pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock’s eyes of foam.
“We’ll lung up, too,” says Tim, and when we return to the c. p. George shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out. There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will be revised at the end of the year) allow twelve hours for a run which any packet can put behind her in ten. So we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which pushes us along at a languid twenty.
To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the thickening traffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reserved to ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning hymn on a Hospital boat.
She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. “Oh, ye Winds of God,” sang the unseen voices: “bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever!”
We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across her great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their hands neighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and the nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. She passed slowly beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. “Oh, ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever.”
“She’s a public lunger or she wouldn’t have been singing the Benedicite; and she’s a Greenlander or she wouldn’t have snow-blinds over her colloids,” said George at last. “She’ll be bound for Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month.
If she was an accident ward she’d be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level. Yes–consumptives.”
“Funny how the new things are the old thing I’ve read in books,” Tim answered, “that savages used to haul their sick and wounded up to the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We hoist ’em in sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do the doctors say we’ve added to the average life of man?”
“Thirty years,” says George with a twinkle in his eye. “Are we going to spend ’em all up here, Tim?”
“Flap ahead, then. Flap ahead. Who’s hindering?” the senior captain laughed, as we went in.
We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental shipping; and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We overcossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land between Trepassy and Lanco, know what gold they bring back from West Erica. Trans-Asiatic Directs we met, soberly ringing the world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their grape-fruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern health stations in icebound ports where submersibles dare not rise.
Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of the north, like strings of unfrightened wild duck. It does not pay to “fly” minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice pack off Nain or Hebron are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world’s shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.
We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black between its drifting iceblocks, all down the Park that the wisdom of our fathers–but every one knows the Quebec run.
We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes ahead of time, and there hung at ease till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could pull out and give us our proper slip. It was curious to watch the action of the holding-down clips all along the frosty river front as the boats cleared or came to rest. A big Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and her crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to sing “Elsinore”–the oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course:
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic Forty couple waltzing on the floor!
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away
And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!
Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:
Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor
West from Sourabaya to the Baltic– Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!
The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the great tower arms flung open–or did I think so because on the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms wide toward her father?
* * * * * * * *
In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. “And by the way,” said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, “I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I’ve asked him to tea on Friday.”
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL
Lights
No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18th.
CAPE VERDE–Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash–green white green–in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light for Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.
INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)–From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April and October.
TABLE BAY–Devil’s Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor Bay at least two thousand feet under, and do not round to till East of E. shoulder Devil’s Peak.
SANDHEADS LIGHT -Green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.
SNAEFELL JOKUL–White occulting light withdrawn for winter.
PATAGONIA–No summer light south Cape Pilar. This includes Staten Island and Port Stanley.
C. NAVARIN–Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new).
EAST CAPE–Fog–flash -single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals (new).
MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO–Lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Cape Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.
For the Board:
CATTERTHUN }
ST. JUST } Lights.
VAN HEDDER }
Casualties
Week ending Dec. 18th.
SABLE ISLAND–Green single barbette-tower freighter, number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level Q P. as. Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.
N. F. BANKS–Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter (Fowey–St. John’s) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 151 N. 50 15′ W. Crew rescued by Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and pithed by Postal Packet, Dec. 14th.
KERGUELEN, MARK BOAT reports last call from Cymena freighter (Gayer
Tong Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald Islands. No wreckage recovered. Messages and wills of crew at all A. B. C. offices.
FEZZAN–T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th.
BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports Caducci (Valandingham Line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point de Benasdue. Passengers transferred Andorra (Fulton Line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.
ASCENSION, MARE BOAT–Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved 7 20′ S. 18 41′ W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices.
Missing
No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from following overdues, they are posted as missing:
Atlantis, W.17630 . Canton–Valparaiso Audhumla W. 889 . Stockholm–Odessa
Berenice, W. 2206 .. . Riga–Vladivostock Draw, E. 446 . . Coventry–Pontes
Arenas Tontine, E. 5068 . C. Wrath–Ungava Wu-Sung, E. 41776 . . Hankow–Lobito Bay
General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:
Jane Eyre, W. 6990 . Port Rupert–City of Mexico Santander, W. 6514 . . Gobi Desert–Manila Y. Edmundsun, E. 9690 . . Kandahar–Fiume
Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels
VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York (twice warned).
GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia (twice warned).
MARVEL of PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro (twice warned).
For the Board:
LAZAREFF }
McKEOUGH } Traffic
GOLDBRATT }
NOTES
High-Level Sleet
The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing planes and digs alike have suffered severely–the former from ‘unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have “held up” a badly balanced plane in a cross-wind know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern and North-western upper levels have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean.
Bat-Boat Racing
The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world to concerted action in regard to “bat” boat racing. We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called ” native element” as they near the line. Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public demonstration off St. Catherine’s Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the “bat” is to be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for “no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water” is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future before it.
Crete and the A. B. C.
The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the A. B. C. Monthly Report, is not without humour. Till the 25th October Crete, as all our planet knows, was the sole surviving European repository of “autonomous institutions,” “local self-government,” and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the past for the confusion of human affairs. She has lived practically on the tourist traffic attracted by her annual pageants of Parliaments, Boards, Municipal Councils, etc., etc. Last summer the islanders grew wearied, as their premier explained, of “playing at being savages for pennies,” and proceeded to pull down all the landing-towers on the island and shut off general communication till such time as the A. B. C. should annex them. For side-splitting comedy we would refer our readers to the correspondence between the Board of Control and the Cretan premier during the “war.” However, all’s well that ends well. The A. B. C. have taken over the administration of Crete on normal lines; and tourists must go elsewhere to witness the”debates,” “resolutions,” and “popular movements” of the old days. The only people to suffer will be the Board of Control, which is grievously overworked already. It is easy enough to condemn the Cretans for their laziness; but when one recalls the large, prosperous, and presumably public-spirited communities which during the last few years have deliberately thrown themselves into the hands of the A. B. C., one, cannot be too hard upon St. Paul’s old friends.
