UNDER THE MOON.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 354, 15 October 1898, Page 5 (Supplement)

UNDER THE MOON.

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Thk mellow harvest-moon, sailing into view round the angle of the house, looked down at the major, and the major, weary and out of temper with a hopeless task, lay back in his chair and looked up at the moon. They were old comrades those two, having been through sundry campaigns together ; and they had known each other well in India during the Mutiny. The major, in fact, was under considerable obligation to the orb over a little matter in the jungle of Nepaul, when the search party, on the point of giving him up for lost, had caught the glint of her ravs on his seabbanl ; he lying all tlfe while under a dead horse, with a bullet in his throat, where he had watched them gradually receding farther and farther away for two hours without the power to utter sound ! Now all that was changed. He had come into property and left the service ten years ago. He was stouter than of yore, in spite of the fly-rods and gun-cases that strewed the room, and the hunters in the stables over there; but he was an altered man, and worried in more senses than the merely physical, for, mirabile ditu, the major was writing a book ! It is a fearsome thing at most times to write a book, but when one has the stern military instincts of the major, with his exacting love of accuracy with a feverish anxiety that each name and date shall be absolutely beyond question, it becomes a task almost heroic.

The major's was a solid book into the bargain * none of yonr retired officers' rambling reminiscences, with more of polo and pigsticking than genuine service; but a regimental record of his late corps—the " Old Dirty Whites " of Peninsula and Mutiny fame. He had worked hard at it for five years, delving with great success among musty official papers of a century and. a half ago until—horror of horrors ! —when he reached his own epoch, on which he might reasonably have hoped to speak with authority, it was to find himself bowled over by a most provoking lapse of memory. Three things of vital importance in his estimation were wanting—the name of an obscure Indian temple long since razed to the ground, where a brilliant bit of heroism had been performed ; the colour of a standard taken there: and the date—matters so trifling that any ordinary being would have contented himself with generalities, but the major was built on very different lines.

In vain he went up to town and button holed scores of men at the service clubs: to no purpose did he advertise in Indian and home papers, and haunt the dark corridors of the War Office until he became a nuisance. Every commissionaire or crossing-sweeper, who sported the red and whits Mutiny ribbon, grew richer by half-a-crown, but the major drew no nearer to his goal, and the book remained at a standstill.

The regiment was again doing its Indian tour, and that afternoon he had received from the adjutant the reply to his final letter, which lay on the table before him and sounded a veritable knell.

'•Dear Sir" (it said), "John Williams was discharged out of the regiment on the 3rd November, 1877, and the most careful inquiries have failed to discover any trace of his whereabouts since then. I find that he was five times reduced from the rank of sergeant, and once from that of troop-sergeant-major, for drunkenness, and it was only by the personal favour of the Colonel, in consequence of his extreme gallantry that he was allowed to remain with us so long.—With many regrets, &c.—P.S.—Quartermaster Milljgan, the last of 'ours ' who was serving with you in the Mutiny, c died at lMoow this spring.' John Williams and the major had been the heroes on that occasion in point, and the major's brain refused to surrender the long-for-gotten secret. There was then only John Williams for it, but where on earth was he, if indeed he were still on earth at all 1 w

The lamp was gradually sinking, and the full-length presentation portrait of the major in gorgeous hussar uniform grew darker on the wall behind him.

The brilliant moonshine Hooding the garden and the rolling vista of Devon moorland lying behind it, brought the old fighting time back to him as his goodnight pipe volleyed out sharp pull's like musketry-fire ; and, starting through the open French-windows with a retrospective eye, this is what he saw !

IT. A plain, with the water out in lake-like patches over its surface ; a row of hills apparently five miles off, iu reality fifty ; feathery, dim, mysterious jungle top swaying in the wind, and a strange silence in the hot air, which the howling yelp of the jackals seemed to intensify. On the edge of a nullah two panting horses, and besides them the major himself and a spare,

