Читать книгу The Iblis at Ludd - Talbot Mundy - Страница 7

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Every circumstance, condition, situation and characteristic has its advantage, only so few know how to look for them. Still, a more than normally alert man can stumble on advantage now and then; and if he has trained himself he can sometimes make the most of what turns up. Individuals seem to have special values in the eternal scheme. The especial merit of Suliman was that, being a small boy, he hero-worshiped and at the same time believed implicitly in bogies.

The merit of a Sikh is different. He, too, worships heroes, but from another point of view; and the more he happens to believe in the unseen, the more suspicious he is of the unexplainable that can be seen and touched and heard. But this both Sikhs and small boys have in common, that they love the lines and the gossip of the lines.

Narayan Singh, given no orders to the contrary, could not more have kept away from the tents where other Sikhs were idling the time away that Suliman could have done, orders to the contrary of not.

Jim went to the row of tents reserved for visiting officers, discovered his bed already made and kit unpacked, but nothing of Narayan Singh or Suliman. There was a Sikh mounting guard at either end of the short line, but they knew no more than that Narayan Singh had come and gone again, taking the butcha with him. So he set off to explore the camp on his own accord.

Ludd, which was Lystra when they wrote the Bible, is one of those places that fills the military mind with wonder at civilian complacency, and stirs civilians to murmur at the thoughtlessness of army men. The town itself is practically undefendable. Yet there has always been a town there, in a land where raid and robbery are the normal thing; and wherever Jew, Egyptian, Philistine, Syrian, Babylonian, Roman, Mongol, crusader and Turk in turn have razed the place, its inhabitants have always built it up again very much as ants rebuild a ruined hill.

It sits on a sandy plain at the foot of the Judean Hills, from which plunderers can swoop down on it at their discretion. There is practically no water except in the rainy season, when there is a lot too much. There are snakes, mosquitoes, centipedes, bed-bugs, fleas and flies. And the largest army in the Near East was camped there, drawing its drinking-water all the way from Egypt through an iron pipe made in the U.S.A.

The secret of that is that, although the surrounding hills are perfectly contrived by nature to be robbers’ fastnesses, and the plains below were manifestly meant for robbers’ meat, you can’t supply and maneuver an army readily among the hills, whereas Ludd is not only a railway junction but is an excellent pushing-off place in every direction, with ample room for store- sheds, airplanes, cavalry lines and what not. So the army, depending on mobility for its security, tolerated the climate and conditions, while the thieves descended from places in the hills, like Hebron, and grew fat.

Jim strolled about the camp enjoying himself more or less, as any man must who loves with devouring interest whatever lives. In an armed camp the very gun-mules learn a new intelligence; and the dogs, without which in dozens no British army—or American for that matter—could maintain its social self- respect, come nearer to being impudently human than in any other circumstances.

There is tidiness, even among barbed-wire and prickly-pear entanglements, and a sense of getting the very utmost out of life (which is true humor as well as sound economy) that may become monotonous to those in camp, but thrill the new arrivals. And there are all the minor innovations made by individual commanding officers for making something out of nothing for the men’s sake, to be admired, or criticized, if you are half-observant. Nothing much escaped Jim’s eye or missed its lodgment in his memory. But there was nothing that looked like a cord for hanging Jenkins.

At the end of an hour of all-observant sauntering he returned to the station to interview the R.T.O., a red-necked, overworked, opinionative despot (like the rest of them; it seems you can’t run a military railway and be tolerant of other people’s feelings). Someone in the early days of war had dug this man out from a freight-junction in a London suburb, put him in uniform, and he had done the rest. He did not mind who knew it.

“Ho! So you’re another that wants to know about that TNT? I told all I knew the minute they asked me. Facts at my fingers’ ends. Made my report in writing. Nothing more to say!”

But there are ways of getting under the thick skin even of an R.T.O.

“How much truth is there in the story that you get commissions from the thieves who loot the railway?”

“What, me? Who says that? Hell’s bells! This gang’ud accuse their wet- nurse of selling milk! Anything missing? Blame the R.T.O.! Horse breaks away—sepoy get a dose of colic—general lose his shaving-brush? Require explanations in triplicate from the R.T.O.! Train two minutes late? Arrest the R.T.O. for mutiny! That’s the life I lead.

“Listen. That TNT arrived in a truck. None o’ my business. I ain’t the hen that laid the stuff. I wrote out an advice on the proper form and sent it up to Jenkins, ordered the truck into number nineteen siding, and says to myself, ‘There, that’s the end of that—damn it!’ and as far as I’m concerned that is the end of it. I’m busy. But if there’s a man in Palestine from general downwards who wants to swap me two piasters against all the commissions I get from thieves or anyone, walk him up to my office and we’ll make the trade. Good morning!”

There was nothing to be unearthed there. The man was obviously as honest as self-satisfied. Jim strolled back to the camp and through the mule- transport lines, where he found Narayan Singh squatting on the sand in deep converse with a dozen grooms. Six or seven tents away Suliman was smoking a cigarette and gambling with three Arab urchins of about his own age.

He caught Narayan Singh’s eye and nodded, passing on without disturbing the group to pounce on Suliman, turn him upside down and shake him until the unearthed increment of small coins fell into the sand to be fought for by the other three.

“But not all that money was won from them!” Suliman objected.

“Good. Teach you not to gamble.”