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THE SERVICE EDITION

OF

THE WORKS OF
RUDYARD KIPLING

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

VOL. I

ACTIONS
AND REACTIONS

BY

RUDYARD KIPLING

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1915

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

Page

An Habitation Enforced 3

The Recall ..,.**« 59

Garm — a Hostage 63

The Power of the Dos 91

The Mother Hive 95

The Bees and the Flies . . . * .123

With the Night Mail 127

The Four Angels . * * + * * 197

VII

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

A. R. Vol. I fg

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

My friend, if cause doth wrest thee,
Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,
Far from acquaintance kest thee
Where country may digest thee . . .
Thank God that so hath blessed thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee.

Thomas Tusser.

IT came without warning, at the very hour his
hand was outstretched to crumple the Holz and
Gunsberg Combine, The New York doctors
called it overwork, and he lay in a darkened room,
one ankle crossed above the other, tongue pressed
into palate, wondering whether the next brain
surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all
anchorages. At last they gave judgment. With
care he might in two years return to the arena,
but for the present he must go across the water
and do no work whatever. He accepted the terms.
It was capitulation; but the Combine that had
shivered beneath his knife gave him all the honours

3

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

of war. Gunsberg himself, full of condolences,
came to the steamer and filled the Chapins' suite
of cabins with overwhelming flowerxworks.

4 Smilax,' said George Chapin when he saw them.
'Fitz is right I'm dead; only I don't see why
he left out the 44 In Memoriam " on the ribbons ! '

4 Nonsense!' his wife answered, and poured
him his tincture. 4 You'll be back before you can
think.'

He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised
that his face had not been branded by the hells of
the past three months. The noise of the decks
worried him, and he lay down, his tongue only a
little pressed against his palate.

An hour later he said: 4 Sophie, I feel sorry
about taking you away from everything like this.
I — I suppose we're the two loneliest people on
God's earth to-night.'

Said Sophie his wife, and kissed him: * Isn't
it something to you that we're going together ? '

They drifted about Europe for months —
sometimes alone, sometimes with chance * met
gipsies of their own land. From the North Cape
to the Blue Grotto at Capri they wandered, be<
cause the next steamer headed that way, or because
some one had set them on the road. The doctors
had warned Sophie that Chapin was not to take
4

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

interest even in other men's interests; but a
familiar sensation at the back of the neck after one
hour's keen talk with aNauheimed railway magnate
saved her any trouble. He nearly wept.

'And I'm over thirty/ he cried; 'with all I
meant to do ! '

' Let's call it a honeymoon/ said Sophie. ' D'you
know, in all the six years we've been married, you've
never told me what you meant to do with your life ? '

' With my life ? What's the use ? It's finished
now.' Sophie looked up quickly from the Bay
of Naples. ' As far as my business goes, I shall
have to live on my rents like that architect at San
Moritz/

' You'll get better if you don't worry ; and even

if it takes time, there are worse things than

How much have you ? '

'Between four and five million. But it isn't
the money. You know it isn't. It's the principle.
How could you respect me ? You never did, the
first year after we married, till I went to work
like the others. Our tradition and upbringing are
against it. We can't accept those ideals/

'Well, I suppose I married you for some sort
of ideal/ she answered, and they returned to their
fortyxthird hotel.

In England they missed the alien
5

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Continental streets that reminded them of their
own polyglot cities. In England all men spoke
one tongue, speciously like American to the ear,
but on cross-examination unintelligible*

'Ah, but you have not seen England/ said a
lady with iron-grey hair. They had met her in
Vienna, Bayreuth, and Florence, and were grateful
to find her again at Claridge's, for she commanded
situations, and knew where prescriptions are most
carefully made up. 4 You ought to take an interest
in the home of our ancestors — as I do/

4 I've tried for a week, Mrs. Shonts/ said Sophie,
' but I never get any further than tipping German
waiters/

4 These are not the true type/ Mrs. Shonts went
on. 4 1 know where you should go/

Chapin pricked up his ears, anxious to run any*
where from the streets on which quick men some*
thing of his kidney did the business denied to him,

4 We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shonts/ said
Sophie, feeling his unrest as he drank the loathed
British tea.

Mrs. Shonts smiled, and took them in hand.
She wrote widely and telegraphed far on their
behalf, till, armed with her letter of introduction,
she drove them into that wilderness which is
reached from an ash - barrel of a station called
Charing Cross* They were to go to Rocketts —

6

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

the farm of one Cloke, in the southern counties —
where, she assured them, they would meet the
genuine England of folklore and song,

Rocketts they found after some hours, four
miles from a station, and, so far as they could
judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from
a road. Trees, kine, and the outlines of barns
showed shadowy about them when they alighted,
and Mr. and Mrs. Gloke, at the open door of a deep
stone'floored kitchen, made them slowly welcome.
They lay in an attic beneath a wavy whitewashed
ceiling, and because it rained, a wood fire was
made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they
fell asleep to the chirping of mice and the whimper
of flames.

When they woke it was a fair day, full of the
noises of birds, the smell of box, lavender, and
fried bacon, mixed with an elemental smell they
had never met before.

'This/ said Sophie, nearly pushing out the
thin casement in an attempt to see round the
corner, 'is — what did the hack — cabman say to
the railway porter about my trunk — " quite on
the top"?'

'No; "a little bit of all right/' I feel farther
away from anywhere than I've ever felt in my
life. We must find out where the telegraph
office is/

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'Who cares?' said Sophie, wandering about,
hair-brush in hand, to admire the illustrated weekly
pictures pasted on door and cupboard*

But there was no rest for the alien soul till
he had made sure of the telegraph office. He
asked the Clokes' daughter, laying breakfast, while
Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush out"
side the low window*

4 Go to the stile a-top o' the Barn field/ said
Mary, 'and look across Pardons to the next spire.
It's directly under. You can't miss it — not if you
keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist
there. But you're in the three-mile radius, sir.
The boy delivers telegrams directly to this door
from Pardons village.'

4 One has to take a good deal on trust in this
country,' he murmured.

Sophie looked at the close turf, scarred only
with last night's wheels, at two ruts which wound
round a rickyard, and at the circle of still orchard
about the half -timbered house.

* What's the matter with it ? ' she said. * Tele-
grams delivered to the Vale of Avalon, of course,'
and she beckoned in an earnest-eyed hound of
engaging manners and no engagements, who
answered, at times, to the name of Rambler. He
led them, after breakfast, to the rise behind the
house where the stile stood against the skyline,

8

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

and, 'I wonder what we shall find now/ said
Sophie, frankly prancing with joy on the grass.

It was a slope of gap-hedged fields possessed to
their centres by clumps of brambles. Gates were
not, and the rabbit ' mined, cattle - rubbed posts
leaned out and in. A narrow path doubled among
the bushes, scores of white tails twinkled before the
racing hound, and a hawk rose, whistling shrilly.

4 No roads, no nothing ! ' said Sophie, her short
skirt hooked by briers. 'I thought all England
was a garden. There's your spire, George, across
the valley. How curious ! '

They walked toward it through an alLaban*
doned land. Here they found the ghost of a patch
of lucerne that had refused to die ; there a harsh
fallow surrendered to yard^high thistles j and here
a breadth of rampant kelk feigning to be lawful
crop. In the ungrazed pastures swaths of dead
stuff caught their feet, and the ground beneath
glistened with sweat. At the bottom of the
valley a little brook had undermined its foot'
bridge, and frothed in the wreckage. But there
stood great woods on the slopes beyond— old, tall,
and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the
walls of a ruined house.

'All this within a hundred miles of London/
he said. * 'Looks as if it had had nervous prostra-
tion, too/ The footpath turned the shoulder of a

9

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

slope, through a thicket of rank rhododendrons,
and crossed what had once been a carriage drive,
which ended in the shadow of two gigantic holm*
oaks*

'A house!' said Sophie, in a whisper* 'A
colonial house ! '

Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose
a dark-bluish brick Georgian pile, with a shell*
shaped fan-light over its pillared door. The
hound had gone off on his own foolish quests*
Except for some stir in the branches and the
flight of four startled magpies, there was neither
life nor sound about the square house, but it
looked out of its long windows most friendlily.

4 Cha-armed to meet you, I'm sure/ said Sophie,
and curtsied to the ground* 4 George, this is
history I can understand* We began here.' She
curtsied again*

The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights*
It was as though an old lady, wise in three
generations' experience, but for the present sitting
out, bent to listen to her flushed and eager grand*
child*

4 1 must look!' Sophie tiptoed to a window,
and shaded her eyes with her hand. 'Oh, this
room's half A ull of cotton^bales — wool, I suppose !
But I can see a bit of the mantelpiece. George,
do come I Isn't that some one ? '

10

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

She fell back behind her husband. The front
door opened slowly, to show the hound, his nose
white with milk, in charge of an ancient of days
clad in a blue linen ephod curiously gathered on
breast and shoulders.

'Certainly/ said George, half aloud. * Father
Time himself. This is where he lives, Sophie/

* We came/ said Sophie weakly. 4 Can we see
the house ? I'm afraid that's our dog/

'No, 'tis Rambler/ said the old man. 'He's
been at my swill-pail again. Staying at Rocketts,
be ye ? Come in. Ah I you runagate I '

The hound broke from him, and he tottered
after him down the drive. They entered the hall
—just such a high light hall as such a house should
own. A slim-balustered staircase, wide and shallow
and once creamy -white, climbed out of it under a
long oval window. On either side delicately*
moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms,
whose sea-green mantelpieces were adorned with
nymphs, scrolls, and Cupids in low relief.

'What's the firm that makes these things?'
cried Sophie, enraptured. ' Oh, I forgot ! These
must be the originals. Adams, is it? I never
dreamed of anything like that steel - cut fender.
Does he mean us to go everywhere ? '

'He's catching the dog/ said George, looking
out. ' We don't count/

11

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

They explored the first or ground floor, de*
lighted as children playing burglars.

'This is like all England/ she said at last
4 Wonderful, but no explanation. You're expected
to know it beforehand. Now, let's try upstairs/

The stairs never creaked beneath their feet.
From the broad landing they entered a long,
green x panelled room lighted by three full * length
windows, which overlooked the forlorn wreck of a
terraced garden, and wooded slopes beyond.

' The drawing-room, of course/ Sophie swam
up and down it. 4 That mantelpiece — Orpheus and
Eurydice— is the best of them all. Isn't it mar*
vellous? Why, the room seems furnished with
nothing in it ! How's that, George ? '

4 It's the proportions. I've noticed it/

4 1 saw a Heppelwhite couch once' — Sophie
laid her finger to her flushed cheek and considered.
'With two of them — one on each side — you
wouldn't need anything else. Except — there must
be one perfect mirror over that mantelpiece/

' Look at that view. It's a framed Constable/
her husband cried.

4 No ; it's a Morland — a parody of a Morland.
But about that couch, George. Don't you think
Empire might be better than Heppelwhite ? Dull
gold against that pale green? It's a pity they
don't make spinets nowadays/

12

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

'I believe you can get them. Look at that
oak wood behind the pines/

4 "While you sat and played toccatas stately
at the clavichord/' ' Sophie hummed, and, head
on one side, nodded to where the perfect mirror
should hang.

Then they found bedrooms with dressing*
rooms and powdering <• closets, and steps leading
up and down — boxes of rooms, round, square,
and octagonal, with enriched ceilings and chased
dooMocks*

4 Now about servants. Oh ! ' She had darted
up the last stairs to the chequered darkness of the
top floor, where loose tiles lay among broken
laths, and the walls were scrawled with names,,
sentiments, and hop records. 'They've been
keeping pigeons here/ she cried.

'And you could drive a buggy through the
roof anywhere/ said George.

4 That's what / say/ the old man cried below
them on the stairs. 'Not a dry place for my
pigeons at all/

4 But why was it allowed to get like this ? ' said
Sophie.

"Tis with housen as teeth/ he replied. 'Let
'em go too far, and there's nothing to be done.
Time was they was minded to sell her, but none
would buy. She was too far away along from any

13

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

place* Time was they'd ha' lived here theyselves,
but they took and died/

' Here ? ' Sophie moved beneath the light of a
hole in the roof*

'Nah — none dies here excep' falling off ricks
and such. In London they died/ He plucked a
lock of wool from his blue smock. 'They was
no staple — neither the Elphicks nor the Moones.
Shart and brittle all of 'em. Dead they be
seventeen year, for I've been here caretakin'
twentyxfive/

4 Who does all the wool belong to downstairs ? '
George asked.

'To the estate. I'll show you the back parts
if ye like. You're from America, ain't ye ? I've
had a son there once myself/ They followed him
down the main stairway. He paused at the turn
and swept one hand towards the wall. 'Plenty
room here for your coffin to come down. Seven
foot and three men at each end wouldn't brish the
paint. If I die in my bed they'll 'ave to up-end
me like a milk-can. 'Tis all luck, d'ye see ? '

He led them on and on, through a maze of
back'kitchens, dairies, larders, and sculleries, that
melted along covered ways into a farm-house,
visibly older than the main building, which again
rambled out among barns, byres, pig-pens, stalls
and stables to the dead fields behind.

14

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

4 Somehow/ said Sophie, sitting exhausted on
an ancient well * curb — 4 somehow one wouldn't
insult these lovely old things by filling them with
hay/

George looked at long stone walls upholding
reaches of silvery^oak weather^boarding ; buttresses
of mixed flint and bricks; outside stairs, stone
upon arched stone ; curves of thatch where grass
sprouted; roundels of house xleeked tiles, and a
huge paved yard populated by two cows and
the repentant Rambler. He had not thought of
himself or of the telegraph office for two and a
half hours.

'But why/ said Sophie, as they went back
through the crater of stricken fields, — 4 why is one
expected to know everything in England? Why
do they never tell ? '

'You mean about the Elphicks and the
Moones ? ' he answered.

4 Yes — and the lawyers and the estate. Who
are they ? I wonder whether those painted floors
in the green room were real oak. Don't you
like us exploring things together — better than
Pompeii ? '

George turned once more to look at the view.
'Eight hundred acres go with the house — the old
man told me. Five farms altogether. Rocketts
is one of 'cm/

15

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 1 like Mrs. Cloke. But what is the old house
called ?'

George laughed 4 That's one of the things
you're expected to know. He never told me/

The Clokes were more communicative. That
evening and thereafter for a week they gave the
Chapins the official history, as one gives it to
lodgers, of Friars Pardon the house and its five
farms. But Sophie asked so many questions, and
George was so humanly interested, that, as con*
fidence in the strangers grew, they launched, with
observed and acquired detail, into the lives and
deaths and doings of the Elphicks and the Moones
and their collaterals, the Haylings and the Torrells*
It was a tale told serially by Cloke in the barn, or
his wife in the dairy, the last chapters reserved for
the kitchen o' nights by the big fire, when the two
had been half the day exploring about the house,
where old Iggulden, of the blue smock, cackled
and chuckled to see them. The motives that
swayed the characters were beyond their compre-
hension; the fates that shifted them were gods
they had never met; the side-lights Mrs. Cloke
threw on act and incident were more amazing than
anything in the record. Therefore the Chapins
listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs. Shonts.

'But why — why — why — did So-and-so do so-
and-so ? ' Sophie would demand from her seat by

16

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

the pothook; and Mrs Cloke would answer,
smoothing her knees, * For the sake of the place/

'I give it up/ said George one night in their
own room. 4 People don't seem to matter in this
country compared to the places they live in* The
way she tells it, Friars Pardon was a sort of
Moloch.'

'Poor old thing!' They had been walking
round the farms as usual before tea. * No wonder
they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made
for it. Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell
to keep it in the family. The octagonal room
with the moulded ceiling next to the big bedroom
was hers. Now what did he tell you while he was
feeding the pigs ? ' said Sophie.

'About the Torrell cousins and the uncle who
died in Java. They lived at Burnt House —
behind High Pardons, where that brook is all
blocked up/

'No; Burnt House is under High Pardons
Wood, before you come to Gale Anstey/ Sophie
corrected.

'Well, old man Cloke said

Sophie threw open the door and called down
into the kitchen, where the Clokes were covering
the fire: 'Mrs. Cloke, isn't Burnt House under
High Pardons?'

'Yes, my dear, of course/ the soft voice

A.R. Vol. I 17 c

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

answered absently. A cough. 'I beg your
pardon, Madam. What was it you said ? '

'Never mind. I prefer it the other way/
Sophie laughed, and George refold the missing
chapter as she sat on the bed.

'Here to-day an' gone to-morrow/ said Cloke
warningly. 'They've paid their first month, but
we've only that Mrs. Shonts' letter for guarantee.'

'None she sent never cheated us yet. It
slipped out before I thought. She's a most
humane young lady. They'll be going away in
a little. Anf you've talked a lot too, Alfred.'

'Yes, but the Elphicks are all dead. No one
can bring my loose talking home to me. But why
do they stay on and stay on so ? '

In due time George and Sophie asked each
other that question, and put it aside. They argued
that the climate — a pearly blend, unlike the hot
and cold ferocities of their native land — suited
them, as the thick stillness of the nights certainly
suited George. He was saved even the sight of
a metalled road, which, as presumably leading to
business, wakes desire in a man ; and the telegraph
office at the village of Friars Pardon, where they
sold picture post* cards and peg-tops, was two
walking miles across the fields and woods. For
all that touched his past among his fellows, or
their remembrance of him, he might have been in
18

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

another planet j and Sophie, whose life had been
very largely spent among husbandless wives of
lofty ideals, had no wish to leave this present of
God* The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge
of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths
of soft sky under which they walked together and
reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst ; the
good grass beneath their feet that cheated the
miles ; their discoveries, always together, amid the
farms — Griffons, Rocketts, Burnt House, Gale
Anstey, and the Home Farm, where Iggulden of
the blue smock x frock would waylay them, and
they would ransack the old house once more ; the
long wet afternoons when they tucked up their
feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against
the apple-trees, and talked together as never till
then had they found time to talk — these things
contented her soul, and her body throve*

'Have you realised/ she asked one morning,
4 that we've been here absolutely alone for the last
thirty -four days ? '

4 Have you counted them ? ' he asked*

4 Did you like them ? ' she replied,

4 1 must have. I didn't think about them*
Yes, I have. Six months ago I should have fretted
myself sick* Remember at Cairo ? I've only had
two or three bad times. Am I getting better, or
is it senile decay ? '

19

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 Climate, all climate/ Sophie swung her new*
bought English boots, as she sat on the stile over*
looking Friars Pardon, behind the Clokes' barn.

'One must take hold of things though/ he
said, 'if it's only to keep one's hand in/ His
eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty
fields. 'Mustn't one?'

' Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey.
I dare say you could hire it/

' No, I'm not as English as that — nor as Morris*
town. Cloke says all the farms here could be
made to pay/

4 Well, I'm Anastasia in the Treasure of Fran*
chard. I'm content to be alive and purr. There's
no hurry/

'No/ He smiled. 'All the same, I'm going
to see after my mail/

' You promised you wouldn't have any/

'There's some business coming through that's
amusing me. Honest. It doesn't get on my
nerves at all/

"Want a secretary?'

'No, thanks, old thing! Isn't that quite
English?'

' Too English ! Go away/ But none the less
in broad daylight she returned the kiss. ' I'm off
to Pardons. I haven't been to the house for nearly
a week/

20

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

4 How've you decided to furnish Jane Elphick's
bedroom?' he laughed, for it had come to be a
permanent Castle in Spain between them*

' Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk
brocade/ she answered, and ran downhill. She
scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of
a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her a week
ago, and singing as she passed under the holm-
oaks, sought the farm-house at the back of Friars
Pardon, The old man was not to be found, and
she knocked at his half -opened door, for she
needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blue-eyed
sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler's old enemy,
crawled out and besought her to enter,

Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle'
spud between his knees, his head drooped.
Though she had never seen death before, her
heart, that missed a beat, told her that he was
dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside
the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he
threw up his nose, she heard herself saying: 4 Don't
howl! Please don't begin to howl, Scottie, or I
shall run away ! '

She held her ground while the shadows in the
rickyard moved toward noon ; sat after a while
on the steps by the door, her arms round the
dog's neck, waiting till some one should come.
She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friars

21

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Pardon slash its roofs with shadow, and the smoke
of Iggulden's last lighted fire gradually thin and
cease. Against her will she fell to wondering
how many Moones, Elphicks, and Torrells had
been swung round the turn of the broad hall
stairs. Then she remembered the old man's talk
of being 'up-ended like a milk * can/ and buried
her face on Scottie's neck. At last a horse's feet
clinked upon flags, rustled in the old grey straw
of the rickyard, and she found herself facing the
vicar — a figure she had seen at church declaim*
ing impossibilities (Sophie was a Unitarian), in an
unnatural voice,

4 He's dead/ she said, without preface.

4 Old Iggulden ? I was coming for a talk with
him/ The vicar passed in uncovered. 4 Ah ! '
she heard him say. 4 Heart ' failure I How long
have you been here ? '

4 Since a quarter to eleven/ She looked at her
watch earnestly and saw that her hand did not shake.

Til sit with him now till the doctor comes,
D'you think you could tell him, and — yes, Mrs,
Betts in the cottage with the wistaria next the
blacksmith's? I'm afraid this has been rather a
shock to you/

Sophie nodded, and fled toward the village.
Her body failed her for a moment ; she dropped
beneath a hedge, and looked back at the great
22

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

house. In some fashion its silence and stolidity
steadied her for her errand.

Mrs. Betts, small, black * eyed and dark, was
almost as unconcerned as Friars Pardon.

4 Yiss, yiss, of course. Dear me ! Well,
Iggulden he had had his day in my father's time.
Muriel, get me my little blue bag, please. Yiss,
ma'am. They come down like ellunvbranches in still
weather. No warnin' at all. Muriel, my bicycle's
behind the fowLhouse. I'll tell Dr. Dallas, ma'am/

She trundled off on her wheel like a brown
bee, while Sophie — heaven above and earth be'
neath changed — walked stiffly home, to fall over
George at his letters, in a muddle of laughter and
tears.

4 It's all quite natural for them' she gasped.
'"They come down like ellum - branches in still
weather. Yiss, ma'am." No, there wasn't anything
in the least horrible, only — only — Oh George,
that poor shiny stick of his between his poor,
thin knees! I couldn't have borne it if Scottie
had howled. I didn't know the vicar was so — so
sensitive. He said he was afraid it was ra^rather
a shock. Mrs. Betts told me to go home, and I
wanted to collapse on her floor. But I didn't
disgrace myself. I — I couldn't have left him —
could I?'

4 You're sure you've took no 'arm ? ' cried Mrs.

23

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Cloke, who had heard the news by famvtele-
graphy, which is older but swifter than Marconi's.

