CHAPTER XVI

_The Bristol Bar_

“Come along to the Bristol Bar and have a drink, Greene,” said Cecil Clarence, _alias_ Gussie Augustus Gus, emerging from his _banda_, into which he had cast his tunic and Sam Browne belt.

“Thanks,” replied Bertram, wondering if there were a Jungle Hotel within easy reach of the _boma_, or whether the outpost had its own Place, “licensed for the sale of beer, wine, spirits, and tobacco, to be consumed on the premises. . . .”

In the High Street, next door to the Officers’ Mess, were two green tents, outside one of which stood a rough camp-table of the “folding” variety, a native string bed, and a circle of Roorkee chairs, boxes and stools. On an erection of sticks and withes, resembling an umbrella stand, stood an orderly array of fresh coco-nuts, the tops of which had been sliced off to display the white interior with its pint or so of sweet, limpid milk.

Emerging from the tent, an Arab “boy” in a blue turban, blue jacket buttoning up to the chin, blue petticoat and puttees, placed bottles of various kinds on the table, together with a “sparklet” apparatus and a pannikin of water. The Bristol Bar was open. . . . From the other tent emerged an officer in the blue uniform of the little fair men.

He eyed the muddy ground, the ugly grey _bandas_ of withered grass and leaves, the muddy, naked Kavirondo—piling their loads on the commissariat dump, and the general dreary, cheerless scene, with the cold eye of extreme distaste and disfavour.

“_Yah_!” said he. He eyed the bottles on the table.

“_Ah_!” said he, and seated himself behind the Bristol Bar.

“Start with a Ver-Gin, I think, as I’ve been such a good boy to-day,” he murmured, and, pouring a measure of Italian vermuth into an enamelled mug, he added a smaller allowance of gin.

“Wish some fool’d roll up so that I can get a drink,” he grumbled, holding the mug in his hand.

It did not occur to him to “_faire Suisse_,” as the French say—to drink alone. He must at least say “Chin-chin” or “Here’s how” to somebody else with a drink in his hand. Had it been cocoa, now, or something of that sort, one might drink gallons of it without a word to a soul. One could lie in bed and wallow and soak, lap it up like a cat or take it in through the pores—but this little drop of alcohol must not be drunk without a witness and a formula. So Lieutenant Forbes possessed his soul in impatience.

A minute later, from every _banda_ and tent, from the Officers’ Mess and from all directions, came British officers, bearing each man in his hands something to drink or something from which to drink.

The Major bore The Glass, and, behind him, the Mess butler carried a square bottle of ration whisky. He was followed by a Swahili clasping to his bosom a huge jar of ration rum, newly arrived. “Leesey” Lindsay, of the Intelligence Department, brought a collapsible silver cup, which, as he said, only wanted knowing. It leaked and it collapsed at inappropriate moments, but, on the other hand, it _did_ collapse, and you could put it in your pocket—where it collected tobacco dust, crumbs, fluff, and grit. Vereker carried a fresh coco-nut and half a coco-nut shell. This latter he was going to carve and polish. He said that coco-nut shells carved beautifully and took a wonderful polish. . . . His uncle, an admiral, had one which he brought from the South Sea Islands. It was beautifully carved and had taken a high polish—from someone or other. A cannibal chief had drunk human blood from it for years. . . . Vereker was going to drink whisky from his for years, and keep it all his life—carving and polishing it between whiles. . . . “Yes. I used that as a drinking-cup all through my first campaign. It nearly fell on my head in the first battle I ever fought. Cut off the tree by a bullet. Carved and polished it myself,” he would be able to say, in years to come. Meanwhile it looked a very ordinary half-shell of the common coco-nut of commerce as known to those who upon Saints’ Days and Festivals do roll, bowl, or pitch. . . .

Captain Macke brought a prepared siphon of “sparklet” water and his ration whisky. Gussie Augustus Gus walked delicately, bearing a brimming condensed milk tin, and singing softly—

“Dear, sweet Mother, Kind and true; She’s a boozer, Through and through . . . . But roll your tail, And roll it high, And you’ll be an angel By and by. . . .”

Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji brought a harsh laugh and an uncultivated taste, but a strong liking, for assorted liquors, preferably sweet. The officer who had been in command of the side of the fort occupied by the men in blue entered the tent and, having removed his belt, seated himself beside Lieutenant Forbes, behind the bar.

“Good evening, Major,” said he; “won’t you come and have a drink? . . . Do!”

Regarding The Glass with a look of surprise, and as though wondering how the devil it came to be there, the Major considered the invitation.

“Thanks!” said he. “Don’t mind if I _do_ sit down for a moment.” And he placed The Glass upon the table. Strangely enough, his own Roorkee chair was already in the centre of the circle facing the said table, as it had been any evening at this time for the last fifty nights. The Mess butler put the rum and whisky beneath his chair. “Let me introduce Lieutenant Greene, attached to Ours. Wavell . . .” said he. . . . “Captain Wavell of Wavell’s Arabs, Greene,” and Bertram shook hands with a remarkable and romantic soldier of fortune, explorer and adventurous knight-errant, whom he came to like, respect, and admire with the greatest warmth. The others drifted up and dropped in, accidentally and casually, as it were, until almost all were there, and the Bristol Bar was full; the hour of the evening star and the evening drink had arrived; _l’heure d’absinthe_, _l’heure verte_ had struck; the sun was below the yard-arm; now the day was over, night was drawing nigh, shadows of the evening stole across the sky; and, war or no war, hunger, mud, disease and misery, or no hunger, mud, disease and misery, the British officer was going to have his evening cocktail, his evening cheroot, and his evening “buck” at the club bar—and to the devil with all Huns who’d interfere with his sacred rights and their sacred rites.

“Here’s the best, Major,” said Forbes, and drank his ver-gin with gusto and appreciation. His very fine long-lashed eyes beneath faultlessly curving eyebrows—eyes which many a woman had enviously and regretfully considered to be criminally wasted on a mere man—viewed the grey prospect with less disgust. The first drink of the day provided the best minute of the day to this exile from the cream of the joys of Europe; and he eyed the array of bottles with something approaching optimism as he considered the question of what should be his drink for the evening.

“Cheerioh!” responded the Major, and took a pull at the whisky and slightly-aerated water in The Glass. “Here’s to Good Count Zeppelin—our finest recruiting agent, and Grandpa Tirpitz—who’ll bring America in on our side. . . .”

“What’ll you drink, Greene?” asked Wavell. “Vermuth? Whisky? Rum? Gin? Try an absinthe? Or can I mix you a Risky—rum and whisky, you know—or a Whum—whisky and rum, of course?”

“They’re both helpful and cheering,” added Forbes.

“Let me make you a cock-eye,” put in Gussie Augustus Gus. “Thing of my own. Much better than a mere cocktail. Thought of it in bed last night while I was sayin’ my prayers. This is one,” and he raised his condensed milk tin. “Cross between milk-punch, cocktail, high-ball, gin-sling, rum-shrub, and a bitters. . . . Go down to posterity as a ‘Gussie’—along with the John Collins and Elsie May. . . . Great thought. . . . Let us pause before it. . . .”

“What’s in it?” asked Captain Macke.

“Condensed milk,” replied Augustus, “ration lime-juice, ration rum, ration whisky, medical-comfort brandy, vermuth, coco-nut milk, angostura, absinthe, glycerine. . . .”

“And a damn great flying caterpillar,” added the Major as a hideous insect, with a fat, soft body, splashed into the pleasing compound.

“Dirty dog!” grumbled Augustus, fishing for the creature. “Here, don’t play submarines in the mud, Eustace—be a sport and swim. . . . I can drink down to him, anyhow,” he added, failing to secure the enterprising little animal with a finger and thumb that groped short of the bottom stratum of his concoction. “Got his head stuck in the toffee-milk at the bottom.” Bertram declined a “Gussie,” feeling unworthy, also unable.

“Have you tried rum and coco-nut milk?” asked Wavell. “It’s a kind of local industry since we’ve been here. The Intelligence Department keeps a Friendly Tribe at work bringing in fresh coco-nuts, and our numerous different detachments provide fatigue-parties in rotation to open them. . . . Many a worse drink than half a tumbler of ration rum poured into the coco-nut. . . .”

