Part 13
In the days of my almost forgotten boyhood I remember reading in the Book of all books that the Wise Man, in a fit of blank despair, declared that there were several things under heaven which he could neither gauge nor understand, viz., "The way of a serpent upon a rock, and the way of a man with a maid," and I beg leave to doubt if Solomon, in all his wisdom, could understand the little ways of a camp liar in his frisky glory. Whence he cometh, whither he goeth, and why he was born, are conundrums which might tax the ingenuity of all the prophets, from Daniel downwards, to solve. I have sought him with peace offerings in each hand, hoping to beguile him from his sinful ways, and have located him not. I have risen in the chilly dawn, and laid wait for him with a gun, but have not feasted mine eyes upon him. I have lain awake through the still watches of the night planning divers surprises for him, but success has not come nigh unto me. I have cursed the camp liar with a fervour born of long suffering, and I have hired a Zulu mule-driver to curse him for me; but my efforts have come to nought, and now I am sore in my very bones when I think of him. All men whose fate it is to dwell under canvas know of his work, but no man hath yet laid hand or eye upon him. A man goeth to his blankets at night time feeling good towards all mankind, satisfied in his own soul that he has garnered in all the legitimate news that he is in any way entitled to handle for the public benefit; and lo! when he ariseth in the dawning he finds that the camp liar has neither slept nor slumbered, for the very air is full of stories concerning battles which have not been fought and victories which have not been won. From mouth to mouth, all along the lines, the stories run as fire runs along fuse, and no man born of woman can tell whence they came or where they will stop. Each soldier questioned swears the tale is true, because "'twas told to him by one who never lied." Yet, at evening, when the weary wretch who works for newspapers returns to his tent, with his boots worn through with fruitless search for the author of the "news," he learns that once again he has been the dupe of the "camp liar"; and he may well be forgiven if he then heaps a whole continent of curses on the invisible shape which, forming itself into a lie, is small enough to enter a man's mouth, and yet big enough to permeate a whole camp. What is a camp liar? It is not a man, neither is it a maid, neither is it dog nor devil. It is a nameless shadow, which flits through the minds of men, fashioned by the Father of Evil to be a curse and a scourge to war correspondents. A mining liar is an awful liar, but he takes tangible form, and one can grapple with him when he appears upon a prospectus. A political liar is a pitiful liar, and vengeance finds him out upon the hustings, and eggs and the produce of the kitchen garden are his reward. A legal liar is a loquacious liar, but he is bounded by his brief and the extent of his fees. But the camp liar has no bounds, and is equally at home in all languages, at one moment dealing with an army in full marching order, and the next battening festively upon one man in a mudhole. There is no height to which the camp liar dare not ascend, there is nothing too trivial for it to touch. It has neither sex nor shape; but, like a fallen angel ousted from Heaven, and not wanted in Hades, it flits through camp a mental microbe, spawning falsehoods in the souls of soldiers.
The camp liar concocts a story of a fearful fight, and fills the air with the groans of the dying, and makes a weird picture out of the grisly, grinning silence of the ghastly dead. Kopjes are stained a rich ripe red with the blood of heroes, and arms, and legs, and skulls, and shattered jaw bones hurtle through the air midst the sound of bursting shells, like straws in a stable-yard when the wind blows high. The very poetry of lying is touched with a master hand when charging squadrons sweep across the veldt and the sunlight kisses the soldier's steel. Then comes the pathos dear to the liar's soul--the farewells of the dying, sobbed just seven seconds before sunset into comrades' ears; the faltering voice, the tear-dimmed eyes, the death rattle in the throat, the last hand clasps, the last deep-drawn breath, in which--mother--Mary--and Heaven are always mingled; and then the moonlight and the moaning of the midnight wind!----The war correspondent leaps from the tent, springs into his saddle with his note-book in his mouth and an indelible lead pencil in each hand, and rides over kopje and veldt ten dreary miles to gaze upon the scene of that awful battle, and finds--one dead mule, and a nigger driver, dead drunk. Then, if he has had a religious education, he climbs out of the saddle, sinks on his knees, and prays for the peace of the camp liar's immortal soul. But if, as is often the case, he has had a secular upbringing, he spits on the dead mule, kicks the nigger, slinks back to camp by a roundabout route, and swears to everyone that he has been forty miles in another direction in a railway truck.
