Afar in the Forest | Page 5

hurry, contriving to look devilish important.
Grim followed them out.

"Rammy, old cock," said Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and
laughing, "don't look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I'll
kiss him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that
doctor's one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for
shell-shock, broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid's knee and the creeping
itch? Suppose he swears I'm luny? What then?"
"Grim will find somebody to swear to anything once," I answered. "But
you look altogether too dashed healthy--got to give the doctor-man a
chance--here, get between the sheets and kid that something hurts you."
"Get out! The doe 'ud put a cast-iron splint on it, and order me into a
hospital. How about toothache? That do? Do they give you bread and
water for it?"
So toothache was selected as an alibi, and Jeremy wrapped his jaw in a
towel, after jabbing his cheek with a pin so as to remember on which
side the pain should be. But it was artifice wasted, for Grim had turned
a better trick. He had found an Australian doctor in the hospital for
Sikhs--the only other Australian in Jerusalem just then-- and brought
him cooee-ing upstairs in a way that proved he knew the whole story
already.
The autopsy, as he called it, was a riot. We didn't talk of anything but
fights at Gaza--the surprise at Nazareth, when the German General
Staff fled up the road on foot in its pyjamas--the three-day scrap at
Nebi Samwil, when Australians and Turks took and retook the same
hill half a dozen times, and parched enemies took turns drinking from
one flask while the shells of both sides burst above them. It seems to
have been almost like old-fashioned war in Palestine from their account
of it, either side conceding that the other played the game.
When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish,
making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got
to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights,
fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern
Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier
Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union

men objected to unskilled labour--you'd have thought Australia was
one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from
dawn till dark.
The doctor was one of those tightly-knit, dark-complexioned little men
with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprise you with a mixture of
intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn't mix with it at all,
for turning up in all the unexpected places. You meet his sort
everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them
and makes a home out of tin cans and packing-cases that would put the
stay-at-home housekeepers to shame. They always have a picture on
the wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what
their circumstances are, there's always something in reserve, for guests,
offered frankly without apology. Never hesitate with those folk, but
don't let them go too far, for they'll beggar themselves to help you in a
tight place, if you'll let them. Ticknor his name was. He's a good man.
"Say, Grim, there's a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest
you," he said at last. "Fellow from Damascus--Arab--one of Feisul's
crowd. He wouldn't let them take him to the Zionist hospital--swore a
Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half
a chance. They'd have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I
hadn't gone shopping with Mabel. She saw the crowd first (I was in
Noureddin's store) and jabbed her way in with her umbrella--she yelled
to me and I bucked the line.
"The Jews wanted to tell me I had no right to take that chap to the Sikh
hospital, and no more had I; so I plugged him up a bit, and put him in a
cab, and let him take himself there, Mabel and me beside him. Seeing I
was paying for the cab, I didn't see why Mabel should walk. Of course,
once we had him in there he was too sick to be moved; but the Army
won't pay for him, so I sent a bill to the Zionists, and they returned it
with a rude remark on the margin. Maybe I can get the money out of
Feisul some day; otherwise I'm stuck."
"I'll settle that," said Grim. "What's the tune he plays?"
"Utter mystery. Swears a Jew stabbed him, but that Damascus outfit

blame the Jews for everything. He's only just down from Damascus. I