Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (484 page)

“‘He that believeth,’ says the General, ‘shall not make haste. That’s in Isaiah. We believe we’re going to win, and so we don’t make haste. As far as I’m concerned I’d like this war to last another five years. We’d have an army then. It’s just this way, Mr. Zigler,’ he says, ‘our people are brimfull of patriotism, but they’ve been born and brought up between houses, and England ain’t big enough to train ‘em — not if you expect to preserve.’

“‘Preserve what?’ I says. ‘England?’

“‘No. The game,’ he says; ‘and that reminds me, gentlemen, we haven’t drunk the King and Foxhunting.’

“So they drank the King and Fox-hunting. I drank the King because there’s something about Edward that tickles me (he’s so blame British); but I rather stood out on the Fox-hunting. I’ve ridden wolves in the cattle- country, and needed a drink pretty bad afterwards, but it never struck me as I ought to drink about it — he-red-it-arily.

“‘No, as I was saying, Mr. Zigler,’ he goes on, ‘we have to train our men in the field to shoot and ride. I allow six months for it; but many column-commanders — not that I ought to say a word against ‘em, for they’re the best fellows that ever stepped, and most of ‘em are my dearest friends — seem to think that if they have men and horses and guns they can take tea with the Boers. It’s generally the other way about, ain’t it, Mr. Zigler?’

“‘To some extent, Sir,’ I said.

“‘I’m
so
glad you agree with me,’ he says. ‘My command here I regard as a training depot, and you, if I may say so, have been one of my most efficient instructors. I mature my men slowly but thoroughly. First I put ‘em in a town which is liable to be attacked by night, where they can attend riding-school in the day. Then I use ‘em with a convoy, and last I put ‘em into a column. It takes time,’ he says, ‘but I flatter myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in the rudiments of their profession. Adrian,’ he says, ‘was there anything wrong with the men who upset Van Bester’s applecart last month when he was trying to cross the line to join Piper with those horses he’d stole from Gabbitas?’

“‘No, Generaal,’ says Van Zyl. ‘Your men got the horses back and eleven dead; and Van Besters, he ran to Delarey in his shirt. They was very good, those men. They shoot hard.’

“
‘So
pleased to hear you say so. I laid ‘em down at the beginning of this century — a 1900 vintage.
You
remember ‘em, Mankeltow?’ he says. ‘The Central Middlesex Buncho Busters — clerks and floorwalkers mostly,’ and he wiped his moustache. ‘It was just the same with the Liverpool Buckjumpers, but they were stevedores. Let’s see — they were a last-century draft, weren’t they? They did well after nine months.
You
know ‘em, Van Zyl? You didn’t get much change out of ‘em at Pootfontein?’

“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘At Pootfontein I lost my son Andries.’

“‘I beg your pardon, Commandant,’ says the General; and the rest of the crowd sort of cooed over Adrian.

“‘Excoose,’ says Adrian. ‘It was all right. They were good men those, but it is just what I say. Some are so dam good we want to hands-up, and some are so dam bad, we say, “Take the Vierkleur into Cape Town.” It is not upright of you, Generaal. It is not upright of you at all. I do not think you ever wish this war to finish.’

“‘It’s a first-class dress-parade for Armageddon,’ says the General. ‘With luck, we ought to run half a million men through the mill. Why, we might even be able to give our Native Army a look in. Oh, not here, of course, Adrian, but down in the Colony — say a camp-of-exercise at Worcester. You mustn’t be prejudiced, Adrian. I’ve commanded a district in India, and I give you my word the native troops are splendid men.’

“‘Oh, I should not mind them at Worcester,’ says Adrian. ‘I would sell you forage for them at Worcester — yes, and Paarl and Stellenbosch; but Almighty!’ he says, ‘must I stay with Cronje till you have taught half a million of these stupid boys to ride? I shall be an old man.’

“Well, Sir, then and there they began arguing whether St. Helena would suit Adrian’s health as well as some other places they knew about, and fixing up letters of introduction to Dukes and Lords of their acquaintance, so’s Van Zyl should be well looked after. We own a fair- sized block of real estate — America does — but it made me sickish to hear this crowd fluttering round the Atlas (oh yes, they had an Atlas), and choosing stray continents for Adrian to drink his coffee in. The old man allowed he didn’t want to roost with Cronje, because one of Cronje’s kin had jumped one of his farms after Paardeberg. I forget the rights of the case, but it was interesting. They decided on a place called Umballa in India, because there was a first-class doctor there.