Four or five days later, just at that hour in the morning when a man clings most fondly to his blankets, another rumour breaks the early morning's limpid silence, a rumour of a battle of great import raging eighteen miles away, just within easy riding distance for a smart correspondent. But the man of ink and hardships chuckles this time. He has been fooled so often by the imp of camp rumours; so murmurs just loud enough to be heard in heaven, "That infernal camp liar again," and rustles his blankets round his ears and drops cosily back into dreamland; but when, later on, he learns that an important battle has been fought, and he has missed it all because he did not want to be fooled by the camp liar, then what he mutters is muttered loud enough to be heard in a different place, and the folk there don't need ear trumpets to catch what he says either.
CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
THE NIGGER SERVANT.
It is raining outside my tent. It has rained for three days and nights, and looks quite capable of raining for three days more; everything is simply sodden. You try to look around you at the men's camps. At every step your boots go up to the ankle, squelch, in the black mud. You slip as you walk, and go down on your hands and knees in the slimy filth; that brings out all the poetry in your nature. If you have had a Christian training in your youth, you think of David dodging Saul, and your sympathies go out towards the stupid king. The mud is everywhere; the horses have trodden it to slime in many places, in others the feet of the soldiers have transformed it to batter. Everything is cold, dreary, dismal; even the tobacco is damp, and leaves a taste in a man's mouth like the receipt of bad news from home. I look at the soldiers hanging around like sheep round a blocked-up shed in a snow-storm, and I feel sympathetic. Their puttees are wet, and there is a suggestion of future rheumatism in every fold that encircles their calves; I can't see much more of them except their weather-beaten faces. They wear their helmets and their blue-black overcoats, but both are wet. They don't look happy, and the cause is not hard to find: they have slept out for three nights without tents. Their blankets are like sponges that have been left in a tub. Each blanket seems to hold about three gallons of water.
I arrived at this computation by watching the men wringing their bedding. Two men got hold of a blanket, one at each end; they twist it different ways, and the water runs out in a stream. The soldiers relapse into language. Most of their adjectives have a decidedly pink tinge, and I shouldn't wonder if they became scarlet if this sort of weather continued.
My nigger slops along through the slush and tells me that my lunch is ready. He is not a happy-looking nigger by any means. A white man looks bad enough in the mud and cold, but a nigger presents a pitiful spectacle. His face goes whitish green, with an undercurrent of slatey grey running through it. The brilliancy leaves the coal-black eyes, and they become as lifeless and limp as a professional politician at a prayer meeting. The mouth goes agape, the thick lips become flabby, and fall away from the teeth. The mouth does not seem to fit the face, but hangs on to it like a second-hand suit on a backyard fence. My nigger is no better, and no worse, than the rest of them. He looks like a chapter in Lamentations, and is about as much at home in the sodden camp as a bar of wet soap in a sand heap. Just now he is good for nothing except to sing doleful hymns in a key sad enough to frighten a transit mule away from a bag of mealies. When he is not singing sadly he is quoting Scripture and thinking about his immortal soul. When the sun comes out to-morrow and the day after, he will be dancing a most unholy dance or be making love to "Dinah," filling in the intervals by cursing in three different languages stray horses that steal our fodder.
It is really astonishing what a difference the weather makes to the morals of the South African nigger. Give him plenty of sunshine, and he forgets he ever had a soul, and throws slabs of blasphemy, picked up from the Tommies around him, with painful liberality. When he gets tired of English oaths, he drops into Cape Dutch, and some of the curses contained in that language are solid enough to hurt anything they hit. Later on he drifts into his native tongue, raises his voice a couple of octaves, and streaks the atmosphere with multi-coloured oaths, until you imagine you are listening to a vocal rainbow. But take away the sunshine, give him a wet hide and a wet floor to camp on, and he straightway becomes all penitence and prayer. His face, peering out dismally between the upturned collar of his weather-stained coat and the down-drawn brim of his battered hat, looks like a soiled sermon, and he is altogether woeful.
