THE BATTERY FOOL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1756, 1 November 1905, Page 4

THE BATTERY FOOL.

(By Oscar King Davis.) Kanaguchi is such a tiny place that one might pass and repass it many times and never notice the little house just at the end of the single row of buildings, where the rice-paddies come right into the village. It is 11 °t vel Y different from the other houses, with its Igw walls of paper squares and its heavy thatch, so thick that not even the summer sun of Japan can send its heat through. In front the old cherrytree and the dusters of flowers* make gallant show of imitating a garden, but the glory of the place' is the great wistaria that hangs over the comer of the house and drapes it with festoons and garlands of purple beauty. If you saw Kadzu at work in her rice-field, with the sleeves of her kimono tucked up over her shoulders and her hare arms plunged: to the elbows in mud, you never would think that she was the pretty girl who lived in the little house and fenced the purple wistaria, so carefully. But Kadzu does not mind, and her mother is feeble beyond* her years and cannot help much with the barley and rice that keep them alive from year to year to love and reverence their Emperor, and he thankful they had had a man to give him when he fought his war with China.

Kadzu remembered very clearly how! fine her father was the day she and her mother, went with him to the barracks gate and said good-bye to himi forever. It was a very sorrowful day for little Kaa'zu, in, spite of the great honour she had had of carrying the little bundle of personal belongings he took away with. him. On© of them was the photograph of herself that they found rn his pocket, with one of her mother, after the battle where he was killed. Working away in the mud and water, Betting out her rice, Kadzu smiled now and then at the thought of that picture, and recalled very clearly the last time she saw her father, when she peerd through the iron bars of the barracks gate and watched his company drawn up for final inspection before going away. How well he looked in his uniform, tall and straight and strong, a very ideal soldier, even though he had! been a farmer all his life! And thinking of him Kadzu would think of this new war that was eating up the lives and the fortunes and the hopes of Japan. They had told her, some of the men who had gone away, that this was to be a great war for the glorification of Dai Nippon. Now there was to be won the dear revenge upon Russia bo long delayed. She was well grounded in the Japanese teaching that revenge is right, and she understood how grand it is to exact justice by strength. Her father had often told her thatBut she wished it could be had some other way, without the war. Goki, the telegraph clerk, who was "too small to he a soldier, had talked to her by the hour, until "she knew it all by heart, and was thoroughly tired of hearing it over again. But Goki never wearied. He could talk faster than his telegraphed words flew along the wires, and he knew so much! Kadzu wondered sometimes, when he was rattling on, how it happened! that anyone else knew anything, he knew so much. She liked much better to hear S'auko, the carpenter, talk. He had a very pleasant way, and was not so conceited and bom-

bastic as Goki. He used to come to the little house sometimes of an evening, especially when the wistaria was in bloom,, and because he was so clever and entertaining he always carried away with him a fine spray of the beautiful flowers. Kadzu liked Osame, too, but be very rarely had anything to say for himself or anybody else. He was as big a*s he was silent, and Kadzu had often admired the strength of his arms and hack as he helped her to get in the barley or rice. For although Osame could not balk much, he knew some things about farming vastly more helpful than mere words, Because he was so big, it was natural that he should be sent into the artillery when he came to join the colours for Ms military service- It takes strong men to handle the heavy guns, and Osame went away to Bakan to serve in one of the great fortresses there, the monster guns of which frowned down on the shining ribbon of r/ater that marks the mouth of the Inland Sea. He was not popular in Kanaguchi. They said he was a stupid fellow, and all the town made jokes at his expense. And because there were few friends to defend! him, and Osame would not speak for himself, there was little check on such talk. Pretty Kadzu did not fail to tell how kind he had been to her and her mother, and how he had helped them; how, when every one else was too busy with the crops to give a minute, Olsame had, worked at night in his own field in order to give part of the day to them. But what could Kadzu say that would stop a village from gossiping?- She was only a girl working hard to support her mother, and she was grateful for the help of the big, sturdy fellow. Sometimes the recollection of his friendliness would move ner to some warmth in his behalf, and then the laugh go round and the knowing nod, and Kadbui would run home blushing, with the laughter ringing in her ears, and her heart hot with indignation.

