 9. The Staves of the Lamp Part 2 That very infant who told the story of the capture of Bonaghi, a conference of the powers, many inventions, to Eustace Cleaver, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast revenues, resigned the service and became a landholder, while his mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl. But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a full-sized magazine rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of his estate. And the surrounding families, who lived in savage seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an earring maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and infant was cast out from the society of JPs and decent men, until such time as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old schoolmates home on leave, affable detrimentals, at whom the bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to look from afar. I knew when a troop ship was in port by the infant's invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal seniority, at others young and blushing giants, whom I had left small fags far down in the lower second. And to these infant and the elders expounded the whole duty of man in the army. I had to cut the service, said the infant, for that's no reason why my vast oars of experience should be lost to posterity. He was just thirty, and in that same summer an imperious wire drew me to his baronial castle. Got a good haul, ex tamar, come along. It was an unusually good haul, arranged with a single eye to my benefit. There was a baldish broken down captain of native infantry, shivering with aegyo behind an indomitable red-nose. And they called him Captain Dixon, who was another captain also of native infantry, with a fair mustache. His face was like white glass, and his hands were fragile. But he answered joyfully to the cry of Tertius. There was an enormously big and well-kept man, who had evidently not campaigned for years, clean-shaved, soft-voiced, and cat-like. But still, Avanaza, for all that he adorned the Indian political service. And there was a lean Irishman. His face tanned and blue-black with the sons of the telegraph department. Luckily, the bay's doors of the bachelor's wing fitted tight, for we dressed promiscuously in the corridor, or in each other's rooms, talking, calling, shouting, and anon waltzing by pairs to songs of Dick Ford's own devising. There were sixty years of mixed work to be sifted out between us. And since we had met one another from time to time in the quick-scene shifting of India, a dinner, camp, or a race meeting here, a Dak-Bungalow, or a railway station up country somewhere else, we had never quite lost touch. Infant sat on the banisters, hungrily and enviously drinking it in. He enjoyed his baronetcy, but his heart yearned for the old days. It was a cheerful babble of matters personal, provincial, and imperial. Pieces of old call-over lists and new policies cut short by the roar of a Burmese gong. And we went down not less than a quarter of a mile of stairs to meet Infant's mother, who had known us all in our school days, and greeted us as if those days had ended a week ago. But it was fifteen years since, with tears of laughter, she had lent me a grey princess skirt for the amateur theatricals. That was a dinner from the Arabian knights. Served in an eighty-foot hall, full of ancestors and pots of flowering roses, and what was more impressive, heated by steam. When it was ended, and the little mother had gone away, you boys want to talk. So I shall say good night now. We gathered about an apple-wood fire in a gigantic polished steel grate under a mantelpiece ten feet high, and the infant compassed us about with curiously cures, and that kind of cigarette which serves best to introduce your own pipe. Oh, bliss, grunted dick-four from the sofa, where he had been packed with a rug over him. First time I've been warm since I came home. We were all nearly on top of the fire, except Infant, who had been long enough at home to take exercise when he felt chilled. This is a grisly diversion, but much affected by the English of the island. If you say a word about cold tubs and brisk walks, Drolb-McTurk, I'll kill you, Infant. I've got a liver, too. Remember when we used to think it a treat to turn out of our beds on a Sunday morning, thermometer fifty-seven degrees if it was summer, and bathe off the pebble ridge? Ugh! Thing I don't understand, said Tertius, was the way we chaps used to go down to the lavatories, boil ourselves pink, and then come up with all our paws open into a young snowstorm or a black frost. Yet none of our chaps died that I can remember. Pocken