Chapter-9
Thousands of men and thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks and mules had gathered at Rawalpindi, to be reviewed by the Viceroy of India. The Amir of Afghanistan was coming to meet the Viceroy. Eight hundred men arrived along with the Amir and several horses that had never seen a camp or a locomotive before in their lives. These horses used to break their heel ropes and stampede up and down the camp in the dark, or the camels would break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of the tents. This happened each night and always caused problems to the sleeping men.
My tent was far away from the camel lines, and I thought it was safe. One night, a man popped his head in and shouted, “Get out, quick! They’re coming! My tent has gone!”
I knew who ‘they’ were, so I quickly put on my boots and waterproof and ran out. Little Vixen, my fox terrier, went out through the other side; and then there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling. I saw the tent cave in, as the pole snapped and began to dance about like a mad ghost. A camel had blundered into it, wet and angry as I was. Then I ran on, because I did not know how many camels might have got loose.
At last, I fell over the tail-end of a gun. I knew that it was somewhere near the artillery lines where the cannon were stacked at night. I put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, and made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammers that I found. Then, I lay along the tail of another gun, wondering where Vixen had got to, and where I might be.
Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I heard a jingle of harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears.
Behind the mule, there was a camel, with his big soft feet slipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro. I always knew enough of beast language—not wild-beast language, but camp-beast language, of course—from the natives to know what he was saying.
The camel must have been the one that flopped into my tent. He called the mule and said, “What shall I do? Where shall I go? I have fought with a white thing that waved, and it took a stick and hit me on the neck. Shall we run on?”
The mule said, “So, it was you and your friends that have been disturbing the camp. You’ll be beaten for this in the morning. But I should give you something in return right now.”
The mule at once hit the camel with two kicks in the ribs that rang like a drum, “Sit down, and keep your silly neck quiet.”
The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and sat down whimpering. There was a regular beat of hoofs in the darkness, and a big troop-horse cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped a gun tail, and landed close to the mule.
“It’s disgraceful,” he said, blowing out his nostrils, “Those camels have racketed through our lines again—the third time this week. Who’s here?”
“I’m the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the First Screw Battery,” said the mule, “and the other’s one of your friends. He’s waked me up too. Who are you?”
“Number Fifteen, E troop, Ninth Lancers—Dick Cunliffe’s horse. Stand over a little, there.”
The mule said, “I walked out of my lines to get a little peace and quiet here.”
The camel then said humbly, “We dreamed bad dreams in the night, and we were very much afraid. I am only a baggage camel of the 39th Native Infantry, and I am not so brave as you are.”
“Instead of running all round the camp, why didn’t you stay and carry baggage for the 39th Native Infantry?” said the mule.
“They were such very bad dreams,” said the camel, “I am sorry.”
“Sit down,” said the mule, “or you’ll snap your long stick-legs between the guns.” He cocked one ear and listened. “Bullocks!” he said, “Gun bullocks. On my word, you and your friends have waked the camp very thoroughly. It takes a good deal of prodding to put up a gun-bullock.”
I heard a chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke of the great sulky white bullocks, that dragged the heavy siege guns when the elephants won’t go any nearer to the firing, came shouldering along together. And almost stepping on the chain was another battery mule, calling wildly for ‘Billy’.
“That’s one of our recruits,” said the old mule to the troop-horse, “He’s calling for me.”
The gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing the cud, but the young mule huddled close to Billy.
“Billy! They came into our lines while we were asleep. Do you think they’ll kill us?” said the mule.
“I’ve a very great mind to give you a number-one kicking,” said Billy, “The idea of a fourteen-hand mule with your training disgraces the battery before this gentleman!”
“Gently, gently!” said the troop-horse, “Remember, they are always like this to begin with. The first time I ever saw a man, I ran for half a day, and if I’d seen a camel, I should have been running still.”
Billy said, “Stop shaking, youngster. The first time they put the full harness with all its chains on my back I stood on my forelegs and kicked every bit of it off. I hadn’t learnt the real science of kicking then, but the battery said they had never seen anything like it.”
“But this wasn’t harness,” said the young mule, “You know I don’t mind that now, Billy. It was things like trees. They fell up and down the lines and bubbled. My head-rope broke, and I couldn’t find my driver. I couldn’t find you, Billy, so I ran off with—with these gentlemen.”
“As soon as I heard the camels were loose, I came away on my own. When a battery—a screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, he must be very badly shaken up. Who are you fellows on the ground there?” asked Billy.
