CHAPTER XIX

_Of a Pudding_

There was a sound of revelry by night, at the Bristol Bar. A Plum Pudding had arrived. Into that lonely outpost, where men languished and yearned for potatoes, cabbage, milk, cake, onions, beer, steaks, chocolate, eggs, cigarettes, bacon, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, jam, sausages, honey, sugar, ham, tobacco, pastry, toast, cheese, wine and other things of which they had almost forgotten the taste, a Plum Pudding had drifted. When it had begun to seem that food began and ended with coco-nut, maize, bully-beef and dog-biscuit—a Plum Pudding rose up to rebuke error.

At least, it was going to do so. At present it lay, encased in a stout wooden box and a soldered sarcophagus of tin, at the feet of the habitués of the Bristol Bar, what time they looked upon the box and found it good in their sight. . . .

“You’ll dine with us and sample it, I hope, Wavell?” said the Major, eyeing the box ecstatically.

“Thanks,” was the reply. “Delighted. . . . May I bring over some brandy to burn round it?”

“Stout fella,” said the Major warmly.

“Do we eat it as it is—or fry it, or something, or what?” he added. “I fancy you bake ’em. . . .”

“I believe puddings are boiled, sir,” remarked Bertram.

“Yes—I b’lieve you’re right, Greene,” agreed Major Mallery. . . . “I seem to know the expression, ‘boiled plum-pudding.’ . . . Yes—boiled plum-pudding. . . .”

“Better tell the cook to boil the bird at once, hadn’t we?” suggested Captain Macke.

“Yes,” agreed Vereker. “I fancy I’ve heard our housekeeper at home talk about boiling ’em for _hours_. Hours and hours. . . . Sure of it.”

“But s’pose the beastly thing’s _bin_ boiled already—what then?” asked Augustus. “Bally thing’d _dissolve_, I tell you. . . . Have to drink it. . . .”

“Very nice, too,” declared Halke.

“I’d sooner eat pudding and drink brandy, than drink pudding and burn brandy,” stated Augustus firmly. “What would we boil it in, anyhow?” he added. “It wouldn’t go in a kettle, an’ if you let it loose in a dam’ great _dekchi_ or something, it’d all go to bits. . . .”

“Tie it up in a shirt or something,” said Forbes. . . . “What’s your idea, Greene—as a man of intellect and education?”

“I’d say boil it,” replied Bertram. “I don’t believe they _can_ be boiled too much. . . . I fancy it ought to be tied up, though, as Clarence suggests, or it might disintegrate, I suppose.”

“Who’s got a clean shirt or vest or pants or something?” asked the Major. “Or could we ram it into a helmet and tie it down?”

It appeared that no one had a _very_ clean shirt, and it happened that nobody spoke up with military promptitude and smart alacrity when Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji offered to lend his pillow-case.

“I know,” said the Major, in a tone of decision and finality. “I’ll send for the cook, tell him there’s a plum-pudding, an’ he can dam’ well serve it hot for dinner as a plum-pudding _ought_ to be served—or God have mercy on him, for we will have none. . . .”

And so it was. Although at first the cook protested that the hour being seven and dinner due at seven-thirty, there was not time for the just and proper cooking of a big plum-pudding. But, “To hell with that for a Tale,” said the Major, and waved pudding and cook away, with instructions to serve the pudding steaming hot, in half an hour, with a blaze of brandy round it, a sprig of holly stuck in it, and a bunch of mistletoe hung above it.

“And write ‘_God Bless Our Home_’ on the _banda_ wall,” he added, as a happy after-thought. The cook grinned. He was a Goanese, and a good Christian cheat and liar.

The Bristol Bar settled down again to talk of Home, hunting, theatres, clubs, bars, sport, hotels, and everything else—except religion, women and war. . . .

“Heard about the new lad, Major?” asked Forbes. “Real fuzzy-wuzzy dervish Soudanese. Lord knows how he comes to be in these parts. Smelt war like a camel smells water, I suppose. . . . Got confused ideas about medals though. . . . Tell the tale, Wavell.”

“Why—old Isa ibn Yakub, my Sergeant-Major—you know Isa, six-feet-six and nine medals, face like black satin”—began Wavell, “brought me a stout lad—with grey hair—who looked like his twin brother. Wanted to join my Arab Company. He’d come from Berbera to Mombasa in a dhow, and then strolled down here through the jungle. . . . Conversation ran somewhat thus:

“‘You want to enlist in my Arab Company, do you? Why?’

“‘I want to fight.’

“‘Against the _Germanis_?’

“‘Anybody.’

“‘You know what the pay is?’

“‘Yes. It is enough. But I also want my Omdurman medal—like that worn by Isa ibn Yakub.’

“‘Oh—you have fought before? And at Omdurman.’

“‘Yes. And I want my medal.’

“‘You are sure you fought at Omdurman?’

“‘Yes. Was I not wounded there and left for dead? Look at this hole through my side, below my arm. I want my medal—like that of Isa ibn Yakub.’

“‘How is it that you have not got it, if you fought there as you say?’

“‘They would not give it to me. I want you to get it for me.’