of baths, said MacTurk, with a chuckle, remember our bath with number five, Beatle, the night rabbit's eggs and rocked king. What I wouldn't give to see old Storky now. He's the only one of the two studies not here. Storky is the great man of his century, said Dick Four. How do you know? I asked. How do I know? said Dick Four scornfully. If you've ever been in a tight place with Storky, you wouldn't ask. I haven't seen him since the camp at Pindi in eighty-seven, I said. He was going strong then, but seven feet high and four feet through. Adequate chap, infernally adequate, said Tertius, pulling his moustache and staring into the fire. God damn near, caught Marshall and broke in Egypt in eighty-four, the infant volunteered. I went out in the same trooper with him, as raw as he was. Only I showed it and Storky didn't. What was the trouble, said MacTurk, reaching forward absently to twitch my dress tied to position. Oh, nothing! His colonel trusted him to take twenty tommys out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Swarkin. And Storky got him broiled by the fuzzies five miles in the interior. He conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of them. He knew jolly well he'd no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was throughing at the mouth, complaining of the paucity of support according to him in his operations. God, it might have been one fat brigadier slaying another. And then he went into the staff-core. That is entirely Storky, said Abnazar from the armchair. You've come across him, too, I said. Oh, yes, he replied in the softest tones. I was at the tail of that, that epic. Don't you chaps know? We did not, Infant MacTurk and I. We called for information very politely. It wasn't anything, said Tershys. We got into a mess up in the Cachin Hills a couple of years ago, and Storky pulled us through, that's all. MacTurk gazed at Tershys with all an Irishman's contempt for the tongue-tied Saxon. Heavens, he said, and it's you and your likes, Governor Ireland. Tershys, aren't you ashamed? Well, I can't tell a yarn. I can chip him when the other fellow starts bucking. Ask him, he pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug. I knew he wouldn't, said Dick Four. Give me a whisky and soda. I've been drinking lemon squash and a moniated quinine, while you chaps have been bathed in champagne, and my head's singing like a top. He wiped his ragged moustache above the drink, and his teeth chattering in his head began. You know the Cachin Marlott expedition? When we scared the souls out of them with a field force, they didn't fight against. Well, both tribes, there was a coalition against us, came in without firing a shot, and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, putty dear. I was at similar, said Abonanza hastily. Never mind, you're tired with the same brush. On the strength of those Tupney-Hapenney treaties, you asses of politicals reported the country was pacified, and the government, being a fool as usual, began road-making, depending on local supply of labour. Remember that, pussy? The rest of our chaps, who'd had no look-in during the campaign, didn't think there'd be any more of it, and were anxious to get back to India. But I'd been in two of these little rows before, and I had my suspicions. I engineered myself, some were ingenio, into the command of a road patrol, no shoveling, only marching up-down, gently with a guard. They'd withdrawn all the troops they could, but I nucleused about forty pythons, recruits chiefly of my regiment, and sat tight at the base camp, while the road-parties went to work as per political survey. Had some ripping-sing-songs in camp, too, said Tershys. My pup, thus did Dick Four refer to his Subbleton, was a pious little beast. He didn't like the sing-songs, and so he went down with mnemonia. I ruckled round the camp and found Tershys, gassing about as a DAQMG, which, God knows, he hasn't cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Colet Base Camp. We're always in force for a frontier row. But I'd heard of Tershys as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his DAQMG breeches and help me. Tershys volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went. Forty pythons, Tershys and me. Looking up the road-parties, McNamara's. Remember old Mack, the sapper, who played the fiddle so damnably at Umballa? Mack's part, he was the last but one. The last was Storky's. He was at the head of the road, with some of his pet Sikhs. Mack said he believed he was all right. Storky is a Sikh, said Tershys. He takes his men to pray at the Derbar Saib, a dam ritsa, regularly as clockwork when he can. Don't interrupt, Tershys. I