“Point of fact—I’m a teetotaller just at present,” replied Bertram, sadly but firmly. “May I substitute lime-juice for rum? . . .”

Vereker screwed in his monocle and regarded him. Not with astonishment or interest, of course, for nothing astonished or interested him any more. He was too young and wise for those emotions. But he regarded him.

“What a dreadful habit to contract at your age, Greene,” observed Augustus, slightly shocked. “Y’ought to pull yourself together, y’know. . . . Give it up. . . . Bad. . . . Bad. . .” and he shook his head.

“What’s it feel like?” asked Captain Macke.

“You’ve been getting into bad company, my lad,” said Major Mallery.

“Oah! Maan, maan! You must not do thatt!” said Mr. Chatterji.

“I’ve got some ration lime-juice here,” said Wavell, “but I really don’t advise it as a drink in this country. It’s useful stuff to have about when you can’t get vegetables of any sort—but I believe it thins your blood, gives you boils, and upsets your tummy. . . . Drop of rum or whisky in the evening . . . do you more good.”

Bertram’s heart warmed to the kindly friendliness of his voice and manner—the more because he felt that, like himself, this famous traveller and explorer was of a shy and diffident nature.

“Thanks. I’ll take your advice then,” he said, and reflected that what was good enough for Wavell was good enough for him, in view of the former’s unique experience of African and Asiatic travel. “I’ll try the rum and coco-nut milk if I may,” he added.

“Three loud cheers!” remarked Augustus. “Won’t mother be pleased! . . . I’m going to write a book about it, Greene, if you don’t mind. . . . ‘The Redemption of Lieutenant Greene’ or somethin’. . . . _You_ know—how on the Eve of Battle, in a blinding flash of self-illuminating introspection, he saw his soul for the Thing it was, saw just where he stood—on the brink of an Abyss. . . . And repented in time. . . . Poignant. . . . Repented and drank rum. . . . Searching.”

“Probably Greene’s pulling our legs the whole time, my good ass,” put in Vereker. “Dare say he’s really a frightful drunkard. Riotous reveller and wallowing wassailer. . . . He’s got rather a wild eye. . . .”

Bertram laughed with the rest. It was impossible to take offence, for there was nothing in the slightest degree offensive about these pleasant, friendly people.

Berners joined the group and saluted the Major. “Ammunition and ration indents all present and correct, sir,” said he.

“Rum ration all right?” asked the Major. “How do you know the jars aren’t full of water?”

“P’raps he’d better select one at random as a sample and bring it over here, Major,” suggested Macke. And it was so. . . .

Another officer drifted in and was introduced to Bertram as Lieutenant Halke of the Coolie Corps, in charge of the Kavirondo, Wakamba, and Monumwezi labourers and porters attached to the Butindi garrison.

He was an interesting man, a big, burly planter, who had been in the colony for twenty years. “I want your birds to dig another trench to-morrow, Halke,” said the Major. “Down by the water-picket.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Halke. “I’m glad that convoy rolled up safely to-day. Their _posho_ {167} was running rather low . . .” and the conversation became technical.

Bertram felt distinctly better for his rum and milk. His weariness fell from him like a garment, and life took on brighter hues. He was not a wretched, weary lad, caught up in the maelstrom of war and flung from pleasant city streets into deadly primeval jungles, where lurked Death in the form of bacillus, savage beast, and more savage and more beastly Man. Not at all. He was one of a band of Britain’s soldiers in an outpost of Empire on her far-flung battle-line. . . . One of a group of cheery comrades, laughing and jesting in the face of danger and discomfort. . . . He had Answered His Country’s Call, and was of the great freemasonry of arms, sword on thigh, marching, marching. . . . Camp-fire and bivouac. . . . The Long Trail. . . . Beyond the Ranges. . . . Men who have Done Things. . . . A sun-burnt, weather-beaten man from the Back of Beyond. . . . Strong, silent man with a Square Jaw. . . . Romance. . . . Adventure. . . . Life. He drank some more of his rum and felt very happy. He nodded, drooped, snored—and nearly fell off his stool. Wavell smiled as he jerked upright again, and tried to look as though he had never slept in his life.

