Cupid in Africa Part 17

Following in the tracks of Ali came another servant, bearing a wooden box, which he tendered to each diner, but as one who goeth through an empty ritual, and without hope that his offering will be accepted. In the box Bertram saw large thick biscuits exceedingly reminiscent of the dog-biscuit of commerce, but paler in hue and less attractive of appearance. He took one, and the well-trained servant only dropped the box in his surprise.

"What are you going to do with _that_?" enquired Hall.

"Why!-eat it, I suppose," said Bertram.

"People don't eat _those_," replied Hall.

"Why not?" asked Bertram.

"Try it and see," was the response.

Bertram did, and desisted not until his teeth ached and he feared to break them. There was certainly no fear of breaking the biscuit. Was it a sort of practical joke biscuit-a rather clever imitation of a biscuit in concrete, hardwood, or pottery-ware of some kind?

"I understand why people do not eat them," he admitted.

"Can't be done," said Hall. "Why, even the Kavirondo who eat live slugs, dead snakes, uncooked rice, raw flesh or rotten flesh and any part of any animal there is, do not regard those things as food. . . . They make ornaments of them, tools, weapons, missiles, all sorts of things. . . ."

"I suppose if one were really starving one could live on them for a time," said the honest and serious-minded Bertram, ever a seeker after truth.

"Not unless one could get them into one's stomach, I suppose," was the reply; "and I don't see how one would do it. . . . I was reduced to trying once, and I tried hard. I put one in a basin and poured boiling water on it. . . . No result whatever. . . . I left it to soak for an hour while I chewed and chewed a piece of bully-beef. . . . Result? . . .

It was slightly darker in colour, but I could no more bite into it than I could into a tile or a book. . . ."

"Suppose you boiled one," suggested Bertram.

"Precisely what I did," said Hall, "for my blood was up, apart from the fact that I was starving. It was a case of Hall _versus_ a Biscuit. I boiled it-or rather watched the cook boil it in a _chattie_. . . . I gave it an hour. At the end of the hour it was of a slightly still darker colour-and showed signs of splitting through the middle. But never a bit could I get off it. . . . 'Boil the dam' thing all day and all night, and give it me hot for breakfast,' said I to the cook. . . .

As one who patiently humours the headstrong, wilful White Man, he went away to carry on the foolish struggle. . . ."

"What was it like in the morning?" enquired Bertram, as Hall paused reminiscent, and chewed the cud of bitter memory.

"Have you seen a long-sodden boot-sole that is resolving itself into its original layers and laminae?" asked Hall. "Where there should be one solid sole, you see a dozen, and the thing gapes, as it were, showing serried rows of teeth in the shape of rusty nails and little protuberances of leather and thread?"

"Yes," smiled Bertram.

"That was my biscuit," continued Hall. "At the corners it gasped and split. Between the layers little lumps and points stood up, where the original biscuit holes had been made when the dreadful thing was without form, and void, in the process of evolution from cement-like dough to brick-like biscuit. . . ."

"Could you eat it?" asked Bertram.

"Could _you_ eat a boiled boot-sole?" was the reply. "The thing had turned from dry concrete to wet leather. . . . It had exchanged the extreme of brittle durability for that of pliant toughness. . . . _Eat_ it!" and Hall laughed sardonically.

"What becomes of them all, then, if no one eats them?" asked Bertram.

"Oh-they have their uses, y' know. Boxes of them make a jolly good breastwork. . . The Army Service Corps are provided with work-taking them by the ton from place to place and fetching them back again. . . .

I reveted a trench with biscuits once. . . . Looked very neat. . . .

Lonely soldiers, in lonely outposts, do _G.o.d BLESS OUR HOME_ and other devices with them-and you can make really attractive little photo-frames for 'midgets' and miniature with them if you have a centre-bit and carving tools. . . The handy-men of the R.E. make awf'ly nice boxes of children's toy-building-bricks with them, besides carved _plaques_ and all sorts of little models. . . . I heard of a prisoner who made a complete steam-engine out of biscuits, but I never saw it myself. . . .

Oh, yes, the Army would miss its biscuits-but I certainly never saw anybody eat one. . . ."

Nor did Bertram, throughout the campaign. And here again it occurred to his foolish civilian mind that if the thousands of pounds spent on wholly and utterly inedible dog-biscuit had been spent on the ordinary biscuits of civilisation and the grocer's shop, sick and weary soldiers, working and suffering for their country in a terrible climate, might have had a sufficiency of food that they could have eaten with pleasure and digested with benefit, without costing their grateful country a penny more.