was about 40 miles beyond Mack's, before I found him. One of my men pointed out gently but firmly that the country was rising. What kind of country, Beatle? Well, I'm no word-painter, thank goodness, but you might call it a hellish country. When we went up to our necks in snow, we were rolling down the cud. Well, disposed inhabitants who were to supply labour for the road-making, don't forget that, Pusedia, sat behind rocks and took pot-shuts at us. Old, old story. We all legged it in search of Storky. I had a feeling that he'd be in good cover. And about dusk, we found him in his road-party, as snug as a bug in a rug in an old Marlott stone fort, with a watch-tower at one corner. He'd overhung the road, they had blasted out of the cliff fifty feet below, and under the road, things went down pretty sheer, for five or six hundred feet into a gorge, about half a mile wide and two or three miles long. We were chaps on the other side of the gorge, scientifically getting our range. So I hammered on the gate and nipped in, and tripped over Storky, in a greasy, bloody old pot-sheen, squatting on the ground, eating with his men. I'd only seen him for half a minute, about three months before, but I might have met him yesterday. He waved his hand all sereno. Hello, Aladdin, hello, Emperor, he said. You're just in time for the performance. I saw his Sikhs looked a bit battered. Where's your command? Where's your Subbleton? I said. Here, all there is of it, said Storky. If you want young Everett, he's dead, and his body's in the watch-tower. They rushed our road-party last week, and got him and seven men. We've been besieged for five days. I suppose they let you through to make sure of you. The whole country's up. Strikes me, you walked into a first-glass trap. He grinned, but neither Tertius nor I could see where the juice the fun was. We hadn't any grub for our men, and Storky had only four days' whack for his. That came with depending on your asinine politicals, Pussidia, who told us that the inhabitants were friendly. To make us quite comfy, Storky took us up to the watch-tower to see poor Everett's body, lying in a foot of drifted snow. He looked like a girl of fifteen, not a hair on a little fellow's face. He'd been shot through the temple, but the Mahalots had left their mark on him. Storky unbuttoned the tunic and showed it to us, a rummy, sickle-shaped cut on his chest. Remember the snow all white in his eyebrows, Tertius? Remember when Storky moved the lamp, and it looked as if he was alive? Yes, said Tertius with a shudder. Remember the besie look on Storky's face, though, with his nostrils all blown out, same as he used to look when he was bully in a fag? That was a lovely evening. We held a council of war up there over Everett's body. Storky said the Mahalots and the Kakeens were up together, having sunk their blood-feuds to settle us. The chaps we'd seen across the gorge were Kakeens. It was about half a mile from them to us as a bullet flies, and they'd made a line of sungars under the brow of the hill to sleep in and starve us out. The Mahalots, he said, were in front of us, promiscuous. There wasn't good cover behind the fort, or they'd have been up there, too. Storky didn't mind the Mahalots half as much as he did the Kakeens. He said the Mahalots were treacherous curses. What I couldn't understand was, why in the world the two gangs didn't join in and rush us? There must have been at least five hundred of them. Storky said they didn't trust each other very well, because they were ancestral enemies when they were at home. And the only time they'd tried to rush, he'd hove a couple of blasting charges among them. And that had sickened them a bit. It was dark but, when we finished, and Storky always serene, said, you command now. I don't suppose you mind my taking any action I may consider necessary to reprovision the fort? I said, of course not. And then the lamp blew out. So Tershys and I had to climb down the tower's steps. We didn't want to stay with Everett. And got back to our men. Storky had gone off to count the stalls, I supposed. Anyhow, Tershys and I sat up in case of a rush. They were plugging at us pretty generally, you know, relieving each other till morning. Morning came. No, Storky, not a sign of him. I took counsel with his senior native officer, a grand white-whiskered old chap, Rutten Singh, from Jolanda Way. He only grinned and said it was all right. Storky'd been out of the fort twice before, somewhere or other, according to him. He said Storky had come back unshipped and gave me to understand that Storky was an invulnerable guru of sorts. All the same, I put the whole command on