Читать книгу Abaft the Funnel - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 4

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "Turnovers," Vol. VII.

THE RED LAMP[5]

"A strong situation—very strong, sir—quite the strongest one in the play, in fact."

"What play?" said a voice from the bottom of the long chair under the bulwarks.

"The Red Lamp."

"Oh!"

Conversation ceased, and there was an industrious sucking of cheroots for the space of half an hour before the company adjourned to the card-room. It was decidedly a night for sleeping on deck—warm as the Red Sea and more moist than Bengal. Unfortunately, every square foot of the deck seemed to be occupied by earlier comers, and in despair I removed myself to the extreme fo'c'sle, where the anchor-chains churn rust-dyed water from the hawseholes and the lascars walk about with slushpots.

The throb of the engines reached this part of the world as a muffled breathing which might be easily mistaken for the snoring of the ship's cow. Occasionally one of the fowls in the coops waked and cheeped dismally as she thought of to-morrow's entrées in the saloon, but otherwise all was very, very still, for the hour was two in the morning, when the crew of a ship are not disposed to be lively. None came to bear me company save the bo'sun's pet kittens, and they were impolite. From where I lay I could look over the whole length of awning, ghostly white in the dark, and by their constant fluttering judged that the ship was pitching considerably. The fo'c'sle swung up and down like an uneasy hydraulic lift, and a few showers of spray found their passage through the hawseholes from time to time.

Have you ever felt that maddening sense of incompetence which follows on watching the work of another man's office? The civilian is at home among his despatch-boxes and files of pending cases. "How in the world does he do it?" asks the military man. The budding officer can arrange for the movements of two hundred men across country. "Incomprehensible!" says the civilian. And so it is with all alien employs from our own. So it was with me. I knew that I was lying among all the materials out of which Clark Russell builds his books of the sea—the rush through the night, the gouts of foam, the singing of the wind in the rigging overhead, and the black mystery of the water—but for the life of me I could make nothing of them all.

"A topsail royal flying free

A bit of canvas was to me,

And it was nothing more."

"Oh, that a man should have but one poor little life and one incomplete set of experiences to crowd into it!" I sighed as the bells of the ship lulled me to sleep and the lookout man crooned a dreary song.

I slept far into the night, for the clouds gathered over the sky, the stars died out, and all grew as black as pitch. But we never slackened speed; we beat the foam to left and right with clanking of chains, rattling of bow-ports, and savage noises of ripping and rending from the cut-water ploughing up to the luminous sea-beasts. I was roused by the words of the man in the smoking-room: "A strong situation, sir, very strong—quite the strongest in the play, in fact—The Red Lamp, y' know."

I thought over the sentence lazily for a time, and then—surely there was a red lamp in the air somewhere—an intolerable glare that singed the shut eyelids. I opened my eyes and looked forward. The lascar was asleep, his face bowed on his knees, though he ought to have been roused by the hum of a rapidly approaching city, by the noises of men and women talking and laughing and drinking. I could hear it not half a mile away: it was strange that his ears should be closed.

The night was so black that one could hardly breathe; and yet where did the glare from the red lamp come from? Not from our ship: she was silent and asleep—the officers on the bridge were asleep; there was no one of four hundred souls awake but myself. And the glare of the red lamp went up to the zenith. Small wonder. A quarter of a mile in front of us rolled a big steamer under full steam, and she was heading down on us without a word of warning. Would the lookout man never look out? Would their crew be as fast asleep as ours? It was impossible, for the other ship hummed with populous noises, and there was the defiant tinkle of a piano rising above all. She should have altered her course, or blown a fog-horn.

I held my breath while an eternity went by, counted out by the throbbing of my heart and the engines. I knew that it was my duty to call, but I knew also that no one could hear me. Moreover, I was intensely interested in the approaching catastrophe; interested, you will understand, as one whom it did in no wise concern. By the light of the luminous sea thrown forward in sheets under the forefoot of the advancing steamer I could discern the minutest details of her structure from cat-head to bridge. Abaft the bridge she was crowded with merrymakers—seemed to be, in fact, a P. & O. vessel given up to a ball. I wondered as I leaned over the bulwarks what they would say when the crash came—whether they would shriek very loudly—whether the men and women would try to rush to our decks, or whether we would rush on to theirs. It would not matter in the least, for at the speed we were driving both vessels would go down together locked through the deeps of the sea. It occurred to me then that the sea would be cold, and that instead of choking decently I might be one in a mad rush for the boats—might be crippled by a falling spar or wrenched plate and left on the heeling decks to die. Then Terror came to me—Fear, gross and overwhelming as the bulk of the night—Despair unrelieved by a single ray of hope.

