AN OFFICER—AND A GENTLEMAN.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10215, 10 December 1898, Page 2

AN OFFICER—AND A GENTLEMAN.

Stnsit Buu-tns. : •. "Yes, it is pretty monotonous, on a trip like this," said my fellow-passenger—the only one—as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the lower ratlines of the mizasen rigging. "A month of tie same society anywhere is apt to be tiresome, but a month in a 'lime-juicer,' on this run, beats every experience I ever had, bar one-' "It must have been an experience, indeed, if it makes this tolerable by comparison," said I, fretfully; "this is simply too deadly for words."

It was. We were "running down. the easting," as the sailors say. We had left South Africa for Maoriland, and had been a month at sea without sighting anything bat the playful porpoise, and the occasional "blow" of a distant whale. The society of the barque was made up of the captain}'the. mate, the second officer, my fellow-passen- : ger, and myself. The crew did not count. Foreigners, for the most part, and as little like the British sailor of fiction as need be. The apprentices were a little better, but too young to be interesting, and too inexperienced to be worth talking to. The captain and the mate hailed from a great shipbuilding port, whose inhabitants show most of the objectionable traits" of two races, without the shrewd dry wit of the one or the rollicking humour of the other. Add to this that the captain got unsociably drunk in his cabin half the time, and still more unsociably sober in the saloon durin- the remainder. The mate and the second mate did not agree very well together. When the latter told mc (in confidence) his opinion of the mate I began to realise what the English language was capable of in efficient hands; but I only grasped its full possibilities when the mate (in confidence) mentioned what he thought of the second mate. Personally, I did not think much of either of them, and was thereby thrown all the more on the resources of my companion in misfortune. He was a lean, wirily-built man with the unmistakeable accent of a gentleman, which even the slang of three continents could not disguise. He certainly had not the build of a powerful man, and save for the occasional reluctant exhibition of a quite unexpected reserve of strength, he did not look like the rough life he must have led. It is saying something for his powers as a story-teller that, after two months of no other society, he was able to tell mc a new and apposite yarn the day he bade mc good-bye in Port Chalmers.

"I had a worse experience than this in the way of monotony, once," he said. "No, not in gaol. The question is not only rude, but the repartee is too obvious to be funny."

"I didn't mean it. Let yourself go. I won't interrupt again," I returned apologetically. "Did you ever hear of the Kalahari Desert" he asked. "There, of course, you have not. The Germans own some of it, called Damaraland. The resi; of it leaks over into British South Africa. I spent six months on the border of it, just before the Jameson raid. I don't know what the rest thought, but I found Pretoria Gaol quite endurable after it."

"You were in that shindy, too, were you? You never mentioned it before.'

"I am not proud of it, I assure you; but you will recollect that I was talking about the Kalahari Desert," he replied severely. "Besides, you may have noticed that I am telling this yarn."

"There, don't get your rag out. Tell mc about the raid another time, and fire away. I won't cut in any more."

"Oh, that's all right. It is not much of a tale. There were eight of us in the detachment. A lieutenant of sorts, a corporal, five police-troopers, and myself. What was I? Hospital sergeant-major,, if you know what that is. The nearest outpost of civilisation was 200 miles away—Palapye, in British Bechuanaland. A waggon-load of stores used to get through once in three months, with any luck. Newspapers? The post-office clerks used to snavel those. - We never got them. Lucky if yotf got your letters. I messed with the officer commanding. No, I know it isn't the -Queen's Regulations, but it would have amounted to solitary confinement for him if he had stuck strictly to professional etiquette. Besides, military rank was "comparatively incidental in the Bechuanaland Border Police. The discipline was as good as they make it, but there was not any difference, socially, between the trooper and his officer. Some of us ihad been ante respectable—once."

He lit his pipe again, and took a meditative look at the grey clouds crossing the face of the moon, and then resumed.

"We were stationed near what the Dutch call a Vlef. That is a sort of fresh-water lake, which hides itself, coyly, under 20ft of sand in dry weather —and it's mostly dry in those parts. Had not been any rain for two years when I saw the place fast. The buck on the borders of the Kalahari never drink anything not even water. Don't believe that? Well they say it takes an experienced liar to make the truth credible."

