" KLINKERMANN'S."

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 November 1900, Page 119

" KLINKERM ANN'S."

By Edgar M. Deli,

Illustrated by E. B. Vaughin,

"WJJPjOU can take a dozen men," said the major. "Klinkermann'sfarin 'Cjf W\ * s on^ our m^ es f rom camp, and y° u will find the country quiet. I have the list here — nearly two hundred names of those who will bring in their arms, and it will be your duty to attend to their safe forwarding to headquarters. I feel sure," continued the major, with a kindly smile, " that you will perform your duty with tact, avoiding, above all things, any unnecessary friction." Sergeant Brown, V..C, saluted, turned on his heels and walked out of the tent. Once outside, he tugged viciously at the end of his thin brown moustache, his favourite gesture when his mind was much exercised. " Klinkermann's farm — four miles — two hundred names — country pacificd — the same old rot !" he muttered, and spat vicionsly on the ground. "lamto go to this farm, sit at a table, smile affably at a lot of loutish yokels, and thank them politely for handing over a few rusty mausers and flintlocks. Next week same two hundred will cut up a convoy at a mile range. Oh, you blithering idiots !" He mentally shook his fist at the staff quarters, and then, with a contented smile dawning on his parchment-like face, he made his way to No. 2 company's quarters. The men in the shade of a sack-roofed lean-to were dreaming peacefully when the sergeant unmercifully shouted in their ears : "Now, then, look sharp a dozen of you !" " What's up ?" queried a fair-headed youth, who had arrived at the front only the day before. " Special duty," replied the sergeant. The youth sprang to his feet excitedly,

visions of glory and the V.C. in his mind. "Take me!" ho cried eagerly. The other men granted amusement ; even the shade of a lean-to is better than the open veldt. Tho youth, not having learnt this, stared at them with wonder. " I say, you fellows," he stammered out, " didn't you hear it was special, and volunteers wanted ?" Another youth, with red hair that no sun could bleach, and a freckled skin, a soldier of three months, winked knowingly. " Oh ! we're all volunteers, ain't wo, sergeant?" he remarked airly. "Don't I know it?" replied tho sergeant entering into the spirit of banter, " and you shall be the very first called, cocky, just to show my appreciation of a willing man." The other men guffawed heartily, but tho freckled youth cursed, as he dragged his sleepy limbs into tho sunlight. The sergeant quickly rattled off ten more names, and their owners groaned and crawled out in turn, while the happy ones who were left behind quickly plunged into sleep and dreams oi less arid lands. "War's rot!" growled the freckled youth, as the little company trotted away beyond the picket lines. " Fighting's all right, but it's this bally ' ride-up-and-down ' that kills a fellow. Might and morning, morning and night, it's 'saddle up, men,' 'special, men,' ' hurry up, men.' Blow their saddle up, say I !" The callous recruit babbled incontinently of Boers and glory. " Look at the sergeant," said he. " There he is, after six months, a V.C. and a noncom ! He came from my town, too. And they didn't give much spons for him there. Always thought him a bit off, myself, till

now, and it just shows what luck can do for a bloke !" The freckled youth snorted disdain. " You're dead funny, you are," he remarked, bitterly. " I suppose yon think you're goin' to have luck, too. A mighty

lot of luck you'll have, doing police work, as we are now. Luck indeed ! Try and find a little pluck first, young man." The squad rode on in silence.

"So you're Klinkerraann ?" interrogated the sergeant, as he handed his horse's reins to a trooper. The man on the verandah, a black-bearded, round-shouldered giant, whom he addressed, nodded acquiescence. "Yes, and I'm Vrau Klinkermann," said another voice. She stood before the open French window, a thin, gaunt woman, with hungry, deep sunk eyes and large, bony hands which, when she was talking, she invariably held folded above her apron. Her hair was dressed with a parting in the middle, from whence it was drawn flat and straight over her ears in the fashion of our grandmothers. There was a restlessness in her movements, in her hands which clasped and unclasped