We were not fifty yards apart when the passengers on the stranger caught sight of us and shrieked aloud. I saw a man pick up his child from one of the benches and futilely attempt to climb the rigging. Then we closed—her name-plate ten feet above ours, looking down into our forehatch. I heard the grinding as of a hundred querns, the ripping of the tough bow-plates, and the pistol-like report of displaced rivets followed by the rush of the sea. We were sinking in mid-ocean.

"Beg y' pardon," said the quartermaster, shaking me by the arm, "but you must have been sleeping in the moonlight for the last two hours, and that's not good for the eyes. Didn't seem to make you sleep easy, either." I opened my eyes heavily. My face was swollen and aching, for on my forehead lay the malignant splendour of the moon. The glare of the Red Lamp had vanished with the brilliantly-lighted ship, but the ghastly shrieks of her drowning crew continued.

"What's that?" I asked tremulously of the quartermaster. "Was it real?"

"Pork chops in the saloon to-morrow," said the quartermaster. "The butcher he got up at four bells to put the old squeaker out of the way. Them's his dying ejaculations."

I dragged my bedding aft and went to sleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] "Turnovers," Vol. VII.

THE SHADOW OF HIS HAND[6]

"I come from San José," he said. "San José, Calaveras County, California: that's my place." I pricked up my ears at the mention of Calaveras County. Bret Harte has made that sacred ground.

"Yes?" said I politely. Always be polite to a gentleman from Calaveras County. For aught you know he may be a lineal descendant of the great Colonel Starbottle.

"Did you ever know Vermilyea of San Luis Obispo?" continued the stranger, chewing the plug of meditation.

"No," said I. Heaven alone knows where lies San Luis Obispo, but I was not going to expose my ignorance. Besides, there might be a story at the back of it all. "What was the special weakness of Mister Vermilyea?"

"Vermilyea! He weak! Lot Vermilyea never had a weakness that you might call a weakness until subsequent events transpired. Then that weakness developed into White Rye. All Westerners drink White Rye. On the Eastern coast they drink Bourbon. Lot tried both when his heart was broken. Both—by the quart."

"D'you happen to remember what broke his heart?" I said.

"This must be your first trip to the States, sir, or you would know that Lot's heart was broken by his father-in-law. Lot's congregation—he took to Religion—always said that he had no business fooling with a father-in-law. A good many other people said that too. But I always adhered to Lot. 'Why don't you kill the animal, Lot?' I used to say. 'I can't. He's the father of my wife,' Lot used to say. 'Loan him money then and settle him on the other side of the States,' I used to say. 'The old clam won't move,' Lot used to say."

"Half a minute. What was the actual trouble between Vermilyea and his father-in-law? Did he borrow money?"