“‘I do not believe you fought at Omdurman at all.’

“‘I did. Was I not shot there?’

“‘Were you in a Soudanese Regiment?’

“‘No.’

“‘What then?’

“‘In the army of Our Lord the Mahdi. And I was shot in front of the line of British soldiers who wear petticoats! . . .’”

“Did you take him?” asked the Major, as the laugh subsided.

“Rather!” was the reply. “A lad who fought against us and expects us to give him a medal for it, evidently thinks we are sportsmen, and probably is one himself. I fancy he’s done a lot of mixed fighting at different times. . . . Says he knew Gordon. . . .”

The cook, Mess butler, and a deputation of servants approached, salaamed as one man, and held their peace.

“What’s up?” asked the Major. “Anyone dead?”

“The Pudding, sah,” said the cook, and all the congregation said, “The Pudding.”

A painful brooding silence settled upon the Bristol Bar.

“If you’ve let pi-dogs or _shenzis_ or kites eat that pudding, they shall eat you—alive,” promised the Major—and he had the air of one whose word is his bond.

“Nossir,” replied the cook. “Pudding all gone to damn. Sahib come and see. I am knowing nothing. It is bad.”

“_What_?” roared the Major, and rose to his feet.

“Sah, I am a poor man. You are my father and my mother,” said the cook humbly, and all the congregation said that they were poor men and that the Major was their father and their mother.

The Major said that the congregation were liars.

“_Bad_?” stammered Forbes. “Puddings can’t go _bad_. . . .”

“Oh, Mother, Mother!” said Augustus, and cried, his head upon his knees.

“Life in epitome,” murmured Vereker. “_Tout lasse_; _tout passe_; _tout casse_.”

“Strike me blind!” said Halke.

“Feller’s a purple liar. . . . Must be,” opined Berners.

“Beat the lot of them,” suggested Macke. “Puddings keep for ever if you handle ’em properly.”

“Yes—the brutes haven’t treated it kindly,” said Augustus, wiping his eyes. “Here, Vereker, you’re Provost-Marshal. Serve them so that _they_ go bad—and see how they like it.”

“It may just have a superficial coating of mould or mildew that can be taken off,” said Bertram.

“Let’s go an’ interview the dam’ thing,” suggested Augustus. “We can then take measures—or rum.”

The Bristol Bar was deserted in the twinkling of an eye as, headed by the Major, the dozen or so of British officers sought out the Pudding, that they might hold an inquest upon it. . . .

Near the cooking-fire in the straw shed behind the Officers’ Mess _banda_, upon some boards beside a tin sarcophagus, lay a large green ball, suggestive of a moon made of green cheese.

In silent sorrow the party gazed upon it, stricken and stunned. And the congregation of servants stood afar off and watched.

Suddenly the Major snatched up the gleaming _panga_ that had been used for prising open the case and for cutting open the tin box in which the green horror had arrived.

Raising the weapon above his head, the Major smote with all his might. Right in the centre of the Pudding the heavy, sharp-edged blade struck and sank. . . . The Pudding fell in halves, revealing an interior even greener and more horrible than the outside, as a cloud of greenish, smoke-like dust went up to the offended heavens. . . .

“Bury the damned Thing,” said the Major, and in his wake the officers of the Butindi garrison filed out, their hearts too full, their stomachs too empty for words.

And the servants buried the Pudding, obeying the words of the Major.

But in the night the Sweeper arose and exhumed the Pudding and ate of it right heartily. And through the night of sorrow he groaned. And at dawn he died. This is the truth.

* * * * *

Dinner that night was a silent meal, if meal it could be called. No man dared speak to his neighbour for fear of what his neighbour might reply. The only reference to the Pudding was made by Augustus, who remarked, as a servant brought in a dish of roasted maize-cobs, where the Pudding should have come—chicken-feed where should have been Food of the Gods—“I am almost glad poor Murie and Lindsay are so ill that they couldn’t possibly have eaten any Pudding in any case. . . . Seems some small compensation to ’em, don’t it, poor devils. . . .”

“I do not think Murie will get better,” observed Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji. “Fever and dysentery, both violent, and I have not proper things. . . .”

The silence seemed to deepen as everybody thought of the two sick men, lying in their dirty clothes, on dirty camp-beds, in leaky grass huts, with a choice of bully-beef, dog-biscuit, coco-nut and maize as a dysentery diet.

Whose turn next? And what sort of a fight could the force put up if attacked by Africans when all the Indians and Europeans were ill with fever and dysentery? Heaven bless the Wise Man who had kept the African Army of British East Africa so small and had disbanded battalions of the King’s African Rifles just before the war. What chance would Indians and white men, who had lived for months in the most pestilential swamp in Africa, have against salted Africans led by Germans especially brought down from the upland health-resorts where they lived? . . .

“Can you give me a little quinine, Chatterji?” asked Augustus. “Got any calomel? I b’lieve my liver’s as big as my head to-day. I feel a corner of it right up between my lungs. Stops my breathing sometimes. . . .”

“Oah, yees. Ha! Ha!” said the medical gentleman. “I have a few tablets. I will presently send you some also. . . .”