4 No* I'm perfectly well/ Sophie protested*

'You lay down till tea-time/ Mrs. Cloke
patted her shoulder* 4 They'll be very pleased,
though she 'as 'ad no proper understandin' for
twenty years/

'They' came before twilight — a black'bearded
man in moleskins, and a little palsied old woman*
who chirruped like a wren.

* I'm his son/ said the man to Sophie, among
the lavender bushes. 'We 'ad a difference-
twenty year back, and didn't speak since. But
I'm his son all the same, and we thank you for
the watching/

'I'm only glad I happened to be there/ she
answered, and from the bottom of her heart she
meant it*

' We heard he spoke a lot o' you — one time an'
another since you came. We thank you kindly/
the man added.

4 Are you the son that was in America ? ' she
asked.

'Yes, ma'am. On my uncle's farm, in Con*
necticut. He was what they call road x master
there/

'Whereabouts in Connecticut?' asked George
over her shoulder.

24

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

4 Veering Holler was the name* I was there
six year with my uncle/

'How small the world is!' Sophie cried
4 Why, all my mother's people came from Veering
Hollow. There must be some there still — the
Lashmars. Did you ever hear of them ? '

4 1 remember hearing that name, seems to me/
he answered, but his face was blank as the back of
a spade*

A little before dusk a woman in grey, striding
like a foot^soldier, and bearing on her arm a long
pole, crashed through the orchard calling for food.
George, upon whom the unannounced English
worked mysteriously, fled to the parlour; but
Mrs. Cloke came forward beaming. Sophie
could not escape.

4 We've only just heard of it/ said the stranger,
turning on her. 4 I've been out with the otter^
hounds all day. It was a splendidly sportin'
thing—

'Did you — er — kill?' said Sophie. She knew
from books she could not go far wrong here.

4 Yes, a dry bitch — seventeen pounds/ was the
answer. 'A splendidly sportin' thing of you to
do. Poor old Iggulden '

4 Oh — that ! ' said Sophie, enlightened.

'If there had been any people at Pardons it
would never have happened. He'd have been

25

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

looked after* But what can you expect from a
parcel of London solicitors ? '

Mrs. Cloke murmured something.

4 No. I'm soaked from the knees down. If I
hang about I shall get chilled. A cup of tea, Mrs.
Cloke, and I can eat one of your sandwiches as I
go/ She wiped her weather-worn face with a
green and yellow silk handkerchief.

4 Yes, my lady ! ' Mrs. Cloke ran and returned
swiftly.

4 Our land marches with Pardons for a mile on
the south/ she explained, waving the full cup, 4 but
one has quite enough to do with one's own people
without poachin'. Still, if I'd known, I'd have
sent Dora, of course. Have you seen her this
afternoon, Mrs. Cloke ? No ? I wonder whether
that girl did sprain her ankle. Thank you/ It
was a formidable hunk of bread and bacon that
Mrs. Cloke presented. 'As I was sayin', Pardons
is a scandal ! Lettin' people die like dogs. There
ought to be people there who do their duty.
You've done yours, though there wasn't the
faintest call upon you. Good night. Tell Dora,
if she comes, I've gone on/

She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie
reeled breathless into the parlour, to shake the
shaking George.

'Why did you keep catching rny eye behind
26

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

the blind? Why didn't you come out and do
your duty ? '

4 Because I should have burst. Did you see
the mud on its cheek ? ' he said,

4 Once. I daren't look again. Who is she ? '

4 God — a local deity then. Anyway, she's
another of the things you're expected to know
by instinct.'

Mrs. Cloke, shocked at their levity, told them
that it was Lady Conant, wife of Sir Walter
Conant, Baronet, a large landholder in the neiglv
bourhood, and if not God, at least His visible
Providence.

George made her talk of that family for an
hour.

4 Laughter/ said Sophie afterward in their own
room, ' is the mark of the savage. Why couldn't
you control your emotions ? It's all real to her?

'It's all real to me. That's my trouble,' he
answered in an altered tone. * Anyway, it's real
enough to mark time with. Don't you think so ? '

4 What d'you mean ? ' she asked quickly, though
she knew his voice.

'That I'm better. I'm well enough to kick/

4 What at?'

4 This 1' He waved his hand round the one
room. * I must have something to play with till
I'm fit for work again/

27

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 Ah ! ' She sat on the bed and leaned forward,
her hands clasped* 'I wonder if it's good for
you/

'We've been better here than anywhere/ he
went on slowly* ' One could always sell it again/

She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled.

'The only thing that worries me is what
happened this morning. I want to know how you
feel about it. If it's on your nerves in the least
we can have the old farm at the back of the house
pulled down* or perhaps it has spoiled the notion
for you ? '

'Pull it down?' she cried. 'You've no busi*
ness faculty* Why. that's where we could live
while we're putting the big house in order. It's
almost under the same roof. No! What hap'
pened this morning seemed to be more of a — of
a leading than anything else. There ought to be
people at Pardons. Lady Conant's quite right/

'I was thinking more of the woods and the
roads* I could double the value of the place in
six months.'

' What do they want for it ? ' She shook her
head, and her loosened hair fell glowingly about
her cheeks.

'Seventy. five thousand dollars. They'll take
sixty*eight/

' Less than half what we paid for our old yacht
28

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

when we married* And we didn't have a good
time in her. You were '

'Well. I discovered I was too much of an
American to be content to be a rich man's son.
You aren't blaming me for that ? '

'Oh no. Only it was a very businesslike
honeymoon. How far are you along with the
deal, George ? '

4 1 can mail the deposit on the purchase money
to-morrow morning, and we can have the thing
completed in a fortnight or three weeks — if you
say so/

' Friars Pardon — Friars Pardon ! f Sophie
chanted rapturously, her dark grey eyes big with
delight. 'All the farms? Gale Anstey, Burnt
House, Rocketts, the Home Farm, the Griffons ?
Sure you've got 'em all ? '

4 Sure/ He smiled.

'And the woods? High Pardons Wood,
Lower Pardons, Suttons, Dutton's Shaw, Reuben's
Ghyll, Maxey's Ghyll, and both the Oak Hangers ?
Sure you've got 'em all ? '

'Every last stick. Why, you know them as
well as I do/ He laughed. 'They say there's
five thousand — a thousand pounds' worth of
lumber — timber they call it — in the Hangers
alone/

' Mrs. Cloke's oven must be mended first thing,

29

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and the kitchen roof, I think I'll have all this
whitewashed/ Sophie broke in, pointing to the
ceiling, 'The whole place is a scandal Lady
Conant is quite right. George, when did you
begin to fall in love with the house? In the
green room— that first day ? I did/

4 I'm not in love with it. One must do some*
thing to mark time till one's fit for work/

'Or when we stood under the oaks, and the
door opened? Oh! Ought I to go to poor
Iggulden's funeral?' She sighed with utter
happiness.

'Wouldn't they call it a liberty — now ?' said
he.

'But I liked him/

'But you didn't own him at the date of his
death/

' That wouldn't keep me away. Only, they made
such a fuss about the watching ' — shz caught her
breath—' it might be ostentatious from that point
of view, too. Oh, George/— she reached for his
hand — ' we're two little orphans moving in worlds
not realised, and we shall make some bad breaks.
But we're going to have the time of our lives/

'We'll run up to London to-morrow and see
if we can hurry those English law — solicitors. I
want to get to work/

They went. They suffered many things ere
30

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

they returned across the fields in a fly one Satur*
day night, nursing a two by two^and^a^half box of
deeds and maps — lawful owners of Friars Pardon
and the five decayed farms therewith.

'I do most sincerely 'ope and trust you'll be
'appy, Madam/ Mrs. Cloke gasped, when she was
told the news by the kitchen fire.

4 Goodness ! It isn't a marriage I ' Sophie ex*
claimed, a little awed; for to them the joke,
which to an American means work, was only just
beginning.

'If it's took in a proper spirit' — Mrs. Cloke's
eye turned toward her oven.

'Send and have that mended to* morrow,'
Sophie whispered.

' We couldn't 'elp noticing,' said Cloke slowly,
'from the times you walked there, that you an'
your lady was drawn to it, but— but I don't know

as we ever precisely thought ' His wife's

glance checked him.

' That we were that sort of people,' said George.
' We aren't sure of it ourselves yet.'

' Perhaps,' said Cloke, rubbing his knees, ' just
for the sake of saying something, perhaps you'll
park it ? '

'What's that?' said George.

'Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill'—
he jerked a thumb to westward — ' that Mr. Sangres

31

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

bought. It was four farms, and Mr. Sangres
made a fine park of them, with a herd of faller
deer/

'Then it wouldn't be Friars Pardon/ said
Sophie. ' Would it?'

4 1 don't know as I've ever heard Pardons was
ever anything but wheat an' wool. Only some
gentlemen say that parks are less trouble than
tenants.' He laughed nervously. 'But the
gentry, o' course, they keep on pretty much as
they was used to.'

'I see,' said Sophie. 'How did Mr. Sangres
make his money ? '

'I never rightly heard. 'It was pepper an'
spices, or it may ha' been gloves. No. Gloves
was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley End. Spices was
Mr. Sangres. He's a Brazilian gentleman — very
sunburnt like/

'Be sure o' one thing. You won't 'ave any
trouble,' said Mrs. Cloke, just before they went to
bed.

Now the news of the purchase was told to Mr.
and Mrs. Cloke alone at 8 p.m. of a Saturday.
None left the farm till they set out for church next
morning. Yet when they reached the church and
were about to slip aside into their usual seats, a
little beyond the font, where they could see the
red'furred tails of the belkropes waggle and twist
32

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

at ringing time, they were swept forward irre^
sistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had
not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever^
retiring bosom of a black*gowned verger, who
ushered them into a room of a pew at the head
of the left aisle, under the pulpit.

4 This/ he sighed reproachfully, 4 is the Pardons'
Pew/ and shut them in.

They could see little more than the choir boys
in the chancel, but to the roots of the hair of their
necks they felt the congregation behind mercilessly
devouring them by look.

4 When the wicked man turneth away.' The
strong alien voice of the priest vibrated under the
hammer*beam roof, and a loneliness unfelt before
swamped their hearts, as they searched for places in
the unfamiliar Church of England service* The
Lord's Prayer — 'Our Father, which art' — set the
seal on that desolation. Sophie found herself
thinking how in other lands their purchase would
long ere this have been discussed from every point
of view in a dozen prints, forgetting that George
for months had not been allowed to glance at
those black and bellowing headlines. Here was
nothing but silence — not even hostility! The
game was up to them ; the other players hid their
cards and waited. Suspense, she felt, was in the
air, and when her sight cleared, saw indeed, a

A.R. Vol. I 33 D

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the
carven motto, ' Wayte awhyle — wayte awhyle/

At the Litany George had trouble with an
unstable hassock, and drew the slip of carpet under
the pew'Seat. Sophie pushed her end back also,
and shut her eyes against a burning that felt like
tears. When she opened them she was looking at
her mother's maiden name, fairly carved on a blue
flagstone on the pew floor :

Ellen Lashmar . ob. 1796 . aetat. 27.

She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered, as
they kneeled, they looked for more knowledge,
but the rest of the slab was blank*

4 Ever hear of her ? ' he whispered.

4 Never knew any of us came from here/

4 Coincidence ? '

4 Perhaps. But it makes me feel better/ and
she smiled and winked away a tear on her lashes,
and took his hand while they prayed for 'all
women labouring of child ' — not ' in the perils of
childbirth'; and the sparrows who had found
their way through the guards behind the glass
windows chirped above the faded gilt and alabaster
family tree of the Conants.

The baronet's pew was on the right of the
aisle. 'After service its inhabitants moved forth
without haste, but so as to effectively block a

34

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

dusky person with a large family who champed in
their rear,

'Spices, I think/ said Sophie, deeply delighted
as the Sangres closed up after the Conants. 4 Let
'em get away, George/

But when they came out many folk whose eyes
were one still lingered by the lych-gate,

4 1 want to see if any more Lashmars are buried
here/ said Sophie,

'Not now. This seems to be show day.
Come home quickly/ he replied,

A group of families, the Clokes a little apart,
opened to let them through. The men saluted
with jerky nods, the women with remnants of a
curtsey. Only Iggulden's son, his mother on his
arm, lifted his hat as Sophie passed.

'Your people/ said the clear voice of Lady
Conant in her ear.

4 1 suppose so/ said Sophie, blushing, for they
were within two yards of her ; but it was not a
question,

'Then that child looks as if it were coming
down with mumps. You ought to tell the mother
she shouldn't have brought it to church/

4 1 can't leave 'er be'ind, my lady/ the woman
said. 'She'd set the 'ouse afire in a minute,
she's that forward with the matches. Ain't you,
Maudie dear ? '

35

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 Has Dr. Dallas seen her * '

* Not yet, my lady/

4 He must You can't get away, of course.
M — m! My idiotic maid is coming in for her
teeth to'morrow at twelve. She shall pick her up
— at Gale Anstey, isn't it ? — at eleven/

* Yes. Thank you very much, my lady/

4 1 oughtn't to have done it/ said Lady Conant
apologetically, 'but there has been no one at
Pardons for so long that you'll forgive my
poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us ? The
vicar usually comes too. I don't use the horses on
a Sunday,' — she glanced at the Brazilian's silver*
plated chariot. 4 It's only a mile across the fields/

'You — you're very kind/ said Sophie, hating
herself because her lip trembled.

'My dear/ the compelling tone dropped to a
soothing gurgle, 'd'you suppose I don't know
how it feels to come to a strange county — country
I should say — away from one's own people?
When I first left the Shires — I'm Shropshire, you
know — I cried for a day and a night. But fretting
doesn't make loneliness any better. Oh, here's
Dora. She did sprain her leg that day/

4 I'm as lame as a tree still,' said the tall maiden
frankly. 'You ought to go out with the otter-
hounds, Mrs. Chapin ; I believe they're drawing
your water next week/

36

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

Sir Walter had already led off George, and
the vicar came up on the other side of Sophie,
There was no escaping the swift procession or the
leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in low*
voiced eddies that had the village for their centre*
Sophie heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her
husband lightly as Chapin ! (She also remembered
many women known in a previous life who
habitually addressed their husbands as Mr. Such*
anyone.) After lunch Lady Conant talked to her
explicitly of maternity as that is achieved in
cottages and farm-houses remote from aid, and of
the duty thereto of the mistress of Pardons.

A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple
lawns, let them out before tea-time into the un*
kempt south side of their land,

4 1 want your hand, please/ said Sophie as soon
as they were safe among the beech boles and the
lawless hollies. 'D'you remember the old maid
in Providence and the Guitar who heard the
Commissary swear, and hardly reckoned herself a
maiden lady afterward? Because Ym a relative
of hers. Lady Conant is

4 Did you find out anything about the Lash*
mars ? ' he interrupted.

'I didn't ask. I'm going to write to Aunt
Sydney about it first. Oh, Lady Conant said
something at lunch about their having bought some

37

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

land from some Lashmars a few years ago. I
found it was at the beginning of last century/

4 What did you say?'

'I said, "Really, how interesting!" Like that.
I'm not going to push myself forward. I've been
hearing about Mr. Sangres' efforts in that direo
tion. And you? I couldn't see you behind the
flowers. Was it very deep water, dear ? '

George mopped a brow already browned by
outdoor exposure.

'Oh no — dead easy/ he answered. 'I've
bought Friars Pardon to prevent Sir Walter's
birds straying/

A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry
leaves and exploded almost under their feet.
Sophie jumped.

4 That's one of 'em/ said George calmly.

* Well, your nerves are better, at any rate/ said
she. 'Did you tell 'em you'd bought the thing
to play with ? '

4 No. That was where my nerve broke down.
I only made one bad break — I think. I said I
couldn't see why hiring land to men to farm wasn't
as much a business proposition as anything else/

4 And what did they say ? '

'They smiled. I shall know what that smile
means some day. They don't waste their smiles.
D'you see that track by Gale Anstey ? '

38

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

They looked down from the edge of the
hanger over a cup'like hollow. People by twos
and threes in their Sunday best filed slowly along
the paths that connected farm to farm.

'I've seen ever so many on our land before/
said Sophie. 4 Why is it ? '

'To show us we mustn't shut up their rights
of way/

4 Those cow<tracks we've been using cross lots ? '
said Sophie forcibly.

'Yes. Any one of 'em would cost us two
thousand pounds each in legal expenses to close/

* But we don't want to/ she said.

4 The whole community would fight if we did/

' But it's our land. We can do what we like/

4 It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We
belong to it, and it belongs to the people— our
people they call 'em. I've been to lunch with the
English too.'

They passed slowly from one bracken*dotted
field to the next — flushed with pride of ownership,
plotting alterations and restorations at each turn ;
halting in their tracks to argue, spreading apart
to embrace two views at once, or closing in to
consider one. Couples moved out of their way,
but smiling covertly.

'We shall make some bad breaks/ he said at
last.

39

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 Together, though* You won't let any one
else in, will you ? '

4 Except the contractors. This syndicate handles
this proposition by its little lone/

'But you might feel the want of some one/
she insisted.

'I shall — but it will be you. It's business,
Sophie, but it's going to be good fun/

' Please God/ she answered flushing, and cried
to herself as they went back to tea. 'It's worth
it. Oh, it's worth it/

The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon
was business of the most varied and searching, but
all done English fashion, without friction. Time
and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the
hands of beneficent advisers from London, or
spirits, male and female, called up by Mr. and
Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farms. In the
centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast,
their interests reaching out on every side.

'I ain't sayin' anything against Londoners/
said Cloke, self-appointed Clerk of the outer
works, consulting engineer, head of the immigra-
tion bureau, and superintendent of woods and
forests ; * but your own people won't go about
to make more than a fair profit out of you/
How is one to know ? ' said George.

4 Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you'll

40

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

be lookin' over your first year's accounts, and,
knowin' what you'll know then, you'll say : " Well,
Billy Beartup" — or Old Cloke as it might be —
" did me proper when I was new/* No man likes
to have that sort of thing laid up against him/

4 1 think I see/ said George, 'But five years
is a long time to look ahead/

4 1 doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in
Reuben's Ghyll will be fit for her drawin'^room
floor in less than seven/ Cloke drawled*

'Yes, that's my work/ said Sophie, (Billy
Beartup of Griffons, a woodman by training and
birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of marriage,
had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.)
4 Sorry if I've committed you to another eternity/

4 And we shan't even know where we've gone
wrong with your new carriage * drive before that
time either/ said Cloke, ever anxious to keep the
balance true — with an ounce or two in Sophie's
favour. The past four months had taught George
better than to reply. The carriage road winding
up the hill was his present keen interest. They
set off to look at it, and the imported American
scraper which had blighted the none too sunny
soul of 4 Skim ' Winsh, the carter. But young
Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guid*
ance, Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved
mountains.

41

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

' You lif ' her like that, an' you tip her like that/
he explained to the gang, 'My uncle he was
road<master in Connecticut/

'Are they roads yonder ?' said Skim, sitting
under the laurels,

'No better than accommodation Broads. Dirt,
they call 'em. They'd suit you, Skim/

4 Why ? ' said the incautious Skim.

4 'Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out
of your cart drunk on a Saturday/ was the answer,

4 1 didn't last time neither/ Skim roared.

After the loud laugh old Whybarne of Gale
Anstey piped feebly, 4 Well, dirt or no dirt, there's
no denyin' Chapin knows a good job when he sees
it. 'E don't build one day and dee^stroy the next,
like that nigger Sangres/

4 Shis the one that knows her own mind/ said
Pinky, brother to Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon
among carters who had helped to bring the grand
piano across the fields in the autumn rains.

'She had ought to/ said Iggulden. 'Whoa,
Duller! She's a Lashmar. They never was
double*thinking/

'Oh, you found that? Has the answer come
from your uncle ? ' said Skim, doubtful whether so
remote a land as America had posts.

The others looked at him scornfully. Skim
was always a day behind the fair.

42

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

Iggulden rested from his labours* 4 She's a
Lashmar right enough* I started up to write to
my uncle at once — the month after she said her
folks came from Veering Holler/

* Where there ain't any roads?' Skim interrupted,
but none laughed.

' My uncle he married an American woman for
his second, and she took it up like a — like the
coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar
place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot
Hill Lashmar, nor any o' the Crayford lot. Her
folk come out of the ground here, neither chalk
nor forest, but wildishers. They sailed over to
America — I've got it all writ down by my uncle's
woman — in eighteen hundred an' nothing. My
uncle says they're all slow begetters like/

4 Would they be gentry yonder now?' Skim
asked.

* Nah — there's no gentry in America, no matter
how long you're there. It's against their law*
There's only rich and poor allowed. They've
been lawyers and such like over yonder for a
hundred years — but she's a Lashmar for all that/

4 Lord I What's a hundred years?' said Why*
barne, who had seen seventy^eight of them.

' An' they write too, from yonder — my uncle's
woman writes — that you can still tell 'em by
headmark. Their hair's foxy - red still — an' they

43

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

throw out when they walk. He's in-toed — treads
like a gipsy; but you watch, an' you'll see 'er
throw out — like a colt/

'Your trace wants taking up/ Pinky's large
ears had caught the sound of voices, and as the
two broke through the laurels the men were hard
at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet.

She had been less fortunate in her inquiries
than Iggulden, for her Aunt Sydney of Meriden
(a badged and certificated Daughter of the Revoke
tion to boot) answered her inquiries with a two*
paged discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of a
Village Improvement Society, of which she was
president, and a demand for an overdue subscript
tion to a Factory Girls' Reading Circle. Sophie
burned it all in the Orpheus and Eurydice grate,
and kept her own counsel.

'What I want to know,' said George, when
Spring was coming, and the gardens needed
thought, 'is who will ever pay me for my labour?
I've put in at least half a million dollars' worth
already/

' Sure you're not taking too much out of your^
self ? ' his wife asked.

'Oh no; I haven't been conscious of myself
all winter/ He looked at his brown English
gaiters and smiled. 'It's all behind me now. I
44

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

believe I could sit down and think of all that —
those months before we sailed/

4 Don't — ah, don't ! ' she cried*

4 But I must go back one day. You don't want
to keep me out of business always — or do you ? '
He ended with a nervous laugh.

Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash
(of old Iggulden's cutting) from the hall rack.

4 Aren't you overdoing it too? You look a
little tired/ he said.

'You make me tired. I'm going to Rocketts
to see Mrs, Cloke about Mary/ (This was the
sister of the telegraphist, promoted to be sewing*
maid at Pardons.) ' Coming ? '

'I'm due at Burnt House to see about the
new well. By the way, there's a sore throat at
Gale Anstey '

'That's my province. Don't interfere. The
Whybarne children always have sore throats*
They do it for jujubes/

4 Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure,
honey. Cloke ought to have told me/

'These people don't tell. Haven't you learnt
that yet? But I'll obey, me lord. See you
later!'

