Cupid in Africa Part 16

The place alone was sufficient to depress anybody, he freely admitted, as he gazed around at the dreary grey environs of this little British _pied-a-terre_-grey thorn bush; grey gra.s.s; grey baobab trees (like hideous grey carrots with whiskerish roots, pulled up from the ground and stood on end); grey sh.e.l.l-strewn mud; grey bushwood; grey mangroves; grey sky. Yes, an inimical minatory landscape; a brooding, unwholesome, sinister landscape; the home of fever, dysentery, disease and sudden death. And over all hung a horrible sickening stench of decay, an evil smell that seemed to settle at the pit of the stomach as a heavy weight.

No wonder if Indians from the hills, deserts, plains and towns of the Deccan, the Punjab, Rajputana, and Nepal, found this terrible place of most terrific heat, foul odour, bad water and worse mud, enervating and depressing. . . . Poor beggars-it wasn't _their_ war either. . . . The faces of the negroes of the King's African Rifles were inscrutable, and, being entirely ignorant of their ways, manners, and customs, he could not tell whether they were exhibiting signs of discouragement and depression, or whether their bearing and demeanour were entirely normal. Certainly they seemed a stolid and reserved folk, with a kind of dignity and self-respecting aloofness that he had somehow not expected. In their tall tarbooshes, jerseys, shorts and puttees, they looked most workman-like and competent soldiers. . . . Certainly they did not tally with his preconceived idea of them as a merry, care-free, irresponsible folk who grinned all over their faces for sheer light-heartedness, and spent their leisure time in tw.a.n.ging the banjo, clacking the bones, singing rag-time songs and doing the cake-walk. On duty, they stood like ebon statues and opened not their mouths. Off duty they squatted like ebon statuettes and shut them. Perhaps they did not know that England expects every n.i.g.g.e.r to do his duty as a sort of born music-hall, musical minstrel-or perhaps they _were_ depressed, like the Sepoys, and had laid aside their banjoes, bones, c.o.o.n-songs and double-shuffle-flap-dancing boots until brighter days? . . . Anyhow, decided Bertram, he would much rather be with these stalwarts than against them, when they charged with their triangular bayonets on their Martini rifles; and if the German _askaris_ were of similar type, he cared not how long his first personal encounter with them might be postponed. . . . Nor did the Englishmen of the Army Service Corps, the Royal Engineers, the Signallers and other details, strike him as light-hearted and bubbling with the _joie de vivre_. Frankly they looked ill, and they looked anxious. . . .

Strolling past the brushwood-and-gra.s.s hut which was the R.A.M.C.

Officers' Mess, he heard the remark:

"They've only got to leave us here in peace a little while for us all to die natural deaths of malaria or dysentery. The wily Hun knows _that_ all right. . . . No fear-we shan't be attacked here. No such luck."

"Not unless we make ourselves too much of a nuisance to him," said another voice. "'Course, if we go barging about and capturing his trading posts and 'factories,' and raiding his _shambas_, he'll come down on us all right. . . ."

"I dunno what we're doing here at all," put in a third speaker. "You can't invade a blooming _continent_ like German East with a weak brigade of sick Sepoys. . . . Sort of bloomin' Jameson's Raid. . . . Why-they could come down the railway from Tabora or Kilimanjaro way with enough European troops alone to eat us alive. What are we here, irritating 'em at all for, _I_ want to know? . . ."

"Why, to maintain Britain's glorious traditions-of sending far too weak a force in the first place," put in the first speaker. "They'll send an adequate army later on, all right, and do the job in style. We've got to demonstrate the necessity for the adequate army first, though. . . ."

"Sort of bait, like," said another, and yawned. "Well, we've all fished, I expect. . . . Know how the worm feels now. . . ."

"I've only fished with flies," observed a languid and euphuistic voice.

"_What_ an honour for the 'appy fly!" replied the worm-fisherman, and there was a guffaw of laughter.

Bertram realised that he was loitering to the point of eavesdropping, and strolled on, pondering many things in his heart. . . .

