Captain Jinks, Hero Part 26

"Not the kind of women I know," said Sam, thinking of Marian.

"I mean my kind of woman," said the doctor. "Do you think we'd sell guns and rifles to the Porsslanese and teach them how to use them, and then go to work and fight them after having armed them?" And she laughed a merry laugh.

"And do you think we'd pay men to invent all sorts of infernal machines like the Barnes torpedo, and then have our big ships blown up by them in time of peace. That is what brought on the whole Castalian and Cubapine war. The idea of praising a man like Barnes! He's been a curse to the world."

"It was really a blessing," said Sam. "It has spread civilization and Christianity all over."

"Well, that's one way of doing it," said she. "But when there are more women like me we'll take things out of the hands of you silly men and run them ourselves. Now, young man, you've talked enough. Turn over and go to sleep."

Cleary called on his friend almost every day and kept him informed. He sent home glowing accounts of Sam as the conqueror of the Great White Temple, and described his sufferings for his country with artistic skill. He also began work on the series of articles which Sam was expected to write for _Scribblers' Magazine_. His gossip about the events in the various camps entertained Sam very much, altho he was often irritated as well. In his capacity of correspondent Cleary saw and knew everything.

"Sam," said he one day, as the invalid was sitting up in an easy-chair at the window--"Sam, it's so long since I was at East Point that I'm becoming more and more of a civilian. You army people begin to amuse me. There's always something funny about you. The Tutonians are the funniest of all. The little red-cheeked officers with their blond mustaches turned up to their eyes are too funny to live. You feel like kissing them and sending them to bed. And the airs they put on! One of their soldiers happened to elbow a lieutenant the other day, and the chap ran him through with his sword, and no one called him to account.

The officers jostle and browbeat any civilian who will submit to it, and then try to get him into a duel, but I believe they're a cowardly lot at bottom. No man of real courage would bl.u.s.ter all over the place so."

"I admire their discipline," said Sam.

"And then there's the Franks. They're not quite so conceited, but they're awfully touchy. I think the mustaches measure conceit. The Tutonians' stick up straight, the Franks' stick right out at each side waxed to a point, and ours droop downward."

Sam began to twist his mustache upward, but it would not stay.

"I was in to see a Frank military trial the other day," said Cleary.

"It was the most comical thing. There were three big generals on the court. I mean big in rank. They were about four feet high in size, and they kept looking at their mustaches in hand-gla.s.ses and combing their hair with pocket-combs. They were trying one of their lieutenants for having sold some secret military plans to a Tutonian attache. Now the joke of it is that military attaches are appointed just for the purpose of buying secrets, and everybody knows it. They're licensed to do it.

And then when they do just what they're licensed for, everybody makes a fuss. Well, the secrets were sold; there wasn't the slightest reason for thinking this lieutenant had sold them, but they had to punish somebody. They say they drew his name from a box. They had three officers to testify against him, and they were the stupidest liars I ever saw. They just blundered from beginning to end, and the president of the court helped them out and told them what to say, and corrected them. The third man said nothing at all except, 'Yes, my general; yes, my general.' Then they called the witnesses for the accused, and two officers stepped forward, when a couple of orderlies grabbed each of them, stuffed a gag into their mouths, and carried them out, while the court looked the other way, and the crowd shouted, 'Long live the army!' The court adjourned on account of the 'contumacy of the witnesses for the defense.' I went in again the next morning, and they announced that both the witnesses had committed suicide. Then the president took a judgment out of his pocket which I had seen him fingering all the first day, and read it off just as it had been written before the trial began, condemning the poor devil to twenty years' imprisonment. I never saw such a farce. Everybody shouted for the army, and the little generals kissed each other and cried, and they had a great time of it. And the president made a speech in which he said that they had saved the army and consequently the country too, and that honor and glory and the fatherland had been redeemed. They've all been promoted and decorated since. They're a queer lot, those Frank officers."

"We ought not to be too quick in judging foreigners," said Sam. "Their methods may seem strange to us, but we are not competent to criticize them. Let each army judge for itself."

"As a matter of fact," said Cleary, "every army is down on the others.

If you believe what they say about each other they're a pretty bad lot.

They all say that the Mosconians are barbarians, and they call the Tutonians thugs. The rest of them call the Franks woman-hunters, and they all call us and the Anglians auctioneers and looters and shopkeepers, and drunkards, and we're known as temple-burners and vandals too."

"What an outrage!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sam.