“So Adrian was fixed to drink the King and Foxhunting, and study up the Native Army in India (I’d like to see ‘em myself), till the British General had taught the male white citizens of Great Britain how to ride. Don’t misunderstand me, Sir. I loved that General. After ten minutes I loved him, and I wanted to laugh at him; but at the same time, sitting there and hearing him talk about the centuries, I tell you, Sir, it scared me. It scared me cold! He admitted everything — he acknowledged the corn before you spoke — he was more pleased to hear that his men had been used to wipe the geldt with than I was when I knocked out Tom Reed’s two lead- horses — and he sat back and blew smoke through his nose and matured his men like cigars and — he talked of the everlastin’ centuries!

“I went to bed nearer nervous prostration than I’d come in a long time. Next morning me and Captain Mankeltow fixed up what his shrapnel had left of my Zigler for transport to the railroad. She went in on her own wheels, and I stencilled her ‘Royal Artillery Mess, Woolwich,’ on the muzzle, and he said he’d be grateful if I’d take charge of her to Cape Town, and hand her over to a man in the Ordnance there. ‘How are you fixed financially? You’ll need some money on the way home,’ he says at last.

“‘For one thing, Cap,’ I said, ‘I’m not a poor man, and for another I’m not going home. I am the captive of your bow and spear. I decline to resign office.’

“‘Skittles!’ he says (that was a great word of his), ‘you’ll take parole, and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle heavier in the working parts — I would. We’ve got more prisoners than we know what to do with as it is,’ he says. ‘You’ll only be an additional expense to me as a taxpayer. Think of Schedule D,’ he says, ‘and take parole.’

“‘I don’t know anything about your tariffs,’ I said, ‘but when I get to Cape Town I write home for money, and I turn in every cent my board’ll cost your country to any ten-century-old department that’s been ordained to take it since William the Conqueror came along.’

“‘But, confound you for a thick-headed mule,’ he says, ‘this war ain’t any more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you’re going to play prisoner till it’s over?’

“‘That’s about the size of it,’ I says, ‘if an Englishman and an American could ever understand each other.’

“‘But, in Heaven’s Holy Name, why?’ he says, sitting down of a heap on an anthill.

“‘Well, Cap,’ I says, ‘I don’t pretend to follow your ways of thought, and I can’t see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor prisoner o’ war on
his!
’

“‘My dear fellow,’ he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, ‘I’ll apologise.’

“‘But if you insist,’ I says, ‘there are just one and a half things in this world I can’t do. The odd half don’t matter here; but taking parole, and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving lectures on my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of my beloved country happens to be the one. We’ll let it go at that, Cap.’

“‘But it’ll bore you to death,’ he says. The British are a heap more afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, I’ve noticed.

“‘I’ll survive,’ I says, ‘I ain’t British. I can think,’ I says.

“‘By God,’ he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of fellowship, ‘you ought to be English, Zigler!’

“It’s no good getting mad at a compliment like that. The English all do it. They’re a crazy breed. When they don’t know you they freeze up tighter’n the St. Lawrence. When they
do
, they go out like an ice-jam in April. Up till we prisoners left — four days — my Captain Mankeltow told me pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and his bad brother that was a trooper in some Colonial corps, and how his father didn’t get on with him, and — well, everything, as I’ve said. They’re undomesticated, the British, compared with us. They talk about their own family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. ‘Taint as if they hadn’t any shame, but it sounds like it. I guess they talk out loud what we think, and we talk out loud what they think.

“I liked my Captain Mankeltow. I liked him as well as any man I’d ever struck. He was white. He gave me his silver drinking-flask, and I gave him the formula of my Laughtite. That’s a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the knowledge to use it. No, I didn’t tell him the money-value. He was English. He’d send his valet to find out.

