Cinderella in the South | Page 7

had exposed himself came to
me untouched. 'It looked near,' he allowed to me smiling. He stayed by
us for the rest of that fell morning. He smiled, and bade me cheer up,
when the naval commander went by; had he not twitted me for sitting
safe under the bulwark and wincing when the four-inch gun roared? He
smiled also a little ironically when my colleague came up, still fondling
his trophy and dilating on its splendor. Then he smiled again and again
as he moved behind him to and fro on the deck, watching him in the
pitiless firing. He smiled moreover when he moved up to the gun; he
was revising the gunlayer's work now and then, so far as I could make
out his movements. He smiled afterwards when the Intelligence Officer
made such sanguine estimates of the slaughter we had dealt out to forts
and trenches. They were talking together, he and his comrade of the
Maxim gun, discussing whether the bag was really a big one, the
former as glib with the pros as the latter was with the cons. The tall
listener smiled rather wistfully as he heard them. After the last round
from the six-pounder had been fired, before we went to lunch, he came
up and said farewell to me. 'But I shall see you again on board, shan't
I?' I asked. 'We shan't put you off at the Bay till nearly sunset, shall
we?' 'I may be getting off long before then,' he said, but he did not
explain how. My prayer book had fallen on the deck, and he picked it
up and gave it to me. 'Mind you keep to your own line,' he said. 'I like
that prayer in your prayer book about Saint Michael. Doubtless he's
covered not a few people's heads in this day of battle, not all of them on
the one side. It's likely enough he has unearthly notions about war, as
he's an unearthly being. Perhaps the dragon he makes war on, war to
the death, is neither England nor Germany, but just the scrapping
between them.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, rather puzzled. Yet he only smiled, he
was not very explicit.
'Oh, by the way,' he said. 'They tell me you've promised to build a

mission church to Saint Michael if you get back to the south safe and
sound.' I wondered afterwards who they were that had told him.
'Yes, I said, 'and if I don't, the building of it's endowed in my will.'
'Why not take the shell-cases,' he said, 'if they offer you some? You
needn't use them in your church as altar-vases. They'd make a splendid
trophy under Saint Michael's feet, a gleaming, sleek-barreled serpent of
slaughter, just the sort of dragon for him to tread, and delight in
treading. Good-bye.'
He was gone amongst the sailors, just as the steward called me up to
the cold soup. I saw no more of him on the voyage, nor have I seen him
since that September day. The one or two I asked about him seemed not
to know whom I meant. I have often wondered who he was since then,
and have framed a theory. Perhaps you can guess what it is without my
needing to write it down.

FUEL OF FIRE

I was lucky to get a lift. We had risen before the moon took to her bed,
and the sun had left his. We were driving through green woodlands
when the light grew clear around us. A little while ago their graceful
trees had been ruddy or bronze doubtless. Now it was the turn of the
hill-trees on the great kopje that we passed within a mile, to grow
bronzed and to redden. For the month of November had only just come
in. We outspanned in a valley where the new green of the grass had
come already. No doubt a month ago it had looked very black and
fire-scathed. Now the showers had brought kind healing and
amendment. We made our morning Memorial together (being all of us
Christians bound on some sort of a Christian pilgrimage), and after that
we breakfasted and smoked at ease while the mules grazed close by,
and the driver boiled his pot, and fed it with meal, and stirred and
ladled out, and ate in the fullness of time. My heart was very thankful.
How much better and kindlier one's lot seemed now fallen as it was

once again in this fair ground of a country at peace in Wartime. This
countryside pleased me ever so much better than British East or
German East this Mashonaland. There to north I remembered without
enthusiasm the tropical passions of the elements, I remembered rather
miserably some of the things