Otnly once had she and Qsame spoken about’it. That was in the summer before he went to join the army, when the jokes ami rough jests of which he was the butt seemed to have been increasing. He was helping her plant rice one afternoon when she suddenly asked: “Whv do you never have anything to say, Olsame? Do you not know how badly, people talk about you in the village and how they laugh at you?” Osame stopped his work, pausing with a bunch of rice shoots in his hand', and looked perplexedly at the girl. Then he looked down at the rice shoots again, but said nothing. “D'o you not know that they call you a stupid,” the girl went on, “and say even worse things, and make jokes about you, and, when anything is displeasing, say it is ‘as stupid! as Olsame,’ or ‘as dull as Olsame’ ?” But Osame made no reply, and went on planting the rice, and the girl, despairing of rousing him,, turned again to her work. Presently, when he had finished the hunch of shoot© in his hand, Olsame paused and looked up at Kadzu. “Yes. I know how they talk,” he said, as if there had been no pause. Then he picked up another hunch of shoots and prepared to go on planting.

The girl turned and looked at him in astonishment. “Then—then, why ?” she began, but stopped, puzzled how to go on. “Because, if it were not about me, it would be about some one else,” Osame said, replying to her unasked question. “I can stand it better than any one else I know in Kanaguchi.” There was no talking to a man like that, and Kadzu turned to her work, pausing now and then to note the swiftness and ease with which Osame set out the sprouts, two rows to her one. work as fast as she might. After Olsame went to Bakan to be a soldier, Kadzu never heard from him. The man who was too silent to talk had nothing to write, and there was no one else in the village in whom he had any interest or who had! any interest in him. His was a singular fate for a Japanese. His father was killed, like Kadzu’©, in the war with China, and on the death of his mother, a few years later, there was no relative to whom he was willing to go. He preferred to etav on the little farm he had inherited and make the most of it for himself. There he lived alone, and Kadzu and her mother 1 were the only friends he had in all Japan. The work was very much harder for Kadzu without Osame’s help. Sianko talked cleverly and was entertaining and witty, but it seemed never to occur to him that there were plenty of things he could d)o to assist the two women who had such a hard time to get along. But Sianko was a carpenter, and perhaps thought farmer’s work not suited bo a man of his importance in life. Hie went so far as to try his wit once or twice at Osamc’s expense; but that was more than Kadzu would hear, even from him, and ho soon ceased the effort. Sanko was older than Olsame and had completed his army service the year before the big farmer went away. But now that the great war of revenge had come at last, after the weary years of waiting and preparation, be knew he dioukl be summoned soon to go out to see actual fighting. He was very glad, yet sometimes when he thought of Kadeu there was a pang in his heart that he could nob ignore. Hie, too, had been in the artillery, and when at last the order did some, Sanko found, to -his Surprise, that he was to go to Osame’s battery.

Kadzu was very sorry when Sanko went away. The carpenter was well liked in Kanaguchi, and many of the villagers walked all the way into the city with him, escorting him in honour to the gate of the mobilisation barracks. Etven little Goki went along, and carriedi the bamboo pole from which floated) the banner setting forth Sanko’s history and merits, so that all the people of the city might know who was this soldier who had come to join the colours tit the call of war. Kadzu went also, walking with three or four -others, silent and thoughtful. But when Sanko passed through the great iron gate of the barracks, she waved the little flag she carried, and cried “Banzai” as loudly as any of the others. Sanko heard, and smiled as he caught her eye®. And though he had said good-by forever, after the manner of a loyal Japanese, as he was, and had made his preparation to die in, the field, as in-

deed he honestly expected to do, yet iaa his secret heart he found himself cherishing a great hope that he might com® back honourably and well, and building plans of what might happen, if he should. „ If hard work were always a relief for loneliness and trouble', Kadzu would have been neither lonely nor troubled Hhfl.fi summer, for the tightening pinch of war made the hard problem of life even more difficult for the girl and her mother. But there was much to talk about now in the events of the conflict, with plenty of excitement. And now, too. Kadzu heard of her long-absent friend. Osame did not write himself, but Sianko did. It was_ little Goki, whe was too small to go to war, who received the wonderful letter, and bursting with the importance of his informat’on, he could hardly wait until hia release from duty to strut down to Kadzu’s house and relate the news to her. Sanko was already a his excellent training in his previous service having speedily won honour for him. One of the men in his section waa Osame, the farmer. He was the same old Osame, only, perhaps, if that were possible, a little more stupid and silent. He was not even a first-class private, in spite of his year of service. He wag the target of the jokes and jests of all the men, as he had been in Kanaguchi, and they .called him “the battery fool.” They were going to the front in a few days. They had been taken out of the fort and equipped with howitzers, forming part of the new regiment of heavy artillery which had just been organised for field-service. _ But ooor Osame! He would never’ win the great fame that comes to men who perform great actions in the face of the enemy.- He was too slow and stupid. It was strange to Sanko that the officer® allowed him to stay. Only his tremendous strength made him of any use in the battery. He could do a man’s share in handling the guns when some one else told him how, but that was all. Ho would be only a farmer all his life, if he did not have the luck to he killed in this war. So the letter ran on, and little Goki, swelling with pride in its possession, mouthed it over and dilated upon it and the certaint-v of Sanko’s coming greatness, and the unhaooy lot of poor, stupid Olsame,"' until Kadzu could bear no more, and sent him away confounded and speechless, for once, with astonishment-. perplexity, and indignation. But if Kadzu would not listen to him, there were plenty of others in Kanaguchi who would, and Goki soon recovered the use of his which wagged and wagged as he spread the story of Osame’s uselessness. And then, a? is the way with such reports, the story grew and took on new proportions, and: changed through shades of sinister meaning that began with mere lack of proper spirit in the performance of duty and ended in absolute cowardice, the most terrible and unpardonable crime in all the range of desperate offenses conceivable to the Japanese mind. Kadzu went about her work sadhearted over what she felt to he the disgrace of hea- friend, the only person in Kanaguchi who had ever really held out a helping hand to her and her mother. She was too loyal to hear Oteame openly disparaged, but in many