"Which would be the better," asked Bertram of himself-"to send an army ten tons of 'biscuit' that it cannot eat, or one ton of real biscuit that it can eat and enjoy?"

But, as an ignorant, simple, and silly civilian, he must be excused. . . .

Dessert followed, in the shape of unripe bananas, and Bertram left the table with a cupful of thin soup, a small piece of cheese, and half a crisp, but pithy and acidulous banana beneath his belt. As the Colonel left the hut he hurried after him.

"If you please, sir," said he, "may I go out with the force that is to attack the German post to-morrow?"

Having acted on impulse and uttered the fatal words, he regretted the fact. Why should he be such a silly fool as to seek sorrow like this?

Wasn't there danger and risk and hards.h.i.+p enough-without going out to look for it?

"In what capacity?" asked Colonel Rock, and added: "Hall is in command, and Stanner is his subaltern."

"As a spectator, sir," said Bertram, "and I might-er-be useful perhaps-er-if-"

"Spectator!" mused the Colonel. "Bright idea! We might _all_ go, of course. . . . Two hundred men go out on the job, and a couple of thousand go with 'em to whoop 'em on and clap, what? Excellent notion. . . .

Wonder if we could arrange a 'gate,' and give the gate-money to the Red Cross, or start a Goose Club or something. . ." and he turned to go into his tent.

Bertram was not certain as to whether this reply was in the nature of a refusal of his request. He hoped it was.

"May I go, sir?" he said.

"You may not," replied the Colonel, and Bertram felt very disappointed.

CHAPTER XII _Reflections_

That night Bertram was again unable to sleep. Lying awake on his hard and narrow bed, faint for want of food, and sick with the horrible stench of the swamp, his mind revolved continually round the problem of how to "personally conduct" a convoy of a thousand porters through twenty miles of enemy country in such a way that it might have a chance if attacked.

After tossing and turning for hours and vainly wooing sleep, he lay considering the details of a scheme by which the armed escort should, as it were, circulate round and round from head to tail of the convoy by a process which left ten of the advance-guard to occupy every tributary turning that joined the path and to wait at the junction of the two paths until the whole convoy had pa.s.sed and the rear-guard had arrived. The ten would then join the rear-guard and march on with them. By the time this had been repeated sufficiently often to deplete the advance-guard, the convoy should halt while the bulk of the rear-guard marched up to the head of the column again and so _da capo_. It would want a lot of explaining to whoever was in command of the rear-guard, for it would be impossible for him, himself, to struggle up and down a line miles long-a line to which anything might happen, at any point, at any moment. . . .

He could make it clear that at any turning he would detail ten men from the advance-guard, and then, when fifty had been withdrawn for this flanking work, he would halt the column so that the officer commanding the rear-guard could send fifty back. . . . Ten to one the fool would bungle it, and he might sit and await the return of the fifty until the crack of doom, or until he went back and fetched them up himself. And as soon as he had quitted the head of the column there would be an attack on it! . . . Yes-or perhaps the a.s.s in command of the ten placed to guard the side-turnings would omit to join the rear-guard as it pa.s.sed-and he'd roll up at his destination, with a few score men short. . . . What would be done to him if he-

_Bang_! . . .

Bertram's heart seemed to leap out of his body and then to stand still.

His bones seemed to turn to water, and his tongue to leather. Had a sh.e.l.l burst beneath his bed? . . . Was he soaring in the air? . . . Had a great mine exploded beneath the Camp, and was the M'paga Field Force annihilated? . . . Captain Hall sat up, yawned, put his hand out from beneath the mosquito curtain of his camp-bed and flashed his electric torch at a small alarm-clock that stood on a box within reach.

"What was that explosion?" said Bertram as soon as he could speak.

"Three-thirty," yawned Hall. "Might as well get up, I s'pose. . . .

Wha'? . . . 'Splosion? . . . Some fool popped his rifle off at nothing, I sh'd say. . . . Blast him! Woke me up. . ."

"It's not an attack, then?" said Bertram, mightily relieved. "It sounded as though it were right close outside the hut. . . ."

"Well-you don't attack with _one_ rifle shot-nor beat off an attack with _none_. I don't, at least," replied Hall. . . "Just outside, was it?"

he added as he arose. "Funny! There's no picket or sentry there. You must have been dreaming, my lad."

"I was wide awake before it happened," said Bertram. "I've been awake all night. . . . It was so close, I-I thought I was blown to bits. . . ."

"'Oo wouldn' sell 'is liddle farm an' go ter War," remarked Hall in Tommy vein. "It's a wearin' life, being blowed outer yer bed at ar' pars free of a mornin', ain't it, guv'nor?"