"The Anglians are more like us, but they've got a few old generals and then a lot of small boys, and nothing much between. I should think the generals would feel like school-masters. I told one of their officers that, and he said it was better than having second lieutenants seventy-five years old as we do. We're loving each other a lot just now, the Anglians and us, but one of our naval officers let on to me that they were dying to have a war with them. You see, since South Africa n.o.body's afraid of them except the Porsslanese, and they don't read the papers. And how the Anglians despise the Franks! Why, we were discussing lying in war at a lunch-party, and one of their generals was there, a rather dense sort of a machine of a man. They had been saying that lying was an essential part of war, and that an officer must be a good liar and able to deceive the enemy well, as well as a good fighter, and the conversation drifted off into the question of lying in general. Somebody asked the general if he would say he was a Tutonian to save his life. 'Of course,' he answered. 'But would you say you were a Frank under the same circ.u.mstances?' asked some one else.

'Certainly not,' he said. Everybody roared, but he didn't see any joke, and looked as grave as an owl all the rest of the afternoon. Then the commanders are all so jealous of each other. They are spying on each other and putting sticks in each other's wheels. Officers are queer people. There's only one profession that can compete with them for feline amenities, and that is the actress profession."

"Cleary," said Sam, "I let you talk this way for old acquaintance's sake, but I wouldn't take it from any one else."

"Fiddlesticks! You know I'm right. The Anglian officers like to hint at the frauds in our quartermaster's department at Havilla, but I shut them up by asking how much their officers made off the horses they bought for South Africa in Hungary. Then they shut up like a clasp-knife. Officers talk a lot about their 'brother officers,' and you'd think they loved each other a lot, but I find they're all glad so many were killed in South Africa because it gives them a lot of promotion. I tell you the officers of all the armies like to have a good list of dead officers after each battle, if they are only their superiors in rank. I've been picking up all I can among the different soldiers, and learning a lot. I was just talking to a lot of Anglian soldiers now. They were sharpening sabers and bayonets on grindstones.

One of the older ones was telling me how they used to flog in the army.

They had a regular parade, and the drummers used to lay on the lash, while a doctor watched so that they shouldn't go too far. Sometimes the young subalterns who were in command would faint away at the sight.

"'But it was so manly, sir,' the fellow said to me. 'The army isn't what it was. But the other armies keep it up still, and we still birch youngsters in the navy so we needn't despair of the world.'"

"When will the campaign be over?" asked Sam.

"There's no telling. All the armies are afraid to leave, for fear the ones that are left will get some advantage from the Porsslanese Government. They're a high old lot of allies. It's a queer business.

But the missionaries are as queer as any of them. You ought to have heard old Amen last Sunday. How he whooped things up! He took his text from the Gospel of St. Loot, I think! He was trying to stir up Taffy to be more severe. Amen ought to be a soldier. Our minister plenipotentiary isn't a backward chap either. I went through the Imperial palace with him and his party the other day, and they pretty nearly cleaned it out, just for souvenirs, you know. He didn't take anything himself, as far as I could see; but his women, bless my soul, they filled their pockets with jade and ivory and what-not. There were some foreign looters in there at the same time, great swells too, and they just smashed the plate-gla.s.s over the cabinets and filled their pockets and their arms too. One old Porsslanese official was standing there, a high mandarin of some sort, and he had an emerald necklace around his neck. Some diplomat or other walked up to him and quietly took it off, and the old man didn't stir, but the tears were rolling down his cheeks."

"He had no right to complain," said Sam. "We clearly have the right to the contents of a conquered city by the rules of war."

"Perhaps. But there are some curious war rules. Some of the armies shoot all natives in soldiers' uniforms because they are soldiers, and then they shoot all natives who resist them in civil dress, because they are not soldiers and have no right to fight. I suppose they ought to go about naked. They used to kill their prisoners with the b.u.t.t-end of their rifles, but that breaks the rifles, and now they generally use the bayonet."

"Here are some newspapers," said he on another occasion. "You've been made a brigadier for capturing Gomaldo. Isn't that great? But they _will_ call you 'Captain Jinks' at home, no matter what your rank is.

The papers say so. The song has made it stick."

"I'm sorry for that," said Sam. "It would be pleasanter to be called 'General.'"

"It's all the same," said Cleary. "Wasn't Napoleon called the Little Corporal? It's really more distinguished."

"Perhaps it is," said Sam contentedly.

"Some of the papers criticize us a little too," added Cleary. "They say we are acting brutally here and in the Cubapines. Of course only a few say it, but their number is increasing."