ways the gossips of the village contrived to get the growing tale to hen ears, although none of them dared speak directly to. her about it. Little Goki had told the story of her reception of the letter, atnd had not failed to give it dlie setting and importance in his repetition. Kanaguchi drew its own conclusions, and many a sigh went up at the sight of the girl, coupled with a pious “Poor Kadzul” She not the girl to believe the story of cowardice. It was a wicked slander, she knew, and she - lost no chance of denouncing it as such, ail unaware of the manner in which thus gradually but persistently she was linking herself to Osame in the minds of the villagers. Thus matters stood when one day word came to Kanaguchi that the battery had sailed in a transport from Moji, bound for the “certain place” so characteristic of Japanese reports of military movements. In the course of time Goki received another letter from Sanko. The battery had arrived at the “certain place,” from which the letter was written, and it was the hope and expectation of the men that in a short time it would proceed to a “certain other place,” there to engage in a great action against the “merciless enemy.” This time there was no mention of Osame. Sanko contented himself with recounting his own exploits, and his hopes of soon becoming sergeantmajor, in the proud belief that the destinies of at least a part of the battery lay in his hands. The barley was heading out in Kadzu’s little field when Sanko’s battery sailed for the front. It had been harvested and threshed when this letter came, and the water was standing deep inside the dikes 'in preparation for the riceplanting. The blight of war left little open trace on the villagers, When they met they were as cheerful and smiling as ever. It was only in the privacy of their own homes that they gave way to the sober feelings that lay ever in their quiet hearts. They would not have been loyal Japanese if they had permitted even their closest neighbours to see anything of the sadness that oppressed them. So Kadzu worked in her rice field with a smile on her face; but under her heavy blue-and-white kimono her heart beat sometimes with an energy that almost stopped her breath. There was no news from the front. The wonderful conspiracy of silence which kept reports of the doings of the army from the outside world served also to keep the people whose fathers, brothers, husbands, and sweethearts were offering their lives for the glory of the empire in almost as complete ignorance of their whereabouts as of their deeds. Weeks passed after the receipt of Sanko’s second letter, with never a word to any one in Kanaguchi as to what was happening to her sons in Manchuria. If Kadzu had had opportunity to read the city papers, she might have gleaned some inkling of what was going on from the mass of vague allusion and the lines of non-

committal ciphers intended to represent the names of men and places -which the stringent military law forbade to be printed. Rut city papers were beyond the range of the farmer girl and her small circle of village friends, and it was only now and then that she caught from words passed from mouth to mouth something of how it fared with her soldier friends. Wonderful Goki knew everything. Not only did ho occasionally see a city paper picked up in the railway-oar where some traveller had dropped it, but there was added to his importance the mystery that pertains to all those who have to do with the handling of telegraph files, those monumental repositories of the secrets of individuals and governments. Rut even through the monstrous conceit of the self-com-placent clerk there had penetrated at last the consciousness that he was no longer welcome at the wistaria-covered hut, and he stayed away, occupying the time he would have spent there in the invention of more and more mouth-fill-ing reports of the astounding deeds of his comrades in the field. Then one day there came real news, a cold, bare recital, which not even Goki’s vivid imagination could embellish with greater interest. He realised his own helplessness as he read the story in a fortuitous newspaper dropped from a car window as a train rumbled through the station. Two great facts stared him in the face from the printed page. There had been a fight, a great battle which had raged for fifteen hours around one devoted spot. In the midst of the maelstrom, the battery, Kanargoohi’s own battery, in which Sanko and Osame served their country, had stood all day the target of the enemy, the rock of solid support for its mates. The day had been won, the battle had been a great victory, and Goki lead with eyes swelling out of their sockets the words in which th* general who commanded the army had praised the battery for its gallantry and its work. And then, with a shock which numbed his sensibilities and made him as stupid as the man he had delighted to call “the battery fool,” he read how the general specially commended Shinobu Osame ‘Tor coolness, daring, and judgment, which, at a critical moment, and at the imminent risk of his life, had saved the battery and rendered the day’s result possible.’*

