‘What have I said?’ shouted Din Mahommed.
’There is the warning! The pulton
are out already and are coming across the plain!
Get away! Let us not be seen with the boy!’
The men waited for an instant, and then, as another
shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently
as they had appeared.
‘The wegiment is coming,’ said Wee Willie
Winkie confidently to Miss Allardyce, ‘and it’s
all wight. Don’t cwy!’
He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later,
when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with
his head in Miss Allardyce’s lap.
And the men of the 195th carried him home with shouts
and rejoicings; and Coppy, who had ridden a horse
into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust,
kissed him openly in the presence of the men.
But there was balm for his dignity. His father
assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest
be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would
be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on
his blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the
Colonel a story that made him proud of his son.
‘She belonged to you, Coppy,’ said Wee
Willie Winkie, indicating Miss Allardyce with a grimy
forefinger. ’I knew she didn’t
ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment
would come to me if I sent Jack home.’
‘You’re a hero, Winkie,’ said Coppy—’a
pukka hero!’
‘I don’t know what vat means,’ said
Wee Willie Winkie, ’but you mustn’t call
me Winkie any no more. I’m. Percival
Will’am Will’ams.’
And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into
his manhood.
And
if ye doubt the tale I tell,
Steer
through the South Pacific swell;
Go
where the branching coral hives
Unending
strife of endless lives,
Where,
leagued about the ’wildered boat,
The
rainbow jellies fill and float;
And,
lilting where the laver lingers,
The
starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where,
’neath his myriad spines ashock,
The
sea-egg ripples down the rock;
An
orange wonder dimly guessed,
From
darkness where the cuttles rest,
Moored
o’er the darker deeps that hide
The
blind white Sea-snake and his bride
Who,
drowsing, nose the long-lost ships
Let
down through darkness to their lips.
The
Palms.
Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always
a mason; but once a journalist, always and for ever
a journalist.
