Cinderella in the South | Page 5

they
supposed to be scrapping like the gods in Homer English Saint George
against German Saint Michael and so on?' But my friend did not seem
very keen about either Homer or hagiology. He explained that he was a
C.M.S. man, and not a medievalist. The discussion languished, ere he
murmured 'Good night.'
I slept rather fitfully. I was awake long before the ship moved away on
her fierce errand. At last, when she had been steaming some while, I
stole down in the dark to the bathroom. When I came out of it the grey
twilight was beginning. I crept aft and looked over the bulwark,
wondering how far we were away now. The shore Maxim was in place
there with plenty of sand bags about it, but the officer in charge of it
was still stretched abed. His friend the Intelligence Officer, who had
messed with us last night, was snoring on another bed beside him. I
stood looking at a dusky island in the moonlight, and began praying a
favorite prayer of mine for those times, asking God to let Saint Michael
cover our heads in the day of battle. I muttered the prayer very low, but
it appeared that somebody heard. A slim figure, seemingly in khaki,
that I had not noticed, rose up from a seal; on the sand bags.
'Are you praying something about battles?' it asked. I started, and
assented clumsily.
'How does one pray about battles nowadays?' the investigator
proceeded. He spoke in the friendliest way, and managed to set even
me at ease. So I told him what I had prayed for.
'It sounds a fair sort of prayer; better than some I've heard,' he allowed,
as he sat down again. 'Some people seem to forget the last lot of the
Books in the Bible when they pray nowadays.' I heartily agreed.
'I don't believe for one,' he went on, 'that Saint Michael is passionately
interested in wiping out either English or askaris or Germans. It's surely

better to pray about him like you prayed. I should think the negative
work appeals to him more than the positive, the salvage more than the
blotting.'
His voice was clear, and evidently carried. The Maxim's warden
grumbled, and began to sit up in bed.
'Possibly,' this disturber of slumber went on quite unconcernedly, 'Saint
Michael has a clearer notion as to the real enemy than some clients who
invoke him.'
Then the officer in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the other's
talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already left his perch
among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had my coffee. Soon
after came the scurry to stations. We were coming into the bay in the
glory of that morning under hangings of amber and rose and feathery
grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in their places. I stood trying to
read the Prayer before Action in its very small print. I murmured what I
was doing to my cheery colleague, so much more enthusiastic than I
was about what seemed to be coming. Then someone came up and
spoke to me. It was surely my friend from the sand bags. I could see
him properly now. He was surely an officer. He stood up slender and
shapely in his khaki, but he was not wearing a single star or a
regimental badge of any kind. Had he forgotten these in the hurry of
this eager morning? With but a few words, he passed on towards the
guns' crews. Soon our four-inch gun was shaking the ship horribly. We
were shelling a trench that ran up a hillside, they said. I sat under cover
of the bulwark near some kneeling riflemen, far from enjoying myself.
Yet no gun roared back in answer to our own. It seemed to be one-sided
enough, this operation of war.
'It's a fearful weapon,' remarked my colleague rather complacently, as
he paced towards the gun platform. One prayed for those who were
naked to its fearsomeness up on the hill there, and prayed about Saint
Michael's intervention to Saint Michael's Commander-in-Chief. The
long-drawn moments slurred by us. A bell rang as the ship wound her
way in slowly. The mournful cry of him who took the soundings came
again and again. Then we stopped dead anew, and our gun's mouth

roared and flamed.
'Such a crowd of askaris; the hill's black with them!' So the signalman
cried to the doctor, as he sped by on a message. I was interested in
watching the gun-layer as he readjusted the dragon mouth. But what
had my friend of the sand-bags to do with the matter? He moved
among the gun's crew, and none said him nay; his hands were on the
gun after