Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales. Arthur Shearly Cripps

him.'

      Then the officer in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in their places. I stood trying to read the Prayer before Action in its very small print. I murmured what I was doing to my cheery colleague, so much more enthusiastic than I was about what seemed to be coming. Then someone came up and spoke to me. It was surely my friend from the sand bags. I could see him properly now. He was surely an officer. He stood up slender and shapely in his khaki, but he was not wearing a single star or a regimental badge of any kind. Had he forgotten these in the hurry of this eager morning? With but a few words, he passed on towards the guns' crews. Soon our four-inch gun was shaking the ship horribly. We were shelling a trench that ran up a hillside, they said. I sat under cover of the bulwark near some kneeling riflemen, far from enjoying myself. Yet no gun roared back in answer to our own. It seemed to be one-sided enough, this operation of war.

      'It's a fearful weapon,' remarked my colleague rather complacently, as he paced towards the gun platform. One prayed for those who were naked to its fearsomeness up on the hill there, and prayed about Saint Michael's intervention to Saint Michael's Commander-in-Chief. The long-drawn moments slurred by us. A bell rang as the ship wound her way in slowly. The mournful cry of him who took the soundings came again and again. Then we stopped dead anew, and our gun's mouth roared and flamed.

      'Such a crowd of askaris; the hill's black with them!' So the signalman cried to the doctor, as he sped by on a message. I was interested in watching the gun-layer as he readjusted the dragon mouth. But what had my friend of the sand-bags to do with the matter? He moved among the gun's crew, and none said him nay; his hands were on the gun after the accredited gunlayer's. We shelled another position, and then another. Afterwards came a lull, and some of us hurried up to breakfast.

      There was much talk there of the possible or probable slaughter we had effected. Doubtless the store ship that had followed us and hung behind us had served us well. Those on shore Had surely been more disposed to hold to their positions, fearing that she carried troops, and meant to land them. Now she was steaming slowly away. How many did our bag amount to? The Intelligence Officer was sanguine, so was my colleague, but the gunnery officer was rather pessimistic. 'Two or three of those rounds went just wrong,' he grunted. 'We've struck a bad day.' After that the porridge and the bacon and the eggs were done with; we were soon back at our stations. Once more our gun bombarded. Once more no answer came. Now occurred the cruise of the motor boat; the best adventure of the day so far, as it seemed to me.

      The boat was lowered, and the shore Maxim mounted in it. Sand bags were piled up in plenty. A Naval Reserve officer, fair-haired and young faced, sprang in to join the gun's officer. There was also a British bluejacket ready to go, and there were African soldiers and sailors, as well as the two engine-men, English and Goanese. They were to beat up the river, and hunt down canoes, should any appear.

      My heart thrilled as I uttered God-speed to the Maxim warden. I think he was unmarried, but his fellow officer was both husband and father; they might have a fiery time in front. Last my graceful friend, with no stars or badges on his khaki, slipped into the boat. He seemed to come and go as he liked, and none refused his services. The boat hummed away from us, past some rocks, and round a headland into the unseen. Then our ship traveled on slowly, before she stopped and fired again. She shot away many rounds that time. I was sick and weary of the firing as I sat on the deck by the doctor's cabin. My colleague was much more alert and cheerful. He had secured a shell-case by the naval commander's bounty. 'They make such splendid trophies,' he told me. But I did not covet one much. I thought of how such war trophies were in demand for Christmas decoration vases in a church by the lakeside. I also thought of the quite possible horror and havoc of shattered askaris' bodies that those splendid trophies might be supposed to have wrought. How one thought besides of the adventurers in that whizzing motor-boat during that next half-hour. But as it turned out, according to their disappointed report, not a shot was fired at them.

      'We let fly with the Maxim at some natives and one European on shore,' the gun-worker shouted, as they drew up at the ship's side. 'We saw some canoes, three of them. Askaris were in them, and urging the paddlers on. Then, of all times, the Maxim took it into its head to jam badly. So we didn't get them.' I happened to catch my friend in khaki's eye as the other lamented. He looked quite cheerful about things, while the other went on, 'We'd have sunk the lot, if it hadn't jammed just then.'

      The thought flickered into my mind as to whether anybody was responsible for that singular coincidence. I looked in my friend's face with some sort of an uneasy question. But he only smiled. His face was strangely prepossessing, so entirely fearless, yet not the least truculent. His brown eyes and boy's lips answered my question with the most engaging of smiles. Those brown eyes assorted piquantly with his very fair hair. He had pushed his white helmet far back on his yellow head. Half an hour later we were in our action stations once more. Our riflemen were firing at individual askaris (were they all askaris, and not unhappy villagers?) who could be descried upon the shore. The signalman, passing by again, snatched a rifle and fired just beside me. One of the Maxims meanwhile was working away grimly, the officer's face was set firm as he steadied his coughing machine. Then it was that I saw my unattached friend step towards him, and take up his stand behind him. Ping! A bullet came just over the gun-director's head. 'That was a near shave,' the warrant officer told me afterwards. 'Someone aimed too high, or he'd have got him that worked the gun.'

      Yet it was a mystery to me why the bullet did not get that handsome head behind and above him, the head that I reflected had doubtless helped to draw the fire so high. He who had exposed himself came to me untouched. 'It looked near,' he allowed to me smiling. He stayed by us for the rest of that fell morning. He smiled, and bade me cheer up, when the naval commander went by; had he not twitted me for sitting safe under the bulwark and wincing when the four-inch gun roared? He smiled also a little ironically when my colleague came up, still fondling his trophy and dilating on its splendor. Then he smiled again and again as he moved behind him to and fro on the deck, watching him in the pitiless firing. He smiled moreover when he moved up to the gun; he was revising the gunlayer's work now and then, so far as I could make out his movements. He smiled afterwards when the Intelligence Officer made such sanguine estimates of the slaughter we had dealt out to forts and trenches. They were talking together, he and his comrade of the Maxim gun, discussing whether the bag was really a big one, the former as glib with the pros as the latter was with the cons. The tall listener smiled rather wistfully as he heard them. After the last round from the six-pounder had been fired, before we went to lunch, he came up and said farewell to me. 'But I shall see you again on board, shan't I?' I asked. 'We shan't put you off at the Bay till nearly sunset, shall we?' 'I may be getting off long before then,' he said, but he did not explain how. My prayer book had fallen on the deck, and he picked it up and gave it to me. 'Mind you keep to your own line,' he said. 'I like that prayer in your prayer book about Saint Michael. Doubtless he's covered not a few people's heads in this day of battle, not all of them on the one side. It's likely enough he has unearthly notions about war, as he's an unearthly being. Perhaps the dragon he makes war on, war to the death, is neither England nor Germany, but just the scrapping between them.'

      'What do you mean?' I asked, rather puzzled. Yet he only smiled, he was not very explicit.

      'Oh, by the way,' he said. 'They tell me you've promised to build a mission church to Saint Michael if you get back to the south safe and sound.' I wondered afterwards who they were that had told him.

      'Yes, I said, 'and if I don't, the building of it's endowed in my will.'

      'Why not take the shell-cases,' he said, 'if they offer you some? You needn't use them in your church as altar-vases. They'd make a splendid trophy under Saint Michael's feet, a gleaming, sleek-barreled serpent of slaughter, just the sort of dragon for him to tread, and delight in treading. Good-bye.'

      He was gone amongst the sailors, just as the steward called me up to the cold soup. I saw no more of him on the voyage, nor have I seen him since that September day. The one or two I asked about him seemed not to know whom I meant.