CORRESPONDENCE
Skylarking on the Equator
To THE EDITOR: Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W. 26-15), I became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard) and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgie–I can give it no other name–went on for at least two hours, and naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was told that these “professors” were engaged in scientific experiments. The extent of their “scientific” knowledge, may be judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give their own words)” a little blue sky” if “they went on long enough.” This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450 feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 4000 level for practically twelve months out of the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of Transylvania, that “skylarking” in the centre of a main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one’s stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush–solely due to these diabolical throw-downs–that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums. Rhyl. J. VINCENT MATHEN.
[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathen’s views, but till the Board sees fit to further regulate the Southern areas in which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes.- Editor.]
Answers to Correspondents
VIGILANS–The Laws of Auroral Derangements are still imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor may of course “seize” without warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis are practically one big electric “leak,” and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often “glue up” when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the same disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the Auroras are “delivering” strongly.
INDIGNANT–On your own showing, you were not under control. That you could not hoist the necessary N. U. C. lights on approaching a traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune which might befall any one. The A. B. C., being responsible for the planet’s traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code will show that you were fined on the lower scale.
PLANISTON–(1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won last year by L. V. Rautsch; R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the same week pulling off the Ten Thousand (oversee). R. M.’s average worked out at a fraction over 500 kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. (2) Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes 15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable.
PATERFAMILIAS–None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, but the average courts are not, as a rule, swayed by sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion of your roof, you had better rest your case on decoverture of domicile (see Parkins v. Duboulay). We sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th was stormy and confused, and–you may have to anchor on a stranger’s chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap!
ALDEBARAN–(1) war, as a paying concern, ceased in 1987. (2) The Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right of waging war so long as it does not interfere with the traffic and all that implies. (3) The A. B. C. was constituted in 1949.
L. M. P.–(1) Keep her full head-on at half power, taking advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She will strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. (2) Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and there is always risk of a turnover. (3) The formulae for stun’sle brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible.
PEGAMOID- (1) Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any other material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely non-hygroscopic. (2) We cannot recommend any particular make.
PULMONAR–(1) For the symptoms you describe, try the Gobi Desert Sanatoria. The low levels of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are against them except at the outset of the disease. (2) We do not recommend boarding-houses or hotels in this column.
BEGINNER–On still days the air above a large inhabited city being slightly warmer–i.e., thinner–than the atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area, precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water. Hence the phenomena of “jolt” and your “inexplicable collisions” with factory chimneys. In air, as on earth, it is safest to fly high.
EMERGENCY–There is only one rule of the road in air, earth, and water. Do you want the firmament to yourself?
PICCIOLA–Both Poles have been overdone in Art and Literature. Leave them to Science for the next twenty years. You did not send a stamp with your verses.
NORTH NIGERIA–The Mark Boat was within her right in warning you off the Reserve. The shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the game. You can buy all the photos you need at Sokoto.
NEW ERA–It is not etiquette to overcross an A. B. C. official’s boat without asking permission. He is one of the body responsible for the planet’s traffic, and for that reason must not be interfered with. You, presumably, are out on your own business or pleasure, and must leave him alone. For humanity’s sake don’t try to be “democratic.”
EXCORIATED–All inflators chafe sooner or later. You must go on till your skin hardens by practice. Meantime vaseline.
REVIEW
The Life of Xavier Lavalle
(Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris)
Ten years ago Lavalle, “that imperturbable dreamer of the heavens,” as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of a lifetime’s labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt, to a world bound hand and foot to Barald’s Theory of Vertices and “compensating electric nodes.” “They shall see,” he wrote–in that immortal postscript to The Heart of the Cyclone–“the Laws whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them.”
“But even here,” he continues, “there is no finality. Better a thousand times my conclusions should be discredited than that my dead name should lie across the threshold of the temple of Science–a bar to further inquiry.”
So died Lavalle–a prince of the Powers of the Air, and even at his funeral Cellier jested at “him who had gone to discover the secrets of the Aurora Borealis.”
If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that Collier’s theories are today as exploded as the ludicrous deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their fugitive and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle’s Law of the Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora Borealis. It is there that I, intent on my own investigations, have passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the North Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned to the zenith.
“Master,” I would cry as I moved respectfully beneath him, “what is it you seek today?” and always the answer, clear and without doubt, from above: “The old secret, my son!”
The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry of the human always!) had I known–if I had known–I would many times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera possess, of having aided him in his monumental researches.
It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the two volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father, so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. Once returned from the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found “in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large and very untidy boy.” Here is her letter:
“Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora–la belle Aurore, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,–I had set out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane–he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the mayor’s house that the grapnel first engages! That I do not regret, for the mayor’s wife and I are not sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs to the window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The Mayor of Meudon, thunders at our door in the name of the Law, demanding, I suppose, my husband’s head. Here is the conversation through the megaphone–Xavier is two hundred feet above us:
“‘Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!’
“No one answers.
“‘Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend arid submit to process for outrage of domicile.’
“Xavier, roused from his calculations, comprehending only the last words: ‘Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy Julie?’
“The mayor, furious, ‘Xavier Lavalle–‘
“Xavier, interrupting: ‘I have not that felicity. I am only a dealer in cyclones!’
“My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he had done, excused himself in a thousand apologies. At last the reconciliation was effected in our house over a supper at two in the morning–Julie in a wonderful costume of compromises, and I have her and the mayor pacified in bed in the blue room.”
And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence his life’s work. M. Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic collision (en plane) on the flank of Hecla between Herrera, then a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man destined to confute his theories and lead him intellectually captive. Even through the years, the immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the Spaniard’s wrecked plane, and cries: “Courage! I shall not fall till I have found Truth, and I hold you fast!” rings like the call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world, immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect–the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist.
The human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed in his own volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is marked with a simplicity, clarity, and good sense beyond praise. I would specially refer such as doubt the sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained the opening and consummation of the Tellurionical Records extending over nine years. Of their tremendous significance be sure that the modest house at Meudon knew as little as that the Records would one day be the planet’s standard in all official meteorology. It was enough for them that their Xavier–this son, this father, this husband–ascended periodically to commune with powers, it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension, and that they united daily in prayers for his safety.
