Cupid in Africa Part 20

CHAPTER XIII _Baking_

When Bertram was awakened by Ali at four o'clock the next morning, he feared he would be unable to get up. Had he been at home, he would have remained in bed and sent for the doctor. His head felt like lead, every bone in his body ached, and he had that horrible sense of internal _malaise_, than which few feelings are more discouraging, distressing and enervating.

The morning smelt horrible, and, by the light of the candle-lamp, the floor was seen to have resigned in favour of the flood. Another problem: Could a fair-sized man dress himself on a tiny camp-bed beneath a small mosquito curtain? If not, he must get out of bed into the water, and paddle around in that slimy ooze which it hid from the eye but not from the nose. Subsidiary problem: Could a man step straight into a pair of wet boots, so as to avoid putting bare feet into the mud, and then withdraw alternate feet from them, for the removal of pyjamas and the putting-on of shorts and socks, while the booted foot remained firmly planted in the slush for his support?

Or again: Sitting precariously on the edge of a canvas bed, could an agile person, with bare feet coyly withdrawn from contact with the foulness beneath, garb his nether limbs to the extent that permitted the pulling-on of boots? . . .

He could try anyhow. . . . After much groping and fumbling, Bertram pulled on his socks and shorts, and then, still lying on his bed, reached for his boots. These he had left standing on a dry patch beneath his bed, and now saw standing, with the rest of his kit, in a couple of inches of filthy water. Balancing himself on the sagging edge of the strip of canvas that served as bed-laths, pallia.s.se and mattress, he struggled into the resisting and reluctant boots, and then boldly entered the water, pleased with the tactics that had saved him from touching it before he was shod. . . . It was not until he had retrieved his sodden puttees and commenced to put them on, that he realised that he was still wearing the trousers of his pyjamas!

And then it was that Bertram, for the first time in his life, furiously swore-long and loud and heartily. Let those who say in defence of War that it rouses man's n.o.bler instincts and brings out all that is best in him, note this deplorable fact.

Could he keep them on, or must he remove those clinging, squelching boots and partially undress again?

Striped blue and green pyjamas, showing for six inches between his shorts and his puttees, would add a distinctly novel touch to the uniform of a British officer. . . . No. It could not be done. Ill as he felt, and deeply as he loathed the idea of wrestling with the knots in the sodden boot-laces of those awful boots, he must do it-in spite of trembling hands, swimming head, and an almost unconquerable desire to lie down again.

And then-alas! for the moral maxims of the copy-books, the wise saws and modern instances of the didactic virtuous-sheer bad temper came to his a.s.sistance. With ferocious condemnations of everything, he cut his boot-laces, flung his boots into the water, splashed about violently in his socks, as he tore off the offending garments and hurled them after the boots, and then completed his dressing with as little regard to water, mud, slime, filth, and clay as though he were standing on the carpet of his dressing-room in England.

"_I'm fed up_!" quoth he, and barged out of the _banda_ in a frame of mind that put the Fear of G.o.d and Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene into all who crossed his path. . . . (_Cupid_ forsooth!)

The first was Ali Suleiman, who stood waiting in the rain, until he could go in and pack his master's kit.

"Here-you-pack my kit sharp, and don't stand there gaping like a fish in a frying-pan. Stir yourself before I stir _you_," he shouted.

The faithful Ali dived into the _banda_ like a rabbit into its hole.

Excellent! This was the sort of _bwana_ he could reverence. Almost had he been persuaded that this new master was not a real gentleman-he was so gentle. . . .

Bertram turned back again, but not to apologise for his harsh words, as his better nature prompted him to do.

"Where's my breakfast, you lazy rascal?" he shouted.

"On the table in Mess _banda_, please G.o.d, thank you, sah," replied Ali Suleiman humbly, as one who prays that his grievous trespa.s.ses may be forgotten.

"Then why couldn't you say so, you-you-you-" and here memories of the Naval Officer stole across his subconsciousness, "you blundering burden, you posthumous porridge-punter, you myopic megalomaniac, you pernicious, piebald pacifist. . . ."

Ali Suleiman rolled his eyes and nodded his head with every epithet.

"Oh, my G.o.d, sah," said he, as Bertram paused for breath, "I am a dam man mos' blasted sinful"-and, so ridiculous a thing is temper, that Bertram neither laughed nor saw cause for laughter.

Splas.h.i.+ng across to the Mess _banda_, he discovered a battered metal teapot, an enamelled tumbler, an almost empty tin of condensed milk, and a tin plate of very sad-looking porridge. By the light of a lamp that appealed more to the olfactory and auditory senses than to the optic, he removed from the stodgy mess the well-developed leg of some insect unknown, and then tasted it-(the porridge, not the leg).

"_Filthy muck_," he remarked aloud.

"Sahib calling me, sir?" said a voice that made him jump, and the Cook's Understudy, a Goanese youth, stepped into the circle of light-or of lesser gloom.

"Very natural you should have thought so," answered Bertram. "I said _Filthy Muck_."

"Yessir," replied the acting deputy a.s.sistant adjutant cooklet, proudly, "I am cooking breakfast for the Sahib."

"_You_ cooked this?" growled Bertram, and half rose, with so menacing an expression and wild an eye that the guilty fled, making a note that this was a Sahib to be properly served in future, and not, as he had foolishly thought him, a poor polite soul for whom anything was good enough. . . .