half rations and sent him to picking out loopholes. About noon, there was no end of a snowstorm and the enemies stopped firing. We replied, gingerly, because we were awfully sure of ammunition. Don't suppose we fired five shots an hour, but we generally got our man. Well, while I was talking with Rutten Singh, I saw Storky coming down from the watchtower, rather puffy about the eyes. His poshteen coated with cleric-colored ice. No trust in these stoastorms, he said. Nip out, quick, and snuffle what you can get. There's a certain amount of friction between the khekeens and the marlots just now. I turned Tershys out with 20 patans and they bucketed about in the snow for a bit till they came on a sort of camp about 800 yards away with only a few men in charge and half a dozen sheep by the fire. They finished off the men and snuffled the sheep and as much grain as they could carry and came back. No one fired a shot at them. There didn't seem to be anybody about, but the snow was falling pretty thick. That's good enough, said Storky, when we got dinner ready and he was chewing mutton kebabs off a cleaning rod. There's no sense in risking men. They're holding a power-wound between the khekeens and the marlots at the head of the gorge. I don't think these so-called coalitions are much good. Do you know what that maniac had done? Tershys and I shook it out of him by instalments. There was an underground granary cellar room below the watchtower and in blasting the road, Storky had blown a hole into one side of it. Being no one else but Storky, he kept the hole open for his own ends and laid poor Everett's body slap over the well of the stairs that led down to it from the watchtower. He'd had to move and replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The six wouldn't go near the place, of course. Well, he got out of this hole and dropped onto the road. Then in the night and a howling snowstorm, he'd dropped over the edge of the cud and made his way down to the bottom of the gorge. Forwarded the nulla, which was half frozen, climbed up on the other side along a track he'd discovered and come out on the right flank of the khekeens. He had then, listen to this, crossed over a ridge that paralleled their rear, walked half a mile behind that and come out on the left of their line where the gorge gets shallow and where there was a regular track between the Marlott and the Khekeen camps. That was about two in the morning and as it turned out, a man spotted him, a Khekeen. So Storky abolished him quietly and left him with the Marlott mark on his chest same as Everett had. I was just as economical as I could be, Storky said to us, if he'd shouted, I should have been slain. I'd never had to do that kind of thing, but once before and that was the first time I'd tried that path. It's perfectly practicable for infantry, you know. What about your first man, I said. Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett. I went out looking for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me, I abolished him, privat him, scragged him, but on thinking it over, it occurred to me that if I could find the body, I'd hove it down some rocks, I might decorate it with the Marlott mark and leave it to the Khekeens to draw inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khekeens are shocked at the Marlott's perpetrating these two dunce of the outrages after they'd sworn to sink all blood feuds. I lay up behind their sungas early this morning and watched them. They all went to confer about it, the head of the gorge. Orfe annoyed they are. Don't wonder. You know the way Storky drops out his words one by one. My God, said the infant explosively, as the full depth of the strategy dawned on him. Dear man, said MacTurk purring rapturously. Storky stalked, said Tershys. That's all there is to it. No, he didn't, said Dick Four. Don't you remember how he insisted that he'd only applied his luck? Don't you remember how Rutten Singh grabbed his boots and groveled in the snow and how our men shouted? None of our patans believed that was luck, said Tershys. They swore Storky ought to have been born a patan. And remember when we nearly had a row in the fort when Rutten Singh said Storky was a patan? Gad how furious the old chap was with my gemadar. But Storky just waggled his finger and they shut up. Old Rutten Singh's sword was half out though and he swore he'd cremate every cake heen and marlott he killed. That made the gemadar pretty wild because he didn't mind fighting against his own creed but he wasn't going to crab a fellow musselman's chances of paradise. Then Storky jabbered Push-Too and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where