Driftwood Spars

Driftwood Spars, by Percival
Christopher Wren

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Christopher Wren This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: Driftwood Spars The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and
Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life
Author: Percival Christopher Wren
Release Date: March 23, 2004 [EBook #11691]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DRIFTWOOD SPARS ***

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DRIFTWOOD SPARS
THE STORIES OF A MAN, A BOY, A WOMAN, AND CERTAIN
OTHER PEOPLE WHO STRANGELY MET UPON THE SEA OF

LIFE
BY
CAPTAIN PERCIVAL CHRISTOPHER WREN, I.A.R.
AUTHOR OF "DEW AND MILDEW", "FATHER GREGORY",
"SNAKE AND SWORD", ETC.
"Like driftwood spars which meet and pass Upon the boundless
ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas! Man nears man, meets, and
leaves again"
--MATTHEW ARNOLD

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE

NOTE.--This book was written in the year 1912

CONTENTS.
I. THE MAN (Mainly concerning the early life of John, Robin
Ross-Ellison.)
II. THE BOY (Mainly concerning the life of Moussa Isa Somali.)
III. THE WOMAN (And Augustus Grabble; General Murger;
Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius
Gosling-Green; Mr. Horace Faggit; as well as a reformed JOHN
ROBIN ROSS-ELLISON.)
IV. "MEET AND LEAVE AGAIN"
CHAPTER I.

THE MAN.
(Mainly concerning the early life of John Robin Ross-Ellison.)
Truth is stranger than fiction, and many of the coincidences of real life
are truly stranger than the most daring imaginings of the fictionist.
Now, I, Major Michael Malet-Marsac, happened at the moment to be
thinking of my dear and deeply lamented friend John Ross-Ellison, and
to be pondering, for the thousandth time, his extraordinary life and
more extraordinary death. Nor had I the very faintest notion that the
Subedar-Major had ever heard of such a person, much less that he was
actually his own brother, or, to be exact, his half-brother. You see I had
known Ross-Ellison intimately as one only can know the man with
whom one has worked, soldiered, suffered, and faced death. Not only
had I known, admired and respected him--I had loved him. There is no
other word for it; I loved him as a brother loves a brother, as a son
loves his father, as the fighting-man loves the born leader of
fighting-men: I loved him as Jonathan loved David. Indeed it was
actually a case of "passing the love of women" for although he killed
Cleopatra Dearman, the only woman for whom I ever cared, I fear I
have forgiven him and almost forgotten her.
But to return to the Subedar-Major. "Peace, fool! Art blind as Ibrahim
Mahmud the Weeper," growled that burly Native Officer as the zealous
and over-anxious young sentry cried out and pointed to where, in the
moonlight, the returning reconnoitring-patrol was to be seen as it
emerged from the lye-bushes of the dry river-bed.
A recumbent comrade of the outpost sentry group sniggered.
My own sympathies were decidedly with the sentry, for I had fever,
and "fever is another man". In any case, hours of peering, watching,
imagining and waiting, for the attack that will surely come--and never
comes--try even experienced nerves.
"And who was Ibrahim the Weeper, Subedar-Major Saheb?" I inquired
of the redoubtable warrior as he joined me.

"He was my brother's enemy, Sahib," replied Mir Daoud Khan Mir
Hafiz Ullah Khan, principal Native Officer of the 99th Baluch Light
Infantry and member of the ruling family of Mekran Kot in far
Kubristan.
"And what made him so blind as to be for a proverb unto you?"
"Just some little drops of water, Sahib, nothing more," replied the big
man with a smile that lifted the curling moustache and showed the
dazzling perfect teeth.
It was bitter, bitter cold--cold as it only can be in hot countries (I have
never felt the cold in Russia as I have in India) and the khaki flannel
shirt, khaki tunic, shorts and putties that had seemed so hot in the cruel
heat of the day as we made our painful way across the valley, seemed
miserably inadequate at night, on the windy hill-top. Moreover I was in
the cold stage of a go of fever, and to have escaped sunstroke in the
natural oven of that awful valley at mid-day seemed but the prelude to
being frost-bitten on the mountain at midnight. Subedar-Major Mir
Daoud Khan Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan appeared wholly unaffected by the
100° variation in temperature, but then he had a few odd stone