“Pray for me,” he says upon the eve of each of his excursions, and returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks “after supper in the little room where he kept his barometers.”
To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, accepting–he who had looked into the very heart of the lightnings–the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolution, of confession–of relics great and small. Marvellous–enviable contradiction!
The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours–labours from which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have shrunk. He had traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost ether of the upper atmosphere each one of the Isoconical Tellurions Lavalle’s Curves, as we call them today. He had disentangled the nodes of their intersections, assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux. Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and Tinsley, his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though he were ordering his flighter for some mid-day journey to Marseilles.
“I have proved my thesis,” he writes. “It remains now only that you should witness the proof. We go to Manila to-morrow. A cyclone will form off the Pescadores S. 17 E. in four days, and will reach its maximum intensity twenty-seven hours after inception. It is there I will show you the Truth.”
A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Lavalle tells us how the Master’s prophecy was verified.
I will not destroy its simplicity or its significance by any attempt to quote. Note well, though, that Herrera’s preoccupation throughout that day and night of superhuman strain is always for the Master’s bodily health and comfort.
“At such a time,” he writes, “I forced the Master to take the broth”; or “I made him put on the fur coat as you told me.” Nor is Tinsley (see pp. 184, 85) less concerned. He prepares the nourishment. He cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master as cold, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly, we have changed very little in the course of the ages! The secrets of earth and sky and the links that bind them, we felicitate ourselves we are on the road to discover; but our neighbours’ heart and mind we misread, we misjudge, we condemn now as ever. Let all, then, who love a man read these most human, tender, and wise volumes.
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transcriber’s note: These “advertisements” appeared in the format that would have been used in a newspaper or magazine ad section–that is in two columns for the smaller ads, and in quarter, half, full and double page layouts for the others. also L is used as the symbol for pounds.
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MISCELLANEOUS
[ WANTS ]
REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY, FOR East Africa, a thoroughly competent Plane and Dirigible Driver, acquainted with Petrol Radium and Helium motors and generators. Low-level work only, but must understand heavy-weight digs.
MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.
84 Palestine Buildings, E. C.
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MAN WANTED-DIG DRIVER for Southern Alps with Saharan summer trips. High levels, high speed. high wages: Apply M. SIDNEY
Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo.
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FAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A COMPETENT, steady man wanted for slow speed, low level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be member of the Church of England, and make himself useful in the garden.
M. R.
The Rectory, Gray’s Barton, Wilts.
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COMMERCIAL DIG, CENTRAL and Southern Europe. A smart, active man for a L. M. T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and Cairo. A linguist preferred.
BAGMAN
Charing Cross Hotel, W. C. (urgent.)
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FOR SALE–A BARGAIN–Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke motor. Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit, 58 in. chest, 153 collar. Can be seen by appointment.
N. 2650 This office.
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The BEE-LINE BOOKSHOP
BELT’S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights for all towns over 4,000 pop. as laid down by A. B. O.
THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12L 6d. BELT’S COASTAL ITINERARY. Short Lights of the World. 7s. 6d. THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES. (By authority of the A.B.C.) Paper,
1s. 6d.; cloth. 2s. 6d. Ready, Jan. 16. ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Gait. Cloth, bds. Ss. 6d. LAVALLE’S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s. 6d.
RIMINGTON’S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative Densities 3s. 6d.
ANGELO’S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d. VAUGHAN’S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d. VAUGHAN’S HINTS TO THE AIRMATEUR 1s.
HOFMAN’S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d. DE VITRE’S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 6d. SANGERS WEATHERS OF THE WORLD. 4s.
SANGER’S TEMPERATURES AT HIGH ALTITUDES. 4s. HAWKIN’S FOG AND HOW To AVOID IT. 3s.
VAN ZUYLAN’S SECONDARY EFFECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS. 4s. 6d. DAHLGREN’S AIR CURRENTS AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 5s. 6d. REDMAYNE’S DISEASE AND THE BAROMETER. 7s. 6d. WALTON’S HEALTH RESORTS OF THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 3s. 6d. WALTON’S THE POLE AND PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. ad. MUTLOWS HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY. 7s. 6d. HALLIWELL’S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment, giving apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with clamps for binnacle, 36 inch size, only L2. 2. 0. Invaluable for night work.) With A.B.C. certificate. L3. 10s. 0d. Zalinski’s Standard Works:
PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS, 5s.
PASSES OF THE SIERRAS, 5s.
PASSES OF THE ROOKIES. 5s.
PASSES OF THE URALS, 5s.
The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s. GRAY’S AIR CURRENTS at MOUNTAIN GORGES, 7s. 6d.
A. C. BELT & SON, READING
———————————————— SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS
———————————————— Fickers! Flickers! Flickers!
HIGH LEVEL FLICKERS
“He that is down need fear no fall,” Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!
Hansen’s air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions in prices previous to winter stocking. Pure para kit with cellulose seat and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. Unequalled for all drop-work.
Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne plus ultra of comfort and safety.
Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, nonconducting Flickers with pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on left hip.
Hansen’s Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight 197 Oxford Street
The new weighted Flicker with tweed or cheviot surface cannot be distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated.
Fickers! Flickers! Flickers! ————————————————
APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES
———————————————— What
“SKID”
was to our forefathers on the ground, “PITCH”
is to their sons in the air.
The popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive Dirigible over the light swift, Plane is mainly due to the former’s immunity from pitch.
Collison’s forward-socketed Air Van renders it impossible for any plane to pitch. The C.F.S. is automatic, simple as a shutter, certain\ as a power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of plane.
COLLISON
186 Brompton Road
Workshops, Chiswick
LUNDIE do MATTERS
Sole Agts for East’n Hemisphere
————————————————
STARTERS AND GUIDES
Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides affixed by skilled workmen in accordance with local building laws.
Rackstraww’s forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic release at end of travel–prices per foot run, clamps and crampons included. The safest on the market.
