Cupid in Africa Part 19

Colonel Rock smiled brightly upon Bertram.

"He always was a man who liked his little joke," said he. . . . "Remind me to send him-"

"Yes, sir," interrupted Bertram, involuntarily, so pleased was he to think that the Pots of Contention were to be returned after all.

". . . A Christmas-card-will you?" finished Colonel Rock.

Bertram's face fell. He thought he could hear, afar off, the ominous sound of the grinding of the mill-stones, between the upper and the nether of which he would be ground exceeding small. . . . Would Colonel Frost send him a telegram? What would Colonel Rock say if he took it to him? Could he pretend that he had never received it. Base thought! If he received one every day? . . .

Suppose he were wounded. Could he pretend that his mind and memory were affected-loss of memory, loss of ident.i.ty, loss of cooking-pots? . . .

"By the way," said the Colonel, as Bertram saluted to depart, "you'll leave here to-morrow morning with a thousand porters, taking rations and ammunition to Butindi. You will take the draft from the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth as escort, and report to Major Mallery there. Don't go and get scuppered, or it'll be bad for them up at Butindi. . . . Start about five. Lieutenant Bridges, of the Coolie Corps, will give you a guide.

He's been up there. . . . Better see Captain Brent about it to-night.

He'll hand over the thousand porters in good condition in the morning. . . .

The A.S.C. people will make a separate dump of the stuff you are to take. . . . Make sure about it, so that you don't pinch the wrong stuff, and turn up at Butindi with ten tons of Number Nine pills and other medical comforts. . . ."

Bertram's heart sank within him, but he strove to achieve a look that blent pleasure, firmness, comprehension, and wide experience of convoy-work into one attractive whole. Wending his way to his _banda_, Bertram found Ali Suleiman making work for himself and doing it.

"I am going to Butindi at five to-morrow morning," he announced. "Have you ever been that way?"

"Oh, yes, sah, please G.o.d, thank you," replied Ali. "I was gun-bearer to a _bwana_, one 'Mericani gentlyman wanting to shoot sable antelope-very rare inseck-but a lion running up and bite him instead, and shocking climate cause him great loss of life."

"Then you could be guide," interrupted Bertram, "and show me the way to Butindi?"

"Yes, sah," replied Ali, "can show _Bwana_ everythings. . . . _Bwana_ taking much quinine and other _n'dawa_ {133a} there though. Shocking climate causing _Bwana_ bad _homa_, bad fever, and perhaps great loss of life also. . . ."

"D'you get fever ever?" asked Bertram.

"Sometimes, sah, but have never had loss of life," was the rea.s.suring answer. . . .

That morning and afternoon Bertram spent in watching the work of the Camp, as he had no duties of his own, and towards evening learnt of the approach of the expedition of the morning. . . .

The column marched along with a swing, evidently pleased with itself, particularly the Swahili detachment, who chanted a song consisting of one verse which contained but one line. "_Macouba Simba na piga mazungo_,"

{133b} they sang with wearying but unwearied regularity and monotony. At their head marched Sergeant Simba, looking as fresh as when he started, and more like a blackened European than a negro.

The Subedar and his Gurkhas had been left to garrison the outpost, but a few had returned on the stretchers of the medical detachment.

Bertram, with sinking heart and sick feelings of horror, watched these blood-stained biers, with their apparently lifeless burdens, file over the bridge, and held his breath whenever a stretcher-bearer stumbled on the greasy logs.

As the last couple safely crossed the bridge and laid their dripping stretcher down for a moment, the occupant, a Gurkha rifleman, suddenly sat up and looked round. His face was corpse-like, and his uniform looked as though it had just been dipped in a bath of blood. Painfully he rose to his feet, while the Swahili bearers gaped in amazement, and tottered slowly forward. Reeling like a drunken man, he followed in the wake of the disappearing procession, until he fell. Picking up the empty stretcher, the bearers hurried to where he lay-only to be waved away by the wounded man, who again arose and reeled, staggering, along the path.

Bertram met him and caught his arm as he collapsed once more.

"_Subr karo_," said Bertram, summoning up some Hindustani of a sort.

"_Stretcher men baitho_." {134a}

"_Nahin_, _Sahib_," whispered the Gurkha; "_kuch nahin hai_." {134b} He evidently understood and spoke a little of the same kind. No. It was nothing. Only seven holes from Maxim-gun fire, that had riddled him as the German N.C.O. sprayed the charging line until a _kukri_ halved his skull. . . . It was nothing. . . . No-it would take more than a _Germani_ and his woolly-haired _askaris_ to put Rifleman Thappa Sannu on a stretcher. . . .

Bertram's hand seemed as though it were holding a wet sponge. He felt sick, and dreaded the moment when he must look at it and see it reeking red.

"_Mirhbani_, _Sahib_," whispered the man again. "_Kuch nahin hai_.

_Hamko mut pukkaro_." {134c}

He lurched free, stumbled forward a dozen yards, and fell again.

There was no difficulty about placing him upon the stretcher this time, and he made no remonstrance, as he was dead.

Bertram went to his _banda_, sat on the edge of his bed, and wrestled manfully with himself.

By the time Hall had made his report to the Colonel and come to the hut for a wash and rest, Bertram had conquered his desire to be very sick, swallowed the lump in his throat, relieved the stinging in his eyes, and contrived to look and behave as though he had not just had one of the most poignant and disturbing experiences of his life. . . .