sinewy man with black moustache and those side whiskers which our troops affected in the fifties The spare man is looking under his hand into the distance, with eyes deeply hollowed by exhaustion and excessive drinking and he suddenly points away into the jungle. 'Do you sea yon banyan-tope, sir?' he says. "There's a column of smoke on the other side of it and a building of some sort. They're there.' The major sweeps the place with his Bold-glass, and smiles a little grimly as he puts it back into its case. ' Can they do it, Williams V The sergeant looks at the horses and again into the distance, and then up at the moon —the Indian moon. 'lt's a pity to let them elide, sir.' ' It's a pity,' assents the major and their eyes, as they meet for a moment, answer each other with a cleam that has blood in it, and vengeance, and the lust of killing. Then they mount and ride on without a word, the leather of their saddles creaking, and the jungle smells all about them, and the jackals troop silently in their wake lolling out their red tongues. Twenty brown-skinned men are grouped about a fire of brushwood near the door of a white-walled temple, laughing and portioning out ill-gotten spoil. They have set no watch, because they have outridden all pursuit and imagine themselves secure. For the most part they are clad in linen garments, mud-stained and blood-stained, too, and, on the strip of praying carpet by the fire, rings and trinkets torn from murdered Englishwomen lie in a glittering heap, together with loot of every description, while brass lotahs, rifles, and litter of all kinds catch t-ho glint of the flame here and there among the grass. There are horses tethered near, heads drooping with the fatigue of forty miies since sun-up, refusing their feed in the shadow of the trees, and there is a stout man, sitting apart on the temple steps, brooding deeply, and sometimes glancing back in sudden terror in the direction they have come. They see all this, crouching on their stomachs, the major and the sergeant, and the sergeant has his eyes fixed on the stout man ! They have left their own horses some distance in the rear, but the wind is blowing softly from the rebel's bivouac in their direction, and the reconnaissance must be short, lest a neigh should betray them. * Sir,' whispers the sergeant close to the major's ear, ' we're in luck to-night; yonder man on the steps is Nana Sahib !' He sees tne veins in the major's forehead swell and knot themselves at his words, and they both glare for the space of a minute at the foullesfc rascal of his time, and they are thinking of Cawnpore, and the women and the children ! Slowly, lest the faintest rustle should betray them, the major draws his pistol, and—strange are the workings of Fate—the man on the steps gets up simultaneously and enters the temple! ' Back to the horses,' says the major, 'we can work up wind and do the business better in the saddle.' It is an anxious ride, at a snail's pace, but the wind is blowing stronger from the mountains, and they are pausing again, in the shadow of the trees, with drawn swords under their bridle-thumbs, and pistols ready to open the ball ! ' Now,' says the major, firing into the group, ' Charge ! Come on, men !' and shouting to an imaginary troop, they go in together. The major's memory is certainly chaotic at this point; it is a confused picture to his mind's eye, but some things stand out clearly in the whirl of the embers of the fire. One is that three mutineers went down before his rush, and that leaping the fire, his horse struck a fourth with its chest as he landed on the other side, and that they found the rascal's neck was broken when they had time to look at him. Another is a vision of white figures, flying into the darkness, and the mad gallop of horses soon swallowed up in the silence of the night. But, looming out of the chaos is the form of the sergeant, ramming his spurs home, and bounding up the shallow temple steps through the doorway which he almost fills, re-appearing with a yell of rage, and the words, "He's gone !' The major cuts a big sowar down, and sends a foot of sabre into the " Adam's apple" of a Ghazi who is almost the last to makp a stand, and as he spurs him off with his boot Williams goes past like an arrow, making for a knot of four who are mounting in hot haste. One does not stay,but the second encumbered with a heavy standard faces round, and his companions also show fight. The sergeant's horse rears straight on end, and is down in a moment lashing out convulsively, the sergeant and the mutineers all mingled on the ground in a whirl of writhing men and circling swords ! Then the major joins in, receiving a bayonet wound in the knee, and a

tulwar slash across the bridle-arm which made him swear vehemently and grow exceeding wroth. The sepoy on foot plunges the bayonet into the major's horse and he falls, and the rebels' yell of triumph scares the jackals from their feast.

Williams, bleeding from the mouth, is up, standing over his officer, and grabbing the standard in both hands, whirls it round and round until he clears a space. Then the major's memory fails him again, and he sees only the dying embers, and the sergeant bending beside him.

' Where are those devils, Williams?' ' You're leaning on one, sir—there are two more yonder, and there's the fourth—take a drain of this, sir, it'll pull you round.' ' But, by gad, Williams, we've missed the Nana, after all ! ' Yes, he must have got away when we fired, but I've just counted fourteen out of the twenty, and half their horses are in the trees yonder.'

' And the name of that h«le was Oh, hang it, it won't come !' and the major got up out of the chair with a heavy sigh ; walking to the open window where he gazed across the garden without seeing it, until his pipe failed. 'Then, after pulling for a minute until it dawned upon him that there was nothing left to pull at, he put it in his pocket, turned slowly away, still with a vacant far-off look, and went mechanically to bed, leaving the long French windows open, and the lamp still lit on the study table.