"Who say? That sounds like one of your own.

"It isn't. I saw it somewhere. Anyway, I shall be all night over this yarn, if you go on at this rate. They called the place Potgieter's V.lei. No, I really cannot say who Potgieter was, but I am pretty sure his ghost does not haunt the spot. He is having the roughest kind of luck if he finds his present climate any hotter than that was. Anyhow, everybody quarrelled with everybody else before we Gad been in camp a month. And, as the officer commanding had notoriously shown the white feather in action, the men tutted him worse than they did themselves and their fellow sufferers. Dull! Jhink of it; man. Not even a native kraal within twenty miles. We shot away what little game there was in three weeks; and then lay in our tents all day, cursing our luck and each other. What were we doing in such a place? On the look-out for a big Boer 'Trek' which never came off. Did you ever go to sleep praying you might wake up in Kingdom Come? I nave. I did it then. I nearly killed myself for lack of something to do, experimenting with the hospital drugs. It was a possible relief when a man fell sick. We burieU the corporal and another, and actually enjoyed the funeral-parades. "We had been four solid months in that awful hole when the accident Happened that brought us out of it. The lieutenant's revolver went off when he was 'cleaning' it. Poor devil! I knew the wound was mortal as soon as I cut his clothes off. People don't generally 'clean* loaded revolvers? Oh, yes they some parts of.—rica. It's one of the peculiar effects of the climate. "Then he told mc (as well as a bullet in the left lung would let him) quite a curious little story about himself. He had passed out of Sandhurst with great cre_t. High enough for the engineers, but he chose the line. He became the joy of his Colonel's heart. Keen on his drill, you know, and took a pride in his work. Had a career before him, everybody said. Seconded, for service with the Bechuana Border Police, win the highest testimonials. There was lots of chance of seeing service. We always had a little border scuffle on somewhere. He got his opportunity in the first Matabele war. Then he found out what he had dreaded all his life. He was a rank coward, without even the nerve to conceal it. Oh, yes, I feel nervous when the bullets are whistling near; but I find it just as safe to go on as go back—and it doesn't look so bad." His own cool daring never cropped up in his yarns, except by implication, bnt he would have lit his pipe in the fames of Gehenna, after storming the gates thereof, if needs were, and he knew it.

"Realise what such an exhibition meant to him. He utterly lost his head and his nerve —and showed it- He was covering himself yards deep with the blackest shame the world can give. Can't you see what he must have had to endure—afterwards? The open scorn of the men he was sent to lead (for he lacked the only virtue some of them possessed) ; the neatly-balanced sarcasms or blunt taunts of bis brother officers: the scarce-veiled contempt of his subordinates; the no less painful polite irony of "his equals. Think of i»he hell life had been to him for 12 awful months! He told mc he had jumped at the chance of obliterating himself—and his record—in the desert. It had taken him four of those months to make up his mind to 'clean' that revolver. I daresay he could not help it. I suppose lie was the victim of a hereditary tendency to get behind a tree. "He implored mc, for the love of God, not to save'bus life, if by any chance the wound left room- for hope. He died in the night, and we buried him next day 'resting on our

arms reversed.' Then I did a thing I suppose I ought to feel sorry for, although I don't. I-invented an attack of Damaxas, and killed him, at the head of his men, fighting against heavy odds with the greatest gallantry. I recommended the four other survivors for promotion and swore them to secresy. The chance of being recalled to civilisation soothed their consciences and kept their mouths shut* \. hy did Ido it. Oh, he cried a bit as he was dying, and told mc the fairy tales he had written home to the girl ho was engaged to. Her letters of appreciation showed that he must have had quite a talent for fiction. "Who was she 7 Did you know her 7 "Yes, I Better than ever he could have,4fl&'l4 A: long look at the drifting clouds ihis time, and then the tag of tJie story in a voice vainly trying to sound

indifferent. „i> V Cir _ if She wrote mc a very -nice letter (not recognising mejandeEi a new name) in achis things when I sent them to her—with a'typ'e-written -Bote. She said that the memory of the dead (him) and of the living (mc) formed her ideal of what brave men should be. No moral excuse for it? That's two bells, isn't it? Goodnight." W.P.H.