Weaver & Denison
Middleboro
————————————————
AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS
————————————————
REMEMBER
Planes are swift–so is Death
Planes are cheap–so is Life
Why does the plane builder insist on the safety of his machines? Methinks the gentleman protests too much.
The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites.
They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles.
Standard Dig construction Co.
Millwall and Buenos Ayres
———————————————— HOVERS
POWELL’S
Wind Hovers
for ‘planes lying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the forebody. Will not send to leeward. “Albatross” wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h.p. and weight.
We fit and test free to
40 east of Greenwich Village
L. & W. POWELL
196 Victoria Street, W.
————————————————
REMEMBER
We shall always be pleased to see you.
We build and test and guarantee our dirigibles or all purposes. They go up when you please and they do not come down till you please.
You can please yourself, but–you might as well choose a dirigible.
STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO. Millwall and Buenos Ayres
————————————————
GAYER AND HUNT
Birmingham and Birmingham
Eng. Ala.
Towers. Landing Stages,
Slips and Lifts
public and private
Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal Construction Dept. Sole patentees and owners of the Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie. Only gold medal Kyoto Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997.
————————————————
AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES
————————————————
C. M. C.
Our Synthetical Mineral
BEARINGS
are chemically and crystal logically identical with the minerals whose names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond, Rock-Crystal, Agate and Ruby Bearings-cups, caps and collars for the higher speeds. For tractor bearings and spindles-Imperative. For rear propellers-Indispensable. For all working parts-Advisable.
Commercial Minerals Co.
107 Minories
————————————————
RESURGAM!
If you have not Clothed YOURSELF in a
NORMANDIE RESURGAM
YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK’S LIST OF AIR-KIT.
RESURGAM AIR-KIT EMPORIUM
HYMANS & GRAHAM
1198 Lower Broadway, New York
————————————————
REMEMBER!
————————————————
* It is now nearly, a generation since the Plane was to supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. * TO-DAY none of the Planet’s freight is carried en plane. * Less than two per rent of the Planet’s passengers are carried en plane.
We design, equip guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes.
Standard Dig Construction Company MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES ————————————————
BAT-BOATS
————————————————
FLINT & MANTEL
SOUTHAMPTON
FOR SALE
at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:
GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430(nom.) Maginnis Motor, under-rake rudder.
MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas’ lock-steering gear.
IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator), Miller keel and rudder.
The above are well known on the South Coast as sound, wholesome knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. Griselda carries spare set of Hofman racing vans and can be lied three foot clear in smooth water with ballast-tank swung aft. The others do not lift, clear of water, and are recommended for beginners.
Also, by private treaty, racing B.B. Tarpon (76 winning flags) 120 knt., 60 ft.; Long-Davidson double under-rake rudder, new this season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis motor, Radium relays and Pond generator. Bronze breakwater forward, and treble reinforced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockered keel: Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.
Tarpon-has been lifted and held seven feet for two miles between touch and touch.
Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the 9th January.
————————————————
AIR PLANES AND STARTERS
————————————————
HINKS MODERATOR
Monorail overhead starter
for family and private planes up to twenty-five foot over all
Absolutely Safe
Hinks & Co.. Birmingham
———————————————— J. D. ARDAGH
I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR PLANE I AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES, BUT TILL THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE, SAFETY, AND COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP CANNOT RELEASE TILL THE MOTORS ARE WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT WITHOUT PITCHING.
Remember our motto, “Upward and Outward,” and do not trust yourself to so-called “rigid” guide-bars
J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN
————————————————
ACCESSORIES AND SPARES
————————————————
CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS
ESTABLISHED 1924
ACCESSORIES and SPARES
Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level (illuminated face).
All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet L2 10 0 With Aerial Board of Control certificate L3 11 0 Foot and Hand Foghoms; Sirens toned to any club note; with air-chest belt-driven horn motor L6 8 0 Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C. requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range L3 3 0
Grapnels, mushroom–anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers, snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public installations.
Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel.
Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear, turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist. Invaluable for sea trips.
Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos.00 to 20 A.B.C. Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the principal clubs (boxed).
A selection of twenty L2 17 6 International night-signals (boxed) L1 11 6
Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices according to power).
Wind-noses for dirigibles–Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or aluminum and flux for winter work.
Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.
Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; paper-mache wire stiffened; ribbed Xylonite (Nickson’s patent); all razor-edged (price by pitch and diameter).
Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.
Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and collars. Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.
Magniac’s bow-rudders–(Lavales patent grooving).
Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (nonmagnetic).
Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h.p. (in pairs).
Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h.p. (tandem).
Stun’sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform.
Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight.
CATALOGUES FREE THROUGHOUT THE PLANET
————————————————
THE FOUR ANGELS
As ADAM lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Earth came down, and offered Earth in fee. But Adam did not need it,
Nor the plough he would not speed it, Singing:–“Earth and Water, Air and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?”
(The Apple Tree’s in bud.)
As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Waters offered all the Seas in fee. But Adam would not take ’em,
Nor the ships he wouldn’t make ’em, Singing:–“Water, Earth and Air and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?”
(The Apple Tree’s in leaf.)
As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Air he offered all the Air in fee. But Adam did not crave it,
Nor the flight he wouldn’t brave it, Singing:–“Air and Water, Earth and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?”
(The Apple Tree’s in bloom.)
As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Fire rose up and not a word said he. But he wished a fire and made it,
And in Adam’s heart he laid it, Singing.–“Fire, fire, burning Fire,
Stand up and reach your heart’s desire!” (The Apple Blossom’s set.)
As Adam was a-working outside of Eden-Wall, He used the Earth, he used the Seas, he used the Air and all; And out of black disaster
He arose to be the master
Of Earth and Water, Air and Fire, But never reached his heart’s desire! (The Apple Tree’s cut down!)
A DEAL IN COTTON
Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares, I wrote some tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab Police (who married Miss Youghal), and Adam, his son. Strickland has finished his Indian Service, and lives now at a place in England called Weston-super-Mare, where his wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Semi-occasionally he comes up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends. Otherwise he plays golf and follows the harriers for his figure’s sake.
