Gunpowder Treason and Plot, and Other Stories for Boys

The bimbashi stood and raged, shouting for his servant Ali, upon whose head he showered many useless abuses and sundry flowers of speech.

But Ali was far away by this time, and so was Jones's camel; and after waiting for half an hour or more, the lost youth decided that he must make a guess at the direction to be pursued, and at any rate keep moving, even though he followed a wrong course; better that than be buried alive in the abominable moving desert of flying and stinging sand.

It was only natural that Jones's guess as to the direction in which lay Atbara should be somewhat out; it would have been strange indeed if he had guessed right. As a matter of fact, his attempt to do so was by no means a bad one; for, had he directed his steps but a point or two less towards the east, he would have hit off the English position nicely, and would soon have encountered the search-party which presently came out to find him, or have been overtaken by some other friendly company hurrying forward from Berber towards the scene of operations at the junction of Atbara and Nile.

Luckily Jones had sandwiches in his pocket, though he would rather have had a gallon or two of water. The drop or so of whisky in his flask did nothing to assuage his thirst. His throat was parched with the sand, his tongue dry and hot and gritty. He could scarcely see; his ears were clogged. Jones plodded along, now praying for help in his most serious plight – he knew that it was serious, though he scarcely realized perhaps how serious; now recalling his dream and laughing at it; now thinking of every conceivable thing that would serve to blot out the disagreeable present, if but for a few minutes.

Meanwhile the sun had come out, and was blazing away in a manner which made life under its direct rays an unpleasant and almost impossible function. Soon it became unbearable. The wind had dropped, and the sand ceased to fly – a mercy for which Jones felt devoutly grateful. But the heat! The poor lost bimbashi scooped a hole in the ground, piling the displaced sand as high as he could, and lying behind it, in order to get a little shade for his face; and there he lay and sweltered until the sun climbed too high, and drove him out of his shelter. Then he travelled on, his brain on fire, until the burning disc above him had sunk sufficiently to allow him to repeat his expedient of earlier in the day; and now he lay half asleep, half comatose, until the cool of evening revived him, and he rose and plodded forward once more.

"I shall go on till I drop, anyway!" soliloquized Bimbashi Jones, like the brave man he was; and then, because he was still a very young man, and because he felt, as any one justly might do under the circumstances, extremely sorry for himself, he shed a few tears of pity over the melancholy fate which impended. "I might have done rather well," he reflected. "I had made a good start – every one said so; but misfortune dogs me wherever I go!" and Jones thought of his disappointment in England, of his illness at Cairo, of this crowning disaster; and he shed a few more consoling tears.

That night Jones, plodding obstinately forward, stumbling, weary, only half conscious, nearly dead with thirst, struck suddenly into country of a different character from the unbroken sand plain through which he had been travelling up to this moment. There was scrub to be pushed through, mimosa bushes, and other greenery.

"Thanks be to God!" exclaimed the bimbashi, for even his baked brain was able to comprehend the significance of the change. "I am coming to the Nile!"

It was not the Nile but the Atbara which Jones had struck well above the Anglo-Egyptian portion; but, oh! the joy of that first big drink of nasty water, and the long-continued, delicious sluicing of the burning head, wherein the fire had raged without ceasing for a twelve-hour round, and would scarcely now be extinguished even though Jones would bring the whole flood of the Atbara to bear upon it.

Then Jones finished his sandwiches and felt a man once more, though a weary one. He thanked Heaven for mercies received, and lay down to sleep until wakened by – yes, actually by the cold. He must move on.

How different the travelling was now! He would not leave the river again, the wanderer wisely resolved. He would follow it until the British position was reached; it could not be far now.

Poor bimbashi! The British fort lay behind him, and he was speeding away in the wrong direction – into the arms, indeed, of Mahmoud, had he only known it.

Part of the night he pushed forward, and part of it he rested and slept.

"It's a ghastly long journey when one does it on foot," thought the lost bimbashi. "However, I shall be in camp by breakfast time;" and his mouth watered over imaginary repasts of tinned meats and tea and other delights.

Morning came, and the sun, and still there were no signs of the camp. Jones was very hungry, but the tinned delicacies were still the fair offspring of imagination, which filleth not the stomach.

He travelled on, in despite of the sun, for the camp could not now be far off; and he would have continued to plod forward until he dropped, but that he received before noon a terrible fright, which sent him into cover for many hours of dangerous daylight.

There were sounds of hoofs, and the soul of the bimbashi rejoiced. "It is some of our fellows doing a cavalry reconnoitre," he reflected; and when they came, as he judged by the sound, within earshot, he treated them to a "coo-ee," and stood up to look out for a view and to hear their reply.

