E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (21 page)

Not a word from Raffles, and none, you may be sure, from me.
Then suddenly Bellingham told me where his tent was, and, adding
that our case was one for serious consideration, strode in its
direction without another word until some sunlit paces separated
us.

"You can bring that stuff with you," he then flung over a
shoulder-strap, "and I advise you to put it where you had it
before."

A trooper saluted him some yards further on, and looked evilly at
us as we followed with our loot. It was Corporal Connal of ours,
and the thought of him takes my mind off the certainly gallant
captain who only that day had joined our division with the
reinforcements. I could not stand the man myself. He added
soda-water to our whiskey in his tent, and would only keep a
couple of bottles when we came away. Softened by the spirit, to
which disuse made us all a little sensitive, our officer was soon
convinced of the honest part that we were playing for once, and
for fifty minutes of the hour we spent with him he and Raffles
talked cricket without a break. On parting they even shook
hands; that was Long John in the captain's head; but the snob
never addressed a syllable to me.

And now to the gallows-bird who was still corporal of our troop:
it was not long before Raffles was to have his wish and the
traitor's wicket. We had resumed our advance, or rather our
humble part in the great surrounding movement then taking
place, and were under pretty heavy fire once more, when Connal
was shot in the hand. It was a curious casualty in more than one
respect, and nobody seems to have seen it happen. Though a
flesh wound, it was a bloody one, and that may be why the
surgeon did not at once detect those features which afterwards
convinced him that the injury had been self-inflicted. It was
the right hand, and until it healed the man could be of no
further use in the firing line; nor was the case serious enough
for admission to a crowded field-hospital; and Connal himself
offered his services as custodian of a number of our horses which
we were keeping out of harm's way in a donga. They had come
there in the following manner: That morning we had been
heliographed to reinforce the C.M.R., only to find that the enemy
had the range to a nicety when we reached the spot. There were
trenches for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer
than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines
towards those of the Boers. So some of us galloped them thither,
six-in-hand, amid the whine of shrapnel and the whistle of shot.
I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his
team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and
crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a
small red flag, ludicrously like those used to indicate a
putting-green, marked the single sloping entrance to the
otherwise precipitous donga, which I for one was duly thankful to
reach alive.

The same evening Connal, with a few other light casualties to
assist him, took over the charge for which he had volunteered and
for which he was so admirably fitted by his knowledge of horses
and his general experience of the country; nevertheless, he
managed to lose three or four fine chargers in the course of the
first night; and, early in the second, Raffles shook me out of a
heavy slumber in the trenches where we had been firing all day.

"I have found the spot, Bunny," he whispered; "we ought to out
him before the night is over."

"Connal?"

Raffles nodded.

"You know what happened to some of his horses last night? Well,
he let them go himself."

"Never!"

"I'm as certain of it," said Raffles, "as though I'd seen him do
it; and if he does it again I shall see him. I can even tell you
how it happened. Connal insisted on having one end of the donga
to himself, and of course his end is the one nearest the Boers.
Well, then, he tells the other fellows to go to sleep at their
end—I have it direct from one of them—and you bet they don't
need a second invitation. The rest I hope to see to-night."

"It seems almost incredible," said I.

"Not more so than the Light Horseman's dodge of poisoning the
troughs; that happened at Ladysmith before Christmas; and two
kind friends did for that blackguard what you and I are going to
do for this one, and a firing-party did the rest. Brutes! A
mounted man's worth a file on foot in this country, and well
they know it. But this beauty goes one better than the poison;
that was wilful waste; but I'll eat my wideawake if our loss
last night wasn't the enemy's double gain! What we've got to
do, Bunny, is to catch him in the act. It may mean watching him
all night, but was ever game so well worth the candle?"

One may say in passing that, at this particular point of contact,
the enemy were in superior force, and for once in a mood as
aggressive as our own. They were led with a dash, and handled
with a skill, which did not always characterize their commanders
at this stage of the war. Their position was very similar to
ours, and indeed we were to spend the whole of next day in trying
with an equal will to turn each other out. The result will
scarcely be forgotten by those who recognize the occasion from
these remarks. Meanwhile it was the eve of battle (most
evenings were), and there was that villain with the horses in
the donga, and here were we two upon his track.

