Traffics and Discoveries

Оглавление

Rudyard Kipling. Traffics and Discoveries

THE CAPTIVE

FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI)

THE CAPTIVE

THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE

POSEIDON'S LAW

THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE

A SAHIBS' WAR

THE RUNNERS

A SAHIBS' WAR

"THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS" THE WET LITANY

"THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS"

PART I

PART II

THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

THE KING'S TASK

THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

STEAM TACTICS

THE NECESSITARIAN

STEAM TACTICS

"WIRELESS"

KASPAR'S SONG IN VARDA

THE ARMY OF A DREAM

SONG OF THE OLD GUARD

THE ARMY OF A DREAM

PART I

PART II

"THEY"

THE RETURN OF THE CHILDREN

MRS. BATHURST

FROM LYDEN'S "IRENIUS"

BELOW THE MILL DAM

"OUR FATHERS ALSO"

BELOW THE MILL DAM

Отрывок из книги

The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat on Simonstown. Beneath them the little Barracouta nodded to the big Gibraltar, and the old Penelope, that in ten years has been bachelors' club, natural history museum, kindergarten, and prison, rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a three-funnelled Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep sea.

Said the sentry, assured of the visitor's good faith, "Talk to 'em? You can, to any that speak English. You'll find a lot that do."

.....

"'There!' said the General, when he'd finished. 'That proves my contention to the hilt. Maybe I'm a bit of a pro-Boer, but I stick to it,' he says, 'that under proper officers, with due regard to his race prejudices, the Boer'ud make the finest mounted infantry in the Empire. Adrian,' he says, 'you're simply squandered on a cattle-run. You ought to be at the Staff College with De Wet.'

"'You catch De Wet and I come to your Staff College – eh,' says Adrian, laughing. 'But you are so slow, Generaal. Why are you so slow? For a month,' he says, 'you do so well and strong that we say we shall hands-up and come back to our farms. Then you send to England and make us a present of two – three – six hundred young men, with rifles and wagons and rum and tobacco, and such a great lot of cartridges, that our young men put up their tails and start all over again. If you hold an ox by the horn and hit him by the bottom he runs round and round. He never goes anywhere. So, too, this war goes round and round. You know that, Generaal!'

.....