser's side, and semaphores flicked zealously from ship
to ship. We floated, a minute speck, between the two hulls, while the
pipes went for the captain's galley on the _Devolution_.

"That's all right," said Moorshed. "Wait till the gangway's down and then
board her decently. We oughtn't to be expected to climb up a ship we've
sunk."

Pyecroft lay on his disreputable oars till Captain Malan, full-uniformed,
descended the _Devolution's_ side. With due compliments--not acknowledged,
I grieve to say--we fell in behind his sumptuous galley, and at last, upon
pressing invitation, climbed, black as sweeps all, the lowered gangway of
the _Cryptic_. At the top stood as fine a constellation of marine stars as
ever sang together of a morning on a King's ship. Every one who could get
within earshot found that his work took him aft. I counted eleven able
seamen polishing the breechblock of the stern nine-point-two, four marines
zealously relieving each other at the life-buoy, six call-boys, nine
midshipmen of the watch, exclusive of naval cadets, and the higher ranks
past all census.

"If I die o' joy," said Pyecroft behind his hand, "remember I died
forgivin' Morgan from the bottom of my 'eart, because, like Martha, we
'ave scoffed the better part. You'd better try to come to attention, Sir."

Moorshed ran his eye voluptuously over the upper deck battery, the huge
beam, and the immaculate perspective of power. Captain Panke and Captain
Malan stood on the well-browned flash-plates by the dazzling hatch.
Precisely over the flagstaff I saw Two Six Seven astern, her black
petticoat half hitched up, meekly floating on the still sea. She looked
like the pious Abigail who has just spoken her mind, and, with folded
hands, sits thanking Heaven among the pieces. I could almost have sworn
that she wore black worsted gloves and had a little dry cough. But it was
Captain Panke that coughed so austerely. He favoured us with a lecture on
uniform, deportment, and the urgent necessity of answering signals from a
senior ship. He told us that he disapproved of masquerading, that he loved
discipline, and would be obliged by an explanation. And while he delivered
himself deeper and more deeply into our hands, I saw Captain Malan wince.
He was watching Moorshed's eye.

"I belong to Blue Fleet, Sir. I command Number Two Six Seven," said
Moorshed, and Captain Planke was dumb. "Have you such a thing as a frame-
plan of the _Cryptic_ aboard?" He spoke with winning politeness as he
opened a small and neatly folded paper.

"I have, sir." The little man's face was working with passion.

"Ah! Then I shall be able to show you precisely where you were torpedoed
last night in"--he consulted the paper with one finely arched eyebrow--"in
nine places. And since the _Devolution_ is, I understand, a sister ship"--
he bowed slightly toward Caplain Malan--"the same plan----"

I had followed the clear precision of each word with a dumb amazement
which seemed to leave my mind abnormally clear. I saw Captain Malan's eye
turn from Moorshed and seek that of the _Cryptic's_ commander. And he
telegraphed as clearly as Moorshed was speaking: "My dear friend and
brother officer, _I_ know Panke; _you_ know Panke; _we_ know Panke--good
little Panke! In less than three Greenwich chronometer seconds Panke will
make an enormous ass of himself, and I shall have to put things straight,
unless you who are a man of tact and discernment----"

"Carry on." The Commander's order supplied the unspoken word. The cruiser
boiled about her business around us; watch and watch officers together, up
to the limit of noise permissible. I saw Captain Malan turn to his senior.

"Come to my cabin!" said Panke gratingly, and led the way. Pyecroft and I
stayed still.

"It's all right," said Pyecroft. "They daren't leave us loose aboard for
one revolution," and I knew that he had seen what I had seen.

"You, too!" said Captain Malan, returning suddenly. We passed the sentry
between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that
Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, I
winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, brass-
fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. Moorshed, with a ruler, was
demonstrating before the frame-plan of H.M.S. _Cryptic_.

"--making nine stencils in all of my initials G.M.," I heard him say.
"Further, you will find attached to your rudder, and you, too, Sir"--he
bowed to Captain Malan yet again--"one fourteen-inch Mark IV practice
torpedo, as issued to first-class torpedo-boats, properly buoyed. I have
sent full particulars by telegraph to the umpires, and have requested them
to judge on the facts as they--appear." He nodded through the large window
to the stencilled _Devolution_ awink with brass work in the morning sun,
and ceased.

Captain Panke faced us. I remembered that this was only play, and caught
myself wondering with what keener agony comes the real defeat.

"Good God, Johnny!" he said, dropping his lower lip like a child, "this
young pup says he has put us both out of action. Inconceivable--eh? My
first command of one of the class. Eh? What shall we do with him? What
shall we do with him--eh?"

"As far as I can see, there's no getting over the stencils," his companion
answered.

"Why didn't I have the nets down? Why didn't I have the nets down?" The
cry tore itself from Captain Panke's chest as he twisted his hands.