When the weather is warm he decks himself out in any piece of gaudy finery he can lay hands upon. He loves to wear a glaring yellow roll of silk or cloth around his hat, a blue or green 'kerchief about his throat, and a crimson girdle encircled about his loins. Then he thinks he is a midsummer sunset, and swaggers round like a peacock in full plumage, looking for something to "mash." He has no sense of the eternal law of averages. It does not trouble him if the whole seat of his most important garment is represented by a hole big enough to put a baby in, if he only has the artistic decorations I have mentioned above. Nor does he see anything out of the way in the fact that one of his feet is encased in an officer's top boot and the other in a remnant of a Boer farmer's cast-off veldtschoon. His soul yearns towards feathers. He will pluck a grand white plume from the tail of an ostrich if he gets a favourable opportunity, and place it triumphantly in his torn and soiled slouch hat, or he will pick up a discarded bonnet from a dust pile and rob it of feathers placed there by feminine hands, in order that he may look a black Beau Brummell.
His manners, like his morals, change with the weather. When the barometer registers "fine and clear," you may expect a saucy answer if you rate him for a late breakast; when it registers "warm, and likely to be warmer," you may consider yourself lucky if you get a morning meal at all. But when it indicates "hot," and the mercury still rising, you know that the time has arrived for you to climb out of your coat and commence cooking for yourself, unless you feel equal to the task of spreading a saucy nigger in sections around the adjacent allotments. It is not always healthy to adopt the latter plan, especially if your "boy" happens to be a Basuto or a Zulu. Should he belong to either of those tribes, threaten him as much as you like, but don't hurry to put your threats into practice; or the nigger may do the scattering, and you may do the penitent part of the business. You may bully him as much as you like when the barometer is falling, for then the life is all out of him, and he has not sufficient spirit left in him to resent any sort of insult.
Even "Tommy" knows this, and on a cold day will call a big Zulu servant by a name which implies that the Zulu's father and mother were never legally married. The Zulu will only smile dismally, and tell "Tommy" that he will pray for the salvation of his soul. Three days later, when the air is dancing in the heat-rays, if Mr. Atkins, emboldened by former success, repeats the speech, the Zulu will rise and confront him with blazing eyes, showing at the same time a wide range of beautiful white teeth, set in a savage snarl, and give Mr. Atkins a choice of titles which it would be hard to improve upon even in a Dublin dockyard, and he will not be slow to back his mouth with his hands should the argument become pressing, as more than one of her Majesty's lieges have found out to their deep and lasting humiliation.
When a combination of rain and religion has depressed him the nigger servant is one of the most abject-looking mortals that ever wore clothes, and makes as sad a spectacle as a farmyard fowl on a front fence in a thunderstorm. But he must not be judged altogether by his appearance on such occasions. He can be loyal to his "boss," and when fit and well he will fight when roused as a devil might fight for the soul of a deacon. He loves to ride or drive a horse, but he is not fond of horses, as I understand the term. He has no idea of making a pet of his charge. A horse is to him merely something to get about upon, and he cannot understand our fondness for our equine friends. I have noticed the same trait in the Boer character. To a Boer a horse is usually merely a means of transit from spot to spot; not a comrade, not a companion. I was not astonished to find this feeling amongst the niggers, because I have noticed it among the natives in every colony in Australia, and even amongst such inveterate horsemen as the Sioux Indians of America and the Maories of New Zealand; but I was surprised to note how little sympathy existed between the Boer and his equine helper.
The nigger servant is a sporting sort of party, and never loses an opportunity to indulge his tastes in this direction. I had an excellent chance the other day to note how fond he is of a bit of hunting. We had camped before sundown in a rather picturesque position, and I was watching the effect of the declining sun on the gloomy kopjes, when I noticed a commotion in all the camps, in front, at the rear, and on both flanks. In ten seconds every nigger in the whole camp had deserted his work and was frantically dashing out on to the veldt. They uttered shrill cries as they ran, and every man had some sort of weapon in his hand, either a tomahawk, a billet of wood, or a rock. With marvellous celerity they formed a huge circle, though what they were after was a puzzle to me. I fancied for awhile that one of their number must have run "amuck," and the rest meant to send him to slumber. Quickly they narrowed the circle, the whole body of them moving as if linked together and propelled by unseen mechanism. When the circle got about the third the size of an ordinary cricket ground I saw what they were after. A brace of hares had caught their eyes, and this was their method of capturing the fleet-footed, but stupid, "racers of the veldt." First one nigger and then another detached himself from the circle, and, darting in, had a shy at the quarry with whatever missile he had with him. If he missed--and a good many of them missed--the speedy little bit of fur, he returned crestfallen to the circle again, amidst jeers and laughter from the rest. The hares darted hither and thither in that ever narrowing circle of foes, until a couple of well-aimed shots, one with a rock as big as a cricket ball, and one with a tomahawk, laid them out, and they became the prize of the successful marksmen. The nigger "boy" has to be paid one pound a week and his "scoff," and, taking him all in all, in spite of his faults, which are many, I verily think he earns it.
