Читать книгу Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 12

  It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,

  I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;

  When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,

  A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

  I couldn’t see the driver, and across my mind it rushed

  That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

  I didn’t care to meet him, and I couldn’t well get down,

  So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

  The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,

  Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;

  And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,

  And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

  He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,

  To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear —

  Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,

  Felt the brute’s proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

  Heard it trumpet on my shoulder – tried to crawl a little higher —

  Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire;

  And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze,

  While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

  It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey

  Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.

  Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.

  They flushed that four-foot drain-head and – it never choked again!

  You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,

  Till you’ve been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.

  I believe in well-flushed culverts…

                                    This is why the death-rate’s small;

  And, if you don’t believe me, get shikarred yourself. That’s all.