did he choose to pick up his Push-Too from, Beatle? Never mind his language, Dick, said I. Give us the gist of it. I fluttered myself. I can address the wily patan on occasion but hang it all. I can't make puns in Push-Too or top off my arguments with a smutty story as he did. He played on those two old dogs of war like a concertina, Storky said. And the other two backed up his knowledge of Oriental nature that the cake heens and the marlottes between them would organize a combined attack on us that night as a proof of good faith. They wouldn't drive it home though because neither side would trust the other on account, as Rutten Singh put it, of the little accidents. Storky's notion was to crawl out at dusk with his seeks, maneuver him along this ungodly goat track that he'd found to the back of the cake heen position. Then lob in a few long shots at the marlottes when the attack was well on. That'll divert their minds and help to agitate them, he said. Then you chaps can come out and sweep up the pieces and we'll rendezvous at the head of the gorge. After that I move we get back to Max Camp and have something to eat. You were commanding? The infant suggested. I was about three months senior to Storky and two months, Sir Tertius's senior, Dick Forre, applied. But we were all from the same old coll. I should say ours was the only little affair on record where someone wasn't jealous of someone else. We weren't, Tertius broke in. But there was another row between Gulsher Khan and Rutten Singh. Our gemadar said, and he was quite right, that no seek living could stork worth a damn. And that the Quran Sahib had better take out the Patans who understood that kind of mountain work. Rutten Singh said that Quran Sahib jolly well knew every Patan was a born deserter and every seek was a gentleman, even if he couldn't crawl on his billy. Storky struck in some women's proverb or other that had the effect of doubling both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Patans could settle their claims on the Cajins and the Marlords later on. But he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain climbing job because Sikhs could shoot. And they can too. Give them a mule load of ammunition apiece and they're perfectly happy. And out he got, said Dick Four. As soon as it was dark and he'd had a bit of a snooze, him and 30 Sikhs went down through the staircases in the tower. Every mother's son of them salute in little Everett, where it stood propped against the wall. Last I heard him say was, Kubadar, tumble-linger. Look out, you'll fall. And they tumble-lingered over the black age of nothing. Close upon 9 p.m., the combined attack developed. Cajins across the valley and Marlots in front of us plug in at long range and yell into each other to come along and cut our infertile throats. Then they skirmished up to the gate and began the old game of calling our Patans renegades and inviting them to join a holy war. One of our men, young fellow from Derra Ismail, jumped on the wall to slang him back and jumped down, blubbing like a child. He'd been hit smack in the middle of the hand. Never saw a man yet who could stand a hit in the hand without weeping bitterly. It tickles up all the nerves. So Tershers took his rifle and smoked the others on the head to keep them quiet at their loopholes. The dear children wanted to open the gate and go in at them generally, but that didn't suit our book. Alas, near midnight, I heard the whop, whop, whop of Turkey's martinis across the valley and some general cursing among the Marlots, whose main body was hid from us by a fold in the hillside. Storky was browning them at a great rate and, very naturally, they turned half-right and began to blaze at their faithless allies, the Kekines. Regular volley-firing. In less than ten minutes after Storky opened the diversion, they were going at it hammer and tongs. Both sides of the valley, when we could see, the valley was a rather mixed-up affair. The Kekines had streamed out of their sungas above the gorge to chastise the Marlots and Storky, I was watching him through my glasses, had slipped in behind them. Very good. The Kekines had to leg it along the hillside, up to where the gorge got shallow, and they could cross over to the Marlots, who were awfully cheered to see the Kekines taken in the rear. Then it occurred to me to comfort the Kekines. So I turned out the whole command and we advanced, ala padashaj, doubling up what, for the sake of argument, will call the Marlots left flank. Even then, if they'd sunk their differences, they could have eaten us alive. But they'd been far into each other half the night and then went on