Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (857 page)

Naturally, he went up to Number Five, immediately overhead, and borrowed from Beetle,
in reposo
on the domestic hearth, a shovelful of burning coals. Coming down with it, he almost ran into Mr. King, his own House-master, at the bottom of the stairs, and from sheer nervous shock tilted out the whole affair at, if not over, his feet. There was some energetic dancing and denouncing, as Beetle noted through the banisters, and when it had ceased Dick had five hundred lines, which did not prevent him from being very happy with Beetle over the spirited action of King’s hind-legs among the cinders.

Last lesson that day was English Literature—’Paradise Lost’—and when Harrison major, whose voice is as a lost sheep’s, bleated about Satan treading on ‘burning marl,’ Beetle sputtered aloud.

King might or might not have guessed the connection. But he said nothing beyond, ‘Two hundred Latin lines.’ Dick condoled with Beetle after tea; but also developed his own grievance, which was that Beetle had heaped too many coals of fire on him.

‘I like that!’ was the retort. ‘I kept
on
tellin’ you your shovel wouldn’t hold ‘em, you blue-snouted Mandrill.’ Beetle knew much about the coloration of Mandrills, and would often describe it to Dick.

But this time Dick’s nose blue-fired where it stood; he gnashed his teeth, and emitted the war cry of the Royal Line of Ashantee. (His naval uncle had fought in those parts and, Dick swore, had taught him all the languages.) What followed, though painful for Beetle who was alone (and Pussy was with Dick), was merely an affair of outposts. The Temple of Janus was opened ceremonially later. After prayers, Number Five, who were sitting up from nine of ten for ‘extra work,’ caught a fag of their House about to undress, hustled it into a nightgown over all for tabard, and sent it to Dick’s study with a stolen gym boxing-glove, which Turkey called ‘the Cartel.’ Dick spared the quavering herald, and pranced up to Number Five, robed in a tablecloth, at the very top of his rarely shown form. As Head of the Gaboon and the Dahomey Customs, he talked Fantee, which includes—with whistlings and quackings—Rabelaisian accounts of the manners of the West Coast, and the etiquette of native courts thereabouts; for his uncle had been an observant officer. It altogether destroyed Number Five. They clung to the table, beseeching Dick to stop and let them get breath; and they topped off the ribald hour with pickled onions and raspberry vinegar for a pledge of naked war.

When they went up to their study next morning, after second lesson, they found, when they could see, everything in it furred with a ghastly, greasy deposit; and a smell fouler than the sight. Dick had shut down their chimney damper, set an old ‘gutty’ golf ball in a sardine-tin on the new-made fire, jammed their window, plugged up with paper beneath their door, and let nature do the rest. Their pictures left white squares on the walls when they took them down. Turkey felt it most, for Art was his province. Beetle wanted to bore holes in the floor, and pour melted lead through; but, as Stalky pointed out, Pussy and Tertius were sub-prefects, and one could not include their study in the field of unrestricted warfare.

‘Dick’s flank is covered all right,’ he said. ‘Beetle ought to have thought of that. Yes, you ass, I
have
thought of snuff; but don’t
you
try to think, or you’ll hash it. Leave him alone!’

So when the King of Ashantee quacked his triumph at next call-over, they all looked straitly to their own front, and lifted neither hand nor hoof. Only Pussy, on an exquisite note between apology and authority, reminded Stalky that the day following would be a House-match (Macrea’s
v.
King’s), which would claim him, Tertius and Dick from three to five. As sub-prefect he could have commanded a truce, but as ally of Dick he had sanctioned the war and had taken part in the execution of Beetle—Death by the Hundred Slices between two forms.

‘That’s all right,’ Stalky answered him.
‘We
wouldn’t dree-eem of goin’ into studies when they’re empty.’

‘Dick didn’t think,’ Pussy went on. It was the extreme limit of concession.

‘Don’t you worry, Kitten. He’s goin’ to.’ After which, Stalky removed from Beetle six penny stamps reserved for correspondence.

“Want ‘em all?’ said Beetle.

‘I didn’t. But I will now, you selfish hound. I do all the work an’—’

‘All
right. ‘Tisn’t
my
fault if I can’t write home,’ said the robbed one in a relieved voice, and went on plaintively: ‘Who’s bagged my new socks, curse you?’

