Читать книгу Valiant Dust - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 9

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A week later ...

Blistering, blasting, devastating heat.

“Have you ever known anything like this before, Joe?” asked Otho Bellême, moistening dry lips with sticky tongue, as he turned to his right-hand man.

“No, mate, never,” replied Joe Mummery, shifting his rifle from one sore shoulder to the other. “Never. And I’ve bin up the Persian Gulf in a tin gun-boat all one summer, Muscat to Mohammerah, chasing dhows. Then ashore, chasing them Afghan gun-runners, from Karachi to Basra pretty well ... No, nothing like this. Not even on the West Coast of Africa, in river-boats.”

“Wish I could die now and go straight to ’ell for a little coolness,” observed Sailor Harris, marching—or rather staggering—on Otho’s left hand.

“Well, you will soon, I should think, very probably,” comforted Joe Mummery.

What struck Otho Bellême as being entirely wrong, immoral, contrary to common sense, sound theory, and all that he had ever been taught on the subject, was the fact that old Tant de Soif, who appeared to live chiefly upon wine, beer, absinthe, and any other alcohol that he could get hold of, was undoubtedly the most cheerful, spry and active member of the whole Section. Apparently the long and terrible march in this appalling heat affected him not at all. From time to time he sang songs more remarkable than edifying; and again, from time to time, uttered words of cheer and encouragement to his younger comrades.

“Hot, my child?” he would reply to a grumbling observation of Père Poussin. “You drink too much. That is why you feel what you call the heat. It’ll be hot later on, I grant you, when we get nearer to the Mekazzen country ... Nice deep stone defiles between nice high stone mountains ... No air ... Stone hotter than the sun ... Everything almost white.”

“White lime-stone?” inquired Otho Bellême.

“No, white-hot,” replied Tant de Soif succinctly.

And in the fullness of time and the emptiness of the great desert, the section of the Legion halted, piled its arms, threw down its knapsacks, and instantly set to work to erect the four walls of the square perimeter camp in which it would build a fortified poste, and there sojourn at the orders of Sergeant-Major Vittorelli.

Life in the poste was about as dull, monotonous, and wearisome as life could well be. The heat was terrific; food as monotonous as the work, and less plentiful, though not more attractive; water scanty and bad; and diversions non-existent.

“Might as well be in prison,” grumbled Sailor Harris to William Bossum.

“You mean ‘in prison again,’ I s’pose,” growled William.

“No, mate, not me. I ain’t bin in prison.”

“Ho! Some’s lucky,” observed William Bossum.

“And you wasn’t, I s’pose?”

“Wot d’you mean?” asked William truculently, raising a large fist.

“That’s enough,” interposed Joe Mummery. “We’re all in prison, aren’t we? Eat up your cold chicken, and don’t grouse. Sing instead, if you’re unhappy. Ever heard this one?”

And lifting up a fine bass voice he trolled,

“This oakum pickin’

Gives me such a lickin’

I’d rather ’ave

A little bit o’ chicken

In me ’ands,

In me dooks.

In the flips o’ me dirty maulers.”

“All together, boys.”

And as Joe Mummery raised a battered spoon as bâton, the Englishmen burst into the chorus of the song which, by now, certain of their comrades believed to be the British National Anthem:

“We ain’t ones to shirk

Any kind of ’ard work

But thank Gawd we can’t get it to do-o-o-o.”

“That’s better,” observed Joe. “Better than jackals singin’, anyhow.”

“Yes, we’re prisoners all right. ‘Prisoners of the Desert,’ he added, ‘By Mr. Drury Lane of The Adelphi Theayter.’ Wonder how long we sits in this salubrious spot while the back-pay, travelling-allowance, and hard-lying money mounts up? Ha’penny a day! Why, it must be gettin’ on towards half a crown every couple o’ months or so.”

“How long?” replied Otho Bellême. “Until Major Riccoli has got his Senegalese and Tirailleurs Algeriens up. From what I heard Sergeant-Major Vittorelli saying to Sergeant Tomaso, we took a short cut and a big chance across those mountains, in March ... Good old Legion. The other detachments are either marching a few hundred miles farther round or waiting for warmer weather up there. No good at winter sports.”

