now i made as bad a soldier (except at heart) as raffles made a good one, and i could not say a harder thing of myself. my ignorance of matters military was up to that time unfathomable, and is still profound. i was always a fool with horses, though i did not think so at one time, and i had never been any good with a gun. the average tommy may be my intellectual inferior, but he must know some part of his work better than i ever knew any of mine. i never even learnt to be killed. i do not mean that i ever ran away. the south african field force might have been strengthened if i had.
the foregoing remarks do not express a pose affected out of superiority to the usual spirit of the conquering hero, for no man was keener on the war than i, before i went to it. but one can only write with gusto of events (like that little affair at surbiton) in which one has acquitted oneself without discredit, and i cannot say that of my part in the war, of which i now loathe the thought for other reasons. the battlefield was no place for me, and neither was the camp. my ineptitude made me the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have gone hard with me but for raffles, who was soon the darling devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. your fireside fire-eater does not think of these things. he imagines all the fighting to be with the enemy. he will probably be horrified to hear that men can detest each other as cordially in khaki as in any other wear, and with a virulence seldom inspired by the bearded dead-shot in the opposite trench. to the fireside fire-eater, therefore (for you have seen me one myself), i dedicate the story of corporal connal, captain bellingham, the general, raffles, and myself.
i must be vague, for obvious reasons. the troop is fighting as i write; you will soon hear why i am not; but neither is raffles, nor corporal connal. they are fighting as well as ever, those other hard-living, harder-dying sons of all soils; but i am not going to say where it was that we fought with them. i believe that no body of men of equal size has done half so much heroic work. but they had got themselves a bad name off the field, so to speak; and i am not going to make it worse by saddling them before the world with raffles and myself, and that ruffian connal.
the fellow was a mongrel type, a glasgow irishman by birth and upbringing, but he had been in south africa for years, and he certainly knew the country very well. this circumstance, coupled with the fact that he was a very handy man with horses, as all colonists are, had procured him the first small step from the ranks which facilitates bullying if a man be a bully by nature, and is physically fitted to be a successful one. connal was a hulking ruffian, and in me had ideal game. the brute was offensive to me from the hour i joined. the details are of no importance, but i stood up to him at first in words, and finally for a few seconds on my feet. then i went down like an ox, and raffles came out of his tent. their fight lasted twenty minutes, and raffles was marked, but the net result was dreadfully conventional, for the bully was a bully no more.
but i began gradually to suspect that he was something worse. all this time we were fighting every day, or so it seems when i look back. never a great engagement, and yet never a day when we were wholly out of touch with the enemy. i had thus several opportunities of watching the other enemy under fire, and had almost convinced myself of the systematic harmlessness of his own shooting, when a more glaring incident occurred.
one night three troops of our squadron were ordered to a certain point whither they had patrolled the previous week; but our own particular troop was to stay behind, and in charge of no other than the villanous corporal, both our officer and sergeant having gone into hospital with enteric. our detention, however, was very temporary, and connal would seem to have received the usual vague orders to proceed in the early morning to the place where the other three companies had camped. it appeared that we were to form an escort to two squadron-wagons containing kits, provisions, and ammunition.
before daylight connal had reported his departure to the commanding officer, and we passed the outposts at gray dawn. now, though i was perhaps the least observant person in the troop, i was not the least wideawake where corporal connal was concerned, and it struck me at once that we were heading in the wrong direction. my reasons are not material, but as a matter of fact our last week's patrol had pushed its khaki tentacles both east and west; and eastward they had met with resistance so determined as to compel them to retire; yet it was eastward that we were travelling now. i at once spurred alongside raffles, as he rode, bronzed and bearded, with warworn wide-awake over eyes grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-pipe sticking straight out from his front teeth. i can see him now, so gaunt and grim and debonair, yet already with much of the nonsense gone out of him, though i thought he only smiled on my misgivings.
"did he get the instructions, bunny, or did we? very well, then; give the devil a chance."
there was nothing further to be said, but i felt more crushed than convinced; so we jogged along into broad daylight, until raffles himself gave a whistle of surprise.
"a white flag, bunny, by all my gods!"
i could not see it; he had the longest sight in all our squadron; but in a little the fluttering emblem, which had gained such a sinister significance in most of our eyes, was patent even to mine. a little longer, and the shaggy boer was in our midst upon his shaggy pony, with a half-scared, half-incredulous look in his deep-set eyes. he was on his way to our lines with some missive, and had little enough to say to us, though frivolous and flippant questions were showered upon him from most saddles.
"any boers over there?" asked one, pointing in the direction in which we were still heading.
"shut up!" interjected raffles in crisp rebuke.
the boer looked stolid but sinister.
"any of our chaps?" added another.
the boer rode on with an open grin.
and the incredible conclusion of the matter was that we were actually within their lines in another hour; saw them as large as life within a mile and a half on either side of us; and must every man of us have been taken prisoner had not every man but connal refused to go one inch further, and had not the boers themselves obviously suspected some subtle ruse as the only conceivable explanation of so madcap a manoeuvre. they allowed us to retire without firing a shot; and retire you may be sure we did, the kaffirs flogging their teams in a fury of fear, and our precious corporal sullen but defiant.
i have said this was the conclusion of the matter, and i blush to repeat that it practically was. connal was indeed wheeled up before the colonel, but his instructions were not written instructions, and he lied his way out with equal hardihood and tact.
"you said 'over there,' sir," he stoutly reiterated; and the vagueness with which such orders were undoubtedly given was the saving of him for the time being.
i need not tell you how indignant i felt, for one.
"the fellow is a spy!" i said to raffles, with no nursery oath, as we strolled within the lines that night.
he merely smiled in my face.
"and have you only just found it out, bunny? i have known it almost ever since we joined; but this morning i did think we had him on toast."
"it's disgraceful that we had not," cried i. "he ought to have been shot like a dog."
"not so loud, bunny, though i quite agree; but i don't regret what has happened as much as you do. not that i am less bloodthirsty than you are in this case, but a good deal more so! bunny, i'm mad-keen on bowling him out with my own unaided hand—though i may ask you to take the wicket. meanwhile, don't wear all your animosity upon your sleeve; the fellow has friends who still believe in him; and there is no need for you to be more openly his enemy than you were before."
well, i can only vow that i did my best to follow this sound advice; but who but a raffles can control his every look? it was never my forte, as you know, yet to this day i cannot conceive what i did to excite the treacherous corporal's suspicions. he was clever enough, however, not to betray them, and lucky enough to turn the tables on us, as you shall hear.