Next morning Augustus came in last to breakfast.

“Thanks for the quinine tablets, Chatterji,” said he. “The hospital orderly brought them in his bare palm. I swallowed all ten, however. What was it—twenty grains?”

“Oah! That was calomel!” replied the worthy doctor, and Augustus arose forthwith and retired, murmuring: “Poignant! _Searching_!”

He had once taken a quarter of a grain of calomel, and it had tied him in knots.

When Bertram visited Murie, Lindsay and Augustus in their respective huts, Augustus seemed the worst of the three. With white face, set teeth, and closed eyes, he lay bunched up, and, from time to time, groaned, “Oh, poignant! _Searching_! . . .”

It being impossible for him to march, it fell to Bertram to take his duty that day, and lead an officers’ patrol to reconnoitre a distant village to which, according to information received by the Intelligence Department, a German patrol had just paid a visit. For some reason the place had been sacked and burnt.

It was Bertram’s business to discover whether there were any signs of a _boma_ having been established by this patrol; to learn anything he could about its movements; whence it had come and whither it had gone; whether the massacre were a punishment for some offence, or just the result of high animal (German) spirits; whether there were many _shambas_, of no further use to slaughtered people, in which the raiders had left any limes, bananas, papai or other fruits, vegetables, or crops; whether any odd chicken or goat had been overlooked, and was wanting a good home; and, in short, to find out anything that could be found out, see all that was to be seen, do anything that might be done. . . . As he marched out of the Fort at the head of a hundred Gurkhas, with a local guide and interpreter, he felt proud and happy, quite reckless, and absolutely indifferent to his fate. He would do his best in any emergency that might arise, and he could do no more. He’d leave it at that.

He’d march straight ahead with a “point” in front of him, and if he was ambushed, he was ambushed.

When they reached the village, he’d deploy into line and send scouts into the place. If he was shot dead—a jolly good job. If he were wounded and left lying for the German _askaris_ to find—or the wild beasts at night . . . he turned from the thought.

Anyhow, he’d got good cheery, sturdy Gurkhas with him, and it was a pleasure and an honour to serve with them.

One jungle march is precisely like another—and in three or four hours the little column reached the village, deployed, and skirmished into it, to find it a deserted, burnt-out ruin. _Kultur_ had passed that way, leaving its inevitable and unmistakable sign-manual. The houses were only blackened skeletons; the gardens, wildernesses; the byres, cinder-heaps; the fruit-trees, withering wreckage. What had been pools of blood lay here and there, with clumps of feathers, burnt and broken utensils, remains of slaughtered domestic animals and chickens.

_Kultur_ had indeed passed that way. To Bertram it seemed, in a manner, sadder that this poor barbarous little African village should be so treated than that a walled city of supermen should suffer. . . “Is there not more cruelty and villainy in violently robbing a crying child of its twopence than in snatching his gold watch from a portly stockbroker?” thought he, as he gazed around on the scene of ruin, desolation and destruction.

To think of Europeans finding time, energy, and occasion to effect _this_ in such a spot, so incredibly remote from their marts and ways and busy haunts! Christians! . . .

Having posted sentries and chosen a spot for rally and defence, he sent out tiny patrols along the few jungle paths that led to the village, and proceeded to see what he could, as there was absolutely no living soul from whom he could learn anything. There was little that the ablest scoutmaster could deduce, save that the place had been visited by a large party of mischievously destructive and brutal ruffians, who wore boots. There was nothing of use or of value that had not been either destroyed or taken. Even papai trees that bore no fruit had been hacked down, and the _panga_ had been laid to the root of tree and shrub and sugar-cane. Not a plantain, lime, mango, or papai was to be seen.

Bertram entered one of the least burnt of the well-made huts of thatch and wattle. There was what had been blood on the earthen floor, blackened walls, charred stools, bed-frames and domestic utensils. He felt sick. . . . In a corner was a child’s bed of woven string plaited over a carved frame. It would make a useful stool or a resting-place for things which should not lie on the muddy floor of his _banda_. He picked it up. Underneath it was a tiny black hand with pinkish finger-tips. He dropped the bed and was violently sick. _Kultur_ had indeed passed that way. . . .

Hurrying out into the sunlight, as soon as he was able to do so, he completed his tour of inspection. There was little of interest and nothing of importance.

Apparently the hamlet had boasted an artist, a sculptor, some village Rodin, before the Germans came to freeze the genial current of his soul. . . . As Bertram studied the handiwork of the absent one, his admiration diminished, however, and he withdrew the “Rodin.” The man was an arrant, shameless plagiarist, a scoundrelly pick-brain imitator, a mere copying ape, for, seen from the proper end, as it lay on its back, the clay statue of a woman, without form and void, boneless, wiggly, semi-deliquescent, was an absolutely faithful and shameless reproduction of the justly world-famous Eppstein Venus.

“The man ought to be prosecuted for infringement of copyright,” thought Bertram, “if there is any copyright in statues. . . .”

The patrols having returned with nothing to report, Bertram marched back to Butindi and reported it.