She set off afoot, for within the three main
roads that bounded the blunt triangle of the
estate (even by night one could scarcely hear the

45

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

carts on them), wheels were not used except for
farm work. The footpaths served all other
purposes. And though at first they had planned
improvements, they had soon fallen in with the
customs of their hidden kingdom, and moved
about the soft>footed ways by woodland, hedge*
row, and shaw as freely as the rabbits. Indeed,
for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded
beneath her helmet of chestnut hair ; but she had
been plagued of late by vague toothaches, which
•she explained to Mrs. Cloke, who asked some
.questions. How it came about Sophie never knew,
but after a while behold Mrs. Cloke's arm was
.about her waist, and her head was on that deep
bosom behind the shut kitchen door.

'My dear! my dear I* the elder woman almost
^sobbed. * An' d 'you mean to tell me you never
suspicioned? Why— why — where was you ever
taught anything at all ? Of course it is. It's what
we've been only waitin' for, all of us. Time and

again IVe said to Lady ' she checked herself.

4 An' now we shall be as we should be/

4 But — but— but ' Sophie whimpered.

'An' to see you buildin' your nest so busy —
pianos and books — an' never thinkin' of a
nursery ! *

4 No more I did.1 Sophie sat bolt upright, and
; began to laugh.

46

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

* Time enough yet/ The fingers tapped thought-
fully on the broad knee, 'But — they must be
strange-minded folk over yonder with you ! Have
you thought to send for your mother ? She dead ?
My dear, my dear! Never mind! She'll be
happy where she knows, *Tis God's work. An'
we was only waitin' for it, for you've never failed
in your duty yet. It ain't your way. What did
you say about my Mary's doings ? ' Mrs. Cloke's
face hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie's
forehead. 4 If any of your girls thinks to be'ave

arbitrary now, I'll But they won't, my dear.

I'll see they do their duty too. Be sure you'll 'ave
no trouble.'

When Sophie walked back across the fields,
heaven and earth changed about her as on the
day of old Iggulden's death. For an instant she
thought of the wide turn of the staircase, and the
new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner could
scar, but presently the shadow passed in a pure
wonder and bewilderment that made her reel.
She leaned against one of their new gates and
looked over their lands for some other stay.

'Well,' she said resignedly, half aloud, 'we
must try to make him feel that he isn't a third in
our party,' and turned the corner that looked over
Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint.

Of a sudden the house they had bought for a

47

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

whim stood up as she had never seen it before,
low -fronted, broad - winged, ample, prepared by
course of generations for all such things. As it
had steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that
it had meaning from their few months of life
within, it soothed and promised good. She went
alone and quickly into the hall, and kissed either
door-post, whispering: 'Be good to me. You
know I You've never failed in your duty yet/

When the matter was explained to George,
he would have sailed at once to their own land,
but this Sophie forbade.

'I don't want science/ she said. 'I just want
to be loved, and there isn't time for that at home.
Besides/ she added, looking out of the window,
4 it would be desertion/

George was forced to soothe himself with
linking Friars Pardon to the telegraph system of
Great Britain by telephone — three-quarters of a
mile of poles, put in by Whybarne and a few
friends. One of these was a foreigner from the
next parish. Said he when the line was being
run : * There's an old ellum right in our road.
Shall us throw her ? '

'Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good
luck, God help 'em/ Old Whybarne shouted the
local proverb from three poles down the line.

48

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

' We ain't goin' to lay any axe^iron to coffin^wood
here — not till we know where we are yet awhile.
Swing round 'er, swing round ! '

To this day, then, that sudden kink in the
straight line across the upper pasture remains a
mystery to Sophie and George* Nor can they tell
why Skim Winsh, who came to his cottage under
Dutton Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45 p.m.
of every Saturday night, as his father had done
before him, sang no more at the bottom of the
garden steps, where Sophie always feared he would
break his neck. The path was undoubtedly an
ancient right of way, and at 10.45 p.rcu on
Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty to
posterity to keep it open — till Mrs. Cloke spoke
to him — once. She spoke likewise to her daughter
Mary, sewing^maid at Pardons, and to Mary's
best new friend, the five-foot* seven imported
London house^maid, who taught Mary to trim
hats, and found the country dullish.

But there was no noise, — at no time was there
any noise, — and when Sophie walked abroad she
met no one in her path unless she had signified a
wish that way. Then they appeared to protest
that all was well with them and their children,
their chickens, their roofs, their water-supply, and
their sons in the police or the railway service.

4 But don't you find it dull, dear ? ' said George,

A.R. Vol. i 49 E

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

loyally doing his best not to worry as the months
went by*

'I've been so busy putting my house in order
I haven't had time to think/ said she. 'Do
you?'

' No — no. If I could only be sure of you/

She turned on the green drawing-room's couch
(it was Empire, not Heppelwhite after all), and
laid aside a list of linen and blankets.

'It has changed everything, hasn't it?' she
whispered.

'Oh Lord. yes. But I still think if we went
back to Baltimore '

'And missed our first real summer together.
No thank you, me lord/

' But we're absolutely alone/

' Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy ?
Don't you worry. I like it — like it to the marrow
of my little bones. You don't realise what her
house means to a woman. We thought we were
living in it last year, but we hadn't begun to.
Don't you rejoice in your study, George ? '

'I prefer being here with you/ He sat down
on the floor by the couch and took her hand.

'Seven/ she said as the French clock struck.
4 Year before last you'd just be coming back from
business/

He winced at the recollection, then laughed.

50

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

4 Business! I've been at work ten solid hours
to-day.'

4 Where did you lunch ? With the Conants ? '

4 No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with
my feet in a swamp. But we've found out where
the old spring is, and we're going to pipe it down
to Gale Anstey next year/

4 Pll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open
the door, dear. I want to look down the passage.
Isn't that corner by the stairhead lovely where
the sun strikes in ? ' She looked through half -
closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale
green all steeped in liquid gold.

4 There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom,'
she went on — * and his first step in the world ought
to be up. I shouldn't wonder if those people
hadn't put it there on purpose. George, will it
make any odds to you if he's a girl ? '

He answered, as he had many times before,
that his interest was his wife, not the child.

'Then you're the only person who thinks so.'
She laughed. 4 Don't be silly, dear. It's expected.
/ know. It's my duty. I shan't be able to look
our people in the face if I fail.'

4 What concern is it of theirs, confound 'em I '

4 You'll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is
boys, Mrs. Cloke says, so I'm provided for. Shall
you ever begin to understand these people ? I shan't.'

51

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'And we bought it for fun — for fun?' he
groaned. 'And here we are held up for goodness
knows how long ! '

'Why? Were you thinking of selling it?'
He did not answer* 'Do you remember the
second Mrs. Chapin ? ' she demanded.

This was a bold, brazen little black 'browed
woman — a widow for choice — who on Sophie's
death was guilefully to marry George for his
wealth and ruin him in a year. George being
busy, Sophie had invented her some two years
after her marriage, and conceived she was alone
among wives in so doing.

'You aren't going to bring her up again?' he
asked anxiously.

' I only want to say that I should hate any one
who bought Pardons ten times worse than I used
to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what
we've put into it of our two selves.'

'At least a couple of million dollars. I know
I could have made ' He broke off.

'The beasts!' she went on. 'They'd be sure
to build a red'brick lodge at the gates, and cut
the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave
instructions in your will that he's never to do that,
George, won't you ? '

He laughed and took her hand again but said
nothing till it was time to dress. Then he

52

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

muttered : 4 What the devil use is a man's country
to him when he can't do business in it ? '

Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition*
At the appointed time was born, not that third in
their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind,
but a godling ; in beauty, it was manifest, excelling
Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer of
delights, a renewer of companionships and an
interpreter of Destiny* This last George did not
realise till he met Lady Conant striding through
Dutton Shaw a few days after the event

'My dear fellow/ she cried, and slapped him
heartily on the back, 4l can't tell you how glad
we all are. — Oh, skill be all right. (There's
never been any trouble over the birth of an heir
at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it ? ' She
felt largely in her leather^bound skirt and drew
out a small silver mug. 'I sent a note to your
wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot
to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give
her my love.' She marched off amid her guard
of grave Airedales.

The mug was worn and dented: above the
twined initials, G. L., was the crest of a footless
bird and the motto : 4 Wayte awhyle — wayte
awhyle.'

4 That's the other end of the riddle,' Sophie

53

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

whispered, when he saw her that evening* 4 Read
her note. The English write beautiful notes/

The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he
will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though
you have said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as
a little stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar
christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar,
your great-grandmother's brother —

George stared at his wife,

4 Go on/ she twinkled from the pillows,

— mother's brother, sold his place to Walter's family. We
seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that
time, but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle,
which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order
for you. I hope little George — Lashmar, he will be too, won't
he ? — will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his
mug.

Affectionately yours,

Alice Conant.
P.S.— How quiet you've kept about it all I

4 Well, I'm '

4 Don't swear/ said Sophie, 4 Bad for the infant
mind/

'But how in the world did she get at it?
Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars ? '

' You know the only time — to young Iggulden
at Rocketts— when Iggulden died/

'Your great , grandmother's brother! She's
traced the whole connection — more than your

54

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean
about our keeping quiet ? '

Sophie's eyes sparkled. 4 I've thought that out
too. We've got back at the English at last.
Can't you see that she thought that we thought
my mother's being a Lashmar was one of those
things we'd expect the English to find out for
themselves, and that's impressed her?' She
turned the mug in her white hands, and sighed
happily. 4 " Wayteawhyle — way te awhyle." That's
not a bad motto, George, It's been worth it.'

'But still I don't quite see '

'I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our
coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme to be
near our ancestors. They'd understand that. And
look how they've accepted us, all of them.'

'Are we so undesirable in ourselves?' George
grunted.

'Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres
man has twice our money. Can you see Marm
Conant slapping him between the shoulders?
Not by a jugful ! The poor beast doesn't exist ! '

'Do you think it's that then?' He looked
toward the cot by the fire where the godling
snorted.

'The minute I get well I shall find out from
Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles
(that's nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is

55

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

born, I've done my duty thus far, but there's
much expected of me/

Entered here Mrs, Cloke, and hung worshipping
over the cot. They showed her the mug and her
face shone, 4 Oh, now Lady Conant's sent it, it'll
be all proper, ma'am, won't it? "George" of
course he'd have to be, but seein' what he is we
was hopin' — all your people was hopin' — it 'ud
be "Lashmar" too, and that 'ud just round it
out, A very 'andsome mug— quite unique, I
should imagine, " Wayte awhyle — wayte awhyle,"
That's true with the Lashmars, I've heard. Very
slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like
Master George won't open 'is nursery till he's
thirty/

' Poor lamb ! ' cried Sophie. ' But how did you
know my folk were Lashmars ? '

Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. 'I'm sure I can't
quite say, ma'am, but I've a belief likely that it
was something you may have let drop to young
Iggulden when you was at Rocketts, That may
have been what give us an inkling. An' so it came
out, one thing in the way o' talk leading to another*
and those American people at Veering Holler was
very obligin' with news, I'm told, ma'am/

4 Great Scott!' said George, under his breath.
4 And this is the simple peasant ! '

' Yiss,' Mrs. Cloke went on. 4 An' Cloke was

56

AN HABITATION ENFORCED

only wonderin' this afternoon — your pillow's
slipped, my dear, you mustn't lie that a-way — just
for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you
wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar
farms back, sin They don't rightly round off Sir
Walter's estate. They come caterin' across us more.
Cloke, 'e 'ud be glad to show you over any day/
' But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he ? '
'We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but'
— with cold contempt — 4 1 think that trained nurse
is just comin' up from her dinner, so I'm afraid
we'll 'ave to ask you, sir « * . Now, Master
George — Ai-ie ! Wake a litty minute, lammie! '

A few months later the three of them were
down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to
consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried
away by spring floods. George Lashmar wanted
all the bluebells on God's earth that day to eat,
and Sophie adored him in a voice like to the
cooing of a dove ; so business was delayed.

4 Here's the place/ said his father at last among
the water forget-me-nots. 'But where the deuce
are the larch -poles, Cloke? I told you to have
them down here ready/

'We'll get 'em down if you say so/ Cloke
answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both
knew.

57

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'But I did say so. What on earth have you
brought that timber x tug here for? We aren't
building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half
a dozen twx>by*four bits would be ample/

'I don't know nothin' about that/ said Cloke.
4 An' I've nothin' to say against larch — if you want
to make a temp'ry job of it, I ain't 'ere to tell
you what isn't so, sir; an' you can't say I ever
come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to lead you
farther in than you set out '

A year ago George would have danced with
impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his
old gaiters with his spud, and waited,

'All I say is that you can put up larch and
make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the
young master's married it'll have to be done again.
Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six^
by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You
put 'em in an' it's off your mind for good an' all.
T'other way — I don't say it ain't right, I'm only
just sayin' what I think — but t'other way, he'll no
sooner be married than we'll 'ave it all to do
again. You've no call to regard my words, but
you can't get out of that'

'No/ said George after a pause; 'I've been
realising that for some time. Make it oak then ;
we can't get out of it/

58

THE RECALL

I am the land of their fathers,

In me the virtue stays ;
I will bring back my children

After certain days.

Under their feet in the grasses

My clinging magic runs.
They shall return as strangers,

They shall remain as sons.

Over their heads in the branches
Of their new^bought ancient trees,

I weave an incantation,

And draw them to my knees.

Scent of smoke in the evening,

Smell of rain in the night,
The hours, the days and the seasons,

Order their souls aright ;

Till I make plain the meaning —
Of all my thousand years —

Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears.

59

GARM— A HOSTAGE

61

GARM— A HOSTAGE

ONE night, a very long time ago, I drove to
an Indian military cantonment called Mian
Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the
back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap
over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and
shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber.
As a matter of fact he was a friend of mine, so I
told him to go home before any one caught him ;
but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a
military guard in search of some one*

The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage,
drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him
to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore
headache, very much ashamed* When his uniform
was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved
and washed and made neat, I drove him back to
barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and
reported that I had accidentally run over him. I
did not tell this story to my friend's sergeant,

63

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to
his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.

Three days later my friend came to call, and at
his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest
bull-terriers — of the old-fashioned breed, two parts
bull and one terrier — that I had ever set eyes on.
He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle
just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the
root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him
distantly for more than a year ; and Vixen, my
own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not
approve.

4 'E's for you/ said my friend ; but he did not
look as though he liked parting with him.

* Nonsense! That dog's worth more than
most men, Stanley/ I said.

4 'E's that and more. HTention ! '

The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright
for a full minute.

'Eyes right!'

He sat on his haunches and turned his head
sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked
thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and
bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made
himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging
down on either side of my neck. I was told to
pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell
with a howl, and held up one leg.

64

GARM-A HOSTAGE

'Part o' the trick/ said his owner. 'You're
going to die now* Dig yourself your little grave
an' shut your little eye/

Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden^
edge, dug a hole and lay down in it When told
that he was cured he jumped out, wagging his tail,
and whining for applause. He was put through
half a dozen other tricks, such as showing how he
would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he
sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to
spring), and how he would stop eating at the word
of command. I had no more than finished prais^
ing him when my friend made a gesture that
stopped the dog as though he had been shot,
took a piece of blue^ruled canteen^paper from his
helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the
dog looked after him and howled. I read

Sir — I give you the dog because of what you got me out of.
He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good
as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please
do not give him back to me, for I'm not going to take him, if
you will keep him. So please do not try to give him back any
more. I have kept his name back, so you can call him any-
thing and he will answer, but please do not give him back.
He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give
him too much meat. He knows more than a man.

Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little
yap to the bull'terrier's despairing cry, and I was
A.R. Vol. I 65 F

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for
dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is
quite another* Dogs are at the best no more than
verminous vagrants, self'Scratchers, foul feeders,
and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed ;
but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least
six months in the year ; a free thing, tied to you
so strictly by love that without you he will not
stir or exercise; a patient, temperate, humorous,
wise soul, who knows your moods before you
know them yourself, is not a dog under any
ruling,

I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me ; and
I felt what my friend must have felt, at tearing
out his heart in this style and leaving it in my
garden. However, the dog understood clearly
enough that I was his master, and did not follow
the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made
much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy,
flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he
might have cheered himself with a fight, but he
only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron
sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled
anew, I meant to dine at the Club that night,
but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed
through the empty house like a child trying to
recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that I could
not leave him to suffer his first evening alone,

66

GARM-A HOSTAGE

So we fed at home, Vixen on one side and the
strangeivdog on the other ; she watching his every
mouthful, and saying explicitly what she thought
of his table manners, which were much better than
hers.

It was Vixen's custom, till the weather grew
hot, to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow
like a Christian ; and when morning came I would
always find that the little thing had braced her feet
against the wall and pushed me to the very edge
of the cot* This night she hurried to bed pur*
posefully, every hair up, one eye on the stranger,
who had dropped on a mat in a helpless, hope*
less sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing
heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several
times, to show her little airs and graces, and struck
up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber.
The stranger^dog softly edged towards me. I put
out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist
was between Vixen's teeth, and her warning aaarh!
said as plainly as speech, that if I took any further
notice of the stranger she would bite.

I caught her behind her fat neck with my left
hand, shook her severely, and said :

4 Vixen, if you do that again you'll be put into
the veranda. Now, remember I '

She understood perfectly, but the minute I
released her she mouthed my right wrist once

67

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

more, and waited with her ears back and all her
body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog's tail
thumped the floor in a humble and peaces-making
way*

I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out
of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled),
and, as I had promised, set her out in the veranda
with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled.
Then she used coarse language — not to me, but to
the bull'terrier — till she coughed with exhaustion.
Then she ran round the house trying every door.
Then she went off to the stables and barked as
though some one were stealing the horses, which
was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, and
her snuffing yelp said, ' Pll be good ! Let me in
and I'll be good!'

She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When
she was quieted I whispered to the other dog, 'You
can lie on the foot of the bed/ The bull jumped
up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with
rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept
till the morning, and they had early breakfast with
me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we
went for a ride. I don't think the bull had ever
followed a horse before. He was wild with excite-
ment, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and scuttered
and scooted, and took charge of the procession.

There was one corner of a village near by, which

68

GARM-A HOSTAGE

we generally passed with caution, because all the
yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered about it
They were half^wild, starving beasts, and though
utter cowards, yet where nine or ten of them get
together they will mob and kill and eat an English
dog, I kept a whip with a long lash for them.
That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps
of design, had moved from beyond my horse's
shadow.

The bull was ploughing along in the dust,
fifty yards behind, rolling in his run, and smiling
as bulLterriers will. I heard Vixen squeal ; half
a dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white
streak came up behind me ; a cloud of dust rose
near Vixen, and, when it cleared, I saw one tall
pariah with his back broken, and the bull wrenching
another to earth. Vixen retreated to the pro
tection of my whip, and the bull paddled back
smiling more than ever, covered with the blood of
his enemies. That decided me to call him ' Garm
of the Bloody Breast/ who was a great person in
his time, or ' Garm ' for short ; so, leaning forward,
I told him what his temporary name would be.
He looked up while I repeated it, and then raced
away. I shouted * Garm I ' He stopped, raced
back, and came up to. ask my will.

Then I saw that my soldier friend was right,
and that that dog knew and was worth more than

69

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

a man. At the end of the ride I gave an order
which Vixen knew and hated : * Go away and get
washed ! ' I said* Garm understood some part of
it, and Vixen interpreted the rest, and the two
trotted off together soberly. When I went to the
back veranda Vixen had been washed snowy- white,
and was very proud of herself, but the dog-boy
would not touch Garm on any account unless I
stood by* So I waited while he was being scrubbed,
and Garm, with the soap creaming on the top of
his broad head, looked at me to make sure that this
was what I expected him to endure* He knew
perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders,

4 Another time/ I said to the dog-boy, 4 you will
wash the great dog with Vixen when I send them
home*'

' Does he know ? ' said the dog-boy, who under-
stood the ways of dogs*

4 Garm/ 1 said, 4 another time you will be washed
with Vixen/

I knew that Garm understood* Indeed, next
washing-day, when Vixen as usual fled under my
bed, Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the
veranda, stalked to the place where he had been
washed last time, and stood rigid in the tub*

But the long days in my office tried him sorely*
We three would drive off in the morning at half-
past eight and come home at six or later* Vixen

70

GARM-A HOSTAGE

knowing the routine of it, went to sleep under my
table ; but the confinement ate into Garm's soul.
He generally sat on the veranda looking out on
the Mall ; and well I knew what he expected.

Sometimes a company of soldiers would move
along on their way to the Fort, and Garm rolled
forth to inspect them ; or an officer in uniform
entered into the office, and it was pitiful to see
poor Garm's welcome to the cloth — not the man.
He would leap at him, and sniff and bark joyously,
then run to the door and back again. One after*
noon I heard him bay with a full throat — a thing
I had never heard before — and he disappeared.
When I drove into my garden at the end of the
day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the
wall at the far end, and the Garm that met me was
a joyous dog. This happened twice or thrice a
week for a month.

I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and
Vixen knew. He would glide homewards from
the office about four o'clock, as though he were
only going to look at the scenery, and this he did
so quietly that but for Vixen I should not have
noticed him. The jealous little dog under the
table would give a sniff and a snort, just loud
enough to call my attention to the flight. Garm
might go out forty times in the day and Vixen
would never stir, but when he slunk off to see his

71

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

true master in my garden she told me in her own
tongue. That was the one sign she made to prove
that Garm did not altogether belong to the family.
They were the best of friends at all times, but, Vixen
explained that I was never to forget Garm did not
love me as she loved me.

I never expected it. The dog was not my dog
— could never be my dog — and I knew he was as
miserable as his master who tramped eight miles
a day to see him* So it seemed to me that the
sooner the two were reunited the better for all.
One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog*
cart (Garm had gone before), and rode over to
cantonments to find another friend of mine, who
was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog's
master,

I explained the whole case, and wound up with :

4 And now Stanley's in my garden crying over
his dog. Why doesn't he take him back ? They're
both unhappy/

4 Unhappy ! There's no sense in the little man
any more. But 'tis his fit/

4 What is his fit ? He travels fifty miles a week
to see the brute, and he pretends not to notice me
when he sees me on the road; and I'm as un^
happy as he is. Make him take the dog back.'

4 It's his penance he's set himself. I told him
by way of a joke, afther you'd run over him so

72

GARM-A HOSTAGE

convenient that night, whin he was drunk — I
said if he was a Catholic he'd do penance. Off
he went wid that fit in his little head an* a dose of
fever, an' nothin' would suit but givin' you the
dog as a hostage/

4 Hostage for what? I don't want hostages
from Stanley/

4 For his good behaviour* He's keepin' straight
now, the way it's no pleasure to associate wid
him/

4 Has he taken the pledge ? '

'If 'twas only that I need not care. Ye can
take the pledge for three months on an' off. He
sez he'll never see the dog again, an' so mark
you, he'll keep straight for evermore. Ye know
his fits ? Well, this is wan of them. How's the
dogtakin'it?'