‘Those Mandrill ones? ‘Wouldn’t be found dead in ‘em. Turkey most likely. He’s eesthetic.’

Beetle sighed. They were a church-going pair of a provocative peacock-blue, which, when coquettishly exhibited across an aisle, would make Dick’s nose glow through half the sermon.

On Saturday afternoon, with everybody down at the House-match, Stalky brought out the communal frying-pan, and laid in it large slabs of the fattest bacon.

‘Old Mother Hunt gave me all that for four-pence. She thinks it’s a bit off. Fry it, Beetle.’

The slices rendered as generously as blubber. When the pan was about half full of fat, Stalky fished out three slices and tied each slice to a string from a new penny string-ball. Then he and the others leaned out of their window, and bobbed them against the window of the study below. In that crisp October air, each bob left a white blob of coagulated fat on the pane.

When a slice ceased to register, it was hauled up and reconditioned. At intervals, someone would go down to report on the effect from the ground-level, or to direct the more delicate stipplings. They put on a second coat to make sure, and judged that it would do.

The returning enemy were too full of their game to notice anything till they had washed, and were well at home again. Then, peering from above, Number Five saw Pussy’s huge paw put forth, and an experimenting finger drawn through the creamy deposit on the panes.

‘Go an’ jape with them, Turkey. Get Dick’s head well out. Keep that fat just off the bubble, Beetle,’ said Stalky.

Turkey presented himself on the area-railings outside the lower study and, as usual, let others make conversation. He had gifts that way. Things had not gone much beyond ‘Filthy swine!’ when the King of Ashantee, ousting his slower-minded mates, leaned forth, and addressed himself directly to Turkey, with two golf balls, one after the other. Here Stalky took the pan from Beetle, and decanted, say, one pint of pure bacon fat on to Dick’s scalp, where it set at once into a frosty wig. The bag of flour, dashed down after it, was sheer waste of the sixth of Beetle’s penny stamps. Without a glance at the result, Turkey sauntered back, and pushed the study table against the door.

‘All right. To-morrow’s Sunday,’ said Stalky. ‘Good for Dick’s topper. But don’t you notice him. He’s the Lord Anointed.’

Saturday Prayers were worth attending; but next day’s divine service was—just that! Dick’s locks had clotted into irregular overlapping scales which, when flattened by a desperate hand, sprang up again unrelatedly. Even his study mates mocked him, but, for Number Five, it was as though he had never been upon earth or in memory. They merely put it about that his was a disease which comes from not brushing the hair, and that presently it would bleed.

That same Sabbath eve—disregarding advice and scorning reinforcements—the Head of the Gaboon tore upstairs alone to call upon them, when, seeing that he appeared to be armed, they fell on him—ankle, waist and neck—without a word. At last he was understood to say something about ‘slugs in a saw-pit.’ They let up.

‘It’s your gloat,’ he gasped. ‘Let’s top off with a duel in the Bunkers. I challenge the lot of you. Death before dishonour!
An’
give me some of that raspberry vinegar.’

‘Your sally any good?’ M’Turk asked. He had Number Five’s armoury in his own care.

‘Hellish stiff. I was bringing it for you to clean a bit. I’ve got cartridges but no oil.’ He picked up from the floor a lock-jawed twenty-two rim-fire Belgian saloon-pistol, which Turkey took over at once.

“Get expelled for duellin’,’ Beetle observed sourly.

‘You abject cur! You’re the only one with gig-lamps, too,’ Stalky rebuked.

‘ You
called me The Mandrill,’ said the Head of the Gaboon. ‘An’ what was that beastliness of yours about my hair bleedin,’—thou—thou varlet?’ (That was Dick’s word of the week, so to say.)

‘Oh,
Plica Polonica,’
said Beetle, and brightly summarised as much as he could recall of Polish Plat out of a Heaven-sent old encyclopedia.

‘Two
shots at Beetle for that,’ said Dick icily.

‘You shall have ‘em!’ cried generous Stalky. ‘But look here, you can’t take us
all
on. What about a quadrilateral duel?’ Stalky saw himself excelling Marryat.