Raffles's plan was to reconnoitre the place, and then take up a
position from which we could watch our man and pounce upon him if
he gave us cause. The spot that we eventually chose and
stealthily occupied was behind some bushes through which we
could see down into the donga; there were the precious horses;
and there sure enough was our wounded corporal, sitting smoking
in his cloak, some glimmering thing in his lap.

"That's his revolver, and it's a Mauser," whispered Raffles. "He
shan't have a chance of using it on us; either we must be on him
before he knows we are anywhere near, or simply report. It's
easily proved once we are sure; but I should like to have the
taking of him too."

There was a setting moon. Shadows were sharp and black. The man
smoked steadily, and the hungry horses did what I never saw
horses do before; they stood and nibbled at each other's tails.
I was used to sleeping in the open, under the jewelled dome that
seems so much vaster and grander in these wide spaces of the
earth. I lay listening to the horses, and to the myriad small
strange voices of the veldt, to which I cannot even now put a
name, while Raffles watched. "One head is better than two," he
said, "when you don't want it to be seen." We were to take watch
and watch about, however, and the other might sleep if he could;
it was not my fault that I did nothing else; it was Raffles who
could trust nobody but himself. Nor was there any time for
recriminations when he did rouse me in the end.

But a moment ago, as it seemed to me, I had been gazing upward at
the stars and listening to the dear, minute sounds of peace; and
in another the great gray slate was clean, and every bone of me
set in plaster of Paris, and sniping beginning between pickets
with the day. It was an occasional crack, not a constant
crackle, but the whistle of a bullet as it passed us by, or a
tiny transitory flame for the one bit of detail on a blue
hill-side, was an unpleasant warning that we two on ours were a
target in ourselves. But Raffles paid no attention to their
fire; he was pointing downward through the bushes to where
Corporal Connal stood with his back to us, shooing a last
charger out of the mouth of the donga towards the Boer trenches.

"That's his third," whispered Raffles, "but it's the first I've
seen distinctly, for he waited for the blind spot before the
dawn. It's enough to land him, I fancy, but we mustn't lose
time. Are you ready for a creep?"

I stretched myself, and said I was; but I devoutly wished it was
not quite so early in the morning.

"Like cats, then, till he hears, and then into him for all we're
worth. He's stowed his iron safe away, but he mustn't have time
even to feel for it. You take his left arm, Bunny, and hang on
to that like a ferret, and I'll do the rest. Ready? Then now!"

And in less time than it would take to tell, we were over the lip
of the donga and had fallen upon the fellow before he could turn
his head; nevertheless, for a few instants he fought like a wild
beast, striking, kicking, and swinging me off my feet as I obeyed
my instructions to the letter, and stuck to his left like a
leech. But he soon gave that up, panting and blaspheming,
demanded explanations in his hybrid tongue that had half a brogue
and half a burr. What were we doing? What had he done?
Raffles at his back, with his right wrist twisted round and
pinned into the small of it, soon told him that, and I think the
words must have been the first intimation that he had as to who
his assailants were.

"So it's you two!" he cried, and a light broke over him. He was
no longer trying to shake us off, and now he dropped his curses
also, and stood chuckling to himself instead. "Well," he went
on, "you're bloody liars both, but I know something else that you
are, so you'd better let go."

A coldness ran through me, and I never saw Raffles so taken
aback. His grip must have relaxed for a fraction of time, for
our captive broke out in a fresh and desperate struggle, but now
we pinned him tighter than ever, and soon I saw him turning
green and yellow with the pain.

"You're breaking my wrist!" he yelled at last.

"Then stand still and tell us who we are."

And he stood still and told us our real names. But Raffles
insisted on hearing how he had found us out, and smiled as though
he had known what was coming when it came. I was dumbfounded.

The accursed hound had followed us that evening to Captain
Bellingham's tent, and his undoubted cleverness in his own
profession of spy had done the rest.

"And now you'd better let me go," said the master of the
situation, as I for one could not help regarding him.

"I'll see you damned," said Raffles, savagely.