If you remember that Infant who told a tale to Eustace Cleever the novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with a vast estate. He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses his friends. I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal nurses and a specialist in “Sprue.” Another time the place was full of schoolboys–sons of Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper’s heart.
But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire, and I fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L. Corkran, so that the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet terminated the Delights, nor separated the Companions.
Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a native Infantry regiment on the border: “The Stricks are coming for to-night-with their boy.”
“I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about,” I said. “Is he in the Service?”
“No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate. He’s Assistant-Commissioner at Dupe–wherever that is. Somaliland, ain’t it, Stalky?” asked the Infant.
Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. “You’re only three thousand miles out. Look at the atlas.”
“Anyhow, he’s as rotten full of fever as the rest of you,” said the Infant, at length on the big divan. “And he’s bringing a native servant with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable room.”
“Why? Is he a Yao–like the fellow Wade brought here–when your housekeeper had fits?” Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some odd things.
“No. He’s one of old Strickland’s Punjabi policemen–and quite European–I believe.”
“Hooray! Haven’t talked Punjabi for three months–and a Punjabi from Central Africa ought to be amusin’.”
We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was Agnes Strickland, whom the Infant makes no secret of adoring.
He is devoted, in a fat man’s placid way, to at least eight designing women; but she nursed him once through a bad bout of Peshawur fever, and when she is in the house, it is more than all hers.
“You didn’t send rugs enough,” she began. “Adam might have taken a chill.”
“It’s quite warm in the tonneau. Why did you let him ride in front? “
“Because he wanted to,” she replied, with the mother’s smile, and we were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Mohammedan.
“That is all that came home of him,” said his father to me. There was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Dalhousie centuries since.”
“And what is this uniform?” Stalky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who came to attention on the marble floor.
“The uniform of the Protectorate troops, Sahib. Though I am the Little Sahib’s body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended by folk dressed altogether as servants.”
“And–and you white men wait at table on horseback?” Stalky pointed to the man’s spurs.
“These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England,” said Imam Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how much leave he had, and he said “Six months.”
“But he’ll take another six on medical certificate,” said Agnes anxiously. Adam knit his brows.
“You don’t want to–eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is doing.” Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs.
“Ah!” said the Infant. “I’ve only a few thousand pheasants to look after. Come along and dress for dinner. We’re just ourselves. What flower is your honour’s ladyship commanding for the table?”
“Just ourselves?” she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall. “Then let’s have marigolds the little cemetery ones.”
So it was ordered.
Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam’s servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember.
Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam Din–shoeless, out of respect to the floors–brought him his medicine, poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders.
“Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary,” said his mother, and Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits.
“Now what d’you expect to get out of your country?” the Infant asked, when–our India laid aside we talked Adam’s Africa. It roused him at once.
“Rubber -nuts -gums -and so on,” he said. “But our real future is cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District.”
“My District!” said his father. “Hear him, Mummy!”
“I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester chaps said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on the market.”
“But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?” she asked.
“My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of black soil that was just the thing for cotton.”
“Ah! What was your Chief like?” Stalky asked, in his silkiest tones.
“The best man alive–absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose yourself. The people call him”–Adam jerked out some heathen phrase–“that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know.”
“I’m glad of that. Because I’ve heard from other quarters” Stalky’s sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long delayed. “Other quarters!” Adam threw out a thin hand. “Every dog has his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!” The shake of his head was as I remembered it among his father’s policemen twenty years before, and his mother’s eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man’s first love or loyalty.
A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.
“I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our shirts,” said the voice of Imam Din.
“Does he know as much English as that?” cried the Infant, who had forgotten his East.
We all admired the cotton for Adam’s sake, and, indeed, it was very long and glossy.
“It’s–it’s only an experiment,” he said. “We’re such awful paupers we can’t even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that”–he patted the stuff–“by a pure fluke.”
“How much did it cost?” asked Strickland.
“With seed and machinery–about two hundred pounds. I had the labour done by cannibals.”
“That sounds promising.” Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette.
“No, thank you,” said Agnes. “I’ve been at Weston-super-Mare a little too long for cannibals. I’ll go to the music-room and try over next Sunday’s hymns.”
She lifted the boy’s hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across the acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the Infant’s ancestors’ banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress disappeared under the musicians’ gallery; two electrics broke out, and she stood backed against the lines of gilded pipes.
“There’s an abominable self-playing attachment here!” she called.
“Me!” the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. “That’s how I play Parsifal.”
“I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps.”
We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor.
“Now for the direct expression,” said Stalky, and moved on the Burgundy recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned blood.
“It’s nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven’t been able to prove cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli offers you four pounds of woman’s breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you–“
“Naturally burn the villages before lunch,” said Stalky.
Adam shook his head. “No troops,” he sighed. “I told my Chief about it, and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man. He advised me if ever I felt like it not to commit a–a barren felo de se, but to let the Sheshaheli do it. Then he could report, and then we could mop ’em up!”
“Most immoral! That’s how we got–” Stalky quoted the name of a province won by just such a sacrifice.
“Yes, but the beasts dominated one end of my cotton-belt like anything. They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for analysis–me and Imam Din.”
“Sahib! Is there a need?” The voice came out of the darkness, and the eyes shone over Adam’s shoulder ere it ceased.
“None. The name was taken in talk.” Adam abolished him with a turn of the finger. “I couldn’t make a casus belli of it just then, because my Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north. Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn Makarrah? He precious nearly lost us the Protectorate at one time, though he’s an ally of ours now.”
“Wasn’t he rather a pernicious brute, even as they go?” said Stalky. “Wade told me about him last year.”
“Well, his nickname all through the country was ‘The Merciful,’ and he didn’t get that for nothing. None of our people ever breathed his proper name. They said ‘He’ or ‘That One,’ and they didn’t say it aloud, either. He fought us for eight months.”
“I remember. There was a paragraph about it in one of the papers,” I said.
“We broke him, though. No–the slavers don’t come our way, because our men have the reputation of dying too much, the first month after they’re captured. That knocks down profits, you see.”
