’So we kicked about the sea from midnight till
seven the next evening, and then we saw a steamer.
“I’ll—I’ll give you anything
I’m wearing to hoist as a signal of distress,”
said the woman; but I had no need to ask her, for
the steamer picked us up and took us back to Bombay.
I forgot to tell you that, when the day broke, I couldn’t
recognise the Captain’s wife—widow,
I mean. She had changed in the night as if fire
had gone over her. I met her a long time afterwards,
and even then she hadn’t forgiven me for putting
her into the boat and obeying the Captain’s
orders. But the husband of the other woman—he’s
in the Army—wrote me no end of a letter
of thanks. I don’t suppose he considered
that the way his wife behaved was enough to make any
decent man do all he could. The other fellows,
who lay in the bottom of the boat and groaned, I’ve
never met. Don’t want to. Shouldn’t
be civil to ’em if I did. And that’s
how the Visigoth went down, for no assignable
reason, with eighty bags of mail, five hundred souls,
and not a single packet insured, on just such a night
as this.’
’Oh,
Trinity of love and power,
Our
brethren shield in that dread hour,
From
rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect
them whereso’er they go.
Thus
evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad
hymns of praise by land and sea.’
’Strikes me they’ll go on singing that
hymn all night. Imperfect sort of doctrine in
the last lines, don’t you think? They might
have run in an extra verse specifying sudden collapse—like
the Visigoth’s. I’m going
on to the bridge, now. Good-night,’ said
the Captain.
And I was left alone with the steady thud, thud, of
the screw and the gentle creaking of the boats at
the davits.
That made me shudder.
THE SOLID MULDOON
Did ye see John Malone, wid
his shinin’, brand-new hat?
Did ye see how he walked like a grand aristocrat?
There was flags an’ banners wavin’
high, an’ dhress and shtyle were
shown,
But the best av all the company was Misther
John Malone. John Malone.
There had been a royal dog-fight in the ravine at
the back of the rifle-butts, between Learoyd’s
Jock and Ortheris’s Blue Rot—both
mongrel Rampur hounds, chiefly ribs and teeth.
It lasted for twenty happy, howling minutes, and then
Blue Rot collapsed and Ortheris paid Learoyd
three rupees, and we were all very thirsty. A
dog-fight is a most heating entertainment, quite apart
from the shouting, because Rampurs fight over a couple
of acres of ground. Later, when the sound of
belt-badges clicking against the necks of beer-bottles
had died away, conversation drifted from dog to man-fights
of all kinds. Humans resemble red-deer in some
respects. Any talk of fighting seems to wake
up a sort of imp in their breasts, and they bell one
to the other, exactly like challenging bucks.
This is noticeable even in men who consider themselves
superior to Privates of the Line: it shows the
Refining Influence of Civilisation and the March of
Progress.
Copyrights
Soldiers Three from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
