Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (699 page)

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Authors: Rudyard Kipling

BOOK: Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

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When that lower study — and there never was a public so low and unsympathetic as that lower study — looked out to see what was frosting their window-panes, the Editorial Staff emptied the hot fat on their heads, and it stayed in their hair for days and days, wearing shiny to the very last.

The boy who suggested this sort of warfare was then reading a sort of magazine, called
Fors Clavigera
, which he did not in the least understand, — it was not exactly a boy’s paper, — and when the lower study had scraped some of the fat off their heads and were thundering with knobby pokers on the door-lock, this boy began to chant pieces of the
Fors
as a war-song, and to show that his mind was free from low distractions. He was an extraordinary person, and the only boy in the School who had a genuine contempt for his masters. There was no affectation in his quiet insolence. He honestly
did
despise them; and threats that made us all wince only caused him to put his head a little on one side and watch the master as a sort of natural curiosity.

The worst of this was that his allies had to take their share of his punishments, for they lived as communists and socialists hope to live one day, when everybody is good. They were bad, as bad as they dared to be, but their possessions were in common, absolutely. And when “the Study” was out of funds they took the most respectable clothes in possession of the Syndicate, and leaving the owner one Sunday and one week day suit, sold the rest in Bideford town. Later, when there was another crisis, it was
not
the respectable one’s watch that was taken by force for the good of the Study and pawned, and never redeemed.

Later still, money came into the Syndicate honestly, for a London paper that did not know with whom it was dealing, published and paid a whole guinea for some verses that one of the boys had written and sent up under a
nom de plume
, and the Study caroused on chocolate and condensed milk and pilchards and Devonshire cream, and voted poetry a much sounder business than it looks.

So things went on very happily till the three were seriously warned that they must work in earnest, and stop giving amateur performances of
Aladdin
and writing librettos of comic operas which never came off, and worrying their housemasters into grey hairs.

Then they all grew very good, and one of them got into the Army; and another — the Irish one — became an engineer, and the third one found himself on a daily paper half a world away from the Pebble Ridge and the sea-beach. The three swore eternal friendship before they parted, and from time to time they met boys of their year in India, and magnified the honour of the old School.

The boys are scattered all over the world, one to each degree of land east and west, as their fathers were before them, doing much the same kind of work; and it is curious to notice how little the character of the man differs from that of the boy of sixteen or seventeen.

The general and commander-in-chief of the Study, he who suggested selling the clothes, never lost his head even when he and his friends were hemmed round by the enemy — the Drill Sergeant — far out of bounds and learning to smoke under a hedge. He was sick and dizzy, but he rose to the occasion, took command of his forces, and by strategic manœuvres along dry ditches and crawlings through tall grass, outflanked the enemy and got into safe ground without losing one man of the three.

A little later, when he was a subaltern in India, he was bitten by a mad dog, went to France to be treated by Pasteur, and came out again in the heat of the hot weather to find himself almost alone in charge of six hundred soldiers, and his Drill Sergeant dead and his office clerk run away, leaving the Regimental books in the most ghastly confusion. Then we happened to meet; and as he was telling his story there was just the same happy look on his face as when he steered us down the lanes with the certainty of a superior thrashing if we were caught.

And there were others who went abroad with their men, and when they got into tight places behaved very much as they had behaved at football.

The boy who used to take flying jumps on to the ball and roll over and over with it, because he was big and fat and could not run, took a flying jump on to a Burmese dacoit whom he had surprised by night in a stockade; but he forgot that he was much heavier than he had been at School, and by the time he rolled off his victim the little dacoit was stone dead.

And there was a boy who was always being led astray by bad advice, and begging off punishment on that account. He got into some little scrape when he grew up, and we who knew him knew, before he was reprimanded by his commanding officer, exactly what his excuse would be. It came out almost word for word as he was used to whimper it at School. He was cured, though, by being sent off on a small expedition here he alone would be responsible for any advice that was going, as well as for fifty soldiers.

And the best boy of them all — who could have become anything — was wounded in the thigh as he was leading his men up the ramp of a fortress. All he said was, “Put me up against that tree and take my men on”; and when his men came back he was dead.

Ages and ages ago, when Queen Victoria was shot at by a man in the street, the School paper made some verses about it that ended like this:

One school of many, made to make
Men who shall hold it dearest right
To battle for their ruler’s sake,
And stake their being in the fight,

Sends greeting, humble and sincere,
Though verse be rude and poor and mean,
To you, the greatest as most dear,
Victoria, by God’s Grace, our Queen!

Such greetings as should come from those
Whose fathers faced the Sepoy hordes,
Or served you in the Russian snows
And dying, left their sons their swords.

For we are bred to do your will
By land and sea, wherever flies
The Flag to fight and follow still,
And work your empire’s destinies.

Once more we greet you, though unseen
Our greetings be, and coming slow.
Trust us, if need arise, O Queen!
We shall not tarry with the blow.

And there are one or two places in the world that can bear witness how the School kept its word.

A Counting-Out Song

WHAT
is the song the children sing
When doorway lilacs bloom in Spring,
And the Schools are loosed, and the games are played
That were deadly earnest when Earth was made?
Hear them chattering, shrill and hard,
After dinner-time, out in the yard,
As the sides are chosen and all submit
To the chance of the lot that shall make them “It.”
    (Singing) “
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                    Catch a nigger by the toe!
                    If he hollers let him go
                    Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                        You — are — It!
”

Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo
Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago,
When the Pole of the Earth sloped thirty degrees,
And Central Europe began to freeze,
And they needed Ambassadors staunch and stark
To steady the Tribes in the gathering dark:
But the frost was fierce and flesh was frail,
So they launched a Magic that could not fail.
    (Singing) “
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                    Hear the wolves across the snow!
                    Some one has to kill ‘em — so
                    Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo
                        Make — you — It!
”

Slowly the Glacial Epoch passed,
Central Europe thawed out at last;
And, under the slush of the melting snows,
The first dim shapes of the Nations rose.
Rome, Britannia, Belgium, Gaul —
Flood and avalanche fathered them all;
And the First Big Four, as they watched the mess,
Pitied Man in his helplessness.
    (Singing) “
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                    Trouble starts when Nations grow.
                    Some one has to stop it-so
                    Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo
                        Make — you — It!
”

Thus it happened, but none can tell
What was the Power behind the spell —
Fear, or Duty, or Pride, or Faith —
That sent men shuddering out to death —
To cold and watching, and, worse than these,
Work, more work, when they looked for ease —
To the day’s discomfort, the night’s despair,
In the hope of a prize that they never would share.
    (Singing) “
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                    Man is born to toil and woe.
                    One will cure the other — so
                    Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo
                        Make — you — It.
”

Once and again, as the Ice went North
The grass crept up to the Firth of Forth.
Once and again, as the Ice came South
The glaciers ground over Lossiemouth.
But, grass or glacier, cold or hot,
The men went out who would rather not,
And fought with the Tiger, the Pig and the Ape,
To hammer the world into decent shape.
    (Singing) “
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
                    What’s the use of doing so?
                    Ask the Gods, for we don’t know;
                    But Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo
                    Make — us — It!
”

Nothing is left of that terrible rune
But a tag of gibberish tacked to a tune
That ends the waiting and settles the claims
Of children arguing over their games;
For never yet has a boy been found
To shirk his turn when the turn came round;
Or even a girl has been known to say
“If you laugh at me I shan’t play.”
    For —       ”
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo,
                    (Don’t you let the grown-ups know!)
                    You may hate it ever so,
                    But if you’re chose you’re bound to go,
                    When Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo
                        Make — you — It!
”