Presently the troop passed across an open patch between mimosa bushes, and Jones saw, not hussars or lancers, but a number of Bagghara horsemen pushing rapidly upstream, and evidently looking about for the owner of the voice lately upraised.

Down bobbed Jones behind a mimosa bush, his heart beating loudly. He drew his revolver in case of accidents. Would they see him? if so —

There were ten men, dirty, savage-looking fellows. They wore white, patched, linen garments, which fluttered behind them, and carried spears. They passed within twenty paces, peering about, and repassed again fifty yards away, talking together and arguing; then they disappeared.

"Thank God for that!" thought the bimbashi. "One wouldn't care to be chewed up by a set of such forsaken-looking fellows at close quarters!"

So he lay low till dark, and then pushed on once more – desperately hungry now, nearly starving. Would that breakfast never come? Could he have made some mistake? Ought he to have gone downstream?

Reason said no – upstream undoubtedly. But, you see, the bimbashi's geography was imperfect, and he was not aware of the existence of the Atbara, as a river, or he had forgotten it. He only knew of Fort Atbara; he thought he was following the Nile.

So Jones tried to satisfy the cravings of his appetite by chewing leaves and grasses, failing utterly; and long before morning came he sank exhausted to the ground, assuring himself that he could not possibly walk another yard.

Then, or soon after, a wonderful thing happened.

The dozing bimbashi heard in his dreams the droning of bagpipes, the sharp notes of the bugle, the dull booming of guns. His old dream began to flutter vaguely through his brain. He was the conquering hero again; he had put the Dervishes to flight; he had – but the noise was too loud for dozing and dreaming, and he awoke with a start.

"Good Heavens!" said poor Jones, half demented with weakness, "it is really the battle; my dream is coming true."

The firing increased; it became almost continuous; it could scarcely be more than a mile or two away. The noise deafened and bewildered the youth, who was, as a matter of fact, in extremis.

Jones listened a little while. Then he started to his feet and rushed madly towards the din.

"I must have a hand in it!" he cried; "they may want me!"

A mile and a second mile the bimbashi covered, now running, now forcing his way through dense scrub, now stopping a moment to recover breath. He was very near the scene of operations now; the din was deafening. He had come up, though he guessed it not, behind Mahmoud's position. The entire Dervish host lay between him and the Sirdar's men. Already the British storm of lead was pouring over his head; already bodies of flying, frightened creatures, camp followers of the Dervish army, dashed by him, some close, some more distant. A party of these nearly ran over him, rushing blindly forward, jabbering to one another.

Jones fired his revolver in their faces. One of them, as he passed, swung some weapon at him, striking the bimbashi flat-wise on the shoulder. The thing was blunt, and made no wound, but it needed only a touch to send the scarcely animate youth upon his nose in the sand; and straightway upon his nose he went, dead as a log for the time being; and in the sand, half hidden by a mimosa bush, he lay, while the subsequent proceedings, to quote a great poem familiar to most of my readers, interested him no more.

When the bimbashi returned to conscious existence, the battle of Atbara, or Nakheila, was over. A great flood of escaping humanity had passed over and around him, fleeing for dear life, but he had known nothing of it. He was roused by English voices. A sergeant was directing his men.

"Look out there, Bill," said the sergeant; "see that chap doesn't let out at you as you pass."

"I'll cook him if he does," said Bill, blood-hot and savage. He had been struck at by wounded Dervishes, and was not disposed to treat treachery with loving-kindness. "Why," he continued, "darn me if it isn't an Englishman – an orficer, too. See here, Joe!"

The sergeant came and looked. Jones had opened his eyes, and looked mildly around.

"Good Lord!" said the sergeant; "you're right; badly wounded, too. Go back for an ambulance, Bill. – Hold up, sir; he won't be long. Are you badly hurt?"

"I want something to eat. I haven't had anything for three days," murmured poor Jones.

The sergeant was too amazed to reply.

"I'm Bimbashi Jones," continued the officer, "and I want my breakfast."

Then the bimbashi fainted.

The name of Alaric Jones, bimbashi, 20th Egyptian Regiment, was included among those entitled to receive a medal for the battle of Atbara. Jones had qualms of conscience as to accepting this, but his friends said, "Rot, my good man; you fired your revolver during the fight, and perhaps wounded an enemy; it's all right." And Jones admitted that he had certainly taken this share in the hostilities.