“What’s the idea when Ole Man Ricketty does get ’em ’ere, I wonder,” speculated William Bossum.

“Chain of postes like this one, I suppose,” replied Otho Bellême. “With Major Riccoli in command of the lot.”

“Well, then wot’s the idea?” pursued William. “No one won’t come ‘removin’ the sand from the foreshore’—for the canary’s cage or their garden paths, if we ain’t ’ere, will they?”

“We’re peacefully penetrating, my son,” replied Otho. “Also, I believe, keeping an eye upon the Sultan of the Mountains, the Great Kaid, the Kaid of Mekazzen—biggest man in North-West Africa, bigger than the Sultan of Morocco.”

“Ar! that’s right,” agreed Sailor Harris. “Ole friend o’ mine, ’e is.”

“Bloke I told you about, Bob,” he added, turning to Otho, “that day at the Fair, when we was with the Circus, in ole Pug Pounder’s Boxing Booth. You an’ me, Bob, an’ the Battersea Boy and the Sheffield Blacksmith ...”

“Yes, and young Sturge and Tod Maclehose and Walter Jones,” agreed Otho. “I’m not likely to forget it, nor your message about ‘Save the little Jewels,’ as I thought you said.”

“‘Save the little Jules,’” murmured Otho again, with a short and bitter laugh.

“Wot was that, ’Arris?” asked William Bossum. “You bin ’ere before, d’you say? If you bin ’ere before, why couldn’t you say so before?”

“Ho, yus, before and be’ind. I didn’t say before that I’d bin ’ere before becos we come some other way. But I been to Mekazzen before, all right,” replied Sailor Harris.

“Well, go on, get it up,” requested William Bossum, “and don’t be so bloomin’ ’aughty and mysterious. Anybody’d think you was a missin’ heir or somethink.”

“You’ll be a missin’ Legion-heir all right, in a moment,” replied Sailor Harris with unwonted brilliance. “If you could close your ’ead for half a second, I’d tell you. What I was tryin’ to say was ... Before I ’ad the misfortune to meet you in Tonbury, I goes ashore from off my ship in Marseilles and gets drunk. So drunk I gets that I joins the Foreign Legion, or else the Foreign Legion joins me ... I dunno ... Any’ow, my Section was garrison of a fort, and my escouade was doin’ a patrol and got mopped up by some Beddoo blokes. Me an’ my chum, ole Peer Legrand, is what they calls the sole survivors of the bloomin’ shipwreck. Took the knock we ’ad—down for the count all right—but not killed, yer see.”

“No, I see you wasn’t killed,” agreed William Bossum.

“An’ these Beddoo blokes takes us along to Mekazzen an’ gives us to this Kite for a Christmas-box or a birthday-present or something. No joy-ride neither, it wasn’t. They fair walloped us along like costermongers’ donkeys, an’ dragged us along be’ind a camel when we couldn’t run no more. Nasty rough lot they was. But nothin’ to the Kite o’ Mekazzen ...

“Cor lumme! Rough! ’E was an ole bastard. We soon wished we was back with the Beddoos. They only knocked us about; but ’e fair tortured us. Uster bring us out to be shot fer breakfast, then put us back and bring us out again to be shot fer supper. Sometimes the firin’ party would fire blanks ... Sometimes they’d shoot all round us ...

“Then one day he took my poor chum Peer Legrand, an’ ’ad him chucked off a tower on to some sharp ’ooks, ’arf-way down the wall. An’ there ’e ’ung till he died ... ’Ooked through the leg ... Upside-down ... like a sheep in a butcher’s shop ... Pore ole Peer. ’E was a good chum, ’e was ... Always called me ’Arry and thought he was sayin’ ’Arris ...

“’E’s a dirty dog, that Kite; an’ I told him so. Treating two soldiers like that becos they wouldn’t join his bloomin’ Fred Karno’s army. Dirty dog. I’d serve him the same if I got a chance.”