"I'm coming to that," said the stranger calmly. "It arrived this way. Lot had a notion to get married. Some men get that idea. He went to 'Frisco and pawned out his heart—Lot had a most feeling heart, and that was his ruin—to a girl who lived at back of Kearney Street. I've forgotten her given name, but the old man's name was Dougherty. Guess he was a naturalised Irishman. The old man did not see the merits of Lot when he went sparking after the girl evenings. He fired Lot out off the stoop three or four times. Lot didn't hit him because he was fond of the daughter. He just quit like a lamb; the old man welting into him with anything that came handy—sticks and besoms, and such. Lot endured that, being a tough man. Every time Lot was fired out he would wait till the old man was pretty well pumped out. Then he used to turn round and say, 'When's the wedding to be?' Dougherty used to ramp round Lot while the girl hid herself till the breeze abated. He had a peculiar aversion to domiciliary visits from Lot, had Dougherty. I've my own theory on the subject. I'll explain it later on. At last Dougherty got tired of Lot and his peacefulness. The girl stuck to him for all she was worth. Lot never budged. 'If you want to marry her,' said the old man, 'just drop your long-suffering for half an hour. Stand up to me, Lot, and we'll run this thing through with our hands.' 'If I must, I must,' said Lot, and with that they began the argument up and down the parlour floor. Lot he was fighting for his wife. He set considerable value on the girl. The old man he was fighting for the fun of the affair. Lot whipped. He handled the old man tenderly out of regard for his connections. All the same he fixed him up pretty thoroughly. When he crawled off the old man he had received his permission to marry the girl. Old man Dougherty ran round 'Frisco advertising Lot for the tallest fighter in the town. Lot was a respectable sort of man and considerable absorbed in preparing for his wedding. It didn't please him any to receive invitations from the boss fighting men of 'Frisco—professional invitations, you must understand. I guess he cussed the father-in-law to be.

"When he was married, he concluded to locate in 'Frisco, and started business there. A married man don't keep his muscle up any. Old man Dougherty he must have counted on that. By the time Lot's first child was born he came around suffering for a fight. He painted Lot's house crimson. Lot endured that. He got a hold of the baby and began yanking it around by the legs to see if it could squeal worth listening to. Lot stretched him. Old man howled with delight. Lot couldn't well hand his father-in-law over to the police, so they had it, knuckle and tooth, all round the front floor, and the old man he quit by the window, considerably mashed up. Lot was fair spent, not having kept up his muscle. My notion is that old man Dougherty being a boss fighter couldn't get his fighting regularly till Lot married into the family. Then he reckoned on a running discussion to warm up his bones. Lot was too fond of his wife to disoblige him. Any man in his senses would have brought the old man before the courts, or clubbed him, or laid him out stiff. But Lot was always tender-hearted.

"Soon as old man Dougherty got his senses together off the pavement, he argued that Lot was considerable less of a fighter than he had been. That pleased the old man. He was plastered and caulked up by the doctors, and as soon as he could move he interviewed Lot and made remarks. Lot didn't much care what he said, but when he came to casting reflections on the parentage of the baby, Lot shut the office door and played round for half an hour till the walls glittered like the evening sun. Old man Dougherty crawled out, but he crowed as he crawled. 'Praise the blessed saints,' he said, 'I kin get my fighting along o' my meals. Lot, ye have prolonged my life a century.'

"Guess Lot would like to see him dead now. He is an old man, but most amazing tough. He has been fighting Lot for a matter of three years. If Lot made a lucky bit of trade, the old man would come along and fight him for luck. If Lot lost a little, the old man would fight him to teach him safe speculation. It took all Lot's time to keep even with him. No man in business can 'tend his business and fight in streaks. Lot's trade fell off every time he laid himself out to stretch the old man. Worst of it was that when Lot was made a Deacon of his church, the old man fought him most terrible for the honour of the Roman Catholic Church. Lot whipped, of course. He always whipped. Old man Dougherty went round among the other Deacons and lauded Lot for a boss pugilist, not meaning to hurt Lot's prospects. Lot had to explain the situation to the church in general. They accepted it.

"Old man Dougherty he fought on. Age had no effect on him. Lot always whipped, but nothing would satisfy the old man. Lot shook all his teeth out till his gums were as bare as a sand-bar. Old man Dougherty came along lisping his invitation to the dance. They fought.

"When Lot shifted to San Luis Obispo, old man Dougherty he came along too—craving for his fight. It was cocktails and plug to him. It grew on him. Lot handled him too gently because of the wife. The old man could come to the scratch once a month, and always at the most inconvenient time. They fought.

"Last I heard of Lot he was sinking into the tomb. 'It's not the fighting,' he said to me. 'It's the darned monotony of the circus. He knows I can whip him, but he won't rest satisfied. 'Lay him out, Lot,' said I; 'fracture his cranium or gouge him. This show is foolish all round.' 'I can't lay him out,' said Lot. 'He's my father-in-law. But don't it strike you I've a deal to be thankful for? If he had been a Jew he'd have fought on Sundays when I was doing Deacon. I've been too gentle with him; the old man knows my spot place, but I've a deal to be thankful for.'