"Ripping little show," said Captain Hall, as he prepared for a bath and change. "The Gurkhas did in their pickets without a sound. Gad! They can handle those _kukris_ of theirs to some purpose. Sentry on a mound in the outpost p.o.o.ped off for some reason. They must just have been doing their morning Stand-to. . . . All four sides of the post opened fire, and we were only attacking on one. . . . They'd got a Maxim at each corner. . . . Too late, though. One hurroosh of a rush before they knew anything, and we were in the _boma_ with the bayonet. Most of them bunked over the other side. . . . Got three white men, though. A Gurkha laid one out-on the Maxim, he was-and the Sergeant of the Swahilis fairly spitted another with his bayonet. . . . Third one got in the way of my revolver. . . I don't s'pose the whole thing lasted five minutes from the time their sentry fired. . . . The Hundred and Ninety-Eighth were fine. Lost our best Havildar, though. He'd have been Jemadar if he'd lived. He was leading a rush of his section in fine style, when he 'copped a packet.' Stopped one badly. Clean through the neck. One o'

those beastly soft-nosed slugs the swine give their _askaris_ for 'savage' warfare. . . . As if a German knew of any other kind. . . ."

"Many casualties?" asked Bertram, trying to speak lightly.

"No-very few. Only eleven killed and seven wounded. Wasn't time for more. Shouldn't have had that much, only the blighter with the Maxim was nippy enough to get going with it while we charged over about forty yards from cover. The Gurkhas jumped the ditch like greyhounds and over the parapet of the inner trench like birds. . . . You _should_ ha' been there. . . . They never had a chance. . . ."

"Yes," said Bertram, and tried to visualise that rush at the belching Maxim.

"Didn't think much of their _bundobust_," continued Hall. "Their pickets were pretty well asleep and the place hadn't got a yard of barbed wire nor even a row of stakes. They hadn't a field of fire of more than fifty yards anywhere. . . . Bit provincial, what? . . ."

While Hall bathed, Bertram went in search of Captain Brent of the Coolie Corps.

Dinner that night was a vain repet.i.tion of yesterday's, save that there was more soup and cold bully-beef gravy available, owing to the rain.

The roof of the _banda_ consisting of lightly thatched gra.s.s, reeds, twigs, and leaves, was as a sieve beneath the tropical downpour. There was nothing to do but to bear it, with or without grinning. Heavy drops in rapid succession pattered on bare heads, resounded on the tin plates, splashed into food, and, by constant dropping, wore away tempers. By comparison with the great heat of the weather, the rain seemed cold, and the little streams that cascaded down from pendent twig or reed were unwelcome as they invaded the back of the neck of some depressed diner below.

A most unpleasant looking snake, dislodged or disturbed by the rain, fell with sudden thud upon the table from his lodging in the roof. Barely had it done so when it was skewered to the boards by the fork of Captain Tollward. "Good man," said Major Manton, and decapitated the reptile with his knife.

"Just as well to put him out of pain," said he coolly; "it's a _mamba_.

Beastly poisonous," and the still-writhing snake was removed with the knife and fork that had carved him. "Lucky I got him in the neck,"

observed Tollward, and the matter dropped.

Bertram wondered what he would have done had a small and highly poisonous serpent suddenly flopped down with a thump in front of his plate.

Squealed like a girl perhaps?

Before long he was sitting huddled up beneath a perfect shower-bath of cold drops, with his feet in an oozy bog which soon became a pool and then a stream, and by the end of "dinner" was a torrent that gurgled in at one end of the Mess _banda_, and foamed out at the other. In this filthy water the Mess servants paddled to and fro, becoming more and more suggestive of drowned birds, while the yellowish khaki-drill of their masters turned almost black as it grew more sodden. One by one the lamps used by the cook and servants went out. That in the _banda_ went out too, and the Colonel, who owned a tent, followed its example. Those officers who had only huts saw no advantage in retiring to them, and sat on in stolid misery, endeavouring to keep cigarettes alight by holding them under the table between hasty puffs.

Having sat-as usual-eagerly listening to the conversation of his seniors-until the damp and depressed party broke up, Bertram splashed across to his _banda_ to find that the excellent Ali had completely covered his bed with his water-proof ground-sheet, had put his pyjamas and a change of underclothing into the bed and the rest of his kit under it. He had also dug a small trench and drain round the hut, so that the interior was merely a bog instead of a pool. . . .

Bertram then faced the problem of how to undress while standing in mud beneath a shower-bath, in such a manner as to be able to get into bed reasonably dry and with the minimum of mud upon the feet. . . .

As he lay sick and hungry, cold and miserable, with apparently high promise of fever and colic, listening to the pattering of heavy drops of water within the hut, and the beating of rain upon the sea of mud and water without, and realised that on the morrow he was to undertake his first really dangerous and responsible military duty, his heart sank. . . .

Who was _he_ to be in sole charge of a convoy upon whose safe arrival the existence of an outpost depended? What a _fool_ he had been to come!

Why should _he_ be lying there half starving in that b.e.s.t.i.a.l swamp, shivering with fever, and feeling as though he had a very dead cat and a very live one in his stomach? . . . Raising his head from the pillow, he said aloud: "I would not be elsewhere for anything in the world. . . ."