far in. Queerest thing you ever saw in your born days. As soon as our men doubled up to the Marlots, they'd blazed the Kekines more zealously than ever, to show they were on our side, run up the valley a few hundred yards, and halt the fire again. The moment Storky saw our game, he duplicated it his side of the gorge, and by jove, the Kekines did just the same thing. Yes, Bartz, it's precious. You forgot him playing. Our Patsy mined the baby on the bugle to hurry us up. Did he, roared Mocturk. Somehow we all began to sing it, and there was an interruption. Rather, said Tertius, when we were quiet, no one of the Aladdin company could forget that tune. Yes, he played Patsy. Go on, Dick. Finally, said Dick Four, we drove both mobs into each other's arms on a bitter-level ground at the head of the valley, and saw the whole crew whirl off, fighting and stabbing and swearing in a blinding snowstorm. They were a heavy, hairy lot, and we didn't follow them. Storky had captured one prisoner, an old pension sepoy of twenty-five years' service, who produced his discharge and awfully sport an old card. He'd been trying to make his men rush us early in the day. He was sulky, angry with his own side for their cowardice, and Ruten Singh wanted to ban at him. Seeks don't understand fighting against the government after you've served it honestly, but Storky rescued him, and froze on to him tight, with ulterior motives, I believe. When we got back to the fort, we buried young Everett. Storky wouldn't hear a blowing up the place, and bunked. We'd only lost ten men, all told. Only ten out of seventy? How'd you lose them, I asked. Oh, there was a rush on the fort early in the night, and a few marlots got over the gate. It was rather a tight thing for a minute or two, but the recruits took it beautifully. Lucky job he hadn't any badly moody men to carry, because we had forty miles to McNamara's camp. By Jove, how we legged it. Halfway in, Ul Ruten Singh collapsed, so we slung him across four rifles on Storky's overcoat, and Storky, his prisoner, and a couple of Seeks were his bearers. After that, I went to sleep. You can, you know, on the march, when your legs get properly numbed. Max swears we all marched into his camp, snoring, and dropped where we halted. His men lugged us into tents like grahmbags. I remember waking up and seeing Storky asleep with his head in Ul Ruten Singh's chest. He slept twenty-four hours. I only slept seventeen. But then I was coming down with dysentery. Coming down? What rot? He had it on him before we joined Storky in the fort, said Tershys. Well, you needn't talk. You have your sword at McNamara, and demanded a drumhead court-martial every time you saw him. The only thing that soothed you was putting you under arrest for every half-hour. You were off your head for three days. Don't remember a word of it, said Tershys placidly. I remember my orderly giving me milk, though. How did Storky come out? MacTurk demanded, purling hard over his pipe. Storky, like a serene Brahmini bull. Poor old Mac was at his royal engineer's wit's end, to know what to do. You see, I was putrid with dysentery. Tershys was raving. Half the men had frostbite, and McNamara's orders were to break camp and come in before winter. So Storky, who hadn't turned a hair, took half his supplies to save him and the botherer lugging him back to the plains, and all the ammunition he could get, and, concilio et auxilio, rut and singy, tramped back to his fort with all his seeks and his precious prisoners, and a lot of disillute hangers on, that he and the prisoner had seduced into service. He had sixty men of sorts, and his brazen cheek. Mac nearly wept with joy when he went. You see, the worthily explicit orders to Storky to come in before the passes were blocked. Mac is a great man for orders, and Storky is a great man for orders when they suit his book. He told me he was going to the Engadine, said Tershys. Set up my cot, smote in a cigarette, and making me laugh till I cried. McNamara bundled a whole lot of us down to the plains next day. We were a walking hospital. Storky told me that McNamara was a simple godsend to him, said Dick Four. I used to see him in Mac's tent, listening to Mac play in the fiddle, and between the pieces, weadling Mac out of picks and shovels and dynamite cartridges, hand over fist. Well, that was the last we saw of Storky. Week or so later, the passes were shut with snow. I don't think Storky wanted to be found, particularly just then. He didn't, said the fair and fat Abbanazar. He didn't, ho-ho! Dick Four threw up his thin, dry hand, with the blue veins at the back of it. Hold on a minute, pussy! I'll let you in