"Then you're damned and done for yourself, my cocky criminal.
Raffles the burglar! Raffles the society thief! Not dead after
all, but 'live and 'listed. Send him home and give him fourteen
years, and won't he like 'em, that's all!"

"I shall have the pleasure of hearing you shot first," retorted
Raffles, through his teeth, "and that alone will make them
bearable. Come on, Bunny, let's drive the swine along and get it
over."

And drive him we did, he cursing, cajoling, struggling, gloating,
and blubbering by turns. But Raffles never wavered for an
instant, though his face was tragic, and it went to my heart,
where that look stays still. I remember at the time, though I
never let my hold relax, there was a moment when I added my
entreaties to those of our prisoner. Raffles did not even reply
to me. But I was thinking of him, I swear. I was thinking of
that gray set face that I never saw before or after.

"Your story will be tested," said the commanding officer, when
Connal had been marched to the guard-tent. "Is there any truth
in his?"

"It is perfectly true, sir."

"And the notorious Raffles has been alive all these years, and
you are really he?"

"I am, sir."

"And what are you doing at the front?"

Somehow I thought that Raffles was going to smile, but the grim
set of his mouth never altered, neither was there any change in
the ashy pallor which had come over him in the donga when Connal
mouthed his name. It was only his eyes that lighted up at the
last question.

"I am fighting, sir," said he, as simply as any subaltern in the
army.

The commanding officer inclined a grizzled head perceptibly, and
no more. He was not one of any school, our General; he had his
own ways, and we loved both him and them; and I believe that he
loved the rough but gallant corps that bore his name. He once
told us that he knew something about most of us, and there were
things that Raffles had done of which he must have heard. But he
only moved his grizzled head.

"Did you know he was going to give you away?" he asked at
length, with a jerk of it toward the guard-tent.

"Yes, sir."

"But you thought it worth while, did you?"

"I thought it necessary, sir."

The General paused, drumming on his table, making up his mind.
Then his chin came up with the decision that we loved in him.

"I shall sift all this," said he. "An officer's name was
mentioned, and I shall see him myself. Meanwhile you had better
go on—fighting."

Corporal Connal paid the penalty of his crime before the sun was
far above the hill held by the enemy. There was abundance of
circumstantial evidence against him, besides the direct testimony
of Raffles and myself, and the wretch was shot at last with
little ceremony and less shrift. And that was the one good thing
that happened on the day that broke upon us hiding behind the
bushes overlooking the donga; by noon it was my own turn.

I have avoided speaking of my wound before I need, and from the
preceding pages you would not gather that I am more or less lame
for life. You will soon see now why I was in no hurry to recall
the incident. I used to think of a wound received in one's
country's service as the proudest trophy a man could acquire.
But the sight of mine depresses me every morning of my life; it
was due for one thing to my own slow eye for cover, in taking
which (to aggravate my case) our hardy little corps happened to
excel.

The bullet went clean through my thigh, drilling the bone, but
happily missing the sciatic nerve; thus the mere pain was less
than it might have been, but of course I went over in a
light-brown heap. We were advancing on our stomachs to take the
hill, and thus extend our position, and it was at this point that
the fire became too heavy for us, so that for hours (in the
event) we moved neither forward nor back. But it was not a
minute before Raffles came to me through the whistling scud, and
in another I was on my back behind a shallow rock, with him
kneeling over me and unrolling my bandage in the teeth of that
murderous fire. It was on the knees of the gods, he said, when I
begged him to bend lower, but for the moment I thought his tone
as changed as his face had been earlier in the morning. To
oblige me, however, he took more care; and, when he had done all
that one comrade could for another, he did avail himself of the
cover he had found for me. So there we lay together on the
veldt, under blinding sun and withering fire, and I suppose it is
the veldt that I should describe, as it swims and flickers
before wounded eyes. I shut mine to bring it back, but all that
comes is the keen brown face of Raffles, still a shade paler than
its wont; now bending to sight and fire; now peering to see
results, brows raised, eyes widened; anon turning to me with the
word to set my tight lips grinning. He was talking all the
time, but for my sake, and I knew it. Can you wonder that I
could not see an inch beyond him? He was the battle to me then;
he is the whole war to me as I look back now.