"I suppose we'd better wait and find out what the umpires will say. The
Admiral won't be exactly pleased." Captain Malan spoke very soothingly.
Moorshed looked out through the stern door at Two Six Seven. Pyecroft and
I, at attention, studied the paintwork opposite. Captain Panke had dropped
into his desk chair, and scribbled nervously at a blotting-pad.

Just before the tension became unendurable, he looked at his junior for a
lead. "What--what are you going to do about it, Johnny--eh?"

"Well, if you don't want him, I'm going to ask this young gentleman to
breakfast, and then we'll make and mend clothes till the umpires have
decided."

Captain Panke flung out a hand swiftly.

"Come with me," said Captain Malan. "Your men had better go back in the
dinghy to--their--own--ship."

"Yes, I think so," said Moorshed, and passed out behind the captain. We
followed at a respectful interval, waiting till they had ascended the
ladder.

Said the sentry, rigid as the naked barometer behind him: "For Gawd's
sake! 'Ere, come 'ere! For Gawd's sake! What's 'appened? Oh! come '_ere_
an' tell."

"Tell? You?" said Pyecroft. Neither man's lips moved, and the words were
whispers: "Your ultimate illegitimate grandchildren might begin to
understand, not you--nor ever will."

"Captain Malan's galley away, Sir," cried a voice above; and one replied:
"Then get those two greasers into their dinghy and hoist the blue peter.
We're out of action."

"Can you do it, Sir?" said Pyecroft at the foot of the ladder. "Do you
think it is in the English language, or do you not?"

"I don't think I can, but I'll try. If it takes me two years, I'll try."

* * * * *

There are witnesses who can testify that I have used no artifice. I have,
on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of _opus alexandrinum_. My gold
I have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with sepia of
the sea, and for hell-hearted ruby and blinding diamond I have substituted
pale amethyst and mere jargoon. Because I would say again "Disregarding
the inventions of the Marine Captain whose other name is Gubbins, let a
plain statement suffice."




THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

THE KING'S TASK

After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name,
In the years when the Lights were darkened, or ever Saint Wilfrid came.
Low on the borders of Britain, the ancient poets sing,
Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon king.

Stubborn all were his people, a stark and a jealous horde--
Not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword;
Blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood,
And set on the ways of their choosing as the hogs of Andred's Wood ...

They made them laws in the Witan, the laws of flaying and fine,
Folkland, common and pannage, the theft and the track of kine;
Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal,
The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel.
Over the graves of the Druids and over the wreck of Rome
Rudely but deeply they bedded the plinth of the days to come.
Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Northman's ire,
Rudely but greatly begat they the body of state and of shire.
Rudely but greatly they laboured, and their labour stands till now
If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough.


THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

Private Copper's father was a Southdown shepherd; in early youth Copper
had studied under him. Five years' army service had somewhat blunted
Private Copper's pastoral instincts, but it occurred to him as a memory of
the Chalk that sheep, or in this case buck, do not move towards one across
turf, or in this case, the Colesberg kopjes unless a stranger, or in this
case an enemy, is in the neighbourhood. Copper, helmet back-first advanced
with caution, leaving his mates of the picket full a mile behind. The
picket, concerned for its evening meal, did not protest. A year ago it
would have been an officer's command, moving as such. To-day it paid
casual allegiance to a Canadian, nominally a sergeant, actually a trooper
of Irregular Horse, discovered convalescent in Naauwport Hospital, and
forthwith employed on odd jobs. Private Copper crawled up the side of a
bluish rock-strewn hill thinly fringed with brush atop, and remembering
how he had peered at Sussex conies through the edge of furze-clumps,
cautiously parted the dry stems before his face. At the foot of the long
slope sat three farmers smoking. To his natural lust for tobacco was added
personal wrath because spiky plants were pricking his belly, and Private
Copper slid the backsight up to fifteen hundred yards....

"Good evening, Khaki. Please don't move," said a voice on his left, and as
he jerked his head round he saw entirely down the barrel of a well-kept
Lee-Metford protruding from an insignificant tuft of thorn. Very few
graven images have moved less than did Private Copper through the next ten
seconds.

"It's nearer seventeen hundred than fifteen," said a young man in an
obviously ready-made suit of grey tweed, possessing himself of Private
Copper's rifle. "Thank _you_. We've got a post of thirty-seven men out
yonder. You've eleven--eh? We don't want to kill 'em. We have no quarrel
with poor uneducated Khakis, and we do not want prisoners we do not keep.
It is demoralising to both sides--eh?"

Private Cooper did not feel called upon to lay down the conduct of
guerilla warfare. This dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed stranger
was his first intimate enemy. He spoke, allowing for a clipped cadence
that recalled to Copper vague memories of Umballa, in precisely the same
offensive accent that the young squire of Wilmington had used fifteen
years ago when he caught and kicked Alf Copper, a rabbit in each pocket,
out of the ditches of Cuckmere. The enemy looked Copper up and down,
folded and re-pocketed a copy of an English weekly which he had been
reading, and said: "You seem an inarticulate sort of swine--like the rest
of them--eh?"