"Strikes me that thankfulness of Lot's sort is nothing more nor less than cussed affectation. Say!"

I said nothing.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "Turnovers," Vol. VII.

A LITTLE MORE BEEF[7]

"A little more beef, please," said the fat man with the grey whiskers and the spattered waistcoat. "You can't eat too much o' good beef—not even when the prices are going up hoof over hock." And he settled himself down to load in a fresh cargo.

Now, this is how the fat man had come by his meal. One thousand miles away, a red Texan steer was preparing to go to bed for the night in the company of his fellows—myriads of his fellows. From dawn till late dusk he had loafed across the leagues of grass and grunted savagely as each mouthful proved to his mind that grass was not what he had known it in his youth. But the steer was wrong. That summer had brought great drought to Montana and Northern Dakota. The cattle feed was withering day by day, and the more prudent stock owners had written to the East for manufactured provender. Only the little cactus that grows with the grasses appeared to enjoy itself. The cattle certainly did not; and the cowboys from the very beginning of spring had used language considered profane even for the cowboy. What their ponies said has never been recorded. The ponies had the worst time of all, and at each nightly camp whispered to each other their longings for the winter, when they would be turned out on the freezing ranges—galled from wither to croup, but riderless—thank Heaven, riderless. On these various miseries the sun looked down impartial. His business was to cake the ground and ruin the grasses.

The cattle—the acres of huddled cattle—were restless. In the first place, they were forced to scatter for graze; and in the second, the heat told on their tempers and made them prod each other with their long horns. In the heart of the herd you would have thought men were fighting with single-sticks. On the outskirts, posted at quarter-mile intervals, sat the cowboys on their ponies, the brims of their hats tilted over their sun-skinned noses, their feet out of the big brown-leather hooded stirrups, and their hands gripping the horn of the heavy saddle to keep themselves from falling on to the ground—asleep. A cowboy can sleep at full gallop; on the other hand, he can keep awake also at full gallop for eight and forty hours and wear down six unamiable bronchos in the process.

Lafe Parmalee; Shwink, the German who could not ride but had a blind affection for cattle from the branding-yard to the butcher's block; Michigan, so called because he said he came from California but spoke not the Californian tongue; Jim from San Diego, to distinguish him from other Jims, and The Corpse, were the outposts of the herd. The Corpse had won his name from a statement, made in the fulness of much McBrayer whisky, that he had once been a graduate of Corpus Christi. He spoke truth, but to the wrong audience. The inhabitants of the Elite Saloon, after several attempts to get the hang of the name, dubbed the speaker The Corpse, and as long as he cinched a broncho or jingled a spur within four hundred miles of Livingston—yea, far in the south, even to the unexplored borders of the sheep-eater Indians—he was known by that unlovely name. How he had passed from college to cattle no man knew, and, according to the etiquette of the West, no man asked. He was not by any means a tenderfoot—had no unmanly weakness for washing, did not in the least object to appearing at the wild and wonderful reunions held nightly in "Miss Minnie's parlour," whose flaring advertisement did not in the least disturb the proprieties of Wachoma Junction, and, in common with his associates, was, when drunk, ready to shoot at anything or anybody. He was not proud. He had condescended to take in hand and educate a young and promising Chicago drummer, who by evil fate had wandered into that wilderness, where all his cunning was of no account; and from that youth's quivering hand—outstretched by command—had shot away the top of a wine-glass. The Corpse was recognised in the freemasonry of the craft as "one of the C.M.R.'s boys, and tough at that."

The C.M.R. controlled much cattle, and their slaughter-houses in Chicago bubbled the blood of beeves all day long. Their salt-beef fed the sailor on the sea, and their iced, best firsts, the housekeeper in the London suburbs. Not even the firm knew how many cowboys they employed, but all the firm knew that on the fourteenth day of July their stockyards at Wachoma Junction were to be filled with two thousand head of cattle, ready for immediate shipment to Chicago while prices yet ruled high, and before the grass had withered utterly. Lafe, Michigan, Jim, The Corpse and the others knew this too, and were heartily glad of it, because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year's work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion. They would get drunk; they would gamble, and would otherwise enjoy themselves till they were broke; and then they would hire out again.