Goki put the paper down on his table and stared at it in speechless astonishment. There was no mention of Sanko in it, not a word. Not even was an officer named. Only Osame, the coward, “the battery fool,” distinguished by his general above all his fellows and his commanders for the work no one who knew him would have believed it possible lie could perform. It was too wonderful for the little telegraph clerk to comprehend. Yet there it was in the brief, colourless sentences of the official report. Osame had done it ; he was the hero, and Sanko was not mentioned. A long time Goki sat heedless of everything else, pondering this inscrutable event. His relief came in, and, finding him thus occupied, demanded the reason, for such unheard-of conduct. Goki replied deliberately that there had been a great battle. Then he picked up the precious jr-aper and walked out of the office into the rood. Hardly aware of what ho did, he went straight to Kadzu’s house.. The girl was sitting in front of the wistaria-vine looking at the rice, whose tall rows of clean, straight shoots gave promise of the harvest. She hardly spoke to the telegraph clerk when he stopped beside her. Without a word he shoved the paper into her hands, pointing to the wonderful news. Kadzu glanced at the nlace indicated, and then there happened a thing more surprising to Goki than even the news he had brought. ‘For. as she read, the girl both laughed and -wept, and then, springing to her feet, gave the little telegraph clerk a stinging slap across the mouth, and crying, “Slanderer!” ran into the house, hugging the paper in her arms. Straight to her mother she ran and thrust the paper into her- hands. Here was the truth at last, she cried, and when the mother finished reading the joyful report and looked around for her daughter, Kadzu was lying prone on her face on the mat in the corner where she 'slept, sobbing as though some terrible calamity had overtaken them. Utterly dumbfounded, Goki walked back along the village street toward the telegraph office, and, for once, had no word for the people he met or who ; hailed him as he passed. Something more unfathomable than the amazing news in the paper had happened to the garrulous little gossip, and he needed time to think it over by himself. He had caught his first glimpse of the complex working of a woman’s heart, and, being only a man, who had thought but little, and never at all of such things, he completely failed to comprehend. But the mother understood, and made nb effort either to comfort or quiet the girl. By and by, when the paroxysm had passed. Kadzu’s first thought was for the paper, and again she read the glorious report. At first it had seemed auite complete. The one great fact was all-sufficient. Osame had proved himself. But now she wanted more. What had he done that was so brave and fine, aiid how had he done it? Even 'the smallest detail she craved, and here was nothing beyond the brief words of the hurried general necessary to state the bare fact. It seemed to Kadzu that all the world must be made to know how Osame had been calumniated. The wicked' slander must be thrust dlowtn the throats of the slanderers, and she iherself would do it. She took up the paper and started out. At the door she paused. A sudden blush surged up over her neck and cheeks. She turned back and sat down again on the floor, the paper spread out before her. silently studying. the cold!, official story. Kanaguchi did not need to be told by Kadzu of what Osame had done. Even if Goki had not found his tongue again and begun to celebrate the deeds of the man of whom he had been so fond of making jests, with as much enthusiasm as if he had always been Osame’s greatest admirer, there were enough of the villagers who had read