In one corner of the great square of mud which was the Camp, Bertram came upon a battery consisting of four tiny guns. Grouped about them stood their Sepoy gunners, evidently at drill of some kind, for, at a sudden word from a British officer standing near, they leapt upon them, laboured frantically for five seconds, stood clear again, and, behold, each gun lay dismembered and p.r.o.ne upon the ground-the wheels off, the trail detached, the barrel of the gun itself in two parts, so that the breech half was separate from the muzzle half. At another word from the officer the statuesque Sepoys again sprang to life, seized each man a piece of the dismembered gun, lifted it above his head, raised it up and down, replaced it on the ground and once more stood at attention. Another order, and, in five seconds, the guns were rea.s.sembled and ready to fire.

"A mountain-battery of screw guns, so called because they screw and unscrew in the middle of the barrel," said Bertram to himself, and concluded that the drill he had just witnessed was that required for putting the dissected guns on the backs of mules for mountain transport, and rebuilding them for use. Certainly they were wonderfully nippy, these Sepoys, and seemed, perhaps, rather more cheery than the others.

One old gentleman who had a chestful of medal-ribbons raised and lowered a gun-wheel above his head as though it had been of cardboard, in spite of his long grey beard and pensioner-like appearance.

Bertram envied the subaltern in command of this battery. How splendid it must be to know exactly what to do and to be able to do it; to be conscious that you are adequate and competent, equal to any demand that can be made upon you. Probably this youth was enjoying this campaign in the mud and stench and heat as much as he had ever enjoyed a picnic or tramping or boating holiday in England. . . . Lucky dog. . . .

At about seven o'clock that evening, Bertram "dined" in the Officers'

Mess of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth. The rickety hut, through the walls of which the fires of the Camp could be seen, and through the roof of which the great stars were visible, was lighted, or left in darkness, by a hurricane-lamp which dangled from the ridge-pole. The officers of the corps sat on boxes, cane-stools, shooting-seats, or patent "weight-less" contrivances of aluminium and canvas. The vacant-faced youth, whose name was Grayne, had a bicycle-saddle which could be raised and lowered on a metal rod. He was very proud of it and fell over backwards twice during dinner. Bertram would have had nothing whatever to sit on had not the excellent and foresighted Ali discovered the fact in time to nail the two sides of a box in the shape of the letter T by means of a stone and the nails still adhering to the derelict wood. On this Bertram balanced himself with less danger and discomfort than might have been expected, the while he viewed with mixed feelings Ali's apologies and promise that he would steal a really nice stool or chair by the morrow.

On the mosaic of box-sides that formed the undulating, uneven, and fissured table-top, the Mess servant places tin plates containing a thin and nasty soup, tasting, Bertram thought, of cooking-pot, dish-cloth, wood-smoke, tin plate and the thumb of the gentleman who had borne it from the cook-house, or rather the cook-hole-in-the-ground, to the Mess hut. The flourish with which Ali placed it before his "beloved ole marstah" as he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Soop, sah, thick an' clear thank-you please"

went some way to make it interesting, but failed to make it palatable.

Although sick and faint for want of food, Bertram was not hungry or in a condition to appreciate disgraceful cooking disgustingly served.

As he sat awaiting the next course, after rejecting the thick-an'-clear "soup," Bertram took stock of the gentlemen whom, in his heart, he proudly, if shyly, called his brother-officers.

At the head of the table sat the Colonel, looking gloomy and distrait.

Bertram wondered if he were thinking of the friends and comrades-in-arms he had left in the vile jungle round Tanga-his second-in-command and half a dozen more of his officers-and a third of his men. Was he thinking of his School-and Sandhurst-and life-long friend and trusted colleague, Major Brett-Boyce, slain by the German _askaris_ as he lay wounded, propped against a tree by the brave and faithful dresser of the subordinate medical service, who was murdered with him in the very midst of his n.o.ble work, by those savage and brutal disciples of a more savage and brutal _kultur_?

Behind him stood his servant, a tall Mussulman in fairly clean white garments, and a big white turban round which was fastened a broad ribbon of the regimental colours adorned with the regimental crest in silver.

"Tell the cook that he and I will have a quiet chat in the morning, if he'll be good enough to come to my tent after breakfast-and then the provost-marshal shall show him a new game, perhaps," said the Colonel to this man as he finished his soup.

With the ghost of a smile the servant bowed, removed the Colonel's plate and departed to gloat over the cook, who, as a Goanese, despised "natives" heartily and without concealment, albeit himself as black as a negro.

