In the Ranks of the C.I.V. Erskine Childers

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СКАЧАТЬ which we snatched furtive moments with our friends on the crowded quay. For hours a stream of horses and mules poured up the gangways; for two other corps were to share the ship with us, the Oxfordshire Yeomanry and the Irish Hospital. At two the last farewells had been said, and we narrowed our thoughts once more to all the minutiæ of routine. As it turned out, we missed that tide, and did not start till two in the next morning; but I was oblivious of such a detail, having been made one of the two "stablemen" of my sub-division, a post which was to last for a week, and kept me in constant attendance on the horses down below; so that I might just as well have been in a very stuffy stable on shore, for all I saw of the run down Channel. My duty was to draw forage from the forward hold (a gloomy, giddy operation), be responsible with my mate for the watering of all the horses in my sub-division—thirty in number, for preparing their feeds and "haying up" three times a day, and for keeping our section of the stable-deck swept and clean. We started with very fine weather, and soon fell into our new life, with, for me at least, a strange absence of any sense of transition. The sea-life joined naturally on to the barrack-life. Both are a constant round of engrossing duties, in which one has no time to feel new departures. The transition had come earlier, with the first day in barracks, and, indeed, was as great and sudden a change, mentally and physically, as one could possibly conceive. On the material side it was sharp enough; but the mental change was stranger still. There was no perspective left; no planning of the future, no questioning of the present; none of that free play of mind and will with which we order our lives at home; instead, utter abandonment to superior wills, one's only concern the present point of time and the moment's duty, whatever it might be.

      This is how we spent the day.

      The trumpet blew reveillé at six, and called us to early "stables," when the horses were fed and watered, and forage drawn. Breakfast was at seven: the food rough, but generally good. We were split up into messes of about fourteen, each of which elected two "mess orderlies," who drew the rations, washed up, swept the troop-deck, and were excused all other duties. I, and my friend Gunner Basil Williams, a colleague in my office at home, were together in the same mess. Coffee, bread and butter, and something of a dubious, hashy nature, were generally the fare at breakfast. I, as stableman, was constantly with the horses, but for the rest the next event was morning stables, about nine o'clock, which was a long and tedious business. The horses would be taken out of their stalls, and half of us would lead them round the stable-deck for exercise, while the rest took out the partitions and cleaned the stalls. Then ensued exciting scenes in getting them back again, an operation that most would not agree to without violent compulsion—and small blame to the poor brutes. It used to take our whole sub-division to shove my roan in. Each driver has two horses. My dun was a peaceful beast, but the roan was a by-word in the sub-division. When all was finished, and the horses fed and watered, it would be near 12.30, which was the dinner-hour. Some afternoons were free, but generally there would be more exercising and stall-cleaning, followed by the afternoon feeds and watering. At six came tea, and then all hands, including us stablemen, were free.

      Hammocks were slung about seven, and it was one of the nightly problems to secure a place. I generally found under the hatchway, where it was airy, but in rainy weather moist. Then we were free to talk and smoke on deck till any hour. Before going to bed, I used to write my diary, down below, at a mess-table, where the lights shot dim rays through vistas of serried hammocks, while overhead the horses fidgeted and trampled in their stalls, making a distracting thunder on the iron decks. It was often writing under difficulties, crouching down with a hammock pressing on the top of one's head—the occupant protesting at the head with no excess of civility; a quality which, by the way, was very rare with us.

      Soon after leaving the Bay, we had some rough weather. "Stables" used to be a comical function. My diary for the first rough day says:—"About six of us were there out of about thirty in my sub-division; our sergeant, usually an awesome personage to me, helpless as a babe, and white as a corpse, standing rigid. The lieutenant feebly told me to report when all horses were watered and feeds made up. It was a long job, and at the end I found him leaning limply against a stall. 'Horses all watered, and feeds ready, sir.' He turned on me a glazed eye, which saw nothing; then a glimmer of recollection flickered, and the lips framed the word 'feed,' no doubt through habit; but to pronounce that word at all under the circumstances was an effort of heroism for which I respected him. Rather a lonely day. My co-stableman curled in a pathetic ball all day, among the hay, in our forage recess. My only view of the outer world is from a big port in this recess, which frames a square of heaving blue sea; but now and then one can get breathing-spaces on deck. In the afternoon—the ship rolling heavily—I went, by an order of the day before, to be vaccinated. Found the doctor on the saloon deck, in a long chair, very still. Thought he was dead, but saluted, and said what I had come for. With marvellous presence of mind, he collected himself, and said: 'I ordered six to come; it is waste of lymph to do one only: get the other five.' After a short absence, I was back, reporting the other five not in a condition to do anything, even to be vaccinated. The ghost of a weary smile lit up the wan face. I saluted and left."

      Our busy days passed quickly, and on the ninth of the month a lovely, still blue day, I ran up to look at the Grand Canary in sight on the starboard bow, and far to the westward the Peak of Teneriffe, its snowy cone flushed pink in the morning sun, above a bank of cloud. All was blotted out in two hours of stable squalors, but at midday we were anchored off Las Palmas (white houses backed by arid hills), the ill-fated Denton Grange lying stranded on the rocks, coal barges alongside, donkey engines chattering on deck, and a swarm of bum-boats round our sides, filled with tempting heaps of fruit, cigars, and tobacco. Baskets were slung up on deck, and they drove a roaring trade. A little vague news filtered down to the troop-deck; Ladysmith unrelieved, but Buller across the Tugela, and some foggy rumour about 120,000 more men being wanted. The Battery also received a four-footed recruit in the shape of a little grey monkey, the gift of the Oxfordshire Yeomanry. He was at once invested with the rank of Bombardier, and followed all our fortunes in camp and march and action till our return home. That day was a pleasant break in the monotony, and also signalized my release from the office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing from mouth to mouth.

      Then came the tropics and the heat, and the steamy doldrums, when the stable-deck was an "Inferno," and exercising the horses like a tread-mill in a Turkish bath, and stall-cleaning an unspeakable business. Yet the hard work kept us in fit condition, and gave zest to the intervals of rest.

      At this time many of us used to sling our hammocks on deck, for down in the teeming troop-deck it was suffocating. It was delicious to lie in the cool night air, with only the stars above, and your feet almost overhanging the heaving sea, where it rustled away from the vessel's sides. At dawn you would see through sleepy eyes an exquisite sky, colouring for sunrise, and just at reveillé the golden rim would rise out of a still sea swimming and shimmering in pink and opal.

      Here is the diary of a Sunday:—

      "February 11.—Reveillé at six. Delicious bathe in the sail-bath. Church parade at ten; great cleaning and brushing up for it. Short service, read by the Major, and two hymns. Then a long lazy lie on deck with Williams, learning Dutch from a distracting grammar by a pompous old pedant. Pronunciation maddening, and the explanations made it worse. Long afternoon, too, doing the same. No exercising; just water, feed, and a little grooming at 4.30, then work over for the day. Kept the ship lively combing my roan's mane; thought he would jump into the engine-room. By the way, yesterday, when waiting for his hay coming down the line, his impatience caused him to jump half over the breast-bar, bursting one head rope; an extraordinary feat in view of the narrowness and lowness of his stall. He hung in a nasty position for a minute, and then we got him to struggle back. Another horse died in the night, and another very sick.

      "Inoculation for enteric began to-day with a dozen fellows. Results rather alarming, as they all are collapsed already in hammocks, and one fainted on deck. It СКАЧАТЬ