“Well, me and Adrian and a crowd of dam Dutchmen was sent down the road to Cape Town in first-class carriages under escort. (What did I think of your enlisted men? They are largely different from ours, Sir: very largely.) As I was saying, we slid down south, with Adrian looking out of the car- window and crying. Dutchmen cry mighty easy for a breed that fights as they do; but I never understood how a Dutchman could curse till we crossed into the Orange Free State Colony, and he lifted up his hand and cursed Steyn for a solid ten minutes. Then we got into the Colony, and the rebs — ministers mostly and schoolmasters — came round the cars with fruit and sympathy and texts. Van Zyl talked to ‘em in Dutch, and one man, a big red-bearded minister, at Beaufort West, I remember, he jest wilted on the platform.

“‘Keep your prayers for yourself,’ says Van Zyl, throwing back a bunch of grapes. ‘You’ll need ‘em, and you’ll need the fruit too, when the war comes down here.
You
done it,’ he says. ‘You and your picayune Church that’s deader than Cronje’s dead horses! What sort of a God have you been unloading on us, you black
aas vogels
? The British came, and we beat ‘em,’ he says, ‘and you sat still and prayed. The British beat us, and you sat still,’ he says. ‘You told us to hang on, and we hung on, and our farms was burned, and you sat still — you and your God. See here,’ he says, ‘I shot my Bible full of bullets after Bloemfontein went, and you and God didn’t say anything. Take it and pray over it before we Federals help the British to knock hell out of you rebels.’

“Then I hauled him back into the car. I judged he’d had a fit. But life’s curious — and sudden — and mixed. I hadn’t any more use for a reb than Van Zyl, and I knew something of the lies they’d fed us up with from the Colony for a year and more. I told the minister to pull his freight out of that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come along and shook hands with Van Zyl. He’d known him at close range in the Kimberley seige and before. Van Zyl was well seen by his neighbours, I judge. As soon as this other man opened his mouth I said, ‘You’re Kentucky, ain’t you?’ ‘I am,’ he says; ‘and what may you be?’ I told him right off, for I was pleased to hear good United States in any man’s mouth; but he whipped his hands behind him and said, ‘I’m not knowing any man that fights for a Tammany Dutchman. But I presoom you’ve been well paid, you dam gun-runnin’ Yank.’

“Well, Sir, I wasn’t looking for that, and it near knocked me over, while old man Van Zyl started in to explain.

“‘Don’t you waste your breath, Mister Van Zyl,’ the man says. ‘I know this breed. The South’s full of ‘em.’ Then he whirls round on me and says, ‘Look at here, you Yank. A little thing like a King’s neither here nor there, but what
you’ve
done,’ he says, ‘is to go back on the White Man in six places at once — two hemispheres and four continents — America, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Don’t open your head,’ he says. ‘You know well if you’d been caught at this game in our country you’d have been jiggling in the bight of a lariat before you could reach for your naturalisation papers. Go on and prosper,’ he says, ‘and you’ll fetch up by fighting for niggers, as the North did.’ And he threw me half-a-crown — English money.

“Sir, I do not regard the proposition in that light, but I guess I must have been somewhat shook by the explosion. They told me at Cape Town one rib was driven in on to my lungs. I am not adducing this as an excuse, but the cold God’s truth of the matter is — the money on the floor did it…. I give up and cried. Put my head down and cried.

“I dream about this still sometimes. He didn’t know the circumstances, but
I dream about it. And it’s Hell!

“How do you regard the proposition — as a Brother? If you’d invented your own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her — and had paid your own expenses from the word ‘go’? An American citizen has a right to choose his own side in an unpleasantness, and Van Zyl wasn’t any Krugerite … and I’d risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man’s address from Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him the facts. But he never answered. Guess he thought I lied…. Damned Southern rebel!

“Oh, say. Did I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in Cape Town, and he fixed things so’s I could lie up a piece in his house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged into the lung — here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He said the British soldier had failed in every point except courage. He said England needed a Monroe Doctrine worse than America — a new doctrine, barring out all the Continent, and strictly devoting herself to developing her own Colonies. He said he’d abolish half the Foreign Office, and take all the old hereditary families clean out of it, because, he said, they was expressly trained to fool around with continental diplomats, and to despise the Colonies. His own family wasn’t more than six hundred years old. He was a very brainy man, and a good citizen. We talked politics and inventions together when my lung let up on me.