Returning, the Colonel's servant bore a huge metal dish on which reposed a mound of most repulsive-looking meat in lumps, rags, shreds, strings, tendrils and fibres, surrounded by a brownish clear water. This was a seven-pound tin of bully-beef heated and turned out in all its native ugliness, naked and unadorned, on to the dish. Like everyone else, Bertram took a portion on his plate, and, like everyone else, left it on his plate, and, like everyone else, left it after tasting a morsel-or attempting to taste, for bully-beef under such conditions has no taste whatever. To chew it is merely as though one dipped a ball of rag and string into dirty water, warmed it, put it in one's mouth, and attempted to masticate it. To swallow it is moreover to attain the same results-nutrient, metabolic and sensational-as would follow upon the swallowing of the said ball of rags and string.

The morsel of bully-beef that Bertram put in his mouth abode with him.

Though of the West it was like the unchanging East, for it changed not.

He chewed and chewed, rested from his labours, and chewed again, in an honest and earnest endeavour to take nourishment and work out his own insalivation, but was at last forced to acknowledge himself defeated by the stout and tough resistance of the indomitable lump. It did not know when it was beaten and it did not know when it was eaten; nor, had he been able to swallow it, would the "juices" of his interior have succeeded where those of his mouth, aided by his excellent teeth, had failed. In course of time it became a problem-another of those small but numerous and worrying problems that were fast bringing wrinkles to his forehead, hollows to his cheeks, a look of care and anxiety to his eyes, and nightmares to his sleep. He could not reduce it, he could not swallow it, he could not publicly reject it. What _could_ he do? . . .

A bright idea. . . . Tactics. . . . He dropped his handkerchief-and when he arose from stooping to retrieve it, he was a free man again. A few minutes later a lump of bully-beef undiminished, unaffected and unfrayed, travelled across the mud floor of the hut in the mandibles of an army of big black ants, to provide them also with a disappointment and a problem, and, perchance, with a bombproof shelter for their young in a subterranean dug-out of the ant-hill. . . .

Bertram again looked around at his fellow-officers. Not one of them appeared to have reduced the evil-looking ma.s.s of fibrous tissue and gristle that lay upon his plate-nor, indeed, did Bertram, throughout the campaign, ever see anyone actually eat and swallow the disgusting and repulsive muck served out to the officers and European units of the Expeditionary Force-hungry as they often were.

To his foolish civilian mind it seemed that if the money which this foul filth cost (for even bully-beef costs money-ask the contractors) had been spent on a half or a quarter or a t.i.the of the quant.i.ty of _edible_ meat-such as tinned ox-tongue-sick and weary soldiers labouring and suffering for their country in a terrible climate, might have had a sufficiency of food which they could have eaten with pleasure and digested with benefit, without costing their grateful country a penny more. . . . Which is an absurd and ridiculous notion expressed in a long and involved sentence. . . .

Next, to the Colonel, eyeing his plate of bully-beef through his monocle and with patent disgust, sat Major Manton, a tall, aristocratic person who looked extraordinarily smart and dapper. Hair, moustache, finger-nails and hands showed signs of obvious care, and he wore tunic, tie and, in fact, complete uniform, in an a.s.sembly wherein open shirts, bare arms, white tennis shoes, slacks, shorts, and even flannel trousers were not unknown. Evidently the Major put correctness before comfort-or, perhaps, found his chief comfort in being correct. He spoke to no one, but replied suavely when addressed. He looked to Bertram like a man who loathed a rough and rude environment having the honour or pleasure or satisfaction of knowing that he noticed its existence, much less that he troubled to loathe it. Bertram imagined that in the rough and tumble of hand-to-hand fighting, the Major's weapon would be the revolver, his aim quick and clean, his demeanour unhurried and unflurried, the expression of his face cold and unemotional.

Beside him sat a Captain Tollward in strong contrast, a great burly man with the physiognomy and bull-neck of a prize-fighter, the hands and arms of a navvy, and the figure of a brewer's dray-man. Frankly, he looked rather a brute, and Bertram pictured him in a fight-using a fixed bayonet or clubbed rifle with tremendous vigour and effect. He would be purple of face and wild of eye, would grunt like a bull with every blow, roar to his men like a charging lion, and swear like a bargee between whiles. . . .

