Rudyard Kipling: 440+ Short Stories in One Edition (Illustrated). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

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СКАЧАТЬ signed the last paper and the Sergeant retreated.

      "It's a filthy amusement," sighed Bobby to himself. Then aloud to Revere: "Are you really worried about Dormer?"

      "A little. You see he's never mad enough to send to a hospital, or drunk enough to run in, but at any minute he may flare up, brooding and sulking as he does. He resents any interest being shown in him, and the only time I took him out shooting he all but shot me by accident."

      "I fish," said Bobby, with a wry face. "I hire a country-boat and go down the river from Thursday to Sunday, and the amiable Dormer goes with me—if you can spare us both."

      "You blazing young fool!" said Revere, but his heart was full of much more pleasant words.

      Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with Private Dormer for mate, dropped down the river on Thursday morning—the Private at the bow, the Subaltern at the helm. The Private glared uneasily at the Subaltern, who respected the reserve of the Private.

      After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and said—"Beg y'pardon, sir, but was you ever on the Durh'm Canal?"

      "No," said Bobby Wick. "Come and have some tiffin."

      They ate in silence. As the evening fell, Private Dormer broke forth, speaking to himself—"Hi was on the Durh'm Canal, jes' such a night, come next week twelve month, a-trailin' of my toes in the water." He smoked and said no more till bedtime.

      The witchery of the dawn turned the grey river-reaches to purple, gold, and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendors of a new heaven.

      Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the glory below and around.

      "Well—damn-my-eyes!" said Private Dormer, in an awed whisper. "This 'ere is like a bloomin' gallantry-show!" For the rest of the day he was dumb, but achieved an ensanguined filthiness through the cleaning of big fish.

      The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer had been struggling with speech since noon. As the lines and luggage were being disembarked, he found tongue.

      "Beg y'pardon—sir," he said, "but would you—would you min' shakin' 'ands with me, sir?"

      "Of course not," said Bobby, and he shook accordingly. Dormer returned to barracks and Bobby to mess.

      "He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think," said Bobby. "My aunt, but he's a filthy sort of animal! Have you ever seen him clean 'them, muchly-fish with 'is thumbs'?"

      "Anyhow," said Revere, three weeks later, "he's doing his best to keep his things clean."

      When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.

      "As good a boy as I want," said Revere, the admiring skipper.

      "The best of the batch," said the Adjutant to the Colonel. "Keep back that young skrim-shanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up."

      So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of gorgeous raiment.

      "Son of Wick—old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner, dear," said the aged men.

      "What a nice boy!" said the matrons and the maids.

      "First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri-ipping!" said Bobby Wick, and ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.

      "We're in a bad way," wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two months. "Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it—two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells—drinking to keep off fever—and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the outside. There's rather more sickness in the out-villages than I care for, but then I'm so blistered with prickly-heat that I'm ready to hang myself. What's the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope? You're over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you attempt it."

      It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a much more to be respected Commandant. The sick ness in the out-villages spread, the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then came the news that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed to the Hill stations.—"Cholera—Leave stopped—Officers recalled." Alas, for the white gloves in the neatly soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to he, the loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid! Without demur and without question, fast as tongue could fly or pony gallop, hack to their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were hastening to their weddings, fled the subalterns.

      Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal Lodge where he had—but only the Haverley girl knows what Bobby had said or how many waltzes he had claimed for the next ball. Six in the morning saw Bobby at the Tonga Office in the drenching rain, the whirl of the last waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication due neither to wine nor waltzing in his brain.

      "Good man!" shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery, through the mists. "Whar you raise dat tonga? I'm coming with you. Ow! But I've had a head and a half. I didn't sit out all night. They say the Battery's awful bad," and he hummed dolorously—Leave the what at the what's-its-name, Leave the flock without shelter, Leave the corpse uninterred, Leave the bride at the altar!

      "My faith! It'll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachman!"

      On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers discussing the latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was here that Bobby learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.

      "They went into camp," said an elderly Major recalled from the whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, "they went into camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred and ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts with sore eyes. A Madras Regiment could have walked through 'em."

      "But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!" said Bobby.

      "Then you'd better make them as fit as be-damned when you rejoin," said the Major, brutally.

      Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed windowpane as the train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the health of the Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up the last straggler of the little army that was to fight a fight, in which was neither medal nor honor for the winning, against an enemy none other than "the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday."

      And as each man reported himself, he said: "This is a bad business," and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery in the cantonment was under canvas, the sickness bearing them company.

      Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters' temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy's neck for the joy of seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.

      "Keep 'em amused and interested," said Revere. "They went on the drink, poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no improvement. Oh, it's good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a—never mind."

      Deighton came СКАЧАТЬ