spasmodically, in her eyes which looked first at her stolid husband, then quickly at the sei'geant and the troopers behind in the background, that did not escape the observer. He saluted deferentially, while Klinkermann spoke to her rapidly in Dutrsh, and casting round one more quick, nervous glance she passed into the room within. " I carry instructions," said the sergeant, quietly, " from the commander of the British forces to receive their arms from those belligerents who will bring them in as token of submission, and 1 am empowered to anuouuee an amnesty to such as do so." Klinkermann watched him with his sleepy black eyes, and it seemed to the sergeant that there was a tone of quiet sarcasm in his voice when he replied : "We are tired of this war." He stretched out his hand towards the veldt as if he would embrace each and all of his state. " And we are thankful for this chance to end it. Enter." The troopers dismounted and tethered their horses, while the sergeant, passing through the French window, sat down in an uncushioned arm-chair at the head of a long deal table. The room was in deep shadow, and he could barely distinguish the occupants, till from the gloom emerged a burly figure who without a word placed a gun upon the table. The sergeant glanced at the weapon. It was a Brown Bess, old and rusted, the lacquer worn from its barrels four score of years since ; it appealed to the sergeant's sense of humour. " Are these the only arms you possess ?"• he queried into the shadows. " Yes, they are all." replied Klinkernianu's

deep voice. "We poor farmers have no money to buy your modern, devil shooting guns." Still in the shadow the sergeant smiled grimly. " The other day I rode beside a man who was shot dead at two thousand yards," he remarked without explanation. " The Irish Brigade were here, then," replied Klinkermann slowly. " Doubtless they are well armed." The sergeant said no more, but stretching his legs comfortably under the table, he spread oat the major's list, and carefully ticked off the names as they answered to his roll call. Two troopers carried the spoil out through the windows, and stacked them in the sunlight, where they looked, as the freckled youth said, like a spring cleaning day at the Tower of London. " Having handed in your names," read the sergeant from the proclamation, "you will return to your farms where, so long as you maintain peace and order, you will remain unmolested by us." The sergeant Hung the paper on the table. "As you have complied with the regulations, you are permitted to depart," he said, ungraciously, and then stared into the daikness with angry eyes, for he could have .sworn that from a distant corner came a gentle ripple of laughter.

An oil lamp, emitting more .smell than light, burned on the bare deal table ; from the verandah came the hum of the troopers' voices, aii occasional laugh or the click of a match, lighting the bed-time pipe; but in the parlour the sergeant sat alone in the wooden-seated arm-chair. He had little in common with the young troopers. He had heard their yarns in shearing camps and mining towns so many years since that their repetition was monotonous. He hated their youthful cynicism with the wisdom of thirty hard years, and their humour was not his. Diamond must cut diamond, and the laughter that hard days had killed in him, only hard days could revive. He had laughed when

ho drove the Q Battery gun to safety, and when he lay behind the rock waiting death with Hallwill, but in the stillness and inaction of this night at the farm he could only yawn and brood. There was a light tap on the door, which cautiously opened, showing the guunt ligure of Vrau Klinkermann silhouetted in the dark background of the passage. ''Good evening," .said the sergeant, politely, but the woman only answered by glancing round cautiously, and raising a waniing finger. She stepped forward to the table on tip toe, and came to a standstill almost at his elbow, looking down at him keenly with her shifty, nervous eyes. When she spoke to him she held her hands as usual folded upon her apron, onlyonce raising one of them to her throat, as if endeavouring to clear away the husk mess that almost choked her voice. " 1 have news for you — urgent news," she whispered, and she paused to try and catch any change in the expression of his face, not knowing that a long training at poker will school a man against any display of emotion. " They gave in their arms to-day," who continued more quickly, as if his impassive look annoyed her, "and .they tried to make you believe that they meant giving up the war — but they don't — they don't ! 1 tell you they have arms — guns, powder, dynamite, such as you have never seen. Tisso." She waited in expectation of some surprise from him, but he only nodded his head unconcernedly. '•Of course they have," he remarked, cheerfully. "My dear Vrau, any fool might know they never used that old iron!" He jerked his head contemptuously towards the window, outside which in heaps were stacked the obsolete relies. Her first hit had palpably failed, but v smile of half scorn was on her lips. " I can tell you where they are hidden," she said. The sergeant leaned forward in his chair. This quite altered the cafle ; business was business, and though he despised the woman who was ready to betray her people, he recognized her value to him.