“So Pappa behaved nasty,” Gussie Augustus Gus was saying to a deeply interested audience. “He’d just been turned down himself by a gay and wealthy widowette whom he’d marked down for his Number 2. When I said, ‘Pappa, I’m going to be married on Monday, please,’ he spake pompous platitudes, finishing up with: ‘_A young man married is a young man marred_.’ . . . ‘Yes, Pappa,’ says I thoughtlessly, ‘_and an old man jilted is an old man jarred_.’ . . . Caused quite a coolness. So I went to sea.” Augustus sighed and drank—and then almost choked with violent spluttering and coughing.

“That blasted Eustace!” he said, as he suddenly and vehemently expelled something.

“Did you marry her?” asked Vereker, showing no sympathy in the matter of the unexpected recovery of the body of Eustace.

“No,” said Augustus. “Pappa did.” . . .

“That’s what I went to see,” he added.

“Don’t believe you ever had a father,” said Vereker.

“I didn’t,” said Gussie Augustus Gus. “I was an orphan. . . . Am still. . . . Poignant. . . . Searching. . . .”

Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji listened to this sort of thing with an owlish expression on his fat face. When anybody laughed he laughed also, loudly and raucously.

It was borne in upon Bertram that it took more than fever, hunger, boredom, mud, rain and misery to depress the spirits of the officers of the garrison of Butindi. . . .

“_Khana tyar hai_, {168a} _Sahib_,” announced the Major’s butler, salaaming.

“Come and gnaw ropes and nibble bricks, Greene,” said the officer addressed, and with adieux to Wavell and Forbes, who ran a mess of their own, the guests departed from the Bristol Bar and entered the Officers’ Mess. Here Bertram learnt the twin delights of a native bedstead when used as a seat. You can either sit on the narrow wooden edge until you feel as though you have been sitting on a hot wire for a week, or you can slide back on to the string part and slowly, slowly disappear from sight, and from dinner.

“This water drawn from the river and been standing in the bath all day, boy?”

“_Han_, {168b} _Sahib_,” replied that worthy.

“Alum in the water?”

“_Han_, _Sahib_.”

“Water then filtered?”

“_Han_, _Sahib_.”

“Water then boiled?”

“_Han_, _Sahib_.”

“_Pukka_ boiled?”

“_Han_, _Sahib_, all bubbling.”

“Filtered again? You saw it all done yourself?”

“_Han_, _Sahib_.”

“That’s all right, then,” concluded the Major.

This catechism was the invariable prelude to the Major’s use of water for drinking purposes, whether in the form of _aqua pura_, whisky and water, or tea. For the only foe that Major Mallery feared was the disease-germ. To bullet and bayonet, shrapnel and shell-splinter, he gave no thought. To cholera, enteric and dysentery he gave much, and if care with his drinking water would do it, he intended to avoid those accursed scourges of the tropics. Holding up the glass to the light of the hurricane lamp which adorned the clothless table of packing-case boards, he gazed through it—as one may do when caressing a glass of crusted ruby port—and mused upon the wisdom that had moved him to make it the sole and special work of one special man to see that he had a plentiful supply of pure fair water.

He gazed. . . . And slowly his idle abstracted gaze became a stare and a glare. His eyes protruded from his head, and he gave a yell of gasping horror and raging wrath that drew the swift attention of all—

While round and round in the alum-ised, filtered, boiled and re-filtered water, there slowly swam—a little fish.

* * * * *

Dinner was painfully similar to that at M’paga, save that the party, being smaller, was more of a Happy Family. It began with what Vereker called “Chatty” soup (because it was “made from talkative meat, in a chattie”), proceeded to inedible bully-beef, and terminated with dog-biscuit and coco-nut—unless you chose to eat your daily banana then.

During dinner, another officer, who had been out all day on a reconnaissance-patrol, joined the party, drank a pint of rum-and-coco-nut milk and fell asleep on the bedstead whereon he sat. He looked terribly thin and ill.