'Like a man. He's the best dog in India.
Can't you make Stanley take him back ? '

'I can do no more than I have done. But ye
know his fits. He's just doin' his penance. What
will he do when he goes to the Hills ? The doctor's
put him on the list/

It is the custom in India to send a certain number
of invalids from each regiment up to stations in
the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though
the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort,
they miss the society of the barracks down below,

73

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and do their best to come back or to avoid going*
I felt that this move would bring matters to a
head, so I left Terence hopefully, though he called
after me —

'He won't take the dog, sorr. You can lay
your month's pay on that. Ye know his fits/

I never pretended to understand Private
Ortheris ; and so I did the next best thing — I left
him alone.

That summer the invalids of the regiment to
which my friend belonged were ordered off to the
Hills early, because the doctors thought marching
in the cool of the day would do them good. Their
route lay south to a place called Umballa, a
hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they
would turn east and march up into the hills to
Kasauli or Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with
the officers the night before they left — they were
marching at five in the morning. It was midnight
when I drove into my garden and surprised a
white figure flying over the wall.

'That man/ said my butler, 'has been here
since nine, making talk to that dog. He is quite
mad. I did not tell him to go away because he
has been here many times before, and because
the dog * boy told me that if I told him to go
away, that great dog would immediately slay me.
He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the

74

GARM-A HOSTAGE

Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or
drink/

4 Kadir Buksh/ said I, * that was well done, for
the dog would surely have killed thee. But I do
not think the white soldier will come any more/

Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his
dreams* Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing
bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked
him and the bark died out in a howl. He had
dreamed he was with his master again, and I nearly
cried* It was all Stanley's silly fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids
made was some miles from their barracks, on the
Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my
house* By a mere chance one of the officers drove
back for another good dinner at the Club (cookx
ing on the line of march is always bad), and there
I met him* He was a particular friend of mine,
and I knew that he knew how to love a dog
properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who
was going up to the Hills for his health, and,
though it was still April, the round, brown brute
puffed and panted in the Club veranda as though
he would burst.

'It's amazing/ said the officer, 'what excuses
these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks.
There's a man in my company now asked me for
leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he'd

75

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

forgotten, I was so taken by the idea I let him
go, and he jingled off in an ekha as pleased as
Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt I Wonder what
it was really ? '

4 If you'll drive me home I think I can show
you/ I said.

So we went over to my house in his dog'Cart
with the retriever ; and on the way I told him the
story of Garm.

'I was wondering where that brute had gone
to. He's the best dog in the regiment/ said my
friend. 4l offered the little fellow twenty rupees
for him a month ago. But he's a hostage, you
say, for Stanley's good conduct. Stanley's one of
the best men I have— when he chooses/

'That's the reason why/ I said. 'A second*
rate man wouldn't have taken things to heart as
he has done/

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden,
and crept round the house. There was a place close
to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees,
where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen
was not allowed to sit near it. In the full Indian
moonlight I could see a white uniform bending
over the dog.

4 Good'bye, old man/ we could not help hearing
Stanley's voice. 4 For 'Eving's sake don't get bit
and go mad by any measly pi * dog. But you

76

GARM-A HOSTAGE

can look after yourself, old man. You don't get
drunk an' run about 'ittin' your friends. You
takes your bones an' you eats your biscuit, an'
you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I'm
goin' away — don't 'owl — I'm goin' off to Kasauli,
where I won't see you no more/

I could hear him holding Garm's nose as the
dog threw it up to the stars.

4 You'll stay here an' be'ave, an' — an' I'll go
away an' try to be'ave, an' I don't know 'ow to
leave you. I don't know '

'I think this is damn silly/ said the officer,
patting his foolish fubsy old retriever. He called
to the private, who leaped to his feet, marched
forward, and saluted.

* You here ? ' said the officer, turning away his
head.

4 Yes, sir, but I'm just goin' back/

'I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart.
You come with me. I can't have sick men
running about all over the place. Report your*
self at eleven, here!

We did not say much when we went indoors,
but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever's
ears.

He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a
dog ; and when he waddled off to my cookhouse
to be fed, I had a brilliant idea.

77

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

At eleven o'clock that officer's dog was nowhere
to be found, and you never heard such a fuss as
his owner made. He called and shouted and
grew angry, and hunted through my garden for
half an hour.

Then I said :

4 He's sure to turn up in the morning. Send c,
man in by rail, and I'll find the beast and return
him/

'Beast?' said the officer, 'I value that dog
considerably more than I value any man I know.
It's all very fine for you to talk — your dog's
here/

'So she was — under my feet — and, had she
been missing, food and wages would have stopped
in my house till her return. But some people
grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip.
My friend had to drive away at last with Stanley
in the back-seat; and then the dog - boy said
to me:

'What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib's dog?
Look at him ! '

I went to the boy's hut, and the fat old
reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up,
He must have heard his master calling for twenty
minutes, but had not even attempted to join him,

4 He has no face,' said the dog'boy scornfully,
4 He is a punniar 'hooter (a spaniel). He never tried

78

GARM-A HOSTAGE

to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called.
Now Vixeri'baba would have jumped through the
window, and that Great Dog would have slain me
with his muzzled mouth. It is true that there
are many kinds of dogs/

Next evening who should turn up but Stanley.
The officer had sent him back fourteen miles by
rail with a note begging me to return the retriever
if I had found him, and, if I had not, to offer
huge rewards. The last train to camp left at
half 'past ten, and Stanley stayed till ten talking
to Garm. I argued and entreated, and even
threatened to shoot the bulLterrier, but the little
man was as firm as a rock, though I gave him a
good dinner and talked to him most severely.
Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time
he could hope to see his man, and followed Stanley
like a shadow. The retriever said nothing, but
licked his lips after his meal and waddled off
without so much as saying * Thank you ' to the
disgusted dog*boy.

So that last meeting was over and I felt as
wretched as Garm, who moaned in his sleep all
night. When we went to the office he found a
place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped
flat till it was time to go home. There was no
more running out into the verandas, no slinking
away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather

79

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run
beside the cart, but sat at my side on the seat,
Vixen with her head under the crook of my left
elbow, and Garm hugging the left handrail*

Here Vixen was ever in great form* She had
to attend to all the moving traffic, such as bullock*
carts that blocked the way, and camels, and led
ponies ; as well as to keep up her dignity when
she passed low friends running in the dust. She
never yapped for yapping's sake, but her shrill,
high bark was known all along the Mall, and other
men's terriers ki^yied in reply, and bullock^drivers
looked over their shoulders and gave us the road
with a grin*

But Garm cared for none of these things. His
big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible
mouth was shut. There was another dog in the
office who belonged to my chief. We called him
4 Bob the Librarian/ because he always imagined
vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in hunting
for them would drag out half the old newspaper^
files. Bob was a well'meaning idiot, but Garm
did not encourage him. He would slide his head
round the door, panting, 'Rats! Come along,
Garm ! ' and Garm would shift one foresaw over
the other, and curl himself round, leaving Bob to
whine at a most uninterested back. The office
was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days.

80

GARM-A HOSTAGE

Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all con*
tented with his surroundings. He had gone for
an unauthorised walk with Vixen early one Sunday
morning, and a very young and foolish artillery x
man (his battery had just moved to that part of
the world) tried to steal them both. Vixen, of
course, knew better than to take food from
soldiers, and, besides, she had just finished her
breakfast So she trotted back with a large piece
of the mutton that they issue to our troops, laid
it down on my veranda, and looked up to see
what I thought. I asked her where Garm was,
and she ran in front of the horse to show me the
way.

About a mile up the road we came across our
artilleryman sitting very stiffly on the edge of a
culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees.
Garm was in front of him, looking rather pleased.
When the man moved leg or hand, Garm bared
his teeth in silence. A broken string hung from
his collar, and the other half of it lay, all warm,
in the artilleryman's still hand. He explained to
me, keeping his eyes straight in front of him,
that he had met this dog (he called him awful
names) walking alone, and was going to take him
to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah.

I said that Garm did not seem to me much of
a pariah, but that he had better take him to the

A. R. Vol. I 81 G

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Fort if he thought best* He said he did not care
to do so. I told him to go to the Fort alone.
He said he did not want to go at that hour, but
would follow my advice as soon as I had called off
the dog. I instructed Garm to take him to the
Fort, and Garm marched him solemnly up to the
gate, one mile and a half under a hot sun, and I
told the quarter^guard what had happened; but
the young artilleryman was more angry than was
at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several
regiments, he was told, had tried to steal Garm in
their time.

That month the hot weather shut down in
earnest, and the dogs slept in the bathroom on
the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed.
Every morning, as soon as the man filled my bath,
the two jumped in, and every morning the man
filled the bath a second time. I said to him that
he might as well fill a small tub specially for the
dogs* 'Nay/ said he smiling, 'it is not their
custom. They would not understand. Besides,
the big bath gives them more space/

The punkah'Coolies who pull the punkahs day
and night came to know Garm intimately. He
noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would
call out to the coolie and bid him pull with a long
stroke. If the man still slept I would wake him
up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing
82

GARM-A HOSTAGE

to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe
Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks.
At any rate, when the punkah stopped, Garm
would first growl and cock his eye at the rope,
and if that did not wake the man — it nearly always
did — he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper's
ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could
never connect the punkah and the coolie ; so Garm
gave me grateful hours of cool sleep. But he was
utterly wretched — as miserable as a human being ;
and in his misery he clung so closely to me that
other men noticed it, and were envious. If I
moved from one room to another Garm followed ;
if my pen stopped scratching, Garm's head was
thrust into my hand ; if I turned, half awake, on
the pillow, Garm was up and at my side, for he
knew that I was his only link with his master, and
day and night, and night and day, his eyes asked
one question — * When is this going to end ? '

Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed
that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot
weather, till one day at the Club a man said:
4 That dog of yours will die in a week or two.
He's a shadow/ Then I dosed Garm with iron
and quinine, which he hated; and I felt very
anxious. He lost his appetite, and Vixen was
allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes. Even
that did not make him swallow, and we held a
83

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

consultation on him, of the best man'doctor in the
place ; a lady'doctor, who cured the sick wives of
kings; and the Deputy Inspector^General of the
veterinary service of all India* They pronounced
upon his symptoms, and I told them his story, and
Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand*

'He's dying of a broken heart/ said the lady*
doctor suddenly,

"Pon my word/ said the Deputy Inspector^
General, ' I believe Mrs, Macrae is perfectly right —
as usual/

The best man*doctor in the place wrote a pre^
scription, and the veterinary Deputy Inspector*
General went over it afterwards to be sure that
the drugs were in the proper dog^proportions ;
and that was the first time in his life that our
doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited.
It was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on
his feet for a week or two; then he lost flesh
again, I asked a man I knew to take him up to
the Hills with him when he went, and the man
came to the door with his kit packed on the top
of the carriage, Garm took in the situation at
one red glance. The hair rose along his back;
he sat down in front of me and delivered the most
awful growl I have ever heard in the jaws of a
dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once,
and as soon as the carnage was out of the garden

84

GARM-A HOSTAGE

Garm laid his head on my knee and whined. So
I knew his answer, and devoted myself to getting
Stanley's address in the Hills.

My turn to go to the cool came late in August,
We were allowed thirty days' holiday in a year,
if no one fell sick, and we took it as we could be
spared. My chief and Bob the Librarian had their
holiday first, and when they were gone I made a
calendar, as I always did, and hung it up at the
head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till
they returned. Vixen had gone up to the Hills
with me five times before; and she appreciated
the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood
fires there as much as I did.

4 Garm/ I said, 4 we are going back to Stanley
atKasauli. Kasauli — Stanley; Stanley — Kasauli/
And I repeated it twenty times. It was not
Kasauli really, but another place. Still I re*
membered what Stanley had said in my garden
on the last night, and I dared not change the
name. Then Garm began to tremble ; then he
barked; and then he leaped up at me, frisking
and wagging his tail.

'Not now/ I said, holding up my hand.
'When I say "Go," well go, Garm/ I pulled
out the little blanket coat and spiked collar that
Vixen always wore up in the Hills, to protect her
against sudden chills and thieving leopards, and I

85

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

let the two smell them and talk it over. What
they said of course I do not know, but it made a
new dog of Garm. His eyes were bright; and
he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate
his food, and he killed his rats for the next three
weeks, and when he began to whine I had only to
say 4 Stanley — Kasauli; Kasauli — Stanley/ to
wake him up, I wish I had thought of it before,

My chief came back, all brown with living in
the open air, and very angry at finding it so hot
in the plains* The same afternoon we three and
Kadir Buksh began to pack for our month's holi'
day, Vixen rolling in and out of the bullock'trunk
twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning all over
and thumping on the floor with his tail. Vixen
knew the routine of travelling as well as she knew
my office*work. She went to the station, singing
songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while
Garm sat with me. She hurried into the railway
carriage, saw Kadir Buksh make up my bed for
the night, got her drink of water, and curled up
with her black * patch eye on the tumult of the
platform, Garm followed her (the crowd gave
him a lane all to himself) and sat down on the
pillows with his eyes blazing, and his tail a haze
behind him,

We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn,
four or five men, who had been working hard for

86

GARM-A HOSTAGE

eleven months, shouting for our daks — the
horse travelling carriages that were to take us up
to Kalka at the foot of the Hills* It was all new
to Garm. He did not understand carriages where
you lay at full length on your bedding, but Vixen
knew and hopped into her place at once; Garm
following. The Kalka Road, before the railway
was built, was about forty^seven miles long, and
the horses were changed every eight miles. Most
of them jibbed, and kicked, and plunged, but they
had to go, and they went rather better than usual
for Garm's deep bay in their rear.

There was a river to be forded, and four bul*
locks pulled the carriage, and Vixen stuck her
head out of the sliding-door and nearly fell into
the water while she gave directions. Garm was
silent and curious, and rather needed reassuring
about Stanley and Kasauli. So we rolled, barking
and yelping, into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate
enough for two.

After Kalka the road wound among the hills,
and we took a curricle with half'broken ponies,
which were changed every six miles. No one
dreamed of a railroad to Simla in those days, for
it was seven thousand feet up in the air. The road
was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation
pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here,
again, Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the

87

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

other; jumped into the back seat, and shouted*
A cool breath from the snows met us about five
miles out of Kalka, and she whined for her coat,
wisely fearing a chill on the liver. I had had
one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed
to the fresh breezes, I put it on, and Garm
chewed it uncomprehendingly, but I think he was
grateful.

4 Hi'yi'yi'yi ! ' sang Vixen as we shot round
the curves ; * TooMooMoot I ' went the driver's
bugle at the dangerous places, and 'Yow! yowl
yow!' bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the
front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get
away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the
haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a
man we knew going down to his work again, and
he would say; 4 What's it like below?' and I
would shout : * Hotter than cinders. What's it
like up above ? ' and he would shout back : 4 Just
perfect ! ' and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder :
4 Here is Solon ' ; and Garm snored where he lay
with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant
little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being
cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and
one generally stops at a rest-house near by for
something to eat. I got out and took both dogs
with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier

88

GARM— A HOSTAGE

told us we should find Stanley 4 out there/ nodding
his head towards a bare, bleak hill

When we climbed to the top we spied that very
Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting
on a rock with his face in his hands and his over*
coat hanging loose about him, I never saw any*
thing so lonely and dejected in my life as this one
little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great
grey hillside.

Here Garm left me.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I
could see, without moving his legs. He flew
through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of
him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the
little man clean over. They rolled on the ground
together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I
could not see which was dog and which was man,
till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from
fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked
all he said, but even while I watched, both man
and dog plumped out to their natural sizes, pre*
cisely as dried apples swell in water. Garm was
on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the
same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud
of Garm— gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He
did not say anything that I could understand, ex^
cept that he had fancied he was going to die, but

89

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

that now he was quite well, and that he was not
going to give up Garm any more to anybody
under the rank of Beelzebub,

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and
happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where
Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry
jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when
Garm wasn't climbing over him ; and then Vixen
and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once* He said good-
bye to me three times, giving me both paws one
after another, and leaping on to my shoulder* He
further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top
of his voice, a mile down the road. Then he raced
back to his own master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the
cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of
Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her nose at
the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and
tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented
little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my
breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the
four happiest people in all the world that night.

90

THE POWER OF THE DOG

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day ;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more ?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy

Love unflinching that cannot lie —

Perfect passion and worship fed

By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.

Nevertheless it is hardly fair

To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits

Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,

And the vet's unspoken prescription runs

To lethal chambers or loaded guns,

Then you will find — it's your own affair,

Bui . . . you've given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still 1),
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone — wherever it goes — for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear I

91

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,

When it comes to burying Christian clay.

Our loves are not given, but only lent,

At compound interest of cent per cent.

Though it is not always the case, I believe,

That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve

For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,

A short>time loan is as bad as a long —

So why in Heaven (before we are there !)

Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear ?

92

THE MOTHER HIVE

93

THE MOTHER HIVE

IF the stock had not been old and overcrowded,
the Wax-moth would never have entered ; but
where bees are too thick on the comb there
must be sickness or parasites* The heat of the hive
had risen with the June honey-flow, and though
the fanners worked, until their wings ached, to
keep people cool, everybody suffered.

A young bee crawled up the greasy, trampled
alighting-board. 4 Excuse me/ she began, 4 but it's
my first honey -flight. Could you kindly tell me
if this is my —

4 own hive?' the Guard snapped. 'Yes!

Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to you ! Next ! '

4 Shame!' cried half-a-dozen old workers with
worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and
a hum.

The little grey Wax -moth, pressed close in a
crack in the alighting-board, had waited this chance
all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and, knowing

95

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged
into a brood'frame, where youngsters who had not
yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod dis*
cussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees
will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came
the bee who had been slanged by the Guard*

'What is the world like, Melissa ?' said a
companion,

* Cruel! I brought in a full load of first<lass
stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be foul*
brooded!' She sat down in the cool draught
across the combs.

'If you'd only heard/ said the Wax * moth
silkily, 'the insolence of the Guard's tone when
she cursed our sister! It aroused the Entire
Community/ She laid an egg. She had stolen in
for that purpose*

4 There was a bit of a fuss on the Gate/ Melissa

chuckled. 'You were there, Miss ?' She

did not know how to address the slim stranger.

'Don't call me "Miss." I'm a sister to all in
affliction — just a working-sister* My heart bled
for you beneath your burden/ The Wax-moth
caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid
another egg.

'You mustn't lay here/ cried Melissa. 'You
aren't a Queen/

'My dear child, I give you my most solemn

96

THE MOTHER HIVE

word of honour those aren't eggs. Those are my
principles, and I am ready to die for them/ She
raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp
round her. 4 If you'd like to kill me, pray do/

4 Don't be unkind, Melissa/ said a young bee,
impressed by the chaste folds of the Wax-moth's
wing, which hid her ceaseless egg'dropping.

'/ haven't done anything/ Melissa answered.
4 She's doing it all/

'Ah, don't let your conscience reproach you
later, but when you've killed me, write me, at least,
as one that loved her fellows-workers/

Laying at every sob, the Wax^moth backed
into a crowd of young bees, and left Melissa
bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her
little voice in the darkness and cried, 4 Stores ! f
till a gang of cell*fillers hailed her, and she left her
load with them.

' I'm afraid I foul-brooded you just now/ said a
voice over her shoulder. 'I'd been on the Gate
for three hours, and one would foulxbrood the
Queen herself after that. No offence meant/

'None taken/ Melissa answered cheerily. 'I
shall be on guard myself, some day. What's next
to do?'

4 There's a rumour of Death's Head Moths
about. Send a gang of youngsters to the Gate,
and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of

A. R. Vol. I 97 H

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

stout scraps-wax pillars. It'll make the Hive hot,
but we can't have Death's Headers in the middle
of our honeyxflow/

4 My Only Wings! I should think not!'
Melissa had all a sound bee's hereditary hatred
against the big, squeaking, feathery Thief of the
Hives, 4 Tumble out!' she called across the
youngsters' quarters. 4 All you who aren't feeding
babies, show a leg. Scrap'wax pillars for the
Ga^ate ! ' She chanted the order at length.

' That's nonsense,' a downy, day - old bee
answered. ' In the first place, I never heard of a
Death's Header coming into a hive. People don't
do such things. In the second, building pillars to
keep 'em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy
of British bees. In the third, if you trust a
Death's Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building
shows lack of confidence. Our dear sister in grey
says so.'

4 Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative,
and a waste of wax that is needed for higher and
more practical ends,' said the Wax-moth from an
empty store-cell.

'The safety of the Hive is the highest thing
I've ever heard of. You mustn't teach us to refuse
work,' Melissa began.

4 You misunderstand me as usual, love. Work's
.the essence of life; but to expend precious un"

98

THE MOTHER HIVE

returning vitality and real labour against imaginary
danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd I If I can
only teach a — a little toleration — a little ordinary
kindness here towards that absurd old bogey you
call the Death's Header, I shan't have lived in
vain/

'She hasn't lived in vain, the darling!' cried
twenty bees together, ' You should see her saintly
life, Melissa ! She just devotes herself to spreading
her principles, and — and — she looks lovely I f

An old, baldish bee came up the comb,

4 Pillar- workers for the Gate! Get out and
chew scraps. Buzz off!' she said. The Wax*
moth slipped aside.

The young bees trooped down the frame,
whispering.

4 What's the matter with 'em ? ' said the oldster.
'Why do they call each other 'Mucky" and
"darling." 'Must be the weather.' She sniffed
suspiciously. 4 Horrid stuffy smell here. Like
stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa ? '

4 Not to my knowledge,' said Melissa, who, of
course, only knew the Wax-moth as a lady with
principles, and had never thought to report her
presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths
to be like blood-red dragon-flies.

4 You had better fan out this corner for a little,'
said the old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped

99

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

her head at once, took firm hold with her forefeet,
and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke —
three hundred beats to the second. Fanning tries
a bee's temper, because she must always keep in the
same place where she never seems to be doing any
good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her
only wings. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must
not live ; and a bee knows it. The Wax^moth
crept forth, and caressed Melissa again*

'I see/ she murmured, 'that at heart you are
one of Us/

4 1 work with the Hive/ Melissa answered
briefly.