" What do you want ?" he said, brusquely. The woman turned on him with a fierce scorn. " You fool !" she whispered, and the sergeant, watching her flushed f.iee and flashing eyes, felt that for once he liad made a grievous mistake. "Do you think that I would sell my people ? No !" Her voice was so passionately intense that, though she only whispered, the sergeant wondered that the troopers did not hear 1 her. "Cannot you undersiand ? I have two sons — my only two. You shot one at Elandsgaate, and the other is here, hei'e in this house, waiting for to-morrow's sun to sacrifice his life, too, against your cursed race. And now I come to you to save him, and you offer me money ! Fool !" The sergeant did not reply ; the woman's passion cowed him. "We must waste no time," she continued, eagerly. "Go through the window, past the stack, to the gate leading on to the road, and I will join you there!" She walked stealthily back to the door, but as she laid her hand on the knob he stopped her. " How many men shall i bring ?" he asked. "Are you afraid?" she queried, sneeringly, and when he shook his head, she passed out cautiously and silently as she had come. He waited a moment, then opening the window door he stepped out on to the verandah. The men were grouped in the far corner, and one of them called out to him : "Shall we start early ?" " At sunrise," he answered carelessly, and stepped from the verandah on to the moonlit grass. He sauntered across the open in good imitation of a man enjoying an evening smoke, and at the gate he found the woman, a shawl wrapped about her head and shoulders, awaiting him. " You are very slow," she murmured, excitedly. "We must be quick !" She hurried forward, impelled by the fever that nerved her to this task j and the sergeant

following could hardly forbear breaking into a run, so swift was her pace. Silently they traversed two paddocks, till in the third they came to the edge of a small donga, into the darkness of which the woman plunged fearlessly. Down they went, the sergeant blindly slipping and stumbling on loose stones, cutting his hands and knees, till he could feel the blood oozing down his trouser legs. The woman stopped abruptly, and spoke to him for the first time. " Take hold of my skirt, now stoop down," she gasped. "It is pitch dark, and you will miss the way." The next instant he found himself struggling through the clinging branches of some bush creeper, which tore at his clothes with almost human viciousness. Only for a few seconds, and then with a final effort they were through, and drawing his breath pantingly, the faint heavy odour of a subterranean chamber oppressed him. The woman struck a match, and lit a candle. Once his eyes had recovered from the first brilliance of the light, he looked round with amazement. They were in a circular chamber, evidently dug out in the side of the donga, and all round, neatly stacked and piled, were hundreds of rifles, their barrels glinting darkly in the candle light. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "An armoury." The woman stamped her foot impatiently. " Will you wait till they come and find us ?" she cried. " There are fuses and powder here. Do your work ! Do you think I would have brought you here otherwise ?" "But these arms, can't I have them ?" he expostulated. " Are you going to carry them out tonight?" she raged at him. "To-morrow morning they will have taken them, but without them they cannot fight !" He did not hesitate, but while she held the light above her head with a steady, firm hand, he silently and deftly did his work. "What will be left?" she asked, half nervously, as if the thought of the work frightened her.

The sergeant laughed grimly. " I could blow up George Street with what's here," he said. She did not understand the local allusion, but she shivered as though she stood in a draught. " When I set the mutch, we must go smart," he instructed her, and then he applied the light to the fuse. It .spluttered, died down and then burnt up brightly. " Now," said the

sergeant, and seizing her hand, he dashed for the entrance. Once more the blind struggle with the guarding bush, the scramble and falls, this time up the slope, and breathless but safe, they sped across the moonlit fields. At the gate they stopped, and the sergeant leant against the post, waiting expectant. " I timed it for ten minutes," he muttered to himself. The woman screamed. In the gateway behind them, silent and grim as an avenger, stood Klinkermann. " You!" he said to his wife, and the man who listened swears that though that was the only English word uttered, the man's voice with its tone of horrible, suppressed wrath will never be forgotten ! She listened with bowed head, and when he had finished she left them, her hands folded as if in patient resignation as when the sergeant first saw her on the verandah. Then Klinkermann turned to him : " And what have you to say ?" he thundered, adding a word which no Englishman will forgive. The sergeant would have struck him, but as he raised his hand a light rose from the darkness, a tongue of flame springing to the

sky, and for a moment illuminating ovory blade of grass on the spreading veldt, and every line in the fierce faces of the men. Thon a crashing report as of a thousand cannons fired simultaneously — and silence. Klinkermann sprang forward with tho cry of a wounded beast, for he understood the answer. " To your arras!" shouted the sergeant to the troopers on the verandah. " Form outposts round the house, and shoot anyone who resists!"

# * # # #

At sunrise the troopers loaded two waggons with old mausers and flintlocks, while grim and silent from the verandah, Klinkermann watched the men. As the sergeant placed his foot in the stirrup, the farmer stepped forward and touched him on the shoulder. " You may like to hear the end of your devil's work," he said slowly. "My wife died at two o'clock !" " How?" asked the sergeant, with a gasp of amazement. But Klinkermann did not answer.