"Thank G.o.d for all England's Captain Tollwards this day," thought Bertram as he watched the powerful-looking man, and thought of the gladiators of ancient Rome.

Stanner was keeping him in roars of Homeric laughter with his jests and stories, no word of any one of which brought the shadow of a smile to the expressionless strong face of Major Manton, who could hear every one of the jokes that convulsed Tollward and threatened him with apoplexy. Next to Stanner sat Hall, who gave Bertram, his left-hand neighbour, such information and advice as he could, anent his taking of the convoy to Butindi, should such be his fate.

"You'll see some fighting up there, if you ever get there," said he.

"They're always having little 'affairs of out-posts' and patrol sc.r.a.ps.

You may be cut up on the way, of course. . . . If the Germans lay for you they're bound to get you, s' far as I can see. . . . How _can_ you defend a convoy of a thousand porters going in single file through impenetrable jungle along a narrow path that it's practically impossible to leave? . . . You can have an advance-guard and a rear-guard, of course, and much good may they do you when your _safari_ covers anything from a couple of miles to three or four. . . . What are you going to do if it's attacked in the middle, a mile or so away from where you are yourself? . . . What are you going to do if they ambush your advance-guard and mop the lot up, as they perfectly easily could do, at any point on the track, if they know you're coming-as of course they will do, as soon as we know it ourselves. . . ."

"You fill me with despondency and alarm," said Bertram, with a lightness that he was far from feeling, and a sinking sensation that was not wholly due to emptiness of stomach.

Suddenly he was aware that a new stench was contending with the familiar one of decaying vegetation, rotting sh.e.l.l-fish, and the slime that was neither land nor water, but seemed a foul grease formed by the decomposition of leaves, gra.s.ses, trees, fish, molluscs and animals in an inky, oily fluid that the tides but churned up for the freer exhalation of poisonous miasma, and had not washed away since the rest of the world arose out of chaos and darkness, that man might breathe and thrive. . . .

The new smell was akin to the old one but more penetrating, more subtly vile, more _vulgar_, than that ancient essence of decay and death and dissolution, and-awaking from a brown study in which he saw visions of himself writhing beneath the bayonets of a dozen gigantic savages, as he fell at the head of his convoy-he perceived that the new and conquering odour proceeded from the cheese. On a piece of tin, that had been the lid of a box, it lay and defied compet.i.tion, while, with the unfaltering step of a strong man doing right, because it is his duty, Ali Suleiman bore it from _bwana_ to _bwana_ with the booming murmur: "Cheese, please G.o.d, sah, thank you." To the observant and thoughtful Bertram its reception by each member of the Mess was interesting and instructive, as indicative of his character, breeding, and personality.

The Colonel eyed it with a cold smile.

"Yes. Please G.o.d it _is_ only cheese," he remarked, "but take it away-quick."

Major Manton glanced at it and heaved a very gentle sigh. "No, thank you, Boy," he said.

Captain Tollward sniffed hard, turned to Stanner, and roared with laughter.

"What ho, the High Explosive!" he shouted, and "What ho, the Forty Rod Gorgonzola-so called because it put the battery-mules out of action at that distance. . . . Who unchained it, I say? Boy, where's its muzzle?"

and he cut himself a generous slice.

Stanner buried his nose in his handkerchief and waved Ali away as he thrust the nutritious if over-prevalent delicacy upon his notice.

"Take it to Bas...o...b.. _Bwana_ and ask him to fire it from his guns," said he. "Serve the Germans right for using poison-gas and liquid fire. . . .

Teach 'em a lesson, what, Tollward?"

"Don't be dev'lish-minded," replied that officer when laughter permitted him to speak. "You're as bad as the bally Huns yourself to suggest such an atrocity. . . ."

"Seems kinder radio-active," said Hall, eyeing it with curiosity.

"Menacing . . ." and he also drove it from him.

Bertram, as one who, being at war, faces the horrors of war as they come, took a piece of the cheese and found that its bite, though it skinned the roof of his mouth, was not as bad as its bark. Grayne affected to faint when the cheese reached him, and the others did according to their kind.