111. Silence and the hush of autumn night. The moon still glided westward, sometimes thinly veiled by misty cloud, and the moorland lay for the most part hidden as a belt of fog rolled over it, dipping into the hollows, muffling the stream whose babble was almost the only sound, until the village chimes with silvery tongue gave three faint strokes and died away in air. There was a heavy dew on the grass of the lawn, and its drops pattered among the laurel bushes ; once, a little yapping cry from dogs in the stable yard, and then, silence again, and the hush of the autumn

night. A. night, and an hour for a poet to walk abroad, but the man who came out of the shrubs and stood with head bent forward, listening, was not of poetic mind , the mould and mire of wet ditches was on his hands and clothes, and the clothes were strange and parti-coloured, with hieroglyphic emblems here and there, live blunt black arrow-heads with the points missing !

His grizzled hair was strangely short, his face close shaven, but even under the prison garb some trace of other days still lingered, and he glanced about him with the same acuteness as on that night in the jungle, thirty years before '

From his lair in the laurels he had watched the man in the lighted room hour by hour ; had seen him take hi 3 pen and lay it down, toss it aside, and light his pipe, and fall to pacing to and fro, and finally leave the room with an abstracted manner.

He had seen a lamp turned up in a room overhead, and the same man divest himself of coat and collar, and then blow out the lamp. The lawn was wide, and a creeper in full gorgeousness of the dying year trailed thickly ovor the windows. A quarter of a century had passed since those two last met, and both had altered ; therefore it was not strange that the convict did not recognise the one man of all others who would have served him in his time of need.

He saw nothing but a well-ap-pointed house, open and unguarded, where he could perhaps find the food he ravened for, and some spare cluftk to hide his badge of shame ; no sudden intention, no familiar gesture brought the truth to his aching brain ; he just watched, silently cursing ; his eyes on the man who lingered up so late, his ears on the road behind, whence the pursuit might come. The moon, now slowly sinking, threw his shadow diagonally over the grass, as he stole to the window, paused, crouching down in the last effort of caution, and entered the room.

The door leading into the interior of the house was closed, and he place a chair against it. One the ledge of a bookcase stood a decanter and a syphon and on the major's table, an empty glass. The man's sunken eyes glowed with a feverish lustre, as ho poured out a heavy dram of brandy with a hand which trembled so violently that some of the spirit spilled among the papers. ' Brandy !' he muttered. ' Seven years since I tasted it. The yellow dog that bit me !' and he drained it to the bottom.

It ran like molten flame through his shivering limbs, bracing him up as if by magic for the work he had to do,

' Food, I must have food,' he muttered again, carefully removing the chair, and opening the door inch by inch. Not a sound in the sleeping house, the lamplight falling over his shoulder on to a well-filled whip rack, and k row of polished horns

from which were hung a dozen wraps and coats of various kinds. Ho crept over to them, and took a large tweed ulster and a travelling cap, and slipped back into the gtudy to put them on. ' Brandy ' —the man scowled savagely, and again drank deep. Turning to go in search of food, he saw the presentation portrait on the wall, and the old familiar uniform pulled him up short before it. ' My God,' he whispered with a strange gasp deep down somewhere in his chest, ' It's the major !'

The minute hand of the clock had traversed half the dial.

The lamp was burning very dimly now, a glowing ring of red wick show that its life was almost exhausted.

The ex-sergeant had to turn it up every moment, to finish what he had been writing. He broke off now and then to look about him at the luxurious, room with the fishing rods in the corner, and the glazed bookcase the sword hanging below the portrait, and the major's dress busby in the centre of the mantelshelf —things new and old, recalling what he had been in the past, and what he was now !

A sparkling tear zigzagged slowly down a furrow on his cheek; the close-cropped grey bead sunk on to the arm of his coat—the major's coat—and he sobbed.

When he looked up again, the lamp was flickering, and he took the p3n quickly. Tne adjutant's letter lay before him with the major's three questions unanswered, and a faint smile crept into William's face as he dipped his pen. Overhead the major tossed restlessly, unable to catch sleep, his recent reverie passing and repassing before him in the darkness. ' Confound it !' he muttered, punching the pillows angrily. ' I know it was some months before we got to the Pap tee. What the deuce was the date V

< The 19th of December, 1858,' wrote the man downstairs, as though in answer to the other's querulous plaint. ' Why the dickens we don't sponge out those infernal Hindustani names and christen 'em over again in English, I don't know,' groaned the major, pulling down the arm of his pyjamas. ' I only heard it once, and that from the saddle —a brown fellow told us when we halted in, bis village.' ' Rantchipukniullah.' wrote the ex-sergeant, turning the lamp up in time to save it from total extinction.