the report to spread the news. It was wonderful how quickly the tied turned —quite as wonderful as the manner in which these loyal Japanese accepted without question the bald outlines of the story for every detail of which they were so hungry. Only now and then did some doubter try to cast a little shadow over the brightness by suggesting that it must be a mistake, and that Sergeant Sanko probably would be found to have been the man who did the work for which Osame got the praise. But, to their oredit, few listened to such sinister suggestion. For the most part Kanaguchi was simply, honestly glad of Osame’s proved~ bravery. It was on a morning when the village had settled down to its old routine again, after all the excitement, that the letter-carrier brought to Kadzu a long, very official-looking envelop. The girl was so surprised that she studied the outside a long time before venturing to break the seal. It surely was hers right enough. There was the address as plain as if written by a priest. She tore it open, wondering who could have written it, and, woman-like, looked first at the signature. It was that of the young priest of the little temple on the hill back of Osame’s farm. She knew the place well. Since Osame had gone to the war she had been there as often as was proper for a young girl who knew the “greater learning for women,” to make offerings for his safety. But she did not know , that the priest had gone to the front, too. Mr Shinobu Osame asked me to write this to you [the letter said], and to tell you that if you heard he had been killed it was not true. He has a -wound in the head where the piece of shell struck him,, and his hands are very sore beating out the fire, but he says that is all. Mr Shinobu did not ask me to say anything more [continued the priest], but it may be you would like to know how he was hurt. There was a great battle. The enemy held a very strong place on a large hill, where they had many guns. Mr Shinobu’s battery was sent into the centre of our line to attack this hill. It was very much exposed, and many of the men were hit; some of them were killed. Mr Shinobu was struck by a piece of shell on the head and knocked down. But after a little he got up again and Went on with his work. He was very strong, and it was bis duty to bring ammunition from the waggons a little hack from the battery. All the waggons were stationed together in a hollow where it was thought they were under cover from the enemy’s fire. But just when the fight was most severe and when most depended upon the battery,a shell from the enemy struck one of the ammunition waggons in the center of the group and burst, setting fire to the wood and exploding scone of the shells. It was very dangerous, for a strong wind was blowing, and it seemed likely that all the .ammunition would be set off, so that the battery would have to retreat, many men would be killed, and perhaps the battle would he lost and the guns captured.

The captain of the battery called to his men to draw away the burning %vaggon from the others, but although they did not quail before the fire of the enemy, they were afraid of the bursting of their own shells. Then Ma’ vSlergeant Miyaoka Sanko was ordered to put out the fire; but he replied that he could not, for he had nq water and could get none. It was then that Mr Shinobu, who had delivered some shells to the guns, saw what had happened. He ran to the burning waggon at once, and such was his great strength that he alone drew it out of its place and away from the others, so that there was* no longer danger of setting them on fire. Then, although the shells in the waggon-box were likely to explode at anv instant.

he set to work to put out the fire. He had no water and nothing to work with, so with his bare hands he beat the fire. This he continued until it was all out, and the battery and the ammunition, and, as it proved, the day’s great battle, were saved. But he was struck again on the head, and is severely wounded. In a few days he will be sent home to be taken care of. He will get well again in time; but ho is too much hurt to be able to recover quickly, and therefore cannot be sent to the hospital, where only those are treated who are expected to join the army . soon. By this great act he has fulfilled his service and has done his whole duty to the empire, as well a,s earned the Kan jo and the pension which have been already given him. The tears ran down the girl’s face unheeded as she finished the letter, and she sat for a long time silent and motionless. This was what he had done —saved his battery alone and made the victory possible; stood by the burning waggon, with death only the thickness of a thin hoard away, and beat out the fine with his bare hands! No wonder they gave him the Kanjo, the certificate of merit for extraordinary gallantry in action, more highly prized l than life itself. No wonder the great general had given space in his report to commend him! Perhaps the general did not know that- he was only “the battery fool!” The girl laughed scornfully as she thought how he saved' the men who had made sport of him. And noW he was to be sent home for care, for the nation was too poor to maintain hospitals for those who could! no longer fight for it.. She knew how that was, and how all over Japan there were homes where only by the strictest economy, often by living on two meals a day, the people had kept their fighting relatives in the little comforts in the field their beggarly pay would not buy, and who, when they were wounded or sick, must care for them to the end with no help from the government. But Osame?. There was no home for him to go to. There was no one to nurse him and bring him hack to health in all Kanaguohi, unless —the blush came surging up over her cheeks again. She ros® and went to her mother. “Oteame is coming home, to get well,” she said, “and there is no place for him to go.” replied the mother, gently; “we must make a place for him here.” Ten days after a hospital train stopped at Kanaguchi, and from it the Bed Cross men bore on a stretcher the w ounded Osame, his head and arms swathed in bandages. There were plenty now who would be proud of the opportunity to care for the man. who had given distinction to all the place, but the stretcher-men bore him gently to the last house in the row on the road, where the purple wistaria hangs thickly over the corner of the thatch, and where a bright-eyed girl and her feeble old mother received him with glad words and happy hearts. And if you chance to b® in Kanaguchi when the wistaria blooms again you will doubtless see Mr Shinobu Osame, “the battery fool,” busily at work putting in his barley, while his wife trims the beautiful vine and tends the little garden, she, as neat and bright and happy as the little house where they live.