CHARACTER SKETCHES IN CAMP.
THE SOLDIER PREACHER.
(Written at Enslin Battlefield.)
He was standing at eventide facing the rough and rugged heights of Enslin. The crimson-tinted clouds that emblazoned the sky cast a ruddy radiance round his head and face, making him appear like one of those ancient martyrs one is apt to see on stained-glass windows in old-world churches in Rome or Venice. His feet were firmly planted close to the graves of the British soldiers and sailors who had fallen when we beat the Boers and drove them back upon Modder River.
In one hand he held a little, well-worn Bible; his other hand was raised high above his close-cropped head, whilst his voice rang out on the sultry, storm-laden air like the clang of steel on steel:
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
No one who looked at the neat, strong figure arrayed in the plain khaki uniform of a private soldier, at the clean-shaven, square-jawed face, at the fearless grey-blue eyes, could doubt either his honesty or earnestness. Courage was imprinted by Nature's never-erring hand on every lineament of his Saxon features. So might one of Cromwell's stern-browed warriors have stood on the eve of Marston Moor.
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
To the right of him the long lines of the tents spread upwards towards the kopje; to the left the veldt, with its wealth of grey-green grass, sown by the bounteous hand of the Great Harvester; all around him, excepting where the graves raised their red-brown furrows, rows of soldiers lounged, listing to the old, old story of man's weakness and eternal shame, and Christ's love and everlasting pity. On the soldier preacher's breast a long row of decorations gleamed, telling of honourable service to Queen and country. Before a man could wear those ribbons he must have faced death as brave men face it on many a battlefield. He must have known the agonies of thirst, the dull dead pain of sleepless nights and midnight marches, the tireless watching at the sentry's post, and the onward rush of armed men up heights almost unscalable. On Egypt's sun-scorched plains he must have faced the mad onslaughts of the Dervish hosts, and rallied with the men who held the lines at Abu Klea Wells, where gallant Burnaby was slain. The hills of Afghanistan must have re-echoed to his tread, else why the green and crimson ribbon that mingled with the rest? His eyes had flashed along the advancing lines of charging impi, led by Zulu chiefs. Yet never had they flashed with braver light than now, when, facing that half-mocking, half-reckless crowd, he cried:
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
Rough as the thrust of a broken bayonet was his speech, unskilled in rhetoric his tongue, his periods unrounded as flying fragments of shrapnel shell; yet all who listened knew that every word came from the speaker's soul, from the magazine of truth. Some London slum had been his cradle, the gutters of the great city the only University his feet had known, the costers' dialect was native to his tongue; yet no smug Churchman crowned with the laurels of the schools could so have stirred the blood of those wild lads, fresh from the boundless bush and lawless mining camps beneath Australian suns.
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
And even as he spoke we, who listened, plainly heard the rolling thunder of our guns as they spoke in sterner tones to the nation's foes from Modder River. It was no new figure that the soldier preacher placed before us. It was the same indignant Christ that swept the rabble from the Temple; the same great Christ who calmly faced the seething mob in Pilate's judgment hall; the same sweet Christ who took the babes upon His knee; the same Divine Christ who, with hyssop and gall, and mingled blood and tears, passed death's dread portals on the dark brow of Calvary. The same grand figure, but quaintly dressed in words that savoured of the London slums and of the soldier's camp, and yet so hedged around with earnest love and childlike faith that all its grossest trappings fell away and left us nothing but the ideal Christ.
Once more we heard the distant batteries speak to those whose hands had rudely grasped the Empire's flag, and every rock, and hill, and crag, and stony height took up the echo, like a lion's roar, until the whispering wind was tremulous with sound. Then all was hushed except the preacher's voice.