‘What for? You each get plugged at three times, same as me.
I
don’t mind.’

‘What distance?’ said Turkey, with his head in his playbox among the oiled rags.

‘Dunno, quite. ‘Ten paces too much?’ Stalky suggested.

‘Rot!’ Beetle protested. ‘You can make a Burrows donkey bray his head off at a hundred yards with dust-shot. I’ve done it.’

‘You unfeelin’ brute! Now you can do a little brayin’ on your own, an’ see how you like it. I vote we make it twelve paces for the duels, and after that we’ll pick sides and have a general stalk in the Bunkers.’

‘Who’s to give the range
then?
Beetle asked.

‘Guess it, you old burbler. Besides, dust-shot don’t hardly sting even at point-blank.’

Beetle explained what his spiritual adventures must be ere he lent himself to such speculations. His piety wearied them.

‘If you say much more we’ll decree you a rabbit—same as Maunsell did young Vivian.
He
made him cock-up at point-blank.’ Stalky was referring to an episode of their early and oppressed past.

‘Yes, an’ Gartside major got hold of it and half cut Maunsell’s fat soul out of him in the dormitory. That shows what prefects think of duellin’! An’ s’pose King spots us in the Bunkers with his filthy telescope? I’ve looked through it. I swear you can see the crabs runnin’ about on Braunton Sands.’ Beetle delivered this all in one passionate breath.

‘You’re sickenin’,’ said Turkey. ‘Maunsell was bullyin’ young Vivian. D’you mean to say
you’re
bein’ bullied? An’, tell me now, has King or Prout or Foxy—has anyone—ever told ye that duellin’ is forbidden at Coll.? Don’t prevaricate. Have you ever seen it posted in the corridor?’

‘Then get Pussy and Tertius for seconds,’ Beetle howled.

‘I’d not dream of runnin’ in on them for a little thing like this,’ Turkey concluded, and Dick added:

‘Besides, this is a private affair. It’s the satisfaction of a gentleman, thou scurvy varlet.’

‘Oh, shut up an’ listen to your Uncle. The Bunkers tomorrow after call-over. Shots all round—
an’
one extra for Beetle. First blood satisfies Honour. Then we’ll pick sides an’ have a general stalk till we’re out of ammunition.’

‘Good business,’ said the foe.
’And
a brew for the survivors after tea! My uncle hath remembered me. Selah! We’d better have it up here and ask Pussy and Tertius. It’s safer.’

At that epoch, the young of the English, alone of their kind, understood the exact difference between official and unofficial. Pussy and Tertius said they would be happy to attend the brew and, being men of substance, sent, as it were, milk and honey in advance. They had not been officially informed what the banquet would celebrate, but prying suspicion is beneath true authority.

‘Anyhow,’ said Pussy to his colleague, ‘I’ve been through Dick’s cartridges to make sure.
’All
dust-shot.’

At three, then, next day, after Beetle, the house-keeper, had set out the table for a brew of six, four boys in prudent overcoats (‘sallies’ pack clumsily beneath short jackets) pushed into the wind for the rushy sand-dunes at the far end of the Pebble Ridge. It is true that certain old men who, though not in the Army, impiously wore red coats, used a fringe of the landscape for a senile diversion known as Golf—Turkey had played it for some weeks and pronounced it ‘sickenin”—but once off the line of their activities—the ‘fairway’ they called it—a boy might have been in the Sahara.

The Equinox drove the sand into their faces or round their legs, as they dived among the sheep-haunted hollows. The upstanding winter tide roared and trampled along the Pebble Ridge outside till they had to shout to each other, and racing slashes of low sunlight from seaward lit the sands and the bents with fierce coppery glares. In a secluded dell, out of the worst of the wind, Turkey posted Stalky and Dick Four—each edge-on, House-cap pulled down to the eyebrows, left elbow crooked, covering mouth and nose, and pistol ready to level over the crook at the Caution and to fire at the Word. For such had been the tradition of the Giants of the Prime—great names—now even greater Captains who, of course, stood fire daily.

‘Squad!’ croaked Turkey in Foxy’s best manner. ‘Fire!’ Both pistols popped together. It was a clean miss.

‘Didn’t you even hear mine?’ Stalky called.