Later on, at the battle of Omdurman, the bimbashi, having recovered now, and a stronger man by many breakfasts and other meals, did well. He was mentioned in the dispatches, as all may see for themselves. He is still a bimbashi, of course, and will not be a bey for a long while; but there is an old man in Stoke Netherby who is proud indeed to be the father of Bimbashi Jones. His mess-fellows in the old "Clodshires" often drink his health as of one of their most distinguished companions; indeed "our bimbashi" is quite a favourite toast on guest days, when the explanation, "Bimbashi Jones, of ours, you know," is added for the information of the ignorant.

THE WOLFMAN

There was weeping and wailing at the village of Dubina, in northern Russia. Women went about with red eyes, and men with grave faces; for a dreadful calamity had happened upon this quiet summer afternoon, and the hearts of all were heavy with grief and sympathy. But loudest of all rose the lamentation from the house of the widow Fedosia, a widow of but six months' standing, and the mother of four small children, the youngest of whom, a child of eight months, had this day met with a terrible fate.

No wonder the poor mother lifted her voice in lamentations which the whole village could hear, for the little chap she had just lost had been a splendid specimen of baby humanity, and the wise woman of the village had prophesied great things for him; and now!

Let me explain what had happened. Fedosia, being a house-serf at the mansion of the manor-lord – for all this happened towards the close of the fourth decade of this century, and in the days of serfdom – and being busy up at the big house, had permitted her eldest daughter, a child of twelve, to wander away into the woods mushroom-hunting, and to take the baby Petka for an airing. She had often been entrusted with her little brother before, so that, the mother thought, there was no risk in allowing her this responsibility. But Katinka came back alone, and told a terrible tale. The poor child could scarcely speak for fright and horror; but when the distracted mother had succeeded in persuading her to find her tongue, the tale she told was sufficient to horrify the whole village, as indeed it did. The children had been some little distance from home, Katinka said – perhaps a mile and a half from the beginning of the forest, but quite close to the path, so that they were perfectly safe, as she thought; and Katinka had laid the child down while she filled her basket with the beautiful mushrooms which abound in that spot. The baby fell asleep, and Katinka wandered about from place to place, but always, as she believed, remaining within a few yards of the child. Suddenly, on looking up from the ground, she was horrified to hear a savage growl, and to see just in front of her, glaring at her with big eyes, and showing its large white teeth, a huge wolf, accompanied by seven or eight little ones. She could not, of course, be sure of the number, and there might have been fewer. Katinka rushed back to where she imagined little Petka was lying asleep, but to her horror she found that he was no longer there. Either he had crawled away, or she had mistaken the place. Frantically she rushed from spot to spot, calling to the boy, and peering under every tree; but all in vain. He was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, the big wolf and the little ones stood and looked after her, following her with their eyes wherever she went, and the mother growled and showed her teeth, so that Katinka, after a time, became so frightened that she was obliged to give up hope of finding the baby, and ran away homewards as fast as she could, leaving the wolves behind – for they did not follow her – and reaching home more dead than alive, to tell her mother the terrible story of her adventure and poor little Petka's dreadful end. Of course no one could for a moment doubt that the wolf family had made a meal of him by this time, even supposing that the poor little man had not already been torn to pieces and bolted while Katinka was still looking for him in the forest.

On learning the news, a party of men had immediately set out to search the place for any evidence they might find as to the child's fate, but they had returned without having obtained the slightest clue. The wolves had disappeared, naturally enough, and so had the baby. There was no use to hope any longer. Poor Fedosia must resign herself to the inevitable: little Petka was dead, eaten by the wolves. Of this there could no longer be the slightest doubt. Enough that it was God's will, and He knew best what was good for the child; but for all that, the poor, bereaved mother was inconsolable. Petka had been her favourite, her baby boy, and she should never see his bright face and his splendid limbs again! No wonder she wept, and that her lamentations were to be heard by the whole village, or that she cried incessantly over the needlework that her mistress gave her to do next day up at the big house, thereby incurring the wrath of the lady, and bringing upon her head sundry bracing but heartless truisms, such as the following: —

"What are you crying about, fool? Are you so rich that it is not a true blessing to have got rid of one of your brats? It is I who have a right to weep, for by your carelessness I have lost a future serf. Stop crying at once, or you shall be fined for spoiling my dress-stuff."

The family up at the mansion were of the worst type of the Russian serf owners of former days – cruel, stupid, unsympathetic, utterly unable to understand the peasants whom fate had placed at their mercy, or to treat them with intelligent consideration; not even wise enough to keep within the laws as to the rights of manor-lord and peasant, but exacting more labour than they were by law entitled to, and, in a word, treating them as very slaves, instead of as – what they really were, or ought to have been – semi-free peasants holding land allotments for which they paid rent by the labour of their hands.