The gun-bullocks rolled their cuds, and both answered together, “We were asleep when the camels came, but when we were trampled on, we got up and walked away. We thought it was better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding. We told your friend here that there was nothing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. We are the seventh yoke of the first gun of the Big Gun Battery.”
They went on chewing.
The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I heard him say something about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world. But the bullocks only clicked their horns together and went on chewing.
“You should never be angry after you are afraid. That’s the worst sign of cowardice,” said the troop-horse, “There is nothing to be ashamed of being scared in the night, if you see things you don’t understand.”
Then, Billy said, “I’m not above stampeding myself, for the fun of the thing, when I haven’t been out for a day or two. But what do you do on active service?”
“Dick Cunliffe’s on my back then, and drives his knees into me. All I have to do is to watch where I am putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs well under me, and be bridle-wise,” said the troop-horse.
“What’s bridle-wise?” said the young mule.
“By the Blue Gums of the Back Blocks,” snorted the troop-horse, “Do you mean to say that you aren’t taught to be bridle-wise in your business? How can you do anything, unless you can spin round at once when the rein is pressed on your neck? It means life or death to your man, and, of course, that’s life and death to you. Get round with your hind legs under you the instant you feel the rein on your neck. If you haven’t room to swing round, rear up a little and come round on your hind legs. That’s being bridle-wise.”
“We aren’t taught that way,” said Billy the mule stiffly. “We’re taught to obey the man at our head: step off when he says so, and step in when he says so.”
“That depends,” said the troop-horse, “Generally I have to go in among a lot of yelling, hairy men with knives—long shiny knives, worse than the farrier’s knives—and I have to take care that Dick’s boot is just touching the next man’s boot without crushing it.”
“Don’t the knives hurt?” said the young mule.
“Well, I got one cut across the chest once, but that wasn’t Dick’s fault.”
“A lot I should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!” said the young mule.
“You must,” said the troop-horse, “If you don’t trust your man, you may as well run away at once. That’s what some of our horses do, and I don’t blame them.”
“It sounds very foolish. Knives are always dangerous. The proper thing to do is to climb up a mountain with a well-balanced saddle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl and wriggle along, till you come out hundreds of feet above anyone else on a ledge where there’s just room enough for your hoofs. Then you stand still and keep quiet—never ask a man to hold your head,” said Billy.
“Don’t you ever trip?” said the troop-horse.
“I wish I could show you our business. It’s beautiful. It took me three years to find out what the men were driving at. A badly packed saddle will only upset a mule, but it’s very seldom. I lead the battery when it comes to that sort of climbing,” said Billy.
The baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro for some time past, anxious to get a word in edgewise. Then I heard him say, as he cleared his throat, nervously, “I—I—I have fought a little, but not in that climbing way or that running way.”
“You don’t look as though you were made for climbing or running much. Well, how was it, old Hay-bales?” said Billy.
The camel then started to speak, “In a big square, the men piled our Packs and saddles, outside the square, and they fired over our backs. The men did, on all sides of the square.”
“What sort of men?” said the troop-horse, “They teach us in riding school to lie down and let our masters fire across us, but Dick Cunliffe is the only man I’d trust to do that.”
“There are plenty of men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many clouds of smoke. I am not frightened then. I sit still and wait,” said the camel.
Billy said, “And you dream bad dreams and upset the camp at night. Before I’d lie down, not to speak of sitting down, and let a man fire across me, my heels and his head would have something to say to each other. Did you ever hear anything as awful as that?”
There was a long silence, and then one of the gun bullocks lifted up his big head and said, “This is very foolish indeed. There is only one way of fighting.”
“Only one way,” said the two together, “This is that way. To put all twenty yokes of us to the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpet.”
“What do Two Tails trumpet for?” said the young mule.
“Two Tails is a great coward. Then, we tug the big gun all together. We do not climb like cats nor run like calves. We go across the level plain, twenty yokes of us, till we are unyoked again. We graze while the big guns talk across the plain to some town with mud walls. Pieces of the wall fall out, and the dust goes up as though many cattle were coming home,” said Billy.
“How can you choose that time for grazing?” said the young mule.
“Eating is always good. We eat till we are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is waiting for it. Sometimes there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, and then there is all the more grazing for those that are left. This is Fate.”
“I surely learnt something tonight,” said the troop-horse, “Do you gentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel inclined to eat when you are being fired at with big guns, and Two Tails is behind you?”