at the proper time. I went down to my regiment, and that spring five months later. I got off with a couple of companies on detachment, nominally to look after some friends of ours across the border. Actually, of course, to recruit. It was a bit unfortunate, because an ass of a young Nike carried a frivolous blood feud he'd inherited from his aunt into those hills. And the local gentry wouldn't volunteer into my corps. Of course, the Nike had taken short leave to manage the business. But that was all regular enough. But he'd stalked my pet orderly's uncle. It was an infernal shame, because I knew Harris of the Gooseneys would be covering that ground three months later. And he'd snaffle all the chaps I had my eyes on. Everybody was down on the Nike, because they felt he ought to have had the decency to postpone his disgustful armours until our companies were at full strength. Still, the beast had a certain amount of professional feeling left. He sent one of his aunts clan by night, tell me that, if I'd take safeguard, he'd put me onto a batch of beauties. I nipped over the border like a shot and about 10 miles on the other side, in a nuller, my repari in charge, showed me about 70 men variously armed, but standing up like a queen's company. Then one of them stepped out and lugged round an old bugle. Just like, who's the man? Bancroft, ain't it? Fill in for his eyeglass in a farce, and played, ah-ah-patsy-mind the baby, ah-ah-patsy-mind, that was as far as he could get. That also was as far as Dick Fork could get, because we had to sing the old song through twice, again and once more, and subsequently in order to repeat it. He explained that if I knew the rest of the song, he had a note for me from the man the song belonged to, whereupon my children, I finished that old tune on the bugle, and this is what I got. I knew you'd like to look at it, don't grab. We were all struggling for a sight of the well-known, unformed handwriting. I'll read it aloud. Fort Everett February 19 Dear Dick or Tertius, the bearer of this is in charge of 75 recruits, all pucker devils, but desirous of leading new lives. They have been slightly polished, and after being boiled, may shape well. I want you to give 30 of them to my agitant, who, though God's own ass, will need men this spring, the best you can keep. You'll be interested to learn that I have extended my road to the end of the Marlott country. All headmen and priests concerned in last September's affair worked one month each, supplying road metal from their own houses. Everett's grave is covered by a 40-foot mound, which should serve well as a base for future triangulations. Brun Singh sends his best salams. I am making some treaties, and have given my prisoner, who also sends his salams, local rank of Khan Bahadur, A. L. Corcoran. Well, that was that, said Dick For, when the roaring, the shouting, the laughter, and I think the tears had subsided. I, Chaperone, the gang across the border as quick as I could. They were rather homesick, but they cheered up when they recognized some of my chaps, who had been in the K. Keen Rao, and they made a ripping good lot. It's rather more than 300 miles from Fort Everett to where I picked him up. Now, Pussy, tell them the latter end of Storky as you saw it. Abnazar laughed a little nervous misleading official laugh. Oh, it wasn't much. I was at similar in the spring, when our Storky, out of his snows, began corresponding direct with the government, after the manner of a king, suggested Dick For. My turn now, Dick. He'd done the whole let of things he shouldn't have done, and constructively pledged the government all sorts of action. Pledge the state's ticker, eh? said MacTurk with a nod to me, about that. But the embarrassing part was that it was also thundering convenient. So well reasoned, don't you know? Came in as pat as if he'd had access to all sorts of information, which he shouldn't, of course. Poo! said Tertius. I back Storky against the foreign office any day. He'd done pretty nearly everything he could think of, except striking court into his own image and superscription, all under cover of building this infernal road, and being blocked by the snow. His report was simply amazing. Von Lenet tore his hair over it at first, and then he gasped, Who the deuce is this unknown Warren Hastings? He must be slain. He must be slain officially. The vice-royal never stand it. It's unheard of. He must be slain by his excellency in person. Order him up here and pitch him a stinger. Well, I sent him no end of an official stinger, and I pitched in an unofficial telegram at the same time. You! This was amazement from the infant, for Abnazar resembled