The sun dropped behind the rolling hills; and the cattle halted for the night, cheered and cooled by a little wandering breeze. The red steer's mother had been caught in a hailstorm five years ago. Till she went the way of all cow-flesh she missed no opportunity of telling her son to beware of the hot day and the cold wind that does not know its own mind. "When it blows five ways at once," said she, "and makes your horns feel creepy, get away, my son. Follow the time-honoured instinct of our tribe, and run. I ran"—she looked ruefully at the scars on her side—"but that was in a barb-wire country, and it hurt me. None the less, run." The red steer chewed his cud, and the little wind out of the darkness played round his horns—all five ways at once. The cowboys lifted up their voices in unmelodious song, that the cattle might know where they were, and began slowly walking round the recumbent herd. "Do anybody's horns feel creepy?" queried the red steer of his neighbours. "My mother told me"—and he repeated the tale, to the edification of the yearlings and the three-year-olds breathing heavily at his side.

The song of the cowboys rose higher. The cattle bowed their heads. Their men were at hand. They were safe. Something had happened to the quiet stars. They were dying out one by one, and the wind was freshening. "Bless my hoofs!" muttered a yearling, "my horns are beginning to feel creepy." Softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. "Come away," quoth he to the yearling. "Come away to the outskirts, and we'll move. My mother said. … " The innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. Being a woman she naturally bellowed "Timber wolves!" and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. Followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. The little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. The herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. Black fear was behind them, black night in front. They headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. The ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. They knew that an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. Then fell the hail—blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. The herd opened like a fan. The red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. A man with a whip rode at his right flank. Behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. The man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. The herd had surrounded him in the darkness. His salvation lay in the legs of Whisky Peat—and Whisky Peat knew it—knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as he strained every nerve—in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. Then, being only over-worked cayuse, Whisky Peat fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground.

It was Michigan, Jim and Lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking, "What's come to The Corpse?" quoth Lafe. Jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: "Onless I'm a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin' up to his durned appellation 'bout fifteen miles back—what there is of him and the cayuse." "Let's go and look," said Lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. "Let's go to—a much hotter place than Texas," responded Jim. "Get the steers to the Junction first. Guess what's left of The Corpse will keep."

And it did. And that was how the fat man in Chicago got his beef. It belonged to the red steer.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "Turnovers," Vol. VII.

THE HISTORY OF A FALL[8]

Mere English will not do justice to the event. Let us attempt it according to the custom of the French. Thus and so following:

Listen to a history of the most painful—and of the most true. You others, the Governors, the Lieutenant-Governors, and the Commissionaires of the Oriental Indias.

It is you, foolishly outside of the truth in prey to illusions so blind that I of them remain so stupefied—it is to you that I address myself!

Know you Sir Cyril Wollobie, K.C.S.I., C.M.G., and all the other little things?

He was of the Sacred Order of Yourself—a man responsible enormously—charged of the conservation of millions. …

Of people. That is understood. The Indian Government conserves not its rupees.

He was the well-loved of kings. I have seen the Viceroy—which is the Lorr-Maire—embrace him of both arms.

That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla.

Even embraces.

His wife! Mon Dieu, his wife!

The aheuried imagination prostrates itself at the remembrance of the splendours Orientals of the Lady Cyril—the very respectable the Lady Wollobie.

That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla. Even wives. In those days I was—what you call—a Schnobb. I am now a much larger Schnobb. Voila the only difference. Thus it is true that travel expands the mind.

But let us return to our Wollobies.

I admired that man there with the both hands. I crawled before the Lady Wollobie—platonically. The man the most brave would be only platonic towards that lady. And I was also afraid. Subsequently I went to a dance. The wine equalled not the splendour of the Wollobies. Nor the food. But there was upon the floor an open space—large and park-like. It protected the dignity Wollobi-callisme. It was guarded by Aides-de-Camp. With blue silk in their coat-tails—turned up. With pink eyes and white moustaches to ravish. Also turned up.

To me addressed himself an Aide-de-Camp.

