THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace
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a dial as long as a wet week, an’ that the surest sign of badness is gladness.
“It’s a wrong idea, an’ the proof is this that the best man that ever wore a uniform was the happiest — and that man was Father John Stronard, C.F.*
[* C.F. — Chaplain to the Forces.]
“The first time I ever saw Father John was in Aldershot in ‘94. He ran a soldiers’ home in North Camp, an’ was one of those fellers with a thin, refined face, that had ‘Priest’ written all over him. He wasn’t an R.C., for all that. He was Church, very High Church, so some of the chaps said, an’ wore little medals on his watch chain. But high or low, he was the whitest kind of white man that ever lived. He was friends with all the other chaplains — that’s the best sign. Friends with ’em all, from Father O’Leary to Mr. Stemm, the Baptist lay preacher. He’d got no fads, he smoked a big fat pipe all day, an’ was ready to put on the gloves with any feller that thought he had the beatin’ of him. He never threw religion at you, but when a man acted the goat, you’d see that man go miles out of his way to avoid Father John.
“Fellers trusted him an’ told him things. There was a wild devil in Ours called Cross. Cross by name and crook by nature. There wasn’t a decent-minded man of Ours who would have anything to do with him. It wasn’t that his language was bad — it was worse than that. After he started swearin’ you felt that the room ought to be disinfected.
“One day on the ranges, firin’ our annual course, we was usin’ a new cartridge, ‘Mark 10.’
“Nobby was lyin’ alongside of me, an’ was passin’ sarcastic remarks about the markers.
“He fired a round, an’ got an ‘outer’; then he tried to pull back the breech block.
“‘Hullo,’ sez Nobby, she’s jammed.’
“It took him nigh on five minutes to get the exploded cartridge out, then he whistled, got up, an’ walked to the officer in charge.
“‘Beg pardon, sir,’ sez Nobby, ‘see this?’
“He held up the cartridge.
“The officer-boy, who hadn’t been from Sandhurst a week or so, frowned most terrible, an’ sez, ‘What’s wrong with it?’
“‘It’s split all up the side, sir,’ Nobby sez, ‘an’ this is the second time it’s happened — the cartridges are defective!’
“If the officer-boy had known cow-heel from tripe he’d have called up the officer in charge, who was at another part of the range, but bein’ only a kid at the game, an’ not wishin’ to take advice from a private, he sez, very stern: —
“‘Go back to your place, me man, an’ don’t talk nonsense.’
“So Nobby came back an’ lay down.
“By an’ by, the Colour-sergeant come up. ‘Why aren’t you firing, Clark?’ he sez, an’ Nobby told him.
“The ‘flag’ took the cartridge, an’ looked at it, an’ shouted, ‘Cease fire!’
“Up dashed the officer-boy.
“‘What the dickens is wrong, Colour-sergeant ‘ he sez angrily.
“‘Defective cartridges, sir,’ sez the ‘flag.’
“‘Who said so?’ sez the officer. ‘Go on firin’ till I tell you to stop.’
“So we went on firin’ for two minutes, an’ then the breech block of Sam Cross’s rifle blew out, an’ Sam went down screamin’, with half his face shot off.
“I’m not going to tell you how the officer was tried an’ cashiered, or how the ammunition was called in, an’ the fuss the papers made about it.
“When Cross got back to his senses, the first man he asked for was Father John, an’ Father John was at the hospital before you could say knife. Practically he didn’t leave him for two days an’ nights. He was with him when the doctors operated on poor old Sam, an’ with him through the night when it was a toss-up whether the patient would live or die, an’ with him for a couple of hours every day till Sam was turned out of hospital cured.
“Now the rum thing about it was this, that although he’d sent for the Father, an’ although they was together so long, not one word of religion passed between them.
“At first Father John used to only sit an’ read in his soft voice — bits out of books — an’ then, when young Sam got better an’ could talk, they’d discuss the coal business what Sam’s brother was in, an’ county cricket, an’ things like that, but for all this, Sam came back to the battalion a new man.
“The only thing that was ever said, was said before witnesses, an’ that was the day before Sam came out.
He walked with the Father to the door of the ward, an’ stood a bit awkward tryin’ to put the words together.
“‘Father,’ he sez, sudden, ‘how could a chap like me get to be a chap like you?’
“‘How d’ye mean, Sam?’ sez Father John.
“‘I mean,’ sez Sam, ‘you’re a man same as me, barrin’ education; how did you get to be patient, an’ gentle, an’ all?
“‘By sacrifice,’ sez Father John sadly.
“That was Sam’s motto when he came back to barracks. He’d got the idea in a dim sort of way into his thick head, that sacrifice meant not doin’ somethin’ you wanted to do, an’ doin’ things you didn’t want to do.
“Sometimes the devil in him got up; an’ I’ve seen him standin’ by his bed-cot, with the veins in his forehead swollen an’ his eyes glarin’ at somebody who had annoyed him, but he wouldn’t speak, an’ his hands would be clenched till the knuckles were white — then you’d see his lips move, an’ you could almost read the word ‘sacrifice’ on his lips.
“Then the regiment was ordered to India, an’ we left the padre behind. He marched down to the station by Sam’s side, an’ he shook hands with him on the platform. I believe that poor Sam never felt anything so much as he did that partin’, but he ‘stuck it’ — he was learnin’ his lesson.
“We hadn’t been in India a year, movin’ from station to station, before a feller by the name of Dah Yussef, who was a sort of head thief in the hills, came down an’ burned a village, killed a lot of people, an’ carried off some women an’ cattle. He was a pukka badmash*, was old Joseph, an’ this was about the ninth dacoity he’d committed in the year, the Government lookin’ on an’ sendin’ polite messages to him, askin’ him to kindly return the goods an’ no questions would be asked. We was stationed on the border, an’ naturally we was very bitter about the Government not doin’ anything.
[* Hindi: real rogue.]
“‘It’s a scandal,’ sez Nobby, very indignant. ‘I’ve a good mind to write home to the Islington Gazette about it. It’s this Liberal Government,’ sez Nobby, gloomily.
“‘It’s a Conservative Government in now,’ I sez, but Nobby sez it didn’t affect the argument.
“Old Joseph, or Yussef, or whatever his name was, naturally got bolder an’ bolder, an’ not satisfied with raiding the villages near his hills, he came farther into the open, an’ started ructions almost on the plains.
“That’s what the Government of India was waitin’ for. The Guides an’ a battalion of Ghoorkas was waitin’ doggo, an’ came by forced march, an’ the Anchesters, the Wessex, the Punjab Lancers, an’ two batteries of Artillery was sent off at a minutes’ notice to call on Uncle Joseph.
“We got the order at midnight, an’ by daybreak we was twelve miles on the road.
“It