“Well, then you wouldn’t be no better than what he is, if you done the same thing,” expostulated William Bossum.

“Well, I’d shoot ’im, any’ow,” was the reply.

“Kite Harem Abduller Kareem,” he growled. “The dirty dog ... I’d like to ...”

“Well, how did you come to get away then?” asked Joe Mummery, as Sailor Harris paused to think of exactly what he’d like to do to the Kaid Haroun Abd’allah Karim of Mekazzen.

“It was his sister done it. Come down in the middle of the night to the dungeon place, she did, where I was chained up like a dog. Sez she can get me out and guided to a place called Tangier if I’d give a bloke there a message from ’er. Then the bloke would give me two ’undred and fifty francs for meself and see me on my way. Likewise she done it too. A dumb bloke, an’ an ole ’ag, an’ a black piccaninny. An’ me in one o’ their big cloaks like a great ’orse-blanket with a hood to it.

“Well, the dumb bloke gets me out all right and guides us to Tangier. And all the way I keeps repeating the message to meself, not knowing but what me life depended on it, yer see. The message from this girl to the bloke in Tangier, Seenyor Peteroh Mulleeny.”

“Yes,” murmured Otho. “Señor Pedro Maligni.”

“What was the message?” asked Joe Mummery.

“‘Save the little jewels,’” replied Sailor Harris, “‘Gibraltar. England. Don’t trust my brother any more. His wife has won. Give this man two hundred and fifty francs and send him over the sea. Peteroh’s gazelle Elizabeth Ellen speaks. Save the little jewels.’

“Yes, that was the message an’ I’ll remember it as long as I live ... Elizabeth Ellen was the girl’s name—the Kite’s sister. Only she pernounced it like El Isa Beth El Ain. Like that ... A lovely piece, she was, too. Cor lumme! ... An’ spoke some English with ’er French and Arabic.”

“Her mother was an Englishwoman—Elizabeth Elaine Torson,” said Otho, “captured with her husband Captain Torson, a gunner from Gibraltar. The tribesmen who captured them, killed him, and sold her in the market-place of Mekazzen as a slave. This Kaid’s father bought her—and the woman of whom Harris is talking was their daughter. So she is the half-sister of the present Kaid. Also half-English ... Poor soul ...”

“How d’you know, Bob?” asked Joe Mummery as Otho fell silent.

“Because the ‘black piccaninny’ who went with Harris and the dumb man and the old hag was her son, disguised. He was ‘the little jewels’ (as Harris thought she said)—his name is Jules—and it was to escort, and to save, the little Jules that she sent Harris to Tangier ... And the little Jules Maligni, being safely handed over to his father, Pedro Maligni, by the dumb guide, was sent to England in charge of a Dr. Maykings and his wife, friends of Señor Pedro Maligni whom they were visiting in Tangier. Dr. Maykings, as you know, Joe, was my father’s friend and doctor ... And ‘the little Jules’ married his daughter Margaret Maykings who, as you also know, was my—er—friend.”

Otho Bellême fell silent.

“Rum world,” soliloquized Sailor Harris. “Rum go. Fair ole pantermime ... Fancy that piccaninny bein’ that girl’s kid!”

“Yes,” continued Otho. “It was Jules Maligni. And I have known him for nearly as long as I can remember ... I met his cousin too—chap named Raisul—son of the Kaid Haroun Abd’allah Karim. He was educated in Paris and Madrid, and he used to come to see Jules Maligni at Oxford, when he visited England. The Señor Pedro Maligni was the Kaid’s agent—financial and political in general, and gun-running in particular, I believe. I expect Jules looked after the English end of it for Pedro—and Raisul looked after Jules ...

“I used to hear a good deal about Mekazzen, at one time, when Jules lived with the Maykings family close to my house—but I never thought I’d see the beastly country.”

“You never know wot you won’t see, mate,” concluded Sailor Harris. “All I know is that ...”

“You don’t know nothing—and you know that wrong,” interrupted William Bossum, and the ensuing scuffle ended the conversation on the subject.