“What about your charming friends, the Sheshahelis?” said the Infant.
“There’s no market for Sheshaheli. People would as soon buy crocodiles. I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn Makarrah dropped down on ’em once–to train his young men–and simply hewed ’em in pieces. The bulk of my people are agriculturists just the right stamp for cotton-growers. What’s Mother playing?–‘Once in royal’?”
The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe restored, steadied to a tune.
“Magnificent! Oh, magnificent! ” said the Infant loyally. I had never heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond.
“How did you get your cannibals to work for you?” asked Strickland.
“They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn Makarrah–just at the time I wanted ’em. You see my Chief had promised me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he would not bag it for his roads this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues didn’t run to it.”
“What is your revenue?” Stalky asked in the vernacular.
“With hut-tax, traders’ game and mining licenses, not more than fourteen thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months ahead.” Adam sighed.
“Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib’s camp. Last year it exceeded three rupees,” Imam Din said quietly.
“Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather strict on fines. I worked up my native clerk–Bulaki Ram–to a ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton-scheme to three points of decimals, after office. I tell you I envied your magistrates here hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about meet, and I was crazy to get the odd two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing grows on a chap when he’s alone–and talks aloud!”
“Hul-lo! Have you been there already?” the father said, and Adam nodded.
“Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of ‘Marmion’ to a tree, sir. Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking nigger came in towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to little things like that.) He said he’d found it, and please would I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makarrah’s men there might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab–a smallboned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our climate when it sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted like–like the dog in ‘Tom Sawyer,’ when he sat on the what’s-its-name beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I could see it had been sarkied. (That’s a sort of gum-poison, pater, which attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer is writing a monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out the corpse one time, with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder, and hot water.
“I’d seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off his feet, and he stopped sneezing, I knew he’d live. He was bad, though; lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a Hajji–had been three times to Mecca–come in from French Africa, and that he’d met the nigger by the wayside–just like a case of thuggee, in India–and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable enough by what I knew of Coast niggers.”
“You believed him?” said his father keenly.
“There was no reason I shouldn’t. The nigger never came back, and the old man stayed with me for two months,” Adam returned. “You know what the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater? He was that.”
“None finer, none finer,” was the answer.
“Except a Sikh,” Stalky grunted.
“He’d been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess–you don’t know what that meant to me -like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That’s why he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by cotton-growing, you know.”
“You talked of that too?” said Strickland.
“Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don’t know what it meant to me. A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?”
“Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the money for our cotton-play.” Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland’s chair.
“Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He brought me news when I was down with fever at Dupe that one of Ibn Makarrah’s men was parading through my District with a bunch of slaves–in the Fork!”
“What’s the matter with the Fork, that you can’t abide it?” said Stalky. Adam’s voice had risen at the last word.
“Local etiquette, sir,” he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky’s atrocious pun. “If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he ought to pretend that they’re his servants. Hawkin’ ’em about in the Fork–the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know–is insolence–same as not backing your topsails in the old days. Besides, it unsettles the District.”
“I thought you said slavers didn’t come your way,” I put in.
“They don’t. But my Chief was smoking ’em out of the North all that season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but open slave-dealing in the Fork, was too much. I couldn’t go myself, so I told a couple of our Makalali police and Imam Din to make talk with the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been expensive, but it turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with the slaver (he didn’t show fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and we tried him in my bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you how demoralized the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a defeat), he’d snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and was offering ’em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered ’em to you, didn’t he, Imam Din?”
“I was witness that he offered man-eaters’ for sale,” said Imam Din.
“Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed, him both ways. You see, he had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant the double fine if I could get it out of him.”
“What was his defence?” said Strickland, late of the Punjab Police.
“As far as I remember–but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the time–he’d mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he was in French territory. Said he’d never do it again, if we’d let him off with a fine. I could have shaken hands with the brute for that. He paid up cash like a motorist and went off one time.”
“Did you see him?”
“Ye-es. Didn’t I, Imam Din?”
“Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the Sahib also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and they swore to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play. The Sahib leaned on his own servant’s shoulder the while.”
“I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me the papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in the safe–two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don’t know what that meant to me! I believe it cured my fever; and as soon as I could, I staggered off with the Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli about labour. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work! It wasn’t gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned out a week or two before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me for a job. I gave it ’em.”
“And so you were very happy?” His mother had stolen up behind us. “You liked your cotton, dear?” She tidied the lump away.
“By Jove, I was happy!” Adam yawned. “Now if any one,” he looked at the Infant, “cares to put a little money into the scheme, it’ll be the making of my District. I can’t give you figures, sir, but I assure–“
“You’ll take your arsenic, and Imam Din’ll take you up to bed, and I’ll come and tuck you in.”
Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands joined across his dark hair, and “Isn’t he a darling?” she said to us, with just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year ’84. We were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imam Din returned to us from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.
“Now,” said Strickland, “tell us what truly befell, son of my servant.”
“All befell as our Sahib has said. Only–only there was an arrangement–a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play.”
“Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant,” said Strickland.
But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din hunker down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at attention.
“When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupe,” he began, “the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected the names of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue was beyond belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this cotton-play. Being at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our Sahib’s forehead, to sink into his brain news concerning a slave-dealer in his district who had made a mock of the law. Sahib,” Imam Din turned to Strickland, “our Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to the spur. He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the slavedealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him.”
“Alone–servant of my son, and son of my servant?” said his father.
“There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come in with the Hajji’s money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our Sahib died, she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given me orders to depart.”
“Being mad with fever–eh?”
“What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart’s desire. He talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his heart’s desire that the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji could have given him money enough out of hand for ten cottonplays; but in this respect also our Sahib’s virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange moneys. Therefore the Hajji said–and I helped with my counsel–that we must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with the English Law. It was great trouble to us, but–the Law is the Law. And the Hajji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if our Sahib died. So I accompanied the Hajji.”
“Knowing who he was?” said Strickland.