“I have never heard about feeling inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all over us, or run into people with knives. I never heard such stuff,” said Billy, with a stamp of his foot.
“Of course,” said the troop-horse, “everyone is not made in the same way, and I can quite see that your family, on your father’s side, would fail to understand a great many things.”
“Never you mind my family on my father’s side,” said Billy angrily, “For every mule hates to be reminded that his father was a donkey. You big brown Brumby!”
(Brumby means a wild horse without any breeding)
“See here, you son of an imported Malaga jackass,” he said between his teeth, “I’d have you know that I’m related on my mother’s side to Carbine, winner of the Melbourne Cup. We aren’t accustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any parrot-mouthed, pig-headed mule in a pop-gun pea-shooter battery. Are you ready?”
They both reared up facing each other, and I was expecting a furious fight.
Both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor mule can bear to listen to an elephant’s voice.
“It’s Two Tails!” said the troop-horse, “I can’t stand him. A tail at each end isn’t fair!”
“I suppose we’ve inherited them from our mothers,” said the troop-horse, “It’s not worth quarrelling about. Hi! Two Tails, are you tied up?”
“Yes,” said Two Tails, with a laugh all up his trunk, “I’m picketed for the night. I’ve heard what you fellows have been saying. But don’t be afraid. I’m not coming over.”
The bullocks and the camel said, half aloud, “We are sorry that you heard, but it is true. Two Tails, why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?”
“Two Tails said, “I don’t quite know whether you’d understand.”
“We don’t, but we have to pull the guns,” said the bullocks.
“I know you are braver than you think you are. But it’s different with me. My battery captain called me a Pachydermatous Anachronism the other day,” replied Two Tails.
“That’s another way of fighting, I suppose,” said Billy.
“You don’t know what that means, of course, but I do. I can see inside my head what will happen when a shell bursts, and you bullocks can’t,” replied Two Tails.
“I can,” said the troop-horse, “But I try not to think about it.”
Two Tails said, “I have to care of myself. I know that nobody knows how to cure me when I’m sick. All they do is that they stop my driver’s pay till I get well, and I can’t trust my driver.”
“We do not understand,” said the bullocks.
“I know you don’t. I’m not talking to you. You don’t know what blood is,” said Two Tails facing the bullocks.
“We do,” said the bullocks, “It is red stuff that soaks into the ground and smells.”
“Don’t talk of it,” he said, “I can smell it now, just thinking of it. It makes me want to run—when my driver—Dick is not on my back.”
“But it is not here,” said the camel and the bullocks, “Why are you so stupid?”
Then, Billy said, “I don’t want to run, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Two Tails stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled, “Oh, I’m not talking to you. You can’t see inside your heads.”
“No. We see out of our four eyes,” said the bullocks, “We see straight in front of us.”
“If I could do that and nothing else, you wouldn’t be needed to pull the big guns at all. If I were like my captain, I could pull the guns. But if I were as wise as all, I should never be here. I should be a king in the forest, as I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked. I haven’t had a good bath for a month.”
“That’s all very fine,” said Billy, “But giving a thing a long name doesn’t make it any better.”
The troop-horse said, “I think I understand what Two Tails means.”
“You’ll understand better in a minute,” said Two Tails angrily, “Now you just explain to me why you don’t like this!”
“Stop that!” said Billy. The troop-horse, and I could hear them stamp and shiver. An elephant’s trumpeting is always nasty, especially on a dark night.
“I shall not stop,” said Two Tails.
Then, he stopped suddenly. I heard a little whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last. She knew as well as I that if there was one thing in the world the elephant was more afraid of than other, it was a little barking dog. So, she stopped to bully Two Tails in his pickets, and yapped round his big feet. Two Tails shuffled and squeaked, “Go away, little dog!” he said.
Billy said to the troop-horse, “Two Tails is afraid of most things. Now, if I have a full meal for every dog I’ve kicked across the parade-ground I should be as fat as Two Tails nearly.”
I whistled, and Vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked my nose, and told me a long tale about hunting for me all through the camp. I never let her know that I understood beast talk, or she would have taken all sorts of liberties. So I buttoned her into the breast of my overcoat. Two Tails shuffled, stamped and growled to himself.
I heard him feeling about with his trunk.
“I hope all of you were alarmed when I trumpeted,” said Two Tails, “I’m frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is frightened by bad dreams in the night.”
“It is very lucky for us that we haven’t all got to fight in the same way,” said the troop-horse.