'It's the same thing. We and the Hive are
one/

'Then why are your feelers different from
ours ? Don't cuddle so/

'Don't be provincial, carissima. You can't
have all the world alike— yet/

' But why do you lay eggs ? ' Melissa insisted.
'You lay 'em like a Queen — only you drop
them in patches all over the place* I've watched
you/

'Ah, Brighteyes, so you've pierced my little
subterfuge? Yes, they are eggs. By and by
they'll spread our principles. Aren't you glad ? '

'You gave me your most solemn word of
honour that they were not eggs/

100

THE MOTHER HIVE

'That was my little subterfuge, dearest — for
the sake of the Cause. Now I must reach the
young/ The Wax-moth tripped towards the
fourth brood-frame where the young bees were
busy feeding the babies.

It takes some time for a sound bee to realise
a malignant and continuous lie. 4 She's very sweet
and feathery/ was all that Melissa thought, * but
her talk sounds like ivy honey tastes. I'd better
get to my field-work again/

She found the Gate in a sulky uproar. The
youngsters told off to the pillars had refused to
chew scrap-wax because it made their jaws ache,
and were clamouring for virgin stuff.

4 Anything to finish the job I ' said the badgered
Guards. * Hang up, some of you, and make wax
for these slack-jawed sisters/

Before a bee can make wax she must fill herself
with honey. Then she climbs to safe foothold and
hangs, while other gorged bees hang on to her in
a duster. There they wait in silence till the wax
comes. The scales are either taken out of the
maker's pockets by the workers, or tinkle down
on the workers while they wait. The workers
chew them (they are useless unchewed) into the
all-supporting, all-embracing Wax of the Hive.

But now, no sooner was the wax cluster in
position than the workers below broke out again.

101

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

4 Come down ! ' they cried. 4 Come down and
work ! Come on, you Levantine parasites ! Don't
think to enjoy yourselves up there while we're
sweating down here ! '

The cluster shivered, as from hooked forefoot
to hooked hind^foot it telegraphed uneasiness. At
last a worker sprang up, grabbed the lowest waxx
maker, and swung, kicking, above her companions.

4 1 can make wax too ! ' she bawled. 4 Give me
a full gorge and Pll make tons of it/

4 Make it, then/ said the bee she had grappled.
The spoken word snapped the current through the
cluster. It shook and glistened like a cat's fur in
the dark* * Unhook !' it murmured. 'No wax
for any one today/

'You lazy thieves! Hang up at once and
produce our wax/ said the bees below.

'Impossible! The sweat's gone. To make
your wax we must have stillness, warmth, and
food. Unhook! Unhook!'

They broke up as they murmured, and dis^
appeared among the other bees, from whom, of
course, they were undistinguishable.

4 'Seems as if we'd have to chew scrap^wax for
these pillars, after all/ said a worker.

'Not by a whole comb/ cried the young bee
who had broken the cluster. 'Listen here! I've
studied the question more than twenty minutes.

102

THE MOTHER HIVE

It's as simple as falling off a daisy. You've heard
of Cheshire, Root and Langstroth ? '

They had not, but they shouted 'Good old
Langstroth ! ' just the same.

4 Those three know all that there is to be
known about making hives. One or t'other of
'em must have made ours, and if they've made
it, they're bound to look after it. Ours is a
"Guaranteed Patent Hive." You can see it on
the label behind.'

4 Good old guarantee ! Hurrah for the label
behind ! ' roared the bees.

4 Well, such being the case, / say that when we
find they've betrayed us, we can exact from them
a terrible vengeance.'

' Good old vengeance ! Good old Root ! 'Nuf f
said ! Chuck it ! ' The crowd cheered and broke
away as Melissa dived through.

'D'you know where Langstroth, Root and
Cheshire live if you happen to want 'em?' she
asked of the proud and panting orator.

'Gum me if I know they ever lived at all!
But aren't they beautiful names to buzz about?
Did you see how it worked up the sisterhood ? '

'Yes, but it didn't defend the Gate,' she
replied.

4 Ah, perhaps that's true, but think how delicate
my position is, sister. I've a magnificent appetite,

103

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and I don't like working. It's bad for the mind.
My instinct tells me that I can act as a restraining
influence on others. They would have been worse,
but for me/

But Melissa had already risen clear, and was
heading for a breadth of virgin white clover, which
to an overtired bee is as soothing as plain knitting
to a woman,

* I think Til take this load to the nurseries/ she
said, when she had finished, 4 It was always quiet
there in my day/ and she topped off with two
little pats of pollen for the babies.

She was met on the fourth brood^comb by a
rush of excited sisters all buzzing together,

4 One at a timei Let me put down my load.
Now, what is it, Sacharissa ? ' she said.

4 Grey Sister — that fluffy one, I mean — she came
and said we ought to be out in the sunshine gather*
ing honey, because life was short. She said any
old bee could attend to our babies, and some day
old bees would. That isn't true, Melissa, is it?
No old bees can take us away from our babies,
can they?'

4 Of course not. You feed the babies while
your heads are soft. When your heads harden,
you go on to field-work. Any one knows that/

'We told her so! We told her so; but she
only waved her feelers, and said we could all lay

104

THE MOTHER HIVE

eggs like Queens if we chose. And I'm afraid lots
of the weaker sisters believe her, and are trying to
do it. So unsettling ! '

Sacharissa sped to a sealed worker-cell whose
lid pulsated, as the bee within began to cut its
way out.

'Come along, precious!' she murmured, and
thinned the frail top from the other side. A pale,
damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly on to the
comb. Sacharissa's note changed at once. 'No
time to waste ! Go up the frame and preen your*
self!' she said. 'Report for nursing-duty in my
ward to-morrow evening at six. Stop a minute*
What's the matter with your third right leg ? '

The young bee held it out in silence — unmis*
takably a drone leg incapable of packing pollen.

'Thank you. You needn't report till the day
after to-morrow.' Sacharissa turned to her con>
panion. 'That's the fifth oddity hatched in my
ward since noon. I don't like it.'

' There's always a certain number of 'em,' said
Melissa. 'You can't stop a few working sisters
from laying, now and then, when they overfeed
themselves. They only raise dwarf drones.'

'But we're hatching out drones with workers'
stomachs; workers with drones' stomachs; and
albinos and mixed-leggers who can't pack pollen
— like that poor little beast yonder. I don't mind

105

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

dwarf drones any more than you do (they all die
in July), but this steady hatch of oddities frightens
me, Melissa ! '

4 How narrow of you ! They are all so delight'
fully clever and unusual and interesting/ piped the
Wax-moth from a crack above them. ' Come here,
you dear, downy duck, and tell us all about your
feelings/

'I wish she'd go!' Sacharissa lowered her
voice. * She meets these — er — oddities as they dry
out, and cuddles 'em in corners/

' I suppose the truth is that we're overstocked
and too well fed to swarm/ said Melissa*

'That is the truth/ said the Queen's voice
behind them. They had not heard the heavy
royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating.
Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and
dragged her weary body forward. 'Can you
suggest a remedy ? ' she said.

'New principles!' cried the Wax-moth from
her crevice. 4 We'll apply them quietly — later/

' Suppose we sent out a swarm ? ' Melissa sug-
gested. 'It's a little late, but it might ease us
off/

4 It would save us, but — I know the Hive!
You shall see for yourself/ The old Queen cried
the Swarming Cry, which to a bee of good blood
should be what the trumpet was to Job's war-

106

THE MOTHER HIVE

horse. In spite of her immense age (three years),
it rang between the canon xlike frames as a pibroch
rings in a mountain pass ; the fanners changed
their note, and repeated it up in every gallery;
and the broad * winged drones, burly and eager,
ended it on one nerve * thrilling outbreak of
bugles: * La Reine le veult! Swarm! Swar^rm!

But the roar which should follow the Call was
wanting* They heard a broken grumble like the
murmur of a falling tide.

4 Swarm ? What for ? Catch me leaving a
good bar'frame Hive, with fixed foundations, for
a rotten old oak out in the open where it may rain
any minute! Wire all right! It's a " Patent
Guaranteed Hive/' Why do they want to turn
us out ? Swarming be gummed ! Swarming was
invented to cheat a worker out of her proper
comforts. Come on off to bed ! '

The noise died out as the bees settled in empty
cells for the night.

'You hear?' said the Queen. 'I know the
Hive!'

4 Quite between ourselves, / taught them that,'
cried the Wax - moth. 'Wait till my principles
develop, and you'll see the light from a new
quarter.'

'You speak truth for once,' the Queen said

107

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

suddenly, for she recognised the Wax , moth.
4 That Light will break into the top of the Hive,
A Hot Smoke will follow it, and your children
will not be able to hide in any crevice/

4 Is it possible?' Melissa whispered* 'I — we
have sometimes heard a legend like it/

4 It is no legend/ the old Queen answered. ' I
had it from my mother, and she had it from
hers. After the Wax^moth has grown strong, a
Shadow will fall across the gate ; a Voice will
speak from behind a Veil; there will be Light,
and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who
live will see everything that they have done, all
together in one place, burned up in one great
Fire/ The old Queen was trying to tell what she
had been told of the Bee Master's dealings with
an infected hive in the apiary, two or three
seasons ago; and, of course, from her point of
view the affair was as important as the Day of
Judgment.

4 And then ? ' asked horrified Sacharissa.

4 Then, I have heard that a little light will burn
in a great darkness, and perhaps the world will
begin again. Myself, I think not/

'Tut! Tut!' the Waxxmoth cried 'You
good, fat people always prophesy ruin if things
don't go exactly your way. But I grant you
there will be changes/

108

THE MOTHER HIVE

There were* When her eggs hatched, the wax
was riddled with little tunnels, coated with the
dirty clothes of the caterpillars. Flannelly lines.
ran through the honey-stores, the pollen-larders,,
the foundations, and, worst of all, through the
babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards
spent half their time tossing out useless little
corpses. The lines ended in a maze of sticky
webbing on the face of the comb. The cater-
pillars could not stop spinning as they walked,
and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed
and garmed everything. Even where it did not
hamper the bees' feet, the stale, sour smell of the
stuff put them off their work; though some of
the bees who had taken to egg-laying said it
encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a
vital interest in life*

When the caterpillars became moths, they made
friends with the ever-increasing Oddities — albinos,
mixed -leggers, single-eyed composites, faceless
drones, half -queens and laying sisters; and the
ever - dwindling band of the old stock worked
themselves bald and fray-winged to feed their
queer charges. Most of the Oddities would not,
and many, on account of their malformations,
could not, go through a day's field work ; but the
Wax-moths, who were always busy on the brood-
comb, found pleasant home occupations for them.

109

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

One albino, for instance, divided the number of
pounds of honey in stock by the number of bees
in the Hive, and proved that if every bee only
gathered honey for seven and three-quarter
minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time
to herself, and could accompany the drones on their
mating flights* The drones were not at all pleased.
Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said
that all brood-cells should be perfect circles, so as
not to interfere with the grub or the workers.
He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely
due to the workers building against each other on
opposite sides of the wall, and that if there were
no interference, there would be no angles. Some
bees tried the new plan for a while, and found it
cost eight times more wax than the old six-sided
specification ; and, as they never allowed a cluster
to hang up and make wax in peace, real wax was
scarce. However, they eked out their task with
varnish stolen from new coffins at funerals, and
it made them rather sick. Then they took to
cadging round sugar - factories and breweries,
because it was easiest to get their material from
those places, and the mixture of glucose and beer
naturally fermented in store and blew the store-
cells out of shape, besides smelling abominably.
Some of the sound bees warned them that ill-
gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities at

110

THE MOTHER HIVE

once surrounded them and balled them to death.
That was a punishment they were almost as fond
of as they were of eating, and they expected the
sound bees to feed them. Curiously enough the
age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion towards
the Hive made the sound bees do this, though
their reason told them they ought to slip away and
unite with some other healthy stock in the apiary.

4 What about seven and three-quarter minutes'
work now ? ' said Melissa one day as she came in.
4 Pve been at it for five hours, and I've only half
a load.'

'Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey
which the Hive produces,' said a blind Oddity
squatting in a store-cell.

4 But honey is gathered from flowers outside—
two miles away sometimes,' cried Melissa.

4 Pardon me/ said the blind thing, sucking hard.
4 But this is the Hive, is it not ? '

4 It was. Worse luck, it is.'

'And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?' It
opened a fresh store-cell to prove it.

4 Ye— es, but it won't be long at this rate,' said
Melissa.

4 The rates have nothing to do with it. This Hive
produces the Hival Honey. You people never seem
to grasp the economic simplicity that underlies all
life.'

Ill

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'Oh, me!' said poor Melissa, 'haven't you
ever been beyond the Gate ? '

'Certainly not* A fool's eyes are in the ends
of the earth. Mine are in my head/ It gorged
till it bloated,

Melissa took refuge in her poorly-paid field*
work and told Sacharissa the story.

4 Hut ! ' said that wise bee, fretting with an old
maid of a thistle, 'Tell us something new. The
Hive's full of such as him — it, I mean.'

'What's the end to be? All the honey going
out and none coming in. Things can't last this
way ! ' said Melissa,

'Who cares?' said Sacharissa, 'I know now
how drones feel the day before they're killed, A
short life and a merry one for me ! '

'If it only were merry! But think of those
awful, solemn, lop-sided Oddities waiting for us at
home — crawling and clambering and preaching —
and dirtying things in the dark,'

' I don't mind that so much as their silly songs,
after we've fed 'em, all about " work among the
merry, merry blossoms," ' said Sacharissa from the
deeps of a stale Canterbury bell,

' I do. How's our Queen ? ' said Melissa,

' Cheerfully hopeless, as usual. But she lays an
egg now and then,'

'Does she so?' Melissa backed out of the
112

THE MOTHER HIVE

next bell with a jerk. 4 Suppose, now, we sound
workers tried to raise a Princess in some clean
corner ? '

4 You'd be put to it to find one. The Hive's
all wax-moth and muckings. But — Well ? '

'A Princess might help us in the time of the
Voice behind the Veil that the Queen talks of*
And anything is better than working for Oddities
that chirrup about work that they can't do, and
waste what we bring home/

4 Who cares ? ' said Sacharissa. 4 I'm with you,
for the fun of it* The Oddities would ball us to
death, if they knew* Come home, and we'll begin/

There is no room to tell how the experienced
Melissa found a far-off frame so messed and mis^
handled by abandoned cell-building experiments
that, for very shame, the bees never went there.
How in that ruin she blocked out a Royal Cell of
sound wax, but disguised by rubbish till it looked
like a kopje among deserted kopjes. How she
prevailed upon the hopeless Queen to make one
last effort and lay a worthy egg. How the Queen
obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was
flung out on the rubbish heap, and how a multitude
of laying sisters went about dropping drone-eggs
where they listed, and said there was no more need
of Queens* How, covered by this confusion,

A.R. Vol. I 113 ]

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Sacharissa educated certain young bees to educate
certain new - born bees in the almost lost
art of making Royal Jelly* How the nectar for
it was won out of hours in the teeth of chill
winds. How the hidden egg hatched true — no
drone, but Blood Royal How it was capped,
and how desperately they worked to feed and
double-feed the now swarming Oddities, lest any
break in the food - supplies should set them to
instituting inquiries, which, with songs about
work, was their favourite amusement. How in
an auspicious hour, on a moonless night, the
Princess came forth — a Princess indeed, — and how
Melissa smuggled her into a dark empty honey-
magazine, to bide her time ; and how the drones,
knowing she was there, went about singing the
deep disreputable love-songs of the old days — to
the scandal of the laying-sisters, who do not think
well of drones. These things are written in the
Book of Queens, which is laid up in the hollow of
the Great Ash Ygdrasil.

After a few days the weather changed again and
became glorious. Even the Oddities would now
join the crowd that hung out on the alighting-
board, and would sing of work among the merry,
merry blossoms till an untrained ear might have
received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet,
in truth, their store-honey had been eaten long ago*

114

THE MOTHER HIVE

They lived from day to day on the efforts of the
few sound bees, while the Wax-moth fretted and
consumed again their already ruined wax. But
the sound bees never mentioned these matters.
They knew, if they did, the Oddities would hold
a meeting and ball them to death.

'Now you see what we have done/ said the
Wax'tnoths. 'We have created New Material,
a New Convention, a New Type, as we said we
would/

4 And new possibilities for us/ said the laying^
sisters gratefully. * You have given us a new life's
work, vital and paramount/

'More than that/ chanted the Oddities in the
sunshine ; ' you have created a new heaven and a
new earth. Heaven, cloudless and accessible ' (it
was a perfect August evening) ' and Earth teeming
with the merry, merry blossoms, waiting only our
honest toil to turn them all to good. The — er —
Aster, and the Crocus, and the — er — Ladies' Smock
in her season, the Chrysanthemum after her kind,
and the Guelder Rose bringing forth abundantly
withal/

' Oh, Holy Hymettus ! ' said Melissa, awestruck.
' I knew they didn't know how honey was made,
but they've forgotten the Order of the Flowers!
What will become of them ? '

A Shadow fell across the alighting'board as

115

in

v\,

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Bee Master and his son came by. The Oddities
crawled in and a Voice behind a Veil said : 4 I've
neglected the old Hive too long. Give me the
smoker/

Melissa heard and darted through the gate.
4 Come, oh come ! ' she cried. 4 It is the destruction
the Old Queen foretold. Princess, come ! '

* Really, you are too archaic for words/ said an
Oddity in an alley <• way. 'A cloud, I admit, may
have crossed the sun; but why hysterics? Above
all, why Princesses so late in the day ? Are you
aware it's the Hival Tea-time ? Let's sing grace.'

Melissa clawed past him with all six legs.
Sacharissa had run to what was left of the fertile
brood'Comb. 4 Down and out ! ' she called across
the brown breadth of it. 'Nurses, guards, fan*
ners, sweepers — out I Never mind the babies.
They're better dead Out, before the Light and
the Hot Smoke ! '

The Princess's first clear fearless call (Melissa
had found her) rose and drummed through all the
frames. 4 La Reine le veult ! Swarm! Swar^rm!

The Hive shook beneath the shattering thunder
of a stuck<down quilt being torn back.

' Don't be alarmed, dears/ said the Wax^moths.
4 That's our work. Look up, and you'll see the
dawn of the New Day/

116

THE MOTHER HIVE

Light broke in the top of the hive as the
Queen had prophesied — naked light on the boiling,
bewildered bees*

Sacharissa rounded up her rearguard, which
dropped headlong off the frame, and joined the
Princess's detachment thrusting toward the Gate,
Now panic was in full blast, and each sound bee
found herself embraced by at least three Oddities.
The first instinct of a frightened bee is to break
into the stores and gorge herself with honey ; but
there were no stores left, so the Oddities fought
the sound bees.

* You must feed us, or we shall die ! ' they cried,
holding and clutching and slipping, while the silent
scared earwigs and little spiders twisted between
their legs. * Think of the Hive, traitors! The
Holy Hive r

'You should have thought before I' cried the
sound bees. * Stay and see the dawn of your New
Day/

They reached the Gate at last over the soft
bodies of many to whom they had ministered.

'On! Out! Up!' roared Melissa in the
Princess's ear. 'For the Hive's sake! To the
Old Oak!'

The Princess left the alighting - board, circled
once, flung herself at the lowest branch of the
Old Oak, and her little loyal swarm — you could

117

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

have covered it with a pint mug — followed, hooked,
and hung*

'Hold close!' Melissa gasped* 'The old
legends have come true ! Look ! '

The Hive was half hidden by smoke, and
Figures moved through the smoke. They heard
a frame crack stickily, saw it heaved high and
twirled round between enormous hands — a
blotched, bulged, and perished horror of grey
wax, corrupt brood, and small drone ^ cells, all
covered with crawling Oddities, strange to the
sun.

4 Why, this isn't a hive ! This is a museum of
curiosities/ said the Voice behind the Veil. It
was only the Bee Master talking to his son.

'Can you blame 'em, father?' said a second
voice. ' It's rotten with Wax^moth. See here ! '

Another frame came up. A finger poked
through it, and it broke away in rustling flakes
of ashy rottenness.

'Number Four Frame! That was your
mother's pet comb once,' whispered Melissa to
the Princess. ' Many's the good egg I've watched
her lay there.'

'Aren't you confusing post hoc with propter
hocf said the Bee Master. ' Wax * moth only
succeed when weak bees let them in/ A third
frame crackled and rose into the light. 'All this

118

THE MOTHER HIVE

is full of laying workers' brood* That never
happens till the stock's weakened. Phew ! '

He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and
it also crumbled to pieces*

The little swarm shivered as they watched the
dwarf drone 'grubs squirm feebly on the grass*
Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well
knowing their work was useless ; but the actual
sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens
a good worker.

'No, they have some recuperative power
left/ said the second voice. ' Here's a Queen cell ! '

'But it's tucked away among What on

earth has come to the little wretches ? They seem
to have lost the instinct of cell * building.' The
father held up the frame where the bees had
experimented in circular cell * work. It looked
like the pitted head of a decaying toadstool.

'Not altogether/ the son corrected. 'There's
one line, at least, of perfectly good cells/

'My work/ said Sacharissa to herself. 'I'm
glad Man does me justice before —

That frame, too, was smashed out and thrown
atop of the others and the foul earwiggy quilts.

As frame after frame followed it, the swarm
beheld the upheaval, exposure, and destruction of
all that had been well or ill done in every cranny
of their Hive for generations past. There was

119

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

black comb so old that they had forgotten where
it hung ; orange, buf f, and ochre* varnished store*
comb, built as bees were used to build before the
days of artificial foundations; and there was a
little, white, frail new work. There were sheets
on sheets of level, even brood-comb that had held
in its time unnumbered thousands of unnamed
workers; patches of obsolete drone-comb, broad
and high-shouldered, showing to what marks the
male grub was expected to grow; and two inch
deep honey - magazines, empty, but still magnifi-
cent : the whole gummed and glued into twisted
scrap * work, awry on the wires, half-cells, begin-
nings abandoned, or grandiose, weak-walled, com-
posite cells pieced out with rubbish and capped
with dirt.

Good or bad, every inch of it was so riddled
by the tunnels of the Wax-moth that it broke in
clouds of dust as it was flung on the heap.

'Oh, seeP cried Sacharissa. 'The Great
Burning that Our Queen foretold. Who can bear
to look ? '

A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish, and
they smelt singeing wax.

The Figures stooped, lifted the Hive and
shook it upside down over the pyre. A cascade
of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff,
and grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a

120

THE MOTHER HIVE

little, and then the flames roared up and consumed
all that fuel,

'We must disinfect/ said a Voice. 'Get me
a sulphuivcandle, please/

The shell of the Hive was returned to its place,
a light was set in its sticky emptiness, tier by tier
the Figures built it up, closed the entrance, and
went away. The swarm watched the light leak'
ing through the cracks all the long night. At
dawn one Wax * moth came by, fluttering im^
pudently.