“No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji, because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures at five thousand rupees upon any slave-block. The Hajji then said to me: ‘Come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my delight’s delight’ The Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father for his son, of a saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One. But I said: ‘We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred rifles. We have here five.’ The Hajji said: ‘I have untied as knot in my head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a thousand.’ I saw that he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew that he was a Great One with virtue in him.
“We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the second day–about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Hajji walked delicately across the open place where their filth is, and scratched upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: ‘I am here once again. Give me six and yoke up.’ They zealously then pushed to us with poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: “Fetch fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.’ The wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town roared into flame, and all went. The Hajji then said: ‘At the end of a time there will come here the white man ye once chased for sport. He will demand labour to plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and your spawn after you.’ They said, lifting their heads a very little from the edge of the ashes: ‘ We are that labour, and our spawn after us.’ The Hajji said: ‘What is also my name?’ They said: ‘Thy name is also The Merciful’ The Hajji said: ‘Praise then my mercy’; and while they did this, the Hajji walked away, I following.”
The Infant made some noise in his throat, and reached for more Burgundy.
“About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only frights Sahib! None had–none could–touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for some heathen to do what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The Hajji said: ‘What do ye see? They said: ‘Oh, our Lord, we neither see nor hear.’ The Hajji said: ‘But I command ye to see and to hear and to say.’ They said: ‘Oh, our Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves stood in a Fork.’ The Hajji said: ‘So testify before the officer who waits you in the town of Dupe.’ They said: ‘What shall come to us after?’ The Hajji said: ‘The just reward for the informer. But if ye do not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds, to fall from the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.’ Hearing this, the Angari men hastened to Dupe. The Hajji then said to me: ‘Are those things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village full?’ I said that three witnesses amply established any case, but as yet, I said, the Hajji had not offered his slaves for sale. It is true, as our Sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and yet another for making to sell them. And it was the double fine that we needed, Sahib, for our Sahib’s cotton-play. We had fore-arranged all this with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: ‘O God, Refuge of the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this’ dog’s meat by the roadside to gain his delight for my heart’s delight?” None the less, he admitted it was the English Law, and so he offered me the six–five–in a small voice, with an averted head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour milk as heathen should. They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because they eat men.”
“Maybe,” said Strickland. “But where were thy wits? One witness is not sufficient to establish the fact of a sale.”
“What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji’s reputation to consider. We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing. And, moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law of evidence well enough.
“So then we went to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari men, ‘I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened her hair for death. The Hajji said: ‘Be quick with my trial. I am not Job!’ The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound of soothing voices round the bed. Yet–yet, because no man can be sure whether a Sahib of that blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly in the manner of the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose’s sake.”
“Then he did not see the prisoner?” said Strickland.
“I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by God’s favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the safe–two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite true that the gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner, and having speech with the man-eaters–the Hajji breathed all that on his forehead to sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard, has remained . . . . Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib called for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from Europe with the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and cotton=3Dmills–ah, then he laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart’s desire, this cotton-play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little, little arrangement, Sahib, of which–is it necessary to tell all the world?”
“And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?” said Strickland.
“Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our Sahib says, the man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the Hajji said to me: ‘I go to my own place, though God knows whether the Man with the Stone Eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.’ I said: ‘Thou art then That One?’ The Hajji said: ‘I am ten thousand rupees reward into thy hand. Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines for the boy?’ I said: ‘What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy life a thousand years!’ The Hajji said: ‘Who has seen to-morrow? God has given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise Him. See that the breed is not lost!’
“He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib’s office-table under the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of Service newly come in by runner from the North. At this, fearing evil news for the Hajji, I would have restrained him, but he said: ‘We be both Great Ones. Neither of us will fail.’ Our Sahib looked up to invite the Hajji to approach before he opened the letter, but the Hajji stood off till our Sahib had well opened and well read the letter. Then the Hajji said: ‘Is it permitted to say farewell?’ Our Sahib stabbed the letter on the file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The Hajji said: ‘I go to my own place,’ and he loosed from his neck a chained heart of ambergris set in soft gold and held it forth. Our Sahib snatched it swiftly in the closed fist, down turned, and said ‘If thy name be written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my heart.’ The Hajji said: ‘And on mine also is a name engraved; but there is no name on the amulet.’ The Hajji stooped to our Sahib’s feet, but our Sahib raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with his shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and so he went away.”
“And what order was in the Service letter?” Stalky murmured.
“Only an order for our Sahib to write a report on some new cattle sickness. But all orders come in the same make of envelope. We could not tell what order it might have been.”
“When he opened the letter–my son–made he no sign? A cough? An oath?” Strickland asked.
“None, Sahib. I watched his hands. They did not shake. Afterward he wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heat.”
“Did he know? Did he know who the Hajji was?” said the Infant in English.
“I am a poor man. Who can say what a Sahib of that get knows or does not know? But the Hajji is right. The breed should not be lost. It is not very hot for little children in Dupe, and as regards nurses, my sister’s cousin at Jull–“
“H’m! That is the boy’s own concern. I wonder if his Chief ever knew?” said Strickland.
“Assuredly,” said Imam Din. “On the night before our Sahib went down to the sea, the Great Sahib–the Man with the Stone Eyes–dined with him in his camp, I being in charge of the table. They talked a long while and the Great Sahib said: ‘What didst thou think of That One?’ (We do not say Ibn Makarrah yonder.) Our Sahib said: ‘Which one?’ The Great Sahib said: ‘That One which taught thy man-eaters to grow cotton for thee. He was in thy District three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked by every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head.’ Our Sahib said: ‘If his head had been needed, another man should have been appointed to govern my District, for he was my friend.’ The Great Sahib laughed and said: ‘If I had needed a lesser man in thy place be sure I would have sent him, as, if I had needed the head of That One, be sure I would have sent men to bring it to me. But tell me now, by what means didst thou twist him to thy use and our profit in this cotton-play?’ Our Sahib said: ‘By God, I did not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was my friend.’ The Great Sahib said: ‘ ‘Toh Vac! (Bosh!) Tell!’ Our Sahib shook his head as he does–as he did when a child–and they looked at each other like sword-play men in the ring at a fair. The Great Sahib dropped his eyes first and he said: ‘So be it. I should perhaps have answered thus in my youth. No matter. I have made treaty with That One as an ally of the State. Some day he shall tell me the tale.’ Then I brought in fresh coffee, and they ceased. But I do not think That One will tell the Great Sahib more than our Sahib told him.”