nothing so much as a fluffy Persian cat. Yes, me, said Abnazar. It wasn't much, but after what you've said, Dicky, it was rather a coincidence, because I wired. Aladdin has now got his wife. Your emperor is appeased. I think you'd better come to life. We hope you've all been pleased. Funny how that old song came up in my head. That was fairly noncommittal and encouraging. The only flaw was that his emperor wasn't appeased by a very long chalk. Storky extricated himself from his mountain fortresses and leafed up similar at his leisure to be offered up on the horns of the altar. But, I began, surely the commander-in-chief is the proper. His Excellency had an idea that if he blew up one single junior captain, same as King used to blow us up, he was holding the reins of empire. And, of course, as long as he had that idea, Fondleinot encouraged him. I'm not sure Fondleinot didn't put the notion into his head. They've changed the breed there since my time, I said. Perhaps. Storky was sent up for his wigging like a bad little boy. I've reasoned to believe that his Excellency's hair stood on end. He walked into Storky for one hour. Storky had attention in the middle of the floor, and, so he vowed, Fondleinot pretending to soothe down his Excellency's topknot in dumb-show in the background. Storky didn't dare look up, or he'd have laughed. Now, wherefore was Storky not broken publicly? said the infant, with a large and luminous lear. Ah, wherefore? said Avanesar, to give him a chance to retrieve his plastic career, and not break his father's heart. Storky hadn't a father, but that didn't matter. He behaved like the Sannawa orphan asylum, and his Excellency graciously spared him. And then he came round to my office, and sat opposite me for ten minutes, puffing at his nostrils. Then he said, Pussy, if I thought that basket-hanger, ah, he remembered that, said MacTurk. That two-anner basket-hanger governed India. I swear I'd become naturalised Muscovite tomorrow. I'm our famine-comprise. This thing's broken my heart. It'll take six months shooting leave in India to mend it. Do you think I can get it, Pussy? He got it in about three minutes and a half, and, seventeen days later, he was back in the arms of Rotten Singh, horrid disgraced, with orders to hand over his command, etc., to Cathcart MacMoney. Observe, said Dick Four, one colonel of the political department in charge of thirty-six on a hilltop. Observe, my children! Naturally, Cathcart, not being a fool, even if he is a political, let Storky do his shooting within fifteen miles of Fort Everett for the next six months. And I always understood they and Rotten Singh and the prisoner were as thick as thieves. Then Storky loafed back to his regiment, I believe. I've never seen him since. I have, though, said MacTurk, swelling with pride. We all turned as one man. It was at the beginning of this hot weather. I was in camp in the Jolanda Doab, and stumbled slap on Storky in a Sikh village, sitting on the one chair of state, with half the population groveling before him, a dozen Sikh babies on his knees, an old harridon clap him on the shoulder, and a garland of flowers round his neck. Storky told me he was recruiting. We dined together that night, but he never said a word of the business at the fort. Told me, though, that if I wanted any supplies, I'd better say I was Koran Saib's spy, and I did, and the Sikhs wouldn't take my money. Ah, that must be one of Rotten Singh's villages, said Dick Four, and we smoked for some time in silence. I say, said MacTurk, casting back through the years, did Storky ever tell you how Rabbit's Eggs came to Rock King that night? No, said Dick Four. Then MacTurk told. I see, said Dick Four, nodding. Practically, he duplicated that trick over again. There's nobody like Storky. Well, that's just where you made a mistake, I said. India's full of Storkies. Cheltenham and Halebury and Marlborough chaps, that we don't know anything about. And the surprises will begin when there's a really big row on. We'll be surprised, said Dick Four. The other side. The gentlemen who go to the front in first-class carriages. Just imagine Storky let loose on the south side of Europe with a sufficiency of Sikhs and a reasonable prospect of loot. Consider it quietly. There's something in that, but you're too much of an optimist, Betel, said the infant. Well, I'm a right-to-be. Ain't I responsible for the whole thing? You needn't laugh. Who wrote Latin has now got a wife, eh? What's that got to do with it, said Tertius? Everything, said I. Prove it, said the infant. And I have. End of Chapter 9, Slaves of the Lamp, Part 2. And end of Storky and Co. by Rudyard Kipling.