Macke punched him in the ribs, sat him up, and banged the tin plate of cold soup with his knife till the idea of “dinner” had penetrated the sleepy brain of the new-corner. “Feed yer face, Murie,” he shouted in his ear.

“Thanks awf’ly,” said that gentleman, took up his spoon, and toppled over backwards on to the bed with a loud snore.

“Disgustin’ manners,” said Gussie Augustus Gus.

“I wish we had a siphon of soda-water. I’d wake him all right.”

“Set him on fire,” suggested Vereker.

“He’s too beastly wet, the sneak,” complained Gussie.

“Oah, he iss sleepee,” observed Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji.

Vereker regarded him almost with interest.

“What makes you think so?” he asked politely. In the laugh that followed, the sleeper was forgotten and remained where he was until Stand-to the following morning. He was living on quinine and his nerves—which form an insufficient diet in tropical Africa.

“Where _Bwana_ sleeping to-night, sah, please Mister?” whispered Ali, as, dinner finished, Bertram sat listening with deep interest to the conversation.

Pipes alight, and glasses, mugs and condensed milk tins charged, the Mess was talking of all things most distant and different from jungle swamps and dirty, weary war. . . .

“Quite most ’sclusive Society in Oxford, I tell you,” Gussie was saying. “Called ourselves _The Astronomers_. . . .”

“What the devil for? Because you were generally out at night?” asked Macke.

“No—because we studied the Stars—of the Stage,” was the reply. . . .

“Rotten,” said Vereker, with a shiver. “You sh’d have called yourselves _The Botanists_,” he added a minute later.

“Why?”

“Because you culled Peroxide Daisies and Lilies of the Ballet.”

“Ghastly,” observed Gussie, with a shudder. “And _cull_ is a beastly word. One who culls is a cully. . . . How’d you like to be called _Cully_, Murie?” he shouted in that officer’s ear. Receiving no reply, he pounded upon the sleeper’s stomach with one hand while violently rolling his head from side to side with the other.

Murie awoke.

“Whassup?” he jerked out nervously.

“How’d you like to be called _Cully_?” shouted Gussie again.

Murie fixed a glassy eye on him. His face was chalky white and his black hair lay dank across his forehead.

“Eh?” said he.

Gussie repeated his enquiry.

“Call me anything—but don’t call me early,” was the reply, as he realised who and where he was, and closed his eyes again.

“_You’re_ an ornament to the Mess. _You_ add to the gaiety of nations. _You_ ought to be on the halls,” shouted the tormentor. “You’re a refined Society Entertainer. . . .”

“Eh?” grunted Murie.

“Come for a walk in the garden I said,” shouted Augustus. “Oh, you give me trypanosomiasis to look at you,” he added.

“You go to Hell,” replied Murie, and snored as he finished speaking.

Bertram felt a little indignant.

“Wouldn’t it be kinder to let him sleep?” he said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” was the reply. “He’ll sleep there for an hour, and then go over to his hut and be awake all night because he’s had no dinner.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Bertram—and asked the Major where he was to sleep that night.

“On your right side, with your mouth shut,” was the reply; to which Augustus added:

“Toe of the right foot in line with the mouth; thumb in rear of the seam of the pyjamas; heel of the left foot in the hollow of the back; and weight of the body on the chin-strap—as laid down in the drill-book.”

“Haven’t you a tent?” asked the Major, and, in learning that Bertram had not, said that a _banda_ should be built for him on the morrow, and that he could sleep on or under the Mess table that night. . . .

When the Major had returned to his tent with the remark “All lights out in fifteen minutes,” Ali set up Bertram’s bed in the Mess _banda_, and in a few minutes the latter was alone. . . . As he sat removing his boots, Bertram was surprised to see Gussie Augustus Gus return to the Mess, carrying a native spear and a bundle of white material. Going to where Murie lay, he raised the spear and drove it with all his force—apparently into Murie’s body! Springing to his feet, Bertram saw that the spear was stuck into the clay and that the shaft, protruding through the meshes of the bed string, stood up beside Murie. Throwing the mosquito-net over the top of it, Gussie enveloped the sleeper in its folds, as well as he could, and vanished.