"You," said Copper, thinking, somehow, of the crushing answers he had
never given to the young squire, "are a renegid. Why, you ain't Dutch.
You're English, same as me."

"_No_, khaki. If you cannot talk civilly to a gentleman I will blow your
head off."

Copper cringed, and the action overbalanced him so that he rolled some six
or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. His brain was
working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience of Alf
Copper. While he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own jaws amazed
him: "If you did, 'twouldn't make you any less of a renegid." As a useful
afterthought he added: "I've sprained my ankle."

The young man was at his side in a flash. Copper made no motion to rise,
but, cross-legged under the rock, grunted: "'Ow much did old Krujer pay
you for this? What was you wanted for at 'ome? Where did you desert from?"

"Khaki," said the young man, sitting down in his turn, "you are a shade
better than your mates. You did not make much more noise than a yoke of
oxen when you tried to come up this hill, but you are an ignorant diseased
beast like the rest of your people--eh? When you were at the Ragged
Schools did they teach you any history, Tommy--'istory I mean?"

"Don't need no schoolin' to know a renegid," said Copper. He had made
three yards down the hill--out of sight, unless they could see through
rocks, of the enemy's smoking party.

The young man laughed; and tossed the soldier a black sweating stick of
"True Affection." (Private Copper had not smoked a pipe for three weeks.)

"_You_ don't get this--eh?" said the young man. "_We_ do. We take it from
the trains as we want it. You can keep the cake--you po-ah Tommee." Copper
rammed the good stuff into his long-cold pipe and puffed luxuriously. Two
years ago the sister of gunner-guard De Souza, East India Railway, had, at
a dance given by the sergeants to the Allahabad Railway Volunteers,
informed Copper that she could not think of waltzing with "a poo-ah
Tommee." Private Copper wondered why that memory should have returned at
this hour.

"I'm going to waste a little trouble on you before I send you back to your
picket _quite_ naked--eh? Then you can say how you were overpowered by
twenty of us and fired off your last round--like the men we picked up at
the drift playing cards at Stryden's farm--eh? What's your name--eh?"

Private Copper thought for a moment of a far-away housemaid who might
still, if the local postman had not gone too far, be interested in his
fate. On the other hand, he was, by temperament, economical of the truth.
"Pennycuik," he said, "John Pennycuik."

"Thank you. Well, Mr. John Pennycuik, I'm going to teach you a little
'istory, as you'd call it--eh?"

"'Ow!" said Copper, stuffing his left hand in his mouth. "So long since
I've smoked I've burned my 'and--an' the pipe's dropped too. No objection
to my movin' down to fetch it, is there--Sir?"

"I've got you covered," said the young man, graciously, and Private
Copper, hopping on one leg, because of his sprain, recovered the pipe yet
another three yards downhill and squatted under another rock slightly
larger than the first. A roundish boulder made a pleasant rest for his
captor, who sat cross-legged once more, facing Copper, his rifle across
his knee, his hand on the trigger-guard.

"Well, Mr. Pennycuik, as I was going to tell you. A little after you were
born in your English workhouse, your kind, honourable, brave country,
England, sent an English gentleman, who could not tell a lie, to say that
so long as the sun rose and the rivers ran in their courses the Transvaal
would belong to England. Did you ever hear that, khaki--eh?"

"Oh no, Sir," said Copper. This sentence about the sun and the rivers
happened to be a very aged jest of McBride, the professional humorist of D
Company, when they discussed the probable length of the war. Copper had
thrown beef-tins at McBride in the grey dawn of many wet and dry camps for
intoning it.

"_Of_ course you would not. Now, mann, I tell you, listen." He spat aside
and cleared his throat. "Because of that little promise, my father he
moved into the Transvaal and bought a farm--a little place of twenty or
thirty thousand acres, don't--you--know."

The tone, in spite of the sing-song cadence fighting with the laboured
parody of the English drawl, was unbearably like the young Wilmington
squire's, and Copper found himself saying: "I ought to. I've 'elped burn
some."

"Yes, you'll pay for that later. _And_ he opened a store."

"Ho! Shopkeeper was he?"

"The kind you call "Sir" and sweep the floor for, Pennycuik.... You see,
in those days one used to believe in the British Government. My father
did. _Then_ the Transvaal wiped thee earth with the English. They beat
them six times running. You know _thatt_--eh?"

"Isn't what we've come 'ere for."

"_But_ my father (he knows better now) kept on believing in the English. I
suppose it was the pretty talk about rivers and suns that cheated him--eh?
Anyhow, he believed in his own country. Inn his own country. _So_--you
see--he was a little startled when he found himself handed over to the
Transvaal as a prisoner of war. That's what it came to, Tommy--a prisoner
of war. You know what that is--eh? England was too honourable and too
gentlemanly to take trouble. There were no terms made for my father."

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