THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace
Читать онлайн книгу.
doubled back an’ carried the poor chap into camp, but it was all up with him, we could see that much. He was shot through the chest, an’ we carried him carefully to the rear.
“Soon after this, the Boers returned to the attack, an’ we was so busily engaged wonderin’ when we’d be wounded ourselves that we had no time to think of B. Jones.
“At one o’clock that afternoon the Boer firin’ went suddenly quiet, an’ half an hour later we heard a faraway pom-pom come into action, an’ knew a relief force was on its way.
“Methuen it was, with his column, an’ most of us were very glad to see him. We had time now to count heads, an’ see who was up an’ who was down.
“That,” said Nobby sadly, “is always the worse part of war. It’s the part where a corporal an’ twelve men go off with spades, an’ another party sews men up in blankets — men you’ve spoke to that mornin’; men you’ve larked with, an’ drank with.
“I was fixin’ up me kit an’ givin’ me rifle a clean, when H. Jones strolled up.
“He nodded to me an’ Smithy.
“‘I hear me young brother’s down,’ he sez, quiet.
“Yes, H.,’ I sez.
“‘How did it happen? ‘ sez H. Jones. So I told him.
“‘What like was this nigger?’ he asked after I finished.
“As well as I could I described him. He was easy to describe, because he had a big yeller face an a crop of woolly hair.
“‘Come along,’ he sez, after a bit, ‘an’ see me brother — he’s a pal of yours, ain’t he?’
“We found poor B. lyin’ on the ground, on the shady side of an ox-wagon. The doctor was there, an’ when he saw H. he took him aside.
“‘I suppose you know your brother is dyin’?’ he sez, an’ H. nodded, then turned to his brother.
“‘How goes it, Jack?’ he sez gentle, an’ poor B. grinned.
“‘So so,’ he sez weakly, ‘me number’s up.’
“‘So they was tellin’ me,’ sez H. ‘Well, we’ve all got to go through it sooner or later.’
“The dyin’ man nodded, an’ for a little while neither of ’em spoke.
“‘Got any message to mother?’ sez H., an’ the poor chap on the ground nodded again.
“‘Give her my kind regards,’ he sez. ‘ Take care of yourself, Fred.’
“It seemed strange to me,” said Nobby, thoughtfully, “that these two brothers, one of them dyin’, should talk so calm one with the other, an’ I never realized till then how little a feller like me knows about the big things of life, an’ death.
“Poor old B. died an hour later, an’ his brother was with him to the last. After it was all over he came to me.
“‘Nobby,’ he sez, ‘which way did the Boers go?’
“As it happened I’d heard one of Methuen’s staff officers describin’ the line of march the Boers were takin’, to I was able to tell him.
“‘Thanks,’ he sez. That night he deserted.
“What happened afterwards I heard from a Boer prisoner who told one of our sergeants.
“H. Jones left the camp soon after midnight, an’ dodgin’ the sentries, an’ the outposts, he made his way in the direction of the Boers. For two days he tramped, sleepin’ at night on the open veldt an’ with nothin’ to eat but a biscuit he took away with him.
“He was found by a Boer patrol, an’ as luck would have it, was taken to the very commando that held the ridge.
“By all accounts, the chap in charge was a young lawyer who’d been educated in England an’ spoke English better than H. Jones ever could hope to speak it.
“‘Hullo!’ he sez, when H. was marched before him, ‘an’ that the devil do you want?’
“‘I’m lookin’ for the feller that killed me young brother,’ says H.
“The young commandant shook his ‘head with a little smile.
“‘I’m afraid,’ he sez very gently, ‘there are many people in this unfortunate country who are lookin’ for the man who killed their brothers.’
“‘My brother was murdered,’ says H. doggedly, an’ told the tale.
“‘I don’t believe any of me men would have done such a thing,’ he sez. ‘What sort of a man was it?’
“So H. described him, an’ the young lawyer frowned.
“‘Bring Van Huis here,’ he sez to a Boer, an’ by an’ by the man he sent for came — a half-bred Dutchman with a dash of Hottentot in him.
“‘Oh, Van Huis,’ sez the Commandant careless, ‘they tell me you killed an English soldier at Valtspruit the other day?’
“The man grinned.
“‘Ja,’ he sez ‘I shot him dead.’
“‘Tell me how you did it,’ sez the Commandant, pickin’ his teeth with a splinter of wood.
“‘Hear,’ sez the half-breed, ‘I called him to bring me water, then I shot him.’
“The Commandant nodded.
“‘That was very clever,’ he sez, ‘so clever that I am goin’ to hang you to that tree, an’ this soldier shall be your executioner.’
“H. Jones came back with an escort of Boers, an’ was placed under arrest, until the C.O. read the letter that the Boer Commandant sent, then he was released.
“‘What I can’t understand,’ sez Smithy to me afterwards, is, how is it that these two chaps, who never took any notice of one another—’
“But I stopped old Smithy because I knew what he was going to say.
“Friends are friends,’ I sez, ‘an’ brothers are brothers — ,’ then I stopped too, for what more can you say than that?”
22. The Ghost of Heilbron Kopje
Nobby Clark, by all showing, is a man of great humanity. I have known him to do things that would make him very angry did be know I knew.
I have seen him, on a certain march — which lasted some six weeks, and was the most fatuous, futile, and wicked operation of the whole war — share his scanty rations with a man he hated. I have seen him by sickbeds as tender as a woman. It is said that in a certain fight on the Vaal River, where the grass caught fire, and the wounded lay helplessly sizzling in the flames, he and Private Smith went again and again into this perfect hell of torment to carry their wounded fellows to safety.
It is said, too, and, I do not doubt, with truth, that they lied their way out of a Victoria Cross, stoutly affirming that they took no part in the rescue, and persisting in the statement that those who thought they saw them were suffering from hallucinations, or, as Nobby put it coarsely, were drunk.
Knowing that deep down in the bottom of his heart Nobby Clark is a sentimentalist, and that away back in the base of his brain he is a shrewd, commonsense individual, the story of the ghost of the Hussar officer leaves me in an unsatisfactory condition of doubt. Is it Nobby’s heart or Nobby’s head that directs the recital? The facts, such as he gives me, I offer to the world in general, and the Psychical