That was in Simla. To-day I do not speak to Aides-de-Camp.

I confine myself exclusively to the cab-drivaire. He does not know so much bad language, but he can drive better.

I approached, under the protection of the Aide-de-Camp, the luminosity of Sir Wollobie.

The world entire regarded.

The band stopped. The lights burned blue. A domestic dropped a plate.

It was an inspiring moment.

From the summit of Jakko forty-five monkies looked down upon the crisis.

Sir Wollobie spoke.

To me in that expanse of floor cultured and park-like. He said: "I have long desired to make your acquaintance."

The blood bouilloned in my head. I became pink. I was aneantied under the weight of an embarras insubrimable.

At that moment Sir Wollobie became oblivious of my personality. That was his custom.

Wiping my face upon my coat-tails I refugied myself among the foules.

I had been spoken to by Sir Wollobie. That was in Simla. That also is history.

Pass now several years. To the day before yesterday!

This also is history—farcical, immense, tragi-comic, but true.

Know you the Totnam Cortrode?

Here lives Maple, who sells washing appliances and tables of exotic legs.

Here voyages also a Omnibuse Proletariat.

That is to say for One penny.

Two pence is the refined volupté of the Aristocrat.

I am of the people.

Entre nous the connection is not desired by us. The people address to me epithets, entirely unprintable. I reply that they should wash. The situation is strained. Hence the Strike Docks and the Demonstrations Laborious.

Upon the funeste tumbril of the Proletariat I take my seat.

I demand air outside upon the roof.

I will have all my penny.

The tumbril advances.

A man aged loses his equilibrium and deposits himself into my lap.

Following the custom of the Brutal Londoner I demand the Devil where he shoves himself.

He apologises supplicatorically.

I grunt.

Encore the tumbril shakes herself.

I appropriate the desired seat of the old man.

The conductaire cries to loud voice: "Fare, Guvnor."

He produces one penny.

A reminiscence phantasmal provokes itself.

I beat him on the back.

It is Sir Wollobie; the ex-Everything!

Also the ex-Everything else!

Figure you the situation!

He clasps my hand.

As a child clasps the hand of its nurse.

He demands of me particular rensignments of my health. It is to him a matter important.

Other time he regulated the health of forty-five millions.

I riposte. I enquire of his liver—his pancreas, his abdomen.

The sacred internals of Sir Wollobie!

He has them all. And they all make him ill.

He is very lonely. He speaks of his wife. There is no Lady Wollobie, but a woman in a flat in Bayswater who cries in her sleep for more curricles.

He does not say this, but I understand.

He derides the Council of the Indian Office. He imprecates the Government.

He curses the journals.

He has a clob. He curses that clob.

Females with teeth monstrous explain to him the theory of Government.

Men of long hair, the psychologues of the paint-pots, correct him tenderly, but from above.

He has known of the actualities of life—Death, Power, Responsibility, Honour—the Good accomplished, the effacement of Wrong for forty years.

There remains to him a seat in a penny 'bus.

If I do not take him from that.

I rap my heels on the knife-board. I sing "tra la la." I am also well disposed to larmes.

He courbes himself underneath an ulstaire and he damns the fog to eternity.

He wills not that I leave him. He desires that I come to dinner.

I am grave. I think upon Lady Wollobie—shorn of chaprassies—at the Clob. Not in Bayswater.

I accept. He will bore me affreusely, but … I have taken his seat.

He descends from the tumbril of his humiliation, and the street hawker rolls a barrow up his waistcoat.

Then intervenes the fog—dense, impenetrable, hopeless, without end.

It is because of the fog that there is a drop upon the end of my nose so chiselled.

Gentlemen the Governors, the Lieutenant-Governors and the Commissaires, behold the doom prepared.

I am descended to the gates of your Life in Death. Which is Brompton or Bayswater.

You do not believe? You will try the constituencies when you return; is it not so?

You will fail. As others failed.

Your seat waits you on the top of an Omnibuse Proletariat.

I shall be there.

You will embrace me as a shipwrecked man embraces a log. You will be "dam glad t' see me."

I shall grin.