Pus.h.i.+ng the burnt and nauseating horror from him, Bertram essayed to pour out tea, only to find that the fluid was readily procurable from anywhere but the spout. A teapot that will not "pour out" freely is an annoyance at the best of times, and to the most placid of souls. (The fact that tea through the lid is as good as tea through the spout is more than counter-balanced by the fact that tea in the cup is better than tea on the table-cloth. And it is a very difficult art, only to be acquired by patient practice, to pour tea into the cup and the cup alone, from the top of a spout-bunged teapot. Try it.)

Bertram's had temper waxed and deepened.

"_Curse the thing_!" he swore, and banged the offending pot on the table, and, forgetting his nice table-manners, blew violently down the spout.

This sent a wave of tea over his head and scalded him, and there the didactic virtuous, and the copy-book maxims, scored.

Sorely tempted to call to the cooklet in honeyed tones, decoy him near with fair-seeming smiles, with friendly gestures, and then to fling the thing at his head, he essayed to pour again.

A trickle, a gurgle, a spurt, a round gush of tea-and the pale wan skeletal remnants of a once l.u.s.ty c.o.c.kroach, sodden and soft, leapt into the cup. Swirling round and round, it seemed giddily to explore its new unresting-place, triumphant, as though chanting, with the Ancient Mariner, some such paean as

"I was the first that ever burst Into this silent tea. . . ."

Heaven alone knew to how many cups of tea that disintegrating corpse had contributed of its best before the gusts of Bertram's temper had contributed to its dislodgment.

(Temper seems to have scored a point here, it must be reluctantly confessed.)

Bertram arose and plunged forth into the darkness, not daring to trust himself to call the cook.

Raising his clenched hands in speechless wrath, he drew in his breath through his clenched teeth-and then slipped with catastrophic suddenness on a patch of slimy clay and sat down heavily in very cold water.

He arose a distinctly dangerous person. . . .

Near the ration-dump squatted a solid square of naked black men, not precisely savages, raw _shenzis_ of the jungle, but something between these and the Swahilis who work as personal servants, gun-bearers, and the better cla.s.s of _safari_ porters. They were big men and looked strong. They smelt stronger. It was a perfectly indescribable odour, like nothing on earth, and to be encountered nowhere else on earth-save in the vicinity of another ma.s.s of negroes.

In the light of a big fire and several lanterns, Bertram saw that the men were in rough lines, and that each line appeared to be in charge of a headman, distinguished by some badge of rank, such as a bowler hat, a tobacco tin worn as an ear-ring, a pair of pink socks, or a frock coat.

These men walked up and down their respective lines and occasionally smote one of their squatting followers, hitting the chosen one without fear or favour, without rhyme or reason, and apparently without doing much damage. For the smitten one, without change of expression or position, emitted an incredibly thin piping squeal, as though in acknowledgment of an attention, rather than as if giving natural vent to anguish. . . .

Every porter had a red blanket, and practically every one wore a _panga_.

The verbs are selected. They _had_ blankets and they _wore_ pangas. The blankets they either sat upon or folded into pads for insertion beneath the loads they were to carry upon their heads. The _pangas_ were attached to strings worn over the shoulder. This useful implement serves the African as toothpick, spade, axe, knife, club, toasting-fork, hammer, weapon, hoe, cleaver, spoon, skinning-knife, and every other kind of tool, as well as being correct jungle wear for men for all occasions, and in all weathers. He builds a house with it; slays, skins and dismembers a bullock; fells a tree, makes a boat, digs a pit; fas.h.i.+ons a club, spear, bow or arrow; hews his way through jungle, enheartens his wife, disheartens his enemy, mows his lawn, and makes his bed. . . .

Not far away, a double company of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth "stood easy." The fact that they were soaked to the skin did nothing to give them an air of devil-may-care gaiety.

The Jemadar in command approached and saluted Bertram, who recognised the features of Ha.s.san Ali.

"It's _you_, is it!" he grunted, and proceeded to explain that the Jemadar would command the rear-guard of one hundred men, and that by the time it was augmented to a hundred and fifty by the process of picking up flankers left to guard side-turnings, the column would be halted while fifty men made their way up to the advance-guard again, and so on.

"D'you understand?" concluded Bertram.

"_Nahin_, _Sahib_," replied the Jemadar.

"_Then fall out_," snapped Bertram. "I'll put an intelligent private in command, and you can watch him until you do," and then he broke into English: "I've had about enough of you, my lad, and if you give me any of your d.a.m.ned nonsense, I'll twist your tail till you howl. Call yourself an _officer_! . . ." and here the Jemadar, saluting repeatedly, like an automaton, declared that light had just dawned upon his mind and that he clearly understood.

"And so you'd better," answered Bertram harshly, staring with a hard scowl into the Jemadar's eyes until they wavered and sank. "So you'd _better_, if you want to keep your rank. . . . March one hundred men down the path past the Officers' Mess, and halt them a thousand yards from here. . . . The coolies will follow. You will return and fall in behind the coolies with the other hundred as rear-guard. See that the coolies do not straggle. March behind your men-so that you are the very last man of the whole convoy. D'you understand?"

Jemadar Ha.s.san Ali did understand, and he also understood that he'd made a bad mistake about Second-Lieutenant Greene. He was evidently one of those subtle and clever people who give the impression that they are not _hushyar_, {142} that they are foolish and incompetent, and then suddenly destroy you when they see you have thoroughly gained that impression.

Respect and fear awoke in the breast of the worthy Jemadar, for he admired cunning, subtlety and cleverness beyond all things. . . . He marched a half of his little force off into the darkness, halted them some half-mile down the path (or rivulet) that led into the jungle, put them in charge of the senior Havildar and returned.