The young mule was quiet for a long time but broke his silence now, “What I want to know is why we have to fight at all.”
“Because we’re told to,” said the troop-horse, with a snort of contempt.
“Orders!” said Billy the mule, and his teeth snapped.
“Yes, but who gives the orders?” said the mule.
“The man who walks at your head or sits on your back or holds the nose rope or twists your tail,” said Billy and the troop-horse and the camel and the bullocks one after the other.
“But who gives them the orders?” asked the mule again.
“You don’t have to know too much. All you have to do is to obey the man at your head and ask no questions,” said Billy.
“He’s quite right,” said Two Tails, “I can’t always obey. But Billy’s right. Obey the man next to you who gives the order or else you’ll get a thrashing.”
The gun-bullocks got up to go.
“It’s almost morning,” they said, “We should go back to our lines. We are the only people tonight who were not afraid. Good-night, you brave people.”
None answered to this, but the troop-horse said, “Where’s that little dog?”
“Here I am,” shouted the Vixen, “with my man. You big, blundering beast of a camel; you upset our tent. My man’s very angry.”
The bullock then said, “The man must be white.”
“Yes he is,” said Vixen, “Do you suppose I’m looked after by a black bullock-driver?”
This annoyed the bullock and he started to move.
They plunged forward in the mud, and manaaged somehow to run their yoke on the pole of an ammunition wagon, where it jammed.
“Now you have done it,” said Billy calmly, “Don’t struggle. You’re hung up till daylight. What’s the matter?”
The bullocks went off into the long hissing snorts. They pushed, crowded, slued, stamped, slipped and nearly fell down in the mud, grunting savagely.
The troop-horse said, “What’s the matter with white men? I live among them.”
“They—eat—us!” said the near bullock.
I never understood why Indian cattle were scared of Englishmen as we only eat beef and none of our cattle-drivers ever touched or liked it.
“I’m going to look at this man. Most of the white men, I know, have things in their pockets,” said the troop-horse.
“I’ll leave you, then. I’m not fond of them myself. White men who don’t have a place to sleep are more than likely to be thieves, and I’ve a good deal of Government property on my back. Come along and we’ll go back to our lines. Good-night, Australia! See you on parade tomorrow, I suppose. Good-night, old Hay-bale!—try to control your feelings, won’t you? Good-night, Two Tails! If you pass us on the ground tomorrow, don’t trumpet. It spoils our formation,” said the troop-horse.
“I’m coming to the parade tomorrow in my dog-cart,” she said, “Where will you be?”
“On the left hand of the second squadron, I set the time for all my troop, little lady,” he said politely, “Now I must go back to Dick. My tail’s all muddy, and he’ll have two hours’ hard work dressing me for parade.”
The big parade was to take place that afternoon. It included all the thirty thousand men and Vixen. I had a good place close to the Viceroy and the Amir of Afghanistan. The first part of the review was all sunshine, and the regiments went by in wave upon wave of legs all moving together, and guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two Tails and two other elephants harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege gun, while twenty yoke of oxen walked behind. The seventh pair had a new yoke, and they looked rather stiff and tired. Last but not the least, came the screw guns. Billy the mule carried himself as though he commanded all the troops. His harness was oiled and polished till it winked.
Suddenly, it began to rain. For a while, it was too misty to see what the troops were doing. They had made a big half circle across the plain, and were spreading out into a line. That line grew and grew and had grown more than half a mile from wing to wing—one solid wall of men, horses and guns. Then, it came on straight towards the Viceroy and the Amir, and as it got nearer, the ground began to shake.
I looked at the Amir. He had not shown the shadow of a sign of astonishment or anything else. But now his eyes began to get bigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his horse’s neck and looked behind him. It almost seemed as though he was going to draw his sword and slash his way out through the Englishmen and the women in the carriages at the back. Then, the advance stopped dead, the ground stood still, the whole line saluted, and thirty bands began to play all together. That was the end of the review, and the regiments went off to their camps in the rain. An infantry band struck up.
Then, I heard an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief, who had come down with the Amir, asking a native officer questions.
“Now,” said he, “in what manner was this wonderful thing done?”
And the officer answered, “An order was given, and they obeyed.”
“But are the beasts as wise as the men?” said the chief.
“They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant or bullock—he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier the general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress. Thus it is done.”
“It is not so in Afghanistan,” said the chief, “for there, we obey only our own wills.”
“And for that reason,” said the native officer, twirling his moustache, “your Amir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our Viceroy.”