Oh Life! Oh Death! Oh Power! Oh Toil! Oh Hope! Oh Stars! Oh Honour! Oh Lodgings! Oh Fog! Oh Omnibuses! Oh Despair! Oh Skittles!

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.

GRIFFITHS THE SAFE MAN[9]

As the title indicates, this story deals with the safeness of Griffiths the safe man, the secure person, the reliable individual, the sort of man you would bank with. I am proud to write about Griffiths, for I owe him a pleasant day. This story is dedicated to my friend Griffiths, the remarkably trustworthy mortal.

In the beginning there were points about Griffiths. He quoted proverbs. A man who quotes proverbs is confounded by proverbs. He is also confounded by his friends. But I never confounded Griffiths—not even in that supreme moment when the sweat stood on his brow in agony and his teeth were fixed like bayonets and he swore horribly. Even then, I say, I sat on my own trunk, the trunk that opened, and told Griffiths that I had always respected him, but never more than at the present moment. He was so safe, y' know.

Safeness is a matter of no importance to me. If my trunk won't lock when I jump on it thrice, I strap it up and go on to something else. If my carpet-bag is too full, I let the tails of shirts and the ends of ties bubble over and go down the street with the affair. It all comes right in the end, and if it does not, what is a man that he should fight against Fate?

But Griffiths is not constructed in that manner. He says: "Safe bind is safe find." That, rather, is what he used to say. He has seen reason to alter his views. Everything about Griffiths is safe—entirely safe. His trunk is locked by two hermetical gun-metal double-end Chubbs; his bedding-roll opens to a letter padlock capable of two million combinations; his hat-box has a lever patent safety on it; and the grief of his life is that he cannot lock up the ribs of his umbrella safely. If you could get at his soul you would find it ready strapped up and labelled for heaven. That is Griffiths.

When we went to Japan together, Griffiths kept all his money under lock and key. I carried mine in my coat-tail pocket. But all Griffiths' contraptions did not prevent him from spending exactly as much as I did. You see, when he had worried his way through the big strap, and the little strap, and the slide-valve, and the spring lock, and the key that turned twice and a quarter, he felt as though he had earned any money he found, whereas I could get masses of sinful wealth by merely pulling out my handkerchief—dollars and five dollars and ten dollars, all mixed up with the tobacco or flying down the road. They looked much too pretty to spend.

"Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths in the treaty port.

He never really began to lock things up severely till we got our passports to travel up-country. He took charge of mine for me, on the ground that I was an imbecile. As you are asked for your passport at every other shop, all the hotels, most of the places of amusement, and on the top of each hill, I got to appreciate Griffiths' self-sacrifice. He would be biting a strap with his teeth or calculating the combinations of his padlocks among a ring of admiring Japanese while I went for a walk into the interior.

"Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths. That was true, because I was bound to find Griffiths somewhere near his beloved keys and straps. He never seemed to see that half the pleasure of his trip was being strapped and keyed out of him.

We never had any serious difficulty about the passports in the whole course of our wanderings. What I purpose to describe now is merely an incident of travel. It had no effect on myself, but it nearly broke Griffiths' heart.

We were travelling from Kyoto to Otsu along a very dusty road full of pretty girls. Every time I stopped to play with one of them Griffiths grew impatient. He had telegraphed for rooms at the only hotel in Otsu, and was afraid that there would be no accommodation. There were only three rooms in the hotel, and "Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths. He was telegraphing ahead for something.

Our hotel was three-quarters Japanese and one-quarter European. If you walked across it it shook, and if you laughed the roof fell off. Strange Japanese came in and dined with you, and Jap maidens looked through the windows of the bathroom while you were bathing.

We had hardly put the luggage down before the proprietor asked for our passports. He asked me of all people in the world. "I have the passports," said Griffiths with pride. "They are in the yellow-hide bag. Turn it very carefully on to the right side, my good man. You have no such locks in Japan, I'm quite certain." Then he knelt down and brought out a bunch of keys as big as his fist. You must know that every Japanese carries a little belaiti-made handbag with nickel fastenings. They take an interest in handbags.

"Safe bind, safe—— D—n the key! What's wrong with it?" said Griffiths.