“Wherefore?” I asked.
“Because they are both Great Ones, and I have observed in my life that Great Ones employ words very little between each other in their dealings; still less when they speak to a third concerning those dealings. Also they profit by silence . . . . Now I think that the mother has come down from the room, and I will go rub his feet till he sleeps.”
His ears had caught Agnes’s step at the stair-head and presently she passed us on her way to the music room humming the Magnificat.
THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD
Who gives him the Bath?
“I,” said the wet,
Rank Jungle-sweat,
“I’ll give him the Bath!”
Who’ll sing the psalms?
“We,” said the Palms.
“Ere the hot wind becalms,
We’ll sing the psalms.”
Who lays on the sword?
“I,” said the Sun,
“Before he has done,
I’ll lay on the sword.”
Who fastens his belt?
“I,” said Short-Rations,
“I know all the fashions
Of tightening a belt!”
Who buckles his spur?
“I,” said his Chief,
Exacting and brief,
“I’ll give him the spur.”
Who’ll shake his hand?
“I,” said the Fever,
“And I’m no deceiver,
I’ll shake his hand.”
Who brings him the wine?
“I,” said Quinine,
“It’s a habit of mine,
I’ll come with his wine.”
Who’ll put him to proof?
“I,” said All Earth,
“Whatever he’s worth,
I’ll put to the proof.”
Who’ll choose him for Knight?
“I,” said his Mother,
“Before any other,
My very own knight!”
And after this fashion, adventure to seek, Was Sir Galahad made–as it might be last week!
THE PUZZLER
I had not seen Penfentenyou since the Middle Nineties, when he was Minister of Ways and Woodsides in De Thouar’s first Administration. Last summer, though he nominally held the same portfolio, he was his Colony’s Premier in all but name, and the idol of his own province, which is two and a half times the size of England. Politically, his creed was his growing country; and he came over to England to develop a Great Idea in her behalf.
Believing that he had put it in train, I made haste to welcome him to my house for a week.
That he was chased to my door by his own Agent-General in a motor; that they turned my study into a Cabinet Meeting which I was not invited to attend; that the local telegraph all but broke down beneath the strain of hundred word coded cables; and that I practically broke into the house of a stranger to get him telephonic facilities on a Sunday, are things I overlook. What I objected to was his ingratitude, while I thus tore up England to help him. So I said: “Why on earth didn’t you see your Opposite Number in Town instead of bringing your office work here?”
“Eh? Who?” said he, looking up from his fourth cable since lunch.
“See the English Minister for Ways and Woodsides.”
“I saw him,” said Penfentenyou, without enthusiasm.
It seemed that he had called twice on the gentleman, but without an appointment–(“I thought if I wasn’t big enough, my business was”)–and each time had found him engaged. A third party intervening, suggested that a meeting might be arranged if due notice were given.
“Then,” said Penfentenyou, “I called at the office at ten o’clock.”
“But they’d be in bed,” I cried.
“One of the babies was awake. He told me that–that ‘my sort of questions “‘–he slapped the pile of cables–“were only taken between 11 and 2 P.M. So I waited.”
“And when you got to business?” I asked.
He made a gesture of despair. “It was like talking to children. They’d never heard of it.”
“And your Opposite Number?”
Penfentenyou described him.
“Hush! You mustn’t talk like that!” I shuddered. “He’s one of the best of good fellows. You should meet him socially.”
“I’ve done that too,” he said. “Have you?”
“Heaven forbid!” I cried; “but that’s the proper thing to say.”
“Oh, he said all the proper things. Only I thought as this was England that they’d more or less have the hang of all the–general hang-together of my Idea. But I had to explain it from the beginning.”
“Ah! They’d probably mislaid the papers,” I said, and I told him the story of a three-million pound insurrection caused by a deputy Under-Secretary sitting upon a mass of green-labelled correspondence instead of reading it.
“I wonder it doesn’t happen every week,” the answered. “D’you mind my having the Agent-General to dinner again tonight? I’ll wire, and he can motor down.”
The Agent-General arrived two hours later, a patient and expostulating person, visibly torn between the pulling Devil of a rampant Colony, and the placid Baker of a largely uninterested England. But with Penfentenyou behind him he had worked; for he told us that Lord Lundie–the Law Lord was the final authority on the legal and constitutional aspects of the Great Idea, and to him it must be referred.
“Good Heavens alive!” thundered Penfentenyou. “I told you to get that settled last Christmas.”
“It was the middle of the house-party season,” said the Agent-General mildly. “Lord Lundie’s at Credence Green now–he spends his holidays there. It’s only forty miles off.”
“Shan’t I disturb his Holiness?” said Penfentenyou heavily. “Perhaps ‘my sort of questions,”‘ he snorted, “mayn’t be discussed except at midnight.”
“Oh, don’t be a child,” I said.
“What this country needs,” said Penfentenyou, “is–” and for ten minutes he trumpeted rebellion.
“What you need is to pay for your own protection,” I cut in when he drew breath, and I showed him a yellowish paper, supplied gratis by Government, which is called Schedule D. To my merciless delight he had never seen the thing before, and I completed my victory over him and all the Colonies with a Brassey’s “Naval Annual” and a “Statesman’s Year Book.”
The Agent-General interposed with agent-generalities (but they were merely provocateurs) about Ties of Sentiment.
“They be blowed!” said Penfentenyou. “What’s the good of sentiment towards a Kindergarten?”
“Quite so. Ties of common funk are the things that bind us together; and the sooner you new nations realize it the better. What you need is an annual invasion. Then you’d grow up.”
“Thank you! Thank you!” said the Agent-General. “That’s what I am always trying to tell my people.”
“But, my dear fool,” Penfentenyou almost wept, “do you pretend that these banana-fingered amateurs at home are grown up?”