Cupid in Africa Part 32

"If you've let pi-dogs or _shenzis_ or kites eat that pudding, they shall eat you-alive," promised the Major-and he had the air of one whose word is his bond.

"Nossir," replied the cook. "Pudding all gone to d.a.m.n. Sahib come and see. I am knowing nothing. It is bad."

"_What_?" roared the Major, and rose to his feet.

"Sah, I am a poor man. You are my father and my mother," said the cook humbly, and all the congregation said that they were poor men and that the Major was their father and their mother.

The Major said that the congregation were liars.

"_Bad_?" stammered Forbes. "Puddings can't go _bad_. . . ."

"Oh, Mother, Mother!" said Augustus, and cried, his head upon his knees.

"Life in epitome," murmured Vereker. "_Tout la.s.se_; _tout pa.s.se_; _tout ca.s.se_."

"Strike me blind!" said Halke.

"Feller's a purple liar. . . . Must be," opined Berners.

"Beat the lot of them," suggested Macke. "Puddings keep for ever if you handle 'em properly."

"Yes-the brutes haven't treated it kindly," said Augustus, wiping his eyes. "Here, Vereker, you're Provost-Marshal. Serve them so that _they_ go bad-and see how they like it."

"It may just have a superficial coating of mould or mildew that can be taken off," said Bertram.

"Let's go an' interview the dam' thing," suggested Augustus. "We can then take measures-or rum."

The Bristol Bar was deserted in the twinkling of an eye as, headed by the Major, the dozen or so of British officers sought out the Pudding, that they might hold an inquest upon it. . . .

Near the cooking-fire in the straw shed behind the Officers' Mess _banda_, upon some boards beside a tin sarcophagus, lay a large green ball, suggestive of a moon made of green cheese.

In silent sorrow the party gazed upon it, stricken and stunned. And the congregation of servants stood afar off and watched.

Suddenly the Major s.n.a.t.c.hed up the gleaming _panga_ that had been used for prising open the case and for cutting open the tin box in which the green horror had arrived.

Raising the weapon above his head, the Major smote with all his might.

Right in the centre of the Pudding the heavy, sharp-edged blade struck and sank. . . . The Pudding fell in halves, revealing an interior even greener and more horrible than the outside, as a cloud of greenish, smoke-like dust went up to the offended heavens. . . .

"Bury the d.a.m.ned Thing," said the Major, and in his wake the officers of the Butindi garrison filed out, their hearts too full, their stomachs too empty for words.

And the servants buried the Pudding, obeying the words of the Major.

But in the night the Sweeper arose and exhumed the Pudding and ate of it right heartily. And through the night of sorrow he groaned. And at dawn he died. This is the truth.

Dinner that night was a silent meal, if meal it could be called. No man dared speak to his neighbour for fear of what his neighbour might reply.

The only reference to the Pudding was made by Augustus, who remarked, as a servant brought in a dish of roasted maize-cobs, where the Pudding should have come-chicken-feed where should have been Food of the G.o.ds-"I am almost glad poor Murie and Lindsay are so ill that they couldn't possibly have eaten any Pudding in any case. . . . Seems some small compensation to 'em, don't it, poor devils. . . ."

"I do not think Murie will get better," observed Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji. "Fever and dysentery, both violent, and I have not proper things. . . ."

The silence seemed to deepen as everybody thought of the two sick men, lying in their dirty clothes, on dirty camp-beds, in leaky gra.s.s huts, with a choice of bully-beef, dog-biscuit, coco-nut and maize as a dysentery diet.

Whose turn next? And what sort of a fight could the force put up if attacked by Africans when all the Indians and Europeans were ill with fever and dysentery? Heaven bless the Wise Man who had kept the African Army of British East Africa so small and had disbanded battalions of the King's African Rifles just before the war. What chance would Indians and white men, who had lived for months in the most pestilential swamp in Africa, have against salted Africans led by Germans especially brought down from the upland health-resorts where they lived? . . .

"Can you give me a little quinine, Chatterji?" asked Augustus. "Got any calomel? I b'lieve my liver's as big as my head to-day. I feel a corner of it right up between my lungs. Stops my breathing sometimes. . . ."

"Oah, yees. Ha! Ha!" said the medical gentleman. "I have a few tablets.

I will presently send you some also. . . ."

Next morning Augustus came in last to breakfast.