'There has been a miscalculation about the
New Day, my dears/ she began; 'one can't
expect people to be perfect all at once. That
was our mistake/

'No, the mistake was entirely ours/ said the
Princess.

'Pardon me/ said the Wax <• moth. 'When
you think of the enormous upheaval — call it good
or bad — which our influence brought about, you
will admit that we, and we alone —

'You?' said the Princess. 'Our stock was
not strong. So you came — as any other disease
might have come. Hang close, all my people/

When the sun rose, Veiled Figures came down,
and saw their swarm at the bough's end waiting
patiently within sight of the old Hive — a handful,
but prepared to go on.

121

THE BEES AND THE FLIES

A farmer of the Augustan age
Perused in Virgil's golden page,
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Gyrene's son —
How the dank sea^god showed the swain
Means to restore his hives again :
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.

The egregious rustic put to death

A bull by stopping of its breath :

Disposed the carcass in a shed

With fragrant herbs and branches spread.

And, having thus performed the charm,

Sat down to wait the promised swarm.

Nor waited long. The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass — and the carcass swelled !
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves ;
Past any doubt, the bull conceives I

123

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

The farmer bids men bring more hives
To house the profit that arrives ;
Prepares on pan, and key and kettle,
Sweet music that shall make 'em settle ;
But when to crown the work he goes,
Gods I what a stink salutes his nose 1
Where are the honest toilers ? Where
The gravid mistress of their care ?
A busy scene, indeed, he sees,
But not a sign or sound of bees.
Worms of the riper grave unhid
By any kindly coffin lid,
Obscene and shameless to the light,
Seethe in insatiate appetite,
Through putrid offal ; while above
The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,
Whose offspring, supping where they supt,
Consume corruption twice corrupt.

124

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

125

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

A Story of 2000 AD,

(Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared)

A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood
on the lower stages of one of the G,P.O.
outward mail towers* My purpose was
a run to Quebec in ' Postal Packet 162 or such
other as may be appointed ' : and the Postmaster*
General himself countersigned the order. This
talisman opened all doors, even those in the des^
patching * caisson at the foot of the tower, where
they were delivering the sorted Continental mail.
The bags lay packed close as herrings in the long
grey underbodies which our G.P,O, still calls
4 coaches/ Five such coaches were filled as I
watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked
on to their waiting packets three hundred feet
nearer the stars*

From the despatchingxcaisson I was conducted

127

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

by a courteous and wonderfully learned official
—Mr, L L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the
Western Route — to the Captains' Room (this
wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail
captains come on for their turn of duty. He
introduces me to the Captain of 4 162 ' — Captain
Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The
one is small and dark; the other large and red;
but each has the brooding sheathed glance charac-
teristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it
in the pictures of our racing professionals, from
L V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh — that
fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually turned
through naked space.

On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the
pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators register,
degree by geographical degree, the progress of
as many homeward-bound packets. The word
'Cape' rises across the face of a dial; a gong
strikes : the South African mid-weekly mail is in
at the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all.
It reminds one comically of the traitorous little
bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the
return of a homer.

'Time for us to be on the move/ says Captain
Purnall, and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to
the top of the despatch-towers. 4 Our coach will lock
on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard.' . . .

128

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

4 No. 1 62 ' waits for us in Slip E of the topmost
stage. The great curve of her back shines frostily
under the lights, and some minute alteration of
trim makes her rock a little in her holding' down
slips.

Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hiss*
ing softly, 4 162 ' comes to rest as level as a rule.
From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn
bright as diamond with boring through uncounted
leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her
three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred
and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well
forward, is thirty <• seven. Contrast this with the
nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack liner, and
you will realise the power that must drive a hull
through all weathers at more than the emergency
speed of the Cyclonic \

The eye detects no joint in her skin plating
save the sweeping hair-crack of the bow-rudder —
Magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of
the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and
half "blind. It is calculated to Castelli's 'gull-
wing' curve. Raise a few feet of that all but
invisible plate three * eighths of an inch and she
will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is
under control again. Give her full helm and she
returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant the
whole forward — a touch on the wheel will suffice

A.R. Vol. I 129

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

— and she sweeps at your good direction up or
down. Open the complete circle and she presents
to the air a mushroon>head that will bring her up
all standing within a half mile*

'Yes/ says Captain Hodgson, answering my
thought, 'Castelli thought he'd discovered the
secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only
found out how to steer dirigible balloons, Mag*
niac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram
each other; and war went out of fashion and
Magniac he went out of his mind because he
said he couldn't serve his country any more, I
wonder if any of us ever know what we're really
doing,'

'If you want to see the coach locked you'd
better go aboard. It's due now/ says Mr, Geary,
I enter through the door amidships. There is
nothing here for display. The inner skin of the
gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of
my head and turns over just short of the turn of
the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks
with decoration, but the G,P.O. serves them raw
under a lick of grey official paint. The inner
skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much
of the stern, but the bow^bulkhead is recessed for
the lifrvshunting apparatus as the stern is pierced
for the shaft - tunnels. The engine-room lies
almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to
130

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

the turn of the bow tanks, is an aperture — a
bottomless hatch at present — into which our
coach will be locked. One looks down over the
coamings three hundred feet to the despatching*-
caisson whence voices boom upward. The light
below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our
coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from
a postages-stamp to a playing-card ; to a punt and
last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do
not even look up as it comes into place* The
Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into
the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr.
Geary satisfy themselves that the coach is locked
home, A clerk passes the way 'bill over the
hatch-coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks
and passes it to Mr, Geary, Receipt has been
given and taken, ' Pleasant run/ says Mr, Geary,
and disappears through the door which a foot-high
pneumatic compressor locks after him.

'A-ahF sighs the compressor released. Our
holding-down clips part with a tang. We are
clear.

Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid
underbody-porthole through which I watch over-
lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold
of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off
the well-known view and darkens Middlesex, On
the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's

131

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

light ploughing through the white fleece* For an
instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward
the Highgate Receiving Towers. 'The Bombay
Mail/ says Captain Hodgson , and looks at his
watch. 4 She's forty minutes late/

4 What's our level?' I ask.

'Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on
the bridge ? '

The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a
repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented
by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he
stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart*
ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered
and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is
feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet,

'It's steep to-night/ he mutters, as tier on tier
of cloud drops under. ' We generally pick up an
easterly draught below three thousand at this time
o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff/

' So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin'
for a slant ! ' says Captain Hodgson. A fog'light
breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The
Antwerp Night Mail makes her signal and rises
between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks
bloodied in the glare of Sheerness Double Light.
The gale will have us over the North Sea in half ^an*
hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly —
nosing to every point of the compass as she rises.

132

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

' Five thousand — six, six thousand eight
hundred ' — the dip ^ dial reads ere we find the
easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the
thousand fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up
the engines and keys down the governor on the
switch before him. There is no sense in urging
machinery when JEolus himself gives you good
knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now
— our nose notched home on our chosen star. At
this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly
combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below
that again is the strong westerly blow through
which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly
drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the
firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata
to silver without a stain except where our shadow
underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights
(those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth)
are dead ahead of us ; for we keep the Southern
Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of
the English system, stabs upward once in ten
seconds its spear of diamond light to the north;
and a point or two off our starboard bow The
Leek, the great cloud * breaker of Saint David's
Head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty*
five degrees each way. There must be half a mile
of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not
affect The Leek.

133

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'Our planet's overlighted if anything/ says
Captain Purnall at the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol
slides under, 'I remember the old days of
common white verticals that 'ud show two or three
hundred feet up in a mist, if you knew where to
look for 'em. In really fluffy weather they might
as well have been under your hat. One could get
lost coming home then, an' have some fun. Now,
it's like driving down Piccadilly/

He points to the pillars of light where the
cloud-breakers bore through the cloud-floor. We
see nothing of England's outlines: only a white
pavement pierced in all directions by these man-
holes of variously coloured fire — Holy Island's
white and red— St, Bee's interrupted white, and
so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be
Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois brothers, who
invented the cloud-breakers of the world whereby
we travel in security I

'Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?'
asks Captain Hodgson, Cork Light (green,
fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Purnall
nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts — the
cloud -bank beneath us is streaked with running
fissures of flame where the Atlantic boats are
hurrying Londonward just clear of the fluff,
MaiLpackets are supposed, under the Conference
rules, to have the five - thousand - foot lanes to

134

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to
take liberties with English air. 'No. 162' lifts
to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the fore-
flange of the rudder and we make Valencia (white,
green, white) at a safe 7000 feet, dipping our
beam to an incoming Washington packet.

There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint
streaks of cream round Dingle Bay show where
the driven seas hammer the coast. A big S.A.T.A.
liner (Societe Anonyme des Transports Aeriens) is
diving and lifting half a mile below us in search
of some break in the solid west wind. Lower
still lies a disabled Dane : she is telling the liner
all about it in International. Our General Com-
munication dial has caught her talk and begins to
eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to
shut it off but checks himself. 4 Perhaps you'd
like to listen/ he says.

4 Argol of St. Thomas/ the Dane whimpers.
4 Report owners three starboard shaft collar-
bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are,
but impossible farther. Shall we buy spares at
Fayal?'

The liner acknowledges and recommends in-
verting the bearings. The Argol answers that
she has already done so without effect, and
begins to relieve her mind about cheap German
enamels for collar - bearings. The Frenchman

135

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

assents cordially, cries 4 Couraget mon ami* and
switches off.

Their lights sink under the curve of the ocean*
4 That's one of Lundt & Bleamers's boats/ says
Captain Hodgson. * Serves 'em right for putting
German compos in their thrust-blocks. She won't
be in Fayal to-night ! By the way, wouldn't you
like to look round the engine-room ? '

I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation
and I follow Captain Hodgson from the control*
platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge of
the tanks* We know that Fleury's gas can lift
anything, as the world-famous trials of '89 showed,
but its almost indefinite powers of expansion
necessitate vast tank room* Even in this thin air
the lift - shunts are busy taking out one * third of
its normal lift, and still '162' must be checked
by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our
flight would become a climb to the stars* Captain
Purnall prefers an overlifted to an under-lifted
ship ; but no two captains trim ship alike, 4 When
/ take the bridge,' says Captain Hodgson, ' you'll
see me shunt forty per cent of the lift out of the
gas and run her on the upper rudder. With a
swoop upwards instead of a swoop downwards, as
you say. Either way will do. It's only habit.
Watch our dip-dial ! Tim fetches her down once
every thirty knots as regularly as breathing.'

136

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six
minutes the arrow creeps from 6700 to 7300.
There is the faint ' szgee ' of the rudder, and back
slides the arrow to 6000 on a falling slant of ten
or fifteen knots.

'In heavy weather you jockey her with the
screws as well/ says Captain Hodgson, and, un*
clipping the jointed bar which divides the engine*
room from the bare deck, he leads me on to the
floor.

Here we find Fleury's Paradox of the Bulk*
headed Vacuum — which we accept now without
thought — literally in full blast. The three engines
are H. T. 8 T. assisted*vacuo Fleury turbines
running from 3000 to the Limit — that is to say,
up to the point when the blades make the air
' bell ' — cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely
as over* driven marine propellers used to do.
M62's' Limit is low on account of the small
size of her nine screws, which, though handier
than the old colloid Thelussons, 'bell' sooner.
The midships engine, generally used as a reinforce,
is not running ; so the port and starboard turbine
vacuum * chambers draw direct into the return*
mains.

The turbines whistle reflectively. From the
low* arched expansion * tanks on either side the_
valves descend pillarwise to the turbine *i

r
k

&J7,

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and thence the obedient gas whirls through the
spirals of blades with a force that would whip the
teeth out of a power-saw. Behind, is its own
pressure held in leash or spurred on by the lift*
shunts ; before it, the vacuum where Fleury's
Ray dances in violet* green bands and whirled
turbillons of flame* The jointed U*tubes of the
vacuum* chamber are pressure * tempered colloid
(no glass would endure the strain for an instant)
and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches
the Ray intently* It is the very heart of the
machine — a mystery to this day. Even Fleury
who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi*
millionaire, could not explain how the restless little
imp shuddering in the U'tube can, in the fractional
fraction of a second, strike the furious blast of
gas into a chill greyish*green liquid that drains
(you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the
vacuum through the eduction*pipes and the mains
back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous,
one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs
to work afresh. Bilge* tank, upper tank, dorsal*
tank, expansion* chamber, vacuum, main* return
(as a liquid), and bilge*tank once more is the
ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and
the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to
Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural
grease of the human finger touch the hooded

138

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

terminals Fleury's Ray will wink and disappear
and must be laboriously built up again. This
means half a day's work for all hands and
an expense of one hundred and seventy * odd
pounds to the G.P.O. for radium-salts and such
trifles.

'Now look at our thrust -collars. You won't
find much German compo there. Full-jewelled,
you see/ says Captain Hodgson as the engineer
shunts open the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings
are CM.C. (Commercial Minerals Company)
stones, ground with as much care as the lens of
a telescope. They cost £37 apiece. So far we
have not arrived at their term of life. These
bearings came from 'No. 97/ which took them
over from the old Dominion of Light which had
them out of the wreck of the Perseus aeroplane
in the years when men still flew wooden kites over
oil engines !

They are a shining reproof to all low-grade
German * ruby ' enamels, so-called * boort ' facings,
and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina
compounds which please dividend-hunting owners
and turn skippers crazy.

The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated
side by side under the engine-room dials, are the
only machines in visible motion. The former
sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises

139

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and falls half an inch. The latter, cased and
guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another
Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than
violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the
gas, and this it will do without watching* That
is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining
to itself beside a sputtering green lamp* A
hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped
tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and
irresolute* Between the two, three white-painted
turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side,
accentuate the empty perspectives* You can hear
the trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the
vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft gluck'
glock of gas-locks closing as Captain Purnall brings
'162' down by the head* The hum of the
turbines and the boom of the air on our skin is no
more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the universal
stillness. And we are running an eighteen-second
mile,

I peer from the fore end of the engine-room
over the hatch - coamings into the coach. The
mail -clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary,
and Medicine Hat bags; but there is a pack of
cards ready on the table.

Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to
the turbine- valves and stand by ; but the spectacled
slave of the Ray in the U-tube never lifts his

140

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

head. He must watch where he is. We are
hard'braked and going astern; there is language
from the Control Platform.

* Tim's sparking badly about something/ says
the unruffled Captain Hodgson. 4 Let's look/

Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left
half-an-hour since, but the embodied authority of
the G.P.O. Ahead of us floats an ancient, alu-
minium-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest,
with no more right to the 5000-foot lane than has
a horse^cart to a modern road. She carries an
obsolete 4 barbette ' conning-tower — a six-foot affair
with railed platform forward — and our warning
beam plays on the top of it as a policeman's lantern
flashes on the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief,
too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-
sleeves. Captain Purnall wrenches open the colloid
to talk with him man to man. There are times
when Science does not satisfy.

4 What under the stars are you doing here, you
sky-scraping chimney-sweep ? ' he shouts as we two
drift side by side. 4 Do you know this is a Mail-
lane ? You call yourself a sailor, sir ? You ain't
fit to peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your
name and number I Report and get down, and
be--!'

'I've been blown up once/ the shock-headed
man cries, hoarsely, as a dog barking. 4l don't

141

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

care two flips of a contact for anything you can do,
Postey/

4 Don't you, sir ? But I'll make you care* I'll
have you towed stern first to Disko and broke up*
You can't recover insurance if you're broke for
obstruction. Do you understand that ? '

Then the stranger bellows : 4 Look at my pro*'
pellers ! There's been a wulli-wa down below that
has knocked us into umbrella^frames ! We've been
blown up about forty thousand feet ! We're all
one conjuror's watch inside! My mate's arm's
broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Ray
went out when the engines smashed; and * * .
and . . * for pity's sake give me my height.
Captain ! We doubt we're dropping/

'Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold
it?' Captain Purnall overlooks all insults, and
leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing.
The stranger leaks pungently.

4 We ought to blow into St. John's with luck.
We're trying to plug the fore^tank now, but she's
simply whistling it away/ her captain wails.

' She's sinking like a log/ says Captain Purnall
in an undertone. * Call up the Banks Mark Boat.
George/ Our dip -dial shows that we, keeping
abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet
the last few minutes.

Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal

142

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

beam begins to swing through the night, twizzling
spokes of light across infinity.

'That'll fetch something/ he says, while Cap'
tain Hodgson watches the General Communicator.
He has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a
few hundred miles west, and is reporting the case.

Til stand by you/ Captain Purnall roars to
the lone figure on the conning^tower.

4 Is it as bad as that ? ' comes the answer. * She
isn't insured. She's mine/

4 'Might have guessed as much/ mutters
Hodgson. 'Owner's risk is the worst risk
of all!'

'Can't I fetch St. John's — not even with this
breeze ? ' the voice quavers.

' Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you any
lift in you, fore or aft ? '

'Nothing but the midship tanks, and they're
none too tight. You see, my Ray gave out

and ' he coughs in the reek of the escaping

gas.

'You poor devil!' This does not reach our
friend. ' What does the Mark Boat say, George ? '

"Wants to know if there's any danger to
traffic. Says she's in a bit of weather herself and
can't quit station. I've turned in a General Call,
so even if they don't see our beam some one's
bound to help — or else we must. Shall I clear our

143

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

slings? Hold on! Here we are! A Planet
liner, too ! She'll be up in a tick ! '

'Tell her to have her slings ready/ cries his
brother captain* 4 There won't be much time to
spare* * . . Tie up your mate/ he roars to the
tramp*

'My mate's all right It's my engineer. He's
gone crazy/

'Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner.
Hurry!'

'But I can make St. John's if you'll stand
by.'

' You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty
minutes. You're less than fifty* eight hundred
now. Get your papers/

A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a
superb spiral and takes the air of us humming.
Her underbody colloid is open and her transporter*
slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our
beam as she adjusts herself — steering to a hair —
over the tramp's conning'tower. The mate comes
up. his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into
the cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head
follows, shouting that he must go back and build
up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will
find a nice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine*
room. The bandaged head goes up wagging
excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The

144

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

liner cheers hollowly above us, and we see the
passengers' faces at the saloon colloid*

4 That's a pretty girl. What's the fool waiting
for now ? ' says Captain PurnalL

The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to
stand by and see him fetch St. John's. He dives
below and returns — at which we little human
beings in the void cheer louder than ever — with
the ship's kitten. Up fly the liner's hissing slings ;
her underbody crashes home and she hurtles away
again. The dial shows less than 3000 feet.

The Mark Boat signals we must attend to the
derelict, now whistling her deaths-song, as she falls
beneath us in long sick zigzags.

* Keep our beam on her and send out a General
Warning,' says Captain Purnall, following her
down.

There is no need. Not a liner in air but knows
the meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and
our quarry a wide berth.

'But she'll drown in the water, won't she?'
I ask.

'Not always/ is his answer. Tve known a
derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself
and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks
on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks.
Pith her, George, and look sharp. There's weather
ahead.'

A. R. Vol.1 145 L

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid,
swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which
in liners is generally cased as a smoking-room
settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch*
We hear the whir of the crescent - shaped arms
opening as they descend. The derelict's forehead
is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally.
She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides
like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light,
and the Atlantic takes her.

'A filthy business/ says Hodgson. 'I wonder
what it must have been like in the old days ? f

The thought had crossed my mind too. What
if that wavering carcass had been filled with the
men of the old days, each one of them taught
(that is the horror of it !) that after death he would
very possibly go for ever to unspeakable torment ?

And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows
now that we are only our fathers re-enlarged upon
the earth), we, I say, ripped and rammed and
pithed to admiration.

Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts
that we are to get into our inflators and to bring
him his at once.

We hurry into the heavy rubber suits — the
engineers are already dressed — and inflate at the
air-pump taps. G.P.O* inflators are thrice as
thick as a racing man's ' flickers/ and chafe

146

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

abominably under the armpits* George takes
the wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the
extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the
c.p. to the deck he would bounce back. But it is
4 162 ' that will do the kicking.

'The Mark Boat's mad — stark ravin' crazy,'
he snorts, returning to command. * She says
there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull
over to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first!
We wasted half an hour fussing over that
dead duck down under, and now I'm expected
to go rubbin' my back all round the Pole*
What does she think a postal packet's made of ?
Gummed silk ? Tell her we're coming on straight,
George.'

George buckles him into the Frame and switches
on the Direct Control. Now under Tim's left
toe lies the port - engine Accelerator; under his
left heel the Reverse, and so with the other foot.
The lift>shunt stops stand out on the rim of the
steering^ wheel where the fingers of his left hand
can play on them. At his right hand is the mid*
ships engine lever ready to be thrown into gear at
a moment's notice. He leans forward in his belt,
eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked to*
ward the General Communicator. Henceforth he
is the strength and direction of '162,' through
whatever may befall.

147

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of
A.B.C. Directions to the traffic at large* We
are to secure all Moose objects'; hood up our
Fleury Rays ; and ' on no account to attempt to
clear snow from our conning^towers till the weather
abates/ Underpowered craft, we are told, can
ascend to the limit of their lift, maiLpackets to
look out for them accordingly; the lower lanes
westward are pitting very badly, 'with frequent
blowouts, vortices, laterals, etc/

Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The
only warning is the electric skin^tension (I feel as
though I were a lace - maker's pillow) and an
irritability which the gibbering of the General
Communicator increases almost to hysteria.

We have made eight thousand feet since we
pithed the tramp and our turbines are giving us
an honest two hundred and ten knots.

Very far to the west an elongated blur of red,
low down, shows us the North Banks Mark Boat.
There are specks of fire round her rising and falling
— bewildered planets about an unstable sun — help*
less shipping hanging on to her light for company's
sake. No wonder she could not quit station.

She warns us to look out for the backwash of
the bad vortex in which (her beam shows it) she
is even now reeling.