The hotel proprietor bowed and smiled very politely for at least five minutes, Griffiths crawling over and under and round and about his bag the while. "It's a percussating compensator," said he, half to himself. "I've never known a percussating compensator do this before." He was getting heated and red in the face.

"Key stuck, eh? I told you those fooling little spring locks are sure to go wrong sooner or later."

"Fooling little devils. It's a percussating comp—— There goes the key. Now it won't move either way. I'll give you the passport to-morrow. Passport kul demang manana—catchee in a little time. Won't that do for you?"

Griffiths was getting really angry. The proprietor was more polite than ever. He bowed and left the room. "That's a good little chap," said Griffiths. "Now we'll settle down and see what the mischief's wrong with this bag. You catch one end."

"Not in the least," I said. "'Safe bind, safe find.' You did the binding. How can you expect me to do the finding? I'm an imbecile unfit to be trusted with a passport, and now I'm going for a walk." The Japanese are really the politest nation in the world. When the hotel proprietor returned with a policeman he did not at once thrust the man on Griffiths' notice. He put him in the verandah and let him clank his sword gently once or twice.

"Little chap's brought a blacksmith," said Griffiths, but when he saw the policeman his face became ugly. The policeman came into the room and tried to assist. Have you ever seen a four-foot policeman in white cotton gloves and a stand-up collar lunging percussating compensator look with a five-foot sword? I enjoyed the sight for a few minutes before I went out to look at Otsu, which is a nice town. No one hindered me. Griffiths was so completely the head of the firm that had I set the town on fire he would have been held responsible.

I went to a temple, and a policeman said "passport." I said, "The other gentleman has got." "Where is other gentleman?" said the policeman, syllable by syllable, in the Ollendorfian style. "In the ho-tel," said I; and he waddled off to catch him. It seemed to me that I could do a great deal towards cheering Griffiths all alone in his bedroom with that wicked bad lock, the hotel proprietor, the policeman, the room-boy, and the girl who helped one to bathe. With this idea I stood in front of four policemen, and they all asked for my passport and were all sent to the hotel, syllable by syllable—I mean one by one.

Some soldiers of the 9th N.I. were strolling about the streets, and they were idle. It is unwise to let a soldier be idle. He may get drunk. When the fourth policeman said: "Where is other gentleman?" I said: "In the hotel, and take soldiers—those soldiers."

"How many soldiers?" said the policeman firmly.

"Take all soldiers," I said. There were four files in the street just then. The policeman spoke to them, and they caught up their big sword-bayonets, nearly as long as themselves, and waddled after him.

I followed them, but first I bought some sweets and gave one to a child. That was enough. Long before I had reached the hotel I had a tail of fifty babies. These I seduced into the long passage that ran through the house, and then I slid the grating that answers to the big hall-door. That house was full—pit, boxes and galleries—for Griffiths had created an audience of his own, and I also had not been idle.

The four files of soldiers and the five policemen were marking time on the boards of Griffith's room, while the landlord and the landlord's wife, and the two scullions, and the bath-girl, and the cook-boy, and the boy who spoke English, and the boy who didn't, and the boy who tried to, and the cook, filled all the space that wasn't devoted to babies asking the foreigner for more sweets.

Somewhere in the centre of the mess was Griffiths and a yellow-hide bag. I don't think he had looked up once since I left, for as he raised his eyes at my voice I heard him cry: "Good heavens! are they going to train the guns of the city on me? What's the meaning of the regiment? I'm a British subject."

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"The passports—your passports—the double-dyed passports! Oh, give a man room to use his arms. Get me a hatchet."

"The passports, the passports!" I said. "Have you looked in your great-coat? It's on the bed, and there's a blue envelope in it that looks like a passport. You put it there before you left Kyoto."

Griffiths looked. The landlord looked. The landlord took the passport and bowed. The five policemen bowed and went out one by one; the 9th N.I. formed fours and went out; the household bowed, and there was a long silence. Then the bath-girl began to giggle.

When Griffiths wanted to speak to me I was on the other side of the regiment of children in the passage, and he had time to reflect before he could work his way through them.

They formed his guard-of-honour when he took the bag to the locksmith.

I abode on the mountains of Otsu till dinner-time.