' And it wasn't a red standard, that I'll swear,' continued the major, now thoroughly awake. ' I can see that brave fellow Williams witn it over his shoulder, when I came to. By Jove, there ought Jto have been a brace of V.C.'s for that night's work. ' It was a dark green colour with white lettering on it, very much torn,' wrote the ex-sergeant below. ' I gave it to a private of B Troop to carry, and he lost it in the river afterwards.'

The major sat suddenly bolt upright in bed sniffing like a terror in an old barn.

' I believe I left that lamp burnins. I certainly smell something !' The ex-sergeant found himself plunged in darkness. The lamp had gone out, and he rose slowly with a heavy sigh. He turned mechanically towards the wall where the portrait hung, and raised bis hand to the salute.

' God bless you sir,' he murmured, moving to the window. 'lf I get clear away, you shall know that I'm living clean. I can't face you now, but I'll watch it.' Was it Fate ?

The heavy ulster as he crept away full of a new resolve that burned him as the neat spirit had done, brushed the glass from the table with a loud crash, and he heard two heels thud on the floor above as the major sprang out of bed.

' Now, if there's any nonsense you must take the consequences,' said the major, throwing the study door back and pausing in his pyjamas on the threshold, with a comprehensive sweep of his revolver to show what the consequences would be.

Not a sound ; the room was empty, and the major advanced quickly until he came iu contact with the chair which struck his chins.

'Ay gad, the seat's warm ! Someone's been in, and the window's open !' He went to it, and from the road, screened by a clump of well-grown aucuba-laurels, there came a low whistle.

Old habits of action revived at the sound, and he ran noiselessly across the lawn, hearing yet another low whistle farther down the road.

' Come out of that, you ' ' Hist !' said a husky voice in front of him, a tall grey figure springing up with startling abruptness out of the bushes, both arms raised to the full, in menace, he naturally though on the instant, in auguish of entreaty, he was to learn after the revolver had gone off, and it was too late ! The shining leaves rustled again, and there was the snapping of twigs as the grey figure plunged back-

wards and lay with its logs stretched out towards him.

‘ Hem,’ ejaculated the major almost apologetically, ‘l’m afraid,’ I’ve hit you rather badly, my friend,’ parting the bushes with both hands and peering down. * Major, it’s mo !’ said the husky voice in whisper. ‘ Eh, what—who are you V he exclaimed, very much startled. ‘ What have I done V

' A last of many kindnesses, sir, to an old comrade —you're put John Williams out of his misery.'

The four warders in their peaked caps, who had come over the wall, &tood in a little grogjp and looked on.

' William Martin, sir—seven years for manslaughter —killed a gamekeeper in Nottingham, got away in a fog two days ago,' one of them had explained to the major; and the ex-sergeant smiled up at the major, and said, ' Yes, major, William Martin,' and the major had replied hastily, ' Yes, yes, I understand,' and then, in a low voice. ' For heaven's sake, Williams, I've not killed you V ' Oh, yes, I'm going, and I I'm glad, sir ; it's best so—l knew when I was writing there that I'd never be able to keep to it. I'd only have gone from bad to worse. I've made too many resolutions, and I've got the drink in me.'

' Five pounds if you bring the doctor here in time,' cried the major. ' The white house next to the church, men.'

' Go, Tom,' said one of the warders, but in a tone that his subordinate understood. ' It's no use, sir. I've seen men shot in action, and so have you. His heart's touched—see, he's going now.' The major saw that it was true and knelt down on the garden bed, 'lt was a poacher job, sir,' said, the dying man, ' and it was him or me, you understand. But that's done with ; you've not forgotten that night we missed the Nana, sir V

The major was rocking to and fro, and could only press the hand that was extended half-timidly along the ground towards him. ' Thank you, sir. That's all I could have wished for. That's all I ' .

' There's brandy in that room there. Quick !' exclaimed the major, raising him, ' If there hadn't been any brandy at all, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be here now,' whispered Williams very faintly, and smiled a wan smile as the moon dipped behind the wood on the hill. ' Read what I wrote there—it's what you wanted—to know ;.' he gasped like a fish once or twice, and, sinking the tired head on to his old leader's shoulder, John Williams went into the other world.