The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with
148

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

very faintly luminous films — wreathing and uneasy
shapes. One forms itself into a globe of pale
flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we
sweep by* It leaps monstrously across the black'
ness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes
there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow
sinks as though that light were lead — sinks and
recovers to lurch and stumble again beneath the
next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift>shunt
strike chords of numbers — 1 : 4 : 7 :— 2 : 4 : 6 :—
7:5:3, and so on ; for he is running by his tanks
only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy
air* All three engines are at work, for the sooner
we have skated over this thin ice the better.
Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault
is charged with pale krypton vapours, which our
skin friction may excite to unholy manifestations.
Between the upper and lower levels — 5000 and
7000, hints the Mark Boat — we may perhaps bolt
through if ... Our bow clothes itself in blue
flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can
keep pace with the changing tensions. A vortex
has us by the beak and we dive down a two-*
thousand'foot slant at an angle (the dip^dial and
my bouncing body record it) of thirty 'five. Our
turbines scream shrilly ; the propellers cannot bite
on the thin air ; Tim shunts the lift ouJ/Q^,five
tanks at once and by sheer weight cU&is her

149

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

bulletwise through the maelstrom till she cushions
with a jar on an up-gust, three thousand feet below*

4 Now we've done it/ says George in my ear,
' Our skin -friction, that last slide, has played Old
Harry with the tensions ! Look out for laterals,
Tim ; she'll want some holding/

'I've got her/ is the answer, 'Come upt old

woman/

She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her
left and right like the pinions of angry angels*
She is jolted off her course four ways at once,
and cuffed into place again, only to be swung
aside and dropped into a new chaos* We are
never without a corposant grinning on our bows
or rolling head over heels from nose to midships.
and to the crackle of electricity around and within
us is added once or twice the rattle of hail — hail
that will never fall on any sea* Slow we must or
we may break our back, pitch-poling.

'Air's a perfectly elastic fluid/ roars George
above the tumult. 4 About as elastic as a head sea
off the Fastnet, ain't it ? '

He is less than just to the good element. If
one intrudes on the Heavens when they are
balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the
High Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at
ninety knots across tremblingly adjusted electric
tensions, one must not complain of any rudeness

150

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

in the reception* Tim met it with an unmoved
countenance, one corner of his under lip caught up
on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness
twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying
from his knuckles at every turn of the hand.
Now and again he shook his head to clear the
sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then
that George, watching his chance, would slide
down the life -rail and swab his face quickly with a
big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a
human being could so continuously labour and so
collectedly think as did Tim through that Hell's
half-hour when the flurry was at its worst. We
were dragged hither and yon by warm or frozen
suctions, belched up on the tops of wulli-was, spun
down by vortices and clubbed aside by laterals
under a dizzying rush of stars in the company of
a drunken moon. I heard the rushing click of
the midship-engine-lever sliding in and out, the
low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the
yelling winds without, the scream of the bow-
rudder gouging into any lull that promised hold
for an instant. At last we began to claw up on
a cant, bow-rudder and port-propeller together;
only the nicest balancing of tanks saved us from
spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days.

' We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark
Boat somehow/ George cried.

151

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

'There's no windward/ I protested feebly,
where I swung shackled to a stanchion. 'How
can there be ? '

He laughed — as we pitched into a thousand*
foot blow-out — that red man laughed beneath his
inflated hood !

4 Look ! ' he said* * We must clear those
refugees with a high lift/

The Mark Boat was below and a little to the
sou'west of us, fluctuating in the centre of her
distraught galaxy. The air was thick with
moving lights at every level. I take it most of
them were trying to lie head to wind, but, not
being hydras, they failed. An under* tanked
Moghrabi boat had risen to the limit of her lift,
and, finding no improvement, had dropped a
couple of thousand. There she met a superb
wulli*wa, and was blown up spinning like a dead
leaf. Instead of shutting off she went astern arid,
naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into
the Mark Boat, whose language (our G.C. took it
in) was humanly simple.

. 'If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be
better/ said George in a calm, while we climbed
like a bat above them all. 'But some skippers
will navigate without enough lift. What does
that Tad*boat think she is doing, Tim ? '

4 Playin' kiss in the ring/ was Tim's unmoved

152

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

reply. A Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a
smooth and butted into it full power. But there
was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the
T.A.D. was flipped out like a pea from off a
finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and
all but over-ending.

'Now I hope she's satisfied/ said Tim. 'I'm
glad I'm not a Mark Boat . * . Do I want help ? '
The General Communicator dial had caught his
ear. * George, you may tell that gentleman with
my love — love, remember, George — that I do not
want help. Who is the officious sardine-tin ? '

4 A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a
tow/

'Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This
postal packet isn't being towed at present/

4 Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance
of salvage/ George explained. 'We call 'em
kittiwakes/

A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated
at ease for one instant within hail of us, her slings
coiled ready for rescues, and a single hand in
her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered
to the insurrection of the airs through which we
tore our way, he lay in absolute peace. I saw the
smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat
dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well.

We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her

153

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

disorderly neighbours when the storm ended as
suddenly as it had begun. A shooting x star to
northward filled the sky with the green blink of a
meteorite dissipating itself in our atmosphere.

Said George: 'That may iron out all the
tensions/ Even as he spoke, the conflicting
winds came to rest ; the levels filled ; the laterals
died out in long easy swells; the airways were
smoothed before us. In less than three minutes
the covey round the Mark Boat had shipped
their power Alights and whirred away upon their
businesses.

4 What's happened?' I gasped. The nervex
storm within and the volt - tingle without had
passed : my inflators weighed like lead.

4 God He knows ! ' said Captain George
soberly. 'That old shooting - star's skin - friction
has discharged the different levels. I've seen it
happen before. Phew 1 What a relief ! '

We dropped from ten to six thousand and got
rid of our clammy suits. Tim shut off and
stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was
coming up behind us. He opened the colloid in
that heavenly stillness and mopped his face.

'Hello, Williams F he cried. 'A degree or
two out o' station, ain't you ? '

4 May be/ was the answer from the Mark Boat.
4 I've had some company this evening/

154

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

'So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little
draught ? '

4 1 warned you. Why didn't you pull out
north ? The east-bound packets have/

* Me ? Not till I'm running a Polar consump-
tives' Sanatorium boat. I was squinting through
a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my

son/

4 Yd be the last man to deny it/ the captain of
the Mark Boat replies softly, 'The way you
handled her just now — I'm a pretty fair judge of
traffic in a volt-flurry — it was a thousand revolu*
tions beyond anything even /'ve ever seen/

Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling.
Captain George on the c,p. winks and points to
the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden
pinned up on Tim's telescope-bracket above the
steering-wheel,

I see. Wholly and entirely do I see !

There is some talk overhead of 4 coming round
to tea on Friday/ a, brief report of the derelict's
fate, and Tim volunteers as he descends: 'For
an A.B.C, man young Williams is less of a high-
tension fool than some . . . Were you thinking
of taking her on, George ? Then I'll just have a
look round that port-thrust — seems to me it's a
trifle warm — and we'll jog along/

The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs

155

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

herself up in her appointed eyrie. Here she will
stay, a shutterless observatory ; a life^boat station ;
a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal ' cum *
meteorological bureau for three hundred miles in
all directions, till Wednesday next when her relief
slides across the stars to take her buffeted place*
Her black hull, double conning^tower, and ever*
ready slings represent all that remains to the
planet of that odd old word authority* She is
responsible only to the Aerial Board of Control —
the A.B*C. of which Tim speaks so flippantly*
But that semi Delected, semi < nominated body of
a few score persons of both sexes, controls this
planet. * Transportation is Civilization/ our motto
runs. Theoretically, we do what we please so
long as we do not interfere with the traffic and
all it implies. Practically, the A.B.C. confirms
or annuls all international arrangements and, to
judge from its last report, finds our tolerant,
humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to
shift the whole burden of public administration
on its shoulders.

I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the
op. while George fans her along over the white
blur of the Banks in beautiful upward curves of
fifty miles each. The dipxdial translates them on
the tape in flowing freehand.

Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the
156

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

last few feet, which record 4 162V path through
the voltxflurry.

4 1 haven't had a fever*chart like this to show
up in five years/ he says ruefully.

A postal packet's dip ' dial records every yard
of every run. The tapes then go to the A.B.C.,
which collates and makes composite photographs
of them for the instruction of captains. Tim
studies his irrevocable past, shaking his head.

4 Hello! Here's a f if teen * hundred - foot drop
at fifty 'five degrees! We must have been
standing on our heads then, George/

'You don't say so/ George answers. 'I
fancied I noticed it at the time/

George may not have Captain Purnall's catlike
swiftness, but he is all an artist to the tips of the
broad fingers that play on the shunt'Stops. The
delicious flight'Curves come away on the tape with
never a waver. The Mark Boat's vertical spindle
of light lies down to eastward, setting in the face
of the following stars. Westward, where no
planet should rise, the triple verticals of Trinity
Bay (we keep still to the Southern route) make
a lowxlifting haze. We seem the only thing at
rest under all the heavens ; floating at ease till the
earth's revolution shall turn up our landing'towers.
And minute by minute our silent clock gives
us a sixteen ^second mile.

157

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

' Some fine night/ says Tim. ' We'll be even
with that clock's Master/

4 He's coming now/ says George, over his
shoulder. 4 I'm chasing the night west/

The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of
mist had been drawn under unobserved, but the
deep airxboom on our skin changes to a joyful
shout.

'The dawn-gust/ says Tim. 'It'll go on to
meet the Sun. Look! Look! There's the
dark being crammed back over our bows ! Come
to the after-colloid. I'll show you something/

The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks
in the coach are asleep, and the Slave of the Ray
is ready to follow them. Tim slides open the aft
colloid and reveals the curve of the world — the
ocean's deepest purple — edged with fuming and
intolerable gold. Then the Sun rises and through
the colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls
in his face.

* Squirrels in a cage/ he mutters. 4 That's all
we are. Squirrels in a cage! He's going twice
as fast as us. Just you wait a few years, my
shining friend, and we'll take steps that will amaze
you. We'll Joshua you ! '

Yes, that is our dream : to turn all earth into
the Vale of Ajalon at our pleasure. So far, we
can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length

158

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

in these latitudes. But some day — even on the
Equator — we shall hold the Sun level in his full
stride.

Now we look down on a sea thronged with
heavy traffic. A big submersible breaks water
suddenly. Another and another follows with a
swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved
pressures* The deep-sea freighters are rising to
lung up after the long night, and the leisurely
ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of
foam.

'We'll lung up, too/ says Tim, and when we
return to the c.p. George shuts off, the colloids
are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out.
There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will
be revised at the end of the year) allow twelve
hours for a run which any packet can put behind
her in ten. So we breakfast in the arms of an
easterly slant which pushes us along at a languid
twenty.

To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a
sunny morning half a mile or so above the dappled
Atlantic cloudxbelts and after a volt*flurry which
has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we
discussed the thickening traffic with the superi"
ority that comes of having a high level reserved
to ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time)
the morning hymn on a Hospital boat.

159

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff
beneath us and we caught the chant before she
rose into the sunlight 4 Oh, ye Winds of God,'
sang the unseen voices j ' bless ye the Lord! Praise
Him and magnify Him for ever ! '

We slid off our caps and joined in. When
our shadow fell across her great open platforms
they looked up and stretched out their hands
neighbourly while they sang. We could see the
doctors and the nurses and the white-button^like
faces of the cot'patients. She passed slowly be*
neath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with
the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine.
So took she the shadow of a cloud and vanished,
her song continuing, ' Oh, ye holy and humble men
of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify
Him for ever!

'She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have
been singing the Benedicite; and she's a Green *
lander or she wouldn't have snow'blinds over her
colloids,' said George at last. * She'll be bound
for Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier sana*
toriums for a month. If she was an accident
ward she'd be hung up at the eighMhousand/foot
level. Yes — consumptives.'

' Funny how the new things are the old things.
I've read in books,' Tim answered, * that savages
used to haul their sick and wounded up to the

160

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

tops of hills because microbes were fewer there..
We hoist 'em into sterilized air for a while. Same
idea. How much do the doctors say weVe added
to the average life of a man ? f

4 Thirty years/ says George with a twinkle in
his eye. * Are we going to spend 'em all up here,
Tim?'

' Flap ahead, then* Flap ahead. Who's hinder-
ing ? ' the senior captain laughed, as we went in.

We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and
Continental shipping; and we had need of it.
Though our route is in no sense a populated one,
there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along.
We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great
Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from
Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insati-
able markets. We overdressed Keewatin liners,
small and cramped; but their captains, who see
no land between Trepassy and Blanco, know what
gold they bring back from West Africa. Trans-
Asiatic Directs, we met, soberly ringing the world
round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy
knots; and white - painted Ackroyd & Hunt
fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, their
ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their
market is in the North among the northern sana-
toria where you can smell their grape-fruit and
bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef

A.R. Vol.1 161 M

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity and
unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern
health stations in ice-bound ports where submer*
sibles dare not rise.

Yellow-bellied ore^flats and Ungava petrol*
tanks punted down leisurely out of the north, like
strings of unfrightened wild duck* It does not
pay to 4 fly ' minerals and oil a mile farther than
is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to
submersibles in the ice-pack off Nain or Hebron
are so great that these heavy freighters fly down
to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they go.
They are the biggest tramps aloft except the
Athabasca grain^tubs. But these last, now that
the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world's
shoulder, timber^lifting in Siberia.

We held to the St. Lawrence, (it is astonishing
how the old waterways still pull us children of
the air), and followed his broad line of black
between its drifting keylocks, all down the Park
that the wisdom of our fathers — but every one
knows the Quebec run.

We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers
twenty minutes ahead of time, and there hung at
ease till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could
pull out and give us our proper slip. It was
curious to watch the action of the holding.down
clips all along the frosty river front as the boats
162

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

cleared or came to rest A big Hamburger was
leaving Pont Levis and her crew, unshipping the
platform railings, began to sing 'Elsinore' — the
oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course :

Mother Rugen 's tea-house on the Baltic —

Forty couple waltzing on the floor !
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away

And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore !

Then, while they sweated home the covering*

plates :

Nor- Nor- Nor- Nor-
lYest from Sourabaya to the Baltic —

Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw !
Mother Rugen 's tea-house on the Baltic

And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore !

The clips parted with a gesture of indignant
dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering under her
snows, were casting out these light and unworthy
lovers. Our signal came from the Heights.
Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it
was with passionate appeal that the great tower
arms flung open — or did I think so because on
the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened
her arms wide towards her father ?

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed
down to the receiving^caisson 5 the hostlers disx

163

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

placed the engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim,
prouder of this than all, introduced me to the
maiden of the photograph on the shelf. 'And
by the way/ said he to her, stepping forth in
sunshine under the hat of civil life, * I saw young
Williams in the Mark Boat* I've asked him to
tea on Friday*'

164

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL

Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week
ending Dec* 1 8*

Cape Verde* Week ending Dec. 18. Verde in-
clined guide-light changes from 1st proximo to
triple flash — green white green — in place of
occulting red as heretofore. The warning light
for Harmattan winds will be continuous
vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-
Saharan N.E. by E. Main Routes.

Invercargil (N.Z.) — From 1st prox. : extreme
southerly light (double red) will exhibit white
beam inclined 45 degrees on approach of
Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this
coast between April and October*

Table Bay — Devil's Peak Glare removed to
Simonsberg. Traffic making Table Moun-
tain coastwise keep all lights from Three
Anchor Bay at least two thousand feet under.

165

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

and do not round to till East of E. shoulder
Devil's Peak.

Sandheads Light — Green triple vertical marks
new private landing-stage for Bay and Burma
traffic only.

Snaefell Jokul — White occulting light withdrawn

for winter.
Patagonia — No summer light south Cape Pilar.

This includes Staten Island and Port Stanley.
C. Navarin — Quadruple fog flash (white), one

minute intervals (new)*

East Cape — Fog flash — single white with single
bomb. 30 sec. intervals (new).

Malayan Archipelago lights unreliable owing erup-
tions. Lay from Cape Somerset to Singapore
direct, keeping highest levels.
For the Board :

Catterthun ]

St. Just } Lights.

Van Hedder )

Casualties

Week ending Dec. 18th.

Sable Island — Green single barbette-tower f reighter,
number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-
tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft.

166

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL

level 2 p.m. Dec 15th. Watched to water
and pithed by Mark Boat.

N.F. Banks— Postal Packet 162 reports Halma
freighter (Fowey — St. John's) abandoned,
leaking after weather, 46° 15' N. 50° 15' W.
Crew rescued by Planet liner Asteroid.
Watched to water and pithed by Postal
Packet, Dec. 14th.

Kerguelen Mark Boat reports last call from Cymena
freighter (Gayer Tong Huk & Co.) taking
water and sinking in snow-storm South
McDonald Islands* No wreckage recovered.
Messages and wills of crew at all A.B.C. offices.

Fezzan — T.A.D. freighter Ulema taken ground
during Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under
plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repair*
ing Dec. 13th.

Biscay, Mark Boat reports Carducci(Valandmgh&m
Line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point ^de
Benasque. Passengers transferred Andorra
(Fulton Line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving
cargo Dec. 12th.

Ascension, Mark Boat — Wreck of unknown racing"
plane, Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite
vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and
salved 7° 20' S. 18° 41' W. Dec. 15th.
Photos at all A.B.C. offices.

167

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Missing

No answer to General Call having been received
during the last week from following overdues, they
are posted as missing : —

Atlantis, W. 17630 . . Canton— Valparaiso

Audhumla,^J. 889 . . Stockholm— Odessa

Berenice,^. 2206. . . Riga — Vladivostock

Draco, E. 446 . . . Coventry — Puntas Arenas

Tontine, E. 3068 . . . C. Wrath— Ungava

Wu-Sung, E. 41776 . . Hankow— Lobito Bay

General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:

Jane Eyre, W. 6990 •„ . Port Rupert— City of Mexico
Santander, W. 5514 . . Gobi-Desert— Manila
K Edmund sun, E. 9690 • Kandahar — Fiume

Broke for Obstruction^ and Quitting Levels

Valkyrie (racing plane), A. }. Hartley owner, New
York (twice warned).

Geisha (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Phil'
adelphia (twice warned).

Marvel of Peru (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner,
Rio de Janeiro (twice warned).

For the Board :

Lazareff \
McKeough > Traffic.
Goldblatt

168

NOTES

High'Level Sleet

The Northern weather so far shows no sign of
improvement. From all quarters come complaints
of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher
levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered
severely — the former from unequal deposits of half'
frozen slush on their vans (and only those who
have ' held up ' a badly balanced plane in a cross*
wind know what that means), and the latter from
loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a con*
sequence, the Northern and North-western upper
levels have been practically abandoned, and the
high fliers have returned to the ignoble security
of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot
levels. But there remain a few undaunted
sun - hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and
ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue
empyrean.

169

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

Bat'Boat Racing

The scandals of the past few years have at last
moved the yachting world to concerted action in
regard to ' bat ' boat racing,

We have been treated to the spectacle of what
are practically keeled racing^planes driven a clear
five foot or more above the water, and only eased
down to touch their so-called 4 native element ' as
they near the line. Judges and starters have been
conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public
demonstration off St Catherine's Light at the
Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit.
In future the ' bat ' is to be a boat, and the long.*
unheeded demand of the true sportsman for 4 no
daylight under mid<keel in smooth water ' is in a
fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely
restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas com*
partments are permitted both fore and aft, as in
the old type, but the water^ballast central tank is
rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for
perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and
wholesome water-borne cruiser. The type of rudder
is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect
to see the Long^Davidson make (the patent on
which has just expired) come largely into use
henceforward, though the strain on the sternpost
in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is

170

NOTES

admittedly very severe. But bat'boat racing has
a great future before it.

Crete and the A.B.C.

The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in'
the A.B.C. Monthly Report, is not without humour.
Till 25th October Crete, as all the planet knows,
was the sole surviving European repository of
* autonomous institutions/ * local self-government/
and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the
past for the confusion of human affairs* She
has lived practically on the tourist traffic attracted
by her annual pageants of Parliaments, Boards,
Municipal Councils, etc. etc. Last summer the
islanders grew wearied, as their premier explained,
of 'playing at being savages for pennies/ and
proceeded to pull down all the landing-towers on
the island and shut off general communication till
such time as the A.B.C* should annex them.
For side ' splitting comedy we would refer our
readers to the correspondence between the Board
of Control and the Cretan premier during the
4 war/ However, all's well that ends well. The
A.B.C. have taken over the administration of
Crete on normal lines ; and tourists must go else'
where to witness the 4 debates/ ' resolutions/ and
4 popular movements ' of the old days. The only

171

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

people who suffer will be the Board of Control,
which is grievously overworked already. It is
easy enough to condemn the Cretans for their
laziness ; but when one recalls the large, prosper^
ous, and presumably publk>spirited communities
which during the last few years have deliberately
thrown themselves into the hands of the A.B.Q,
one cannot be too hard upon St. Paul's old
friends.

172

CORRESPONDENCE

Skylarking on the Equator-

To the Editor— Only last week,, while crossing;
the Equator (W. 26*15), I became aware of a
furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or
twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft.
level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists,
engaged in exploding scores of the largest pattern
atmospheric bombs (A.R.C, standard) and, in the
intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow and
stern smoke^ring swivels* This orgie — I can give
it no other name — went on for at least two hours,
and naturally produced violent electric derange*
ments. My compasses, of course, were thrown
out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two
brisk shocks from the lower platfornvraiL On
remonstrating, I was told that these 4 professors '
were engaged in scientific experiments. The
extent of their 4 scientific' knowledge may be
judged by the fact that they expected to produce

173

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

(I give their own words) "a little blue sky" if
" they went on long enough." This in the heart
of the Doldrums at 450 feet ! I have no objection
to any amount of blue sky in its proper place
(it can be found at the 4000 level for practically
twelve months out of the year), but I submit,
with all deference to the educational needs of
Transylvania, that 4 skylarking' in the centre
of a main^travelled road where, at the best of
times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions
and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my
friends had finished, the road was seared, and
blown, and pitted with unequal pressure^layers,
spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least
an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward
rush — solely due to these diabolical throw^downs
—that came near to wrecking my propeller.
Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough
in all conscience without the added terrors of
scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.

RhyL J. Vincent Mathen.

[We entirely sympathize with ProfessorMathen's
views, but till the Board sees fit to further regulate
the Southern areas in which scientific experiments
may be conducted, we shall always be exposed
to the risk which our correspondent describes.
Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum

174

CORRESPONDENCE

is, nowadays, only too capable of producing
secondary causes, — Editor.]

Answers to Correspondents

Vigilans — The Laws of Auroral Derangements
are still imperfectly understood. Any overheated
motor may of course 4 seize' without warning;
but so many complaints have reached us of
accidents similar to yours while shooting the
Aurora that we are inclined to believe with
Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora
Borealis are practically one big electric 4 leak/ and
that the paralysis of your engines was due to
complete magnetization of all metallic parts.
Low-flying planes often 4 glue up ' when near the
Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science
why the same disability should not be experienced
at higher levels when the Auroras are * delivering f
strongly.

Indignant — On your own showing, you were
not under control. That you could not hoist the
necessary N.U.C. lights on approaching a traffic^
lane because your electrics had short-circuited is
a misfortune which might befall any one. The
A.B.C., being responsible for the planet's traffic,
cannot, however, make allowance for this kind
175

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

of misfortune. A reference to the Code will show
that you were fined on the lower scale.