"Thanks for the quinine tablets, Chatterji," said he. "The hospital orderly brought them in his bare palm. I swallowed all ten, however.

What was it-twenty grains?"

"Oah! That was calomel!" replied the worthy doctor, and Augustus arose forthwith and retired, murmuring: "Poignant! _Searching_!"

He had once taken a quarter of a grain of calomel, and it had tied him in knots.

When Bertram visited Murie, Lindsay and Augustus in their respective huts, Augustus seemed the worst of the three. With white face, set teeth, and closed eyes, he lay bunched up, and, from time to time, groaned, "Oh, poignant! _Searching_! . . ."

It being impossible for him to march, it fell to Bertram to take his duty that day, and lead an officers' patrol to reconnoitre a distant village to which, according to information received by the Intelligence Department, a German patrol had just paid a visit. For some reason the place had been sacked and burnt.

It was Bertram's business to discover whether there were any signs of a _boma_ having been established by this patrol; to learn anything he could about its movements; whence it had come and whither it had gone; whether the ma.s.sacre were a punishment for some offence, or just the result of high animal (German) spirits; whether there were many _shambas_, of no further use to slaughtered people, in which the raiders had left any limes, bananas, papai or other fruits, vegetables, or crops; whether any odd chicken or goat had been overlooked, and was wanting a good home; and, in short, to find out anything that could be found out, see all that was to be seen, do anything that might be done. . . . As he marched out of the Fort at the head of a hundred Gurkhas, with a local guide and interpreter, he felt proud and happy, quite reckless, and absolutely indifferent to his fate. He would do his best in any emergency that might arise, and he could do no more. He'd leave it at that.

He'd march straight ahead with a "point" in front of him, and if he was ambushed, he was ambushed.

When they reached the village, he'd deploy into line and send scouts into the place. If he was shot dead-a jolly good job. If he were wounded and left lying for the German _askaris_ to find-or the wild beasts at night . . .

he turned from the thought.

Anyhow, he'd got good cheery, st.u.r.dy Gurkhas with him, and it was a pleasure and an honour to serve with them.

One jungle march is precisely like another-and in three or four hours the little column reached the village, deployed, and skirmished into it, to find it a deserted, burnt-out ruin. _Kultur_ had pa.s.sed that way, leaving its inevitable and unmistakable sign-manual. The houses were only blackened skeletons; the gardens, wildernesses; the byres, cinder-heaps; the fruit-trees, withering wreckage. What had been pools of blood lay here and there, with clumps of feathers, burnt and broken utensils, remains of slaughtered domestic animals and chickens.

_Kultur_ had indeed pa.s.sed that way. To Bertram it seemed, in a manner, sadder that this poor barbarous little African village should be so treated than that a walled city of supermen should suffer. . . "Is there not more cruelty and villainy in violently robbing a crying child of its twopence than in s.n.a.t.c.hing his gold watch from a portly stockbroker?"

thought he, as he gazed around on the scene of ruin, desolation and destruction.

To think of Europeans finding time, energy, and occasion to effect _this_ in such a spot, so incredibly remote from their marts and ways and busy haunts! Christians! . . .

Having posted sentries and chosen a spot for rally and defence, he sent out tiny patrols along the few jungle paths that led to the village, and proceeded to see what he could, as there was absolutely no living soul from whom he could learn anything. There was little that the ablest scoutmaster could deduce, save that the place had been visited by a large party of mischievously destructive and brutal ruffians, who wore boots.

There was nothing of use or of value that had not been either destroyed or taken. Even papai trees that bore no fruit had been hacked down, and the _panga_ had been laid to the root of tree and shrub and sugar-cane.

Not a plantain, lime, mango, or papai was to be seen.

Bertram entered one of the least burnt of the well-made huts of thatch and wattle. There was what had been blood on the earthen floor, blackened walls, charred stools, bed-frames and domestic utensils. He felt sick. . . . In a corner was a child's bed of woven string plaited over a carved frame. It would make a useful stool or a resting-place for things which should not lie on the muddy floor of his _banda_. He picked it up. Underneath it was a tiny black hand with pinkish finger-tips. He dropped the bed and was violently sick. _Kultur_ had indeed pa.s.sed that way. . . .

Hurrying out into the sunlight, as soon as he was able to do so, he completed his tour of inspection. There was little of interest and nothing of importance.

Apparently the hamlet had boasted an artist, a sculptor, some village Rodin, before the Germans came to freeze the genial current of his soul.