"They make themselves ridiculous," said Sam. "They don't see how ludicrous their suggestions are that we should actually retire and let these countries relapse into barbarism. As that fellow said at Havilla, they have no sense of humor."

"And yet," retorted Cleary, "our greatest humorists, Mark Swain, Mr.

Tooley, and the best cartoonists, and our only really humorous paper, _Knife_, are on that side."

"But they are only humorists," cried Sam, "mere professional jokers.

You can't expect serious sense from them. They are mere buffoons. The serious people here, such as Dr. Amen, are with us to a man."

"I saw old Amen get caught the other day," said Cleary. "I was interviewing the colonel of the 15th, and in came Amen and began talking about the Porsslanese--what barbarians they were, no religion, no belief, no faith. Why, the idea of self-sacrifice was utterly unknown to them! Just then in came a young officer and said, 'Colonel, the son of that old native we're going to shoot this afternoon for looting, is bothering us and says he wants to be shot instead of his father. What shall we do with him?' Amen said good-day and cleared out.

By the way, the colonel of the 15th is in a hole just now. He was shut up in the legations, you know, and all the women there were down on him because he wouldn't make the sentries salute them when the men were dead tired with watching. They are charging him with cowardice.

There'll never be an end of this backbiting. It's almost as sickening as the throat-cutting and stabbing. I confess I'm getting sick of it all. When you see a private shoot an old native for not blacking his boots, when the poor fellow was trying to understand him and couldn't, and smiling as best he could, it's rather tough; and I've seen twenty babies if I've seen one lying in the streets with a bayonet hole in them. They have executions every day in one camp or another. I saw one coolie, who had been working fourteen hours at a stretch loading carts, shot down because he hadn't the strength to go on."

"I'm afraid the heat is telling on you, Cleary," said Sam. "This is all sickly sentimentality. War is war. The trouble with you is that there has been no regular campaign on to occupy your attention. This lying about doing nothing is a bad thing for everybody. Wait till the Tutonian Emperor comes out and we'll have something to do."

"He won't find any enemy to fight," said Cleary.

"Trust him for that," replied Sam. "He's every inch a soldier, and he'll find the way to make war, depend upon it. He's a religious man too, and he will back up the missionaries better than we've done."

"Yes. Amen thinks the world of him. Amen ought to have been a Tutonian soldier. He says the best imagery of religion comes from war. I told him I had an article written about a fight which said that our men 'fought like demons' and 'yelled like fiends,' and I would change it to read that they fought like seraphs and yelled like cherubim, but he didn't think it was funny."

CHAPTER XIII

The War-Lord

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As soon as Sam was well enough to be moved the doctors sent him down to the coast, and Cleary, who had been up and down the river several times in the course of his newspaper work, went with him. Sam still felt feeble, and altho he could walk without a crutch, he now had a decided limp which was sure to be permanent. They arrived at the port a few days before the expected arrival of the Emperor, and the whole place was overflowing with excitement. The Emperor, who had never seen a skirmish, was notwithstanding considered the greatest general of his time, and he was coming now to prove it before the world and incidentally to wreak vengeance upon a people, one of whom had killed his amba.s.sador. The town was profusely decorated, the Tutonian garrison was increased, and Count von Balderdash, the commander-in-chief, himself took command. Six fleets were drawn up in the wide bay to await the coming of the war-lord. It was announced that he would make his entry at night, and that the hour of arrival had been timed for a dark moonless night. This was a.s.serted to be for the better display of fireworks. Finally, one morning the Tutonian fleet of four or five large vessels was sighted in the distance. They steamed slowly up and down in the distance until night fell, and then, as their colored electric lights, outlining the masts and funnels, became distinct in the darkness, they began to approach. Each of the awaiting fleets was distinguished with particular-colored lights, and they had taken their position at a considerable distance from the sh.o.r.e, leaving a pa.s.sage near the ruined forts for the Emperor. Sam and Cleary found a good lookout on a dismantled bastion, and saw the whole parade. As the leading vessel came near the first fleet the latter saluted with its guns. Suddenly the lights on the advancing ship were extinguished, and a strong flash-light was throw from above upon the forward deck. There in bold relief stood a single figure, brilliantly illuminated by the light. Cleary and Sam turned their field-gla.s.ses upon it.

"By Jove! it's the Emperor," cried Cleary. "He's got on his admiral's uniform, and now he's pa.s.sing his own fleet that Balderdash brought with him."

They looked at the striking scene for some minutes, and the crowds on the wharves and sh.o.r.es murmured with surprise.