Planiston — (1) The Five Thousand Kilometre
(overland) was won last year by L. V* Rautsch,
R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the same week
pulling off the Ten Thousand (oversea). R. M/s
average worked out at a fraction over 500 kilo^
metres per hour, thus constituting a record. (2)
Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a
dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes
15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable*

Paterfamilias — None whatever. He is liable
for direct damage both to your chimneys and any
collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into
garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental
anguish may be included, but the average courts
are not, as a rule, swayed by sentiment* If you
can prove that his grapnel removed any portion
of your roof, you had better rest your case on
decoverture of domicile (see Parkins v. Duboulay).
We sympathize with your position, but the night
of the 14th was stormy and confused, and — you
may have to anchor on a stranger's chimney your^
self some night, ferbum sap. !

Aldebaran — (1) War, as a paying concern,
ceased in 1967. (2) The Convention of London
expressly reserves to every nation the right of

176

CORRESPONDENCE

waging war so long as it does not interfere with
traffic and all that implies, (3) The A.B.C. was
constituted in 1949,

L* M. D. — Keep her full head-on at half power,
taking advantage of the lulls to speed up and
creep into it She will strain much less this way
than in quartering across a gale, (2) Nothing is
to be gained by reversing into a following gale,
and there is always risk of a turnover. (3) The
formulae for stun'sle brakes are uniformly un*
reliable, and will continue to be so as long as air
is compressible.

Pegamoid — Personally we prefer glass or flux
compounds to any other material for winter work
nose * caps as being absolutely non - hygroscopic,
(2) We cannot recommend any particular make.

Pulmonar — For the symptoms you describe,
try the Gobi Desert Sanatoria, The low levels
of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are against
them except at the outset of the disease. (2) We
do not recommend boarding-houses or hotels in
this column.

Beginner — On still days the air above a large
inhabited city being slightly warmer — *>., thinner
— than the atmosphere of the surrounding country,
a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area,

A.R. Vol. I 177 N

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water.
Hence the phenomena of 'jolt' and your 'in*
explicable collisions' with factory chimneys. In
air, as on earth, it is safest to fly high.

Emergency— There is only one rule of the road
in air, earth, and water. Do you want the firma-
ment to yourself ?

Picciola — Both Poles have been overdone in
Art and Literature. Leave them to Science for
the next twenty years. You did not send a stamp
with your verses.

North Nigeria — The Mark Boat was within her
right in warning you off the Reserve. The shadow
of a low-flying dirigible scares the game. You
can buy all the photos you need at Sokoto.

New Era — It is not etiquette to overcross an
A.B.C. official's boat without asking permission.
He is one of the body responsible for the planet's
traffic, and for that reason must not be interfered
with. You, presumably, are out on your own
business or pleasure, and must leave him alone.
For humanity's sake don't try to be * democratic/

Excoriated — All inflators chafe sooner or later.
You must go on till your skin hardens by practice.
Meantime vaseline.

178

REVIEW

The Life of Xavier Lavalle

{Reviewed by Rene* Talland. Ecole Ae'ronautique, Paris)

Ten years ago Lavalle, 'that imperturbable
dreamer of the heavens/ as Lazareff hailed him,
gathered together the fruits of a lifetime's labour,
and gave it, with well'justified contempt, to a
world bound hand and foot to Barald's Theory of
Vertices and ' compensating electric nodes/ 4 They
shall see/ he wrote, — in that immortal postscript
to The Heart of the Cyclone— -4 'the Laws whose
existence they derided written in fire beneath
them/

4 But even here/ he continues, 4 there is no
finality. Better a thousand times my conclusions
should be discredited than that my dead name
should lie across the threshold of the temple of
Science — a bar to further inquiry/

So died Lavalle — a prince of the Powers of the
Air, and even at his funeral Cellier jested at 4 him

179

1

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

who had gone to discover the secrets of the Aurora
Borealis/

If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind
you that Cellier's theories are to-day as exploded
as the ludicrous deductions of the Spanish school.
In the place of their fugitive and warring dreams
we have, definitely, Lavalle's Law of the Cyclone
which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot
of the overarching throne of the Aurora Borealis.
It is there that I, intent on my own investigations,
have passed and re^passed a hundred times the
worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath
him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and
gashes upon the North Cape ; the nervous hand,
integrally a part of the mechanism of his flighter ;
and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned
to the zenith,

'Master/ I would cry as I moved respectfully
beneath him, * what is it you seek to-day ? ' and
always the answer, clear and without doubt, from
above : 'The old secret, my son ! '

The immense egotism of youth forced me on my
own path, but (cry of the human always !) had I
known— if I had known — I would many times
have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege,
such as Tinsley and Herrera possess, of having
aided him in his monumental researches.

It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we

180

REVIEW

owe the two volumes consecrated to the ground*
life of his father, so full of the holy intimacies of
the domestic hearth* Once returned from the
abysms of the utter North to that little house upon
the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher,
the daring observer, the man of iron energy that
imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even
plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the
co-equal of his children, and, it must be written,
not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle,
who, as she writes five years after the marriage,
to her venerable mother, found 'in this unequalled
intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large
and very untidy boy/ Here is her letter :

'Xavier returned from I do not know where
at midnight, absorbed in calculations on the
eternal question of his Aurora — la belle Aurore,
whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring — I
had set out the guide^light above our roof, so he
had but to descend and fasten the plane — he
wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town
with his anchor down ! Figure to yourself, dear
mother, it is the roof of the mayor's house that the
grapnel first engages ! That I do not regret, for the
mayor's wife and I are not sympathetic ; but when
Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it
across the garden into the conservatory I protest at
the top of my voice. Little Victor in his night'

181

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

clothes runs to the window, enormously amused
at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too
dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The
Mayor of Meudon thunders at our door in the
name of the Law, demanding, I suppose, my
husband's head. Here is the conversation through
the megaphone — Xavier is two hundred feet
above us.

44 Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation
for outrage of domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle ! "

'No one answers.

"Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law,
descend and submit to process for outrage of
domicile."

4 Xavier, roused from his calculations, only
comprehending the last words : " Outrage of
domicile ? My dear mayor, who is the man that
has corrupted thy Julie ? "

'The mayor, furious, "Xavier Lavalle—

' Xavier, interrupting: "I have not that felicity.
I am only a dealer in cyclones ! "

'My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon
attended in the streets, and my Xavier, after a long
time comprehending what he had done, excused
himself in a thousand apologies. At last the
reconciliation was effected in our house over
a supper at two in the morning — Julie in a
wonderful costume of compromises, and I have

182

REVIEW

her and the mayor pacified in bed in the blue
room/

And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds
his roof, her Xavier departs anew for the Aurora
Borealis, there to commence his life's work. M.
Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic collision (en
plane) on the flank of Hecla between Herrera, then
a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man
destined to confute his theories and lead him
intellectually captive. Even through the years, the
immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the
Spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries : ¥ Courage !
/ shall not fall till I have found Truth, and I hold
you fast ! ' rings like the call of trumpets. This is
that Lavalle whom the world, immersed in
speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor
suspect — the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the
last a pedant and a theorist.

The human, as apart from the scientific, side
(developed in his own volumes) of his epoch *
making discoveries is marked with a simplicity,
clarity, and good sense beyond praise. I would
specially refer such as doubt the sustaining influence
of ancestral faith upon character and will to the
eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are
contained the opening and consummation of the
Tellurionical Records extending over nine years.
Of their tremendous significance be sure that the

183

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

modest house at Meudon knew as little as that the
Records would one day be the planet's standard in
all official meteorology. It was enough for them
that their Xavier — this son, this father, this husband
— ascended periodically to commune with powers,
it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension,
and that they united daily in prayers for his
safety*

'Pray for me/ he says upon the eve of each
of his excursions, and returning, with an equal
simplicity, he renders thanks * after supper in the
little room where he kept his barometers/

To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old
school, accepting — he who had looked into the
very heart of the lightnings — the dogmas of papal
infallibility, of absolution, of confession — of relics
great and small. Marvellous — enviable con*
tradiction !

The completion of the Tellurionical Records
closed what Lavalle himself was pleased to call the
theoretical side of his labours — labours from which
the youngest and least impressionable planeur might
well have shrunk. He had traced through cold
and heat, across the deeps of the oceans, with
instruments of his own invention, over the in-
hospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile
visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently,
unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting
184

REVIEW

cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted
death*bed in the utmost ether of the upper atmo*
sphere — each one of the Isoconical Tellurions —
Lavalle's Curves, as we call them to-day. He had
disentangled the nodes of their intersections, assign*
ing to each its regulated period of flux and reflux.
Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and Tinsley,
his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as
though he were ordering his flighter for some mid*
day journey to Marseilles.

4 1 have proved my thesis/ he writes. 'It re*
mains now only that you should witness the
proof. We go to Manila to*morrow. A cyclone
will form off the Pescadores S. 1 7 E. in four days,
and will reach its maximum intensity twenty*seven
hours after inception. It is there I will show you
the Truth/

A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera
to Madame Lavalle tells us how the Master's
prophecy was verified.

I will not destroy its simplicity or its significance
by any attempt to quote. Note well, though, that
Herrera's preoccupation throughout that day and
night of superhuman strain is always for the
Master's bodily health and comfort. 'At such
a time/ he writes, ' I forced the Master to take the
broth ' ; or 'I made him put on the fur coat as you
told me/ Nor is Tinsley (see pp. 184*85) less
185

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

concerned. He prepares the nourishment* He
cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the
chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning.
Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both
hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights
in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost
unbelievable ! And yet men write of the Mastei
as cold, aloof, self x contained. Such characters
do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion
which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly,
we have changed very little in the course of the
ages ! The secrets of earth and sky and the links
that bind them, we felicitate ourselves we are on
the road to discover; but our neighbours' heart
and mind we misread, we misjudge, we condemn
— now as ever. Let all then who love a man read
these most human, tender, and wise volumes.

186

/nMsceilaneous

WANTS

REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY,
for East Africa, a thoroughly com-
petent Plane and Dirigible Driver,
acquainted with Radium and Helium
motors and generators. Low -level
work only, but must understand heavy-
weight digs.

MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.

84 Palestine Buildings, E.G.

WANTED— DIG DRIVER
for Southern Alps with Saharan
summer trips. High levels, high speed,
high wages.

Apply M. SIDNEY,
Hotel San Stefano, Monte Carlo.

pAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A COM-
petent, steady man wanted for
slow speed, low level Tangye dirigible.
No night work, no sea trips. Must be
member of the Church of England, and
make himself useful in the garden.

M. R.,
The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts.

COMMERCIAL DIG, CENTRAL
and Southern Europe. A smart,
active man for a L.M.T. Dig. Night
work only. Headquarters London
and Cairo. Linguist preferred.

BAGMAN,
Charing Cross Hotel, W.C.

SALE— A BARGAIN —
Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans,
Pinke motor. Restayed this autumn.
Hansen air-kit, 38 in. chest, 15 J collar.
Can be seen by appointment.

N. 2650. This office.

The Bee-Line Bookshop

BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights

for all towns over 4000 pop. as laid down

by A.B.C.
THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin

Oxford, limp back. 123. 6d.
BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Shore

Lights of the World. 75. 6d.
THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDI-

TERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES.

(By authority of the A.B.C.) Paper,

is. 6d. ; cloth, 25. 6d. Ready Jan. 15.
ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and

Gait. Cloth, bds. 35. 6d.
LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CY-

CLONE, with supplementary charts.

4s. 6d.
RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE

AIR, and Table of Comparative Densi-

ties. 3s. 6d.
ANGELC^S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE.

New edition, revised. 55. od.
VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN

CALM AND STORM, as. 6d.
VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIR-

MATEUR. is.

HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND

VELOCITY. With diagrams. 35. 6d.
DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING

BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES, as. 6d.
SANGER'S WEATHERS OF THE

WORLD. 4S.
SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT

HIGH ALTITUDES. 45.
HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW TO AVOID

IT. 35.
VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY EF-

FECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS.

4S. 6d.
DAHLGREN'S AIR CURRENTS AND

EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 55. 6d.
REDMAYNE'S DISEASE AND THE

BAROMETER. 75. 6d.
WALTON'S HEALTH RESORTS OF

THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 35. 6d.
WALTON'S THE POLE ANlf PUL-

MONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. 6d.
MUTLOWS HIGH LEVEL BACTERI-

OLOGY. 7s. 6d.
HALLI WELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR

MAP, with clockwork attachment, giving

apparent motion of heavens, boxed,

complete with clamps for binnacle. 36

inch size only, £2:25. (Invaluable for

night work.) With A.B.C. certificate,

£3 '• I0s.
Zalinski's Standard Works :

PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS. 55.

PASSES OF THE SIERRAS. 55.

PASSES OF THE ROCKIES, gs.

PASSES OF THE URALS. §s.
The four boxed, limp cloth, with

charts, 155.
GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS IN MOUN-

TAIN GORGES. 7s. 6d.

A. C. BELT & SON, READING

187

Safety Meat for Beronauts

Flickers! Flickers! Flickers!

High Level Flickers

" He that is doivn need fear no fall."
Fear not ! Tou 'will fall lightly as down !

(TT Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects.
^ Tremendous reductions in prices previous to
winter stocking. Pure para kit with cellulose
seat and shoulder -pads, weighted to balance.
Unequalled for all drop-work.

Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne plus ultra
of comfort and safety.

Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, non-conduct-
ing Flickers with pipe and nozzle fitting all
types of generator. Graduated tap on left hip.

Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Plight
197 Oxford Street

The new weighted Flicker with tweed or
cheviot surface cannot be distinguished
from the ordinary suit till inflated.

Flickers! Flickers! Flickers!

188

Hppltances for Hit planes

What

"SKID"

was to our forefathers
on the ground,

"PITCH"

is to their sons in the air.

The popularity of the
large, unwieldy, slow, ex-
pensive Dirigible over the
light, swift Plane is
mainly due to the former's
immunity from pitch.

Collison's forward-
socketed Air Van renders
it impossible for any plane
to pitch. The C.F.S. is
automatic, simple as a
shutter, certain as a power
hammer, safe as oxygen.
Fitted to any make of
plane.

COLLISON

1 86 Brompton Road

Workshops, Chhiolck

LUNDIE & MATHERS

Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere

Starters

and

Guides

Hotel, club, and
private house plane-
starters, slips, and
guides affixed by
skilled workmen in
accordance with local
building laws.

Rackstraw's forty-
foot collapsible steel
starters with automatic
release at end of travel
— prices per foot run,
cramps and crampons
included. The safest
on the market.

Weaver & Denison
Middleboro

189

Bir planes anfc HMrigible Ooofcs

Planes are swift— so is Death
Planes are cheap — so Is Life

does the 'plane builder
insist on the safety of his
machines ?

Methinks the gentleman pro-
tests too much.

The Standard Dig Construc-
tion Company do not build
kites.

They build, equip, and guar-
antee dirigibles.

Standard Dig
Construction Co.

Miiiwali and Buenos Ayres.

HOVERS

POWELL'S
Wind' Hovers

for 'planes lying-to in heavy
weather, save the motor and
strain on the forebody. Will
not send to leeward. " Alba-
tross " wind - hovers, rigid-
ribbed ; according to h.p. and
weight.

We jit and test free to 40°
both luays of Greenwich.

L. & W. POWELL

196 Victoria Street, W.

Remember

We shall always be
pleased to see you.

We build and test and guar-
antee our dirigibles for all
purposes. They go up when
you please and they do not
come down till you please.
You can please yourself, but
— you might as well choose
a dirigible.

STANDARD DIRIGIBLE
CONSTRUCTION CO.

nd Buenos fiyres.

Gayer &Hutt

Birmingham
Eng.

Birmingham
Ala.

Towers, Landing Stages,
Slips and Lifts

public and private

Contractors to the A.B.C.,
South - Western European
Postal Construction Dept.

Sole patentees and owners
of the Collison anti-quake
diagonal tower - tie. Only
gold medal Kyoto Exhibition
of Aerial Appliances, 1997.

190

Hit planes an&

C.M.C.

Our Synthetical Mineral

BEARINGS

are chemically and crystallogic-
ally identical with the minerals
whose names they bear. Any
size, any surface.
Diamond, Rock-Crystal, Agate and
Ruby Bearings — cups, caps, and
collars for the higher speeds.
For tractor bearings and spindles

— Imperative.

For rear propellers — Indispensable.
For all working parts — Advisable.

Commercial Minerals Co.
107 Minories

Resurgam !

IF YOU HAVE NOT CLOTHED
YOURSELF IN A

Normandie
Resurgam

YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE
INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT
WEEK'S LIST OF AIR-KIT.

Resurgam Air- Kit
Emporium

HYMANS & GRAHAM
1198

Lower Broadway, New York

Remember !

Q It is now nearly a generation since the Plane was
to supersede the Dirigible for all purposes.

(][ TO-DAY none of the Planet's freight is car-
ried en plane.

Q Less than two per cent, of the Planet's passen-
gers are carried en plane.

We design, equip, and
guarantee Dirigibles for
all purposes.

Standard Dig Construction
Company

MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES

191

Flint & Mantel

Southampton

FOR SALE

at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats :

GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nom.) Maginnis Motor,

under-rake rudder.
MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas*

lock-steering gear.
IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator),

Miller keel and rudder.

The above are well known on the South Coast as
sound, wholesome knockabout boats, with ample cruising
accommodation. Griselda carries spare set of Hofman
racing vans, and can be lifted three foot clear in smooth
water with ballast-tank swung aft. The others do not
lift clear of water, and are recommended for beginners.

Also, by private treaty, racing B.B. Tarpon (76 winning
flags) 1 20 knt., 60 ft. ; Long-Davidson -double under-
rake rudder, new this season and unstrained. 850 nom.
Maginnis motor, Radium relays and Pond generator.
Bronze breakwater forward, and treble reinforced fore-
foot and entry. Talfourd rockered keel. Triple set of
Hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of 5327
sq. ft.

Tarpon has been lifted and held seven feet for two miles
between touch and touch.

Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the
tyh January.

192

air planes anfc Starters

Hinks's Moderator

Monorail overhead starter
for family and private planes
up to twenty-five foot over all

Absolutely
Safe

Hlnks & Co., Birmingham

J. D. ARDAGH

I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR 'PLANE
AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES, BUT TILL
THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY
RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE, SAFETY, AND
COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP
CANNOT RELEASE TILL THE MOTORS ARE
WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS
SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT
WITHOUT PITCHING. i— i i— i r— I

Remember our motto, " Upward and Outward" and
dp not trust yourself to so-called " rigid " guide bars

J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN

A.R. Vol. i 193

HccesBortes anb Spares

CHRISTIAN WR

ESTABLIS

Accessories

Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically record-
ing change of level (illuminated face).
All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet . . . £2 10 o
With Aerial Board of Control certificate -.£311 o

Foot and Hand Fog-horns ; Sirens toned to
any club note j with air-chest belt-driven
from motor . . . . . . £6 8 o

Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C. re-
quirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred

mile range £3 3 o

Grapnels, mushroom anchors, pithing-irons, winches,
hawsers, snaps, shackles, and mooring ropes, for lawn,
city, and public installations.

Detachable under-cars, aluminium or stamped steel.
Keeled under-rirs for planes : single-action detaching-
gear, turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist.
Invaluable for sea trips.

Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos. oo to 20
A.B.C. Standard. Rockets and fog -bombs in colours
and tones of the principal clubs (boxed).

A selection of twenty £2 17 6

International night-signals (boxed) . . . £i 1 1 6

Catalogues free thr

194

Hccessories an& Spares

IGHT & OLDIS

HED 1924

and Spares

Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked
on cover (prices according to power).

Wind-noses for dirigibles — Pegamoid, cane-stiffened,
lacquered cane or aluminium and flux for winter work.

Smoke-ring cannon for hail-storms, swivel-mounted,
bow or stern.

Propeller -blades : metal, tungsten backed ; papier-
mache, wire stiffened ; ribbed xylonite (Nickson's patent) ;
all razor-edged (price by pitch and diameter).

Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.

Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and
collars. Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.

Magniac's bow-rudders — (Lavalle's patent grooving).
Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (non-magnetic).
Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h.p. (in pairs).
Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h.p. (tandem).
Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform.

Direct plunge - brakes worked from lower platform
only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight.

oughout the Planet

195

THE FOUR ANGELS

As Adam lay a^dreaming beneath the Apple Tree,
The Angel of the Earth came down, and offered Earth in fee.
But Adam did not need it,
Nor the plough he would not speed it,
Singing : — ' Earth and Water, Air and Fire,

What more can mortal man desire ? '
(The Apple Tree's in bud.)

As Adam lay a^dreaming beneath the Apple Tree,
The Angel of the Waters offered all the Seas in fee.
But Adam would not take 'em,
Nor the ships he wouldn't make 'em,
Singing : — ' Water, Earth and Air and Fire,

What more can mortal man desire ? '
(The Apple Tree's in leaf.)

As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree,
The Angel of the Air he offered all the Air in fee.
But Adam did not crave it,
Nor the voyage he wouldn't brave it,
Singing :— ' Air and Water, Earth and Fire,

What more can mortal man desire ? f
(The Apple Tree's in bloom.)

197

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS

As Adam lay a^dreaming beneath the Apple Tree,
The Angel of the Fire rose up and not a word said he.
But he wished a fire and made it,
And in Adam's heart he laid it,
Singing : — ' Fire, Fire, burning Fire,

Stand up and reach your heart's desire I '
(The Apple Blossom's set.)

As Adam was a-working outside of Eden^Wall,
He used the Earth, he used the Seas, he used the Air and all j
And out of black disaster
He arose to be the master

Of Earth and Water, Air and Fire,
But never reached his heart's desire I
(The Apple Tree's cut down I)

END OF VOL. I

Printed ty R. & R. CLARK. LIMITED, Edinburgh

THE SERVICE KIPLING

26 Vols. i6mo.
Blue Cloth. 2s. 6d. net per Vol.

The volumes are printed in an old-style
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and known as the Dolphin Type.

Plain Tales from the Hills. 2 Vols.

Soldiers Three. 2 Vols.

Wee Willie Winkie. 2 Vols.

From Sea to Sea. 4 Vols.

Life's Handicap. 2 Vols.

The Light that Failed. 2 Vols.

The Naulahka. 2 Vols.

Many Inventions. 2 Vols.

The Day's Work. 2 Vols.

Kim. 2 Vols.

Traffics and Discoveries. 2 Vols.

Actions and Reactions. 2 Vols.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

THE WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING.

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MANY INVENTIONS. Sixty-fourth Thousand.
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"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS." A Story of the Grand

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PR 4854 .A4 1915 v.l SMC
Kipling, Rudyard,
Actions and reactions