Chapter XXXVII (4)

Now, since there was a prize for the drawer of the bottom boy, Taylor and Glover each had a lively interest in insuring that the other should be bottom. Each of them argued that if he could just beat the other he would win twelve shillings, for neither of them could conceive that the wooden spoon should become the property of any other member of the form. Both of them, therefore, while making a great parade of laziness, began surreptitiously to neglect their work a shade less thoroughly than before.

There were two favourites for the other prize. Poor Tomkins had declined to enter for the sweepstake, but his name had been entered and had been drawn by Cork. Cork was in the same house as Tomkins, but whereas Tomkins was a mere insignificant scholar Cork was in the Cricket Eleven and a great man. Hitherto he had treated Tomkins with good-humoured contempt. Tomkins was useful to him. Tomkins was responsible for Cork’s classical studies, his French, and his mathematics. Cork did not overwork Tomkins; he did not give him his essays. Somebody else did the essays.

In consideration for these services Cork had not interfered with Tomkins’ ambition to work hard. Cork was a man of large tolerance. If Tomkins liked to ‘sweat himself blue’ that was Tomkins’ look-out. So he contented himself with occasional badinage in which Tomkins was asked to explain the pleasure he derived from ‘oiling.’

But, of course, the sweepstake altered Cork’s attitude. He had drawn Tomkins and, if Tomkins could beat Rolland, Cork would win twelve shillings. Clearly Tomkins must spare no effort to beat Rolland. ‘Oil,’ instead of seeming an eccentric hobby, became a civic virtue. Cork began to take the liveliest interest in the progress of his young ward. Cork had been left near the bottom of the form, and Tomkins, who had come up with a head remove, sat just behind him. When Tomkins missed a question, Cork turned round and expressed by crude but intelligible signs his bitter disappointment.

Mr. Strange, who was Cork’s housemaster as well as form-master, was very puzzled by this new development. ‘Why this sudden interest in Tomkins?’ he said one day. ‘I’m not sure that Tomkins is altogether grateful for your attentions.’

Tomkins wasn’t. Cork’s zeal quite put him off. Tomkins began to lose his nerve, and Rolland beat him all along the line.

Cork was quite embittered by Tomkins’ failure. ‘Oh, yes, Tomkins,’ he said one day, ‘you can oil all right when it’s only to please yourself, but when it’s a question of twelve bob for me you simply foozle everything. You did a rotten rep. this morning. Your father’s a Baptist, isn’t he? Well, by gum! if you don’t come out top I’ll baptise you.’

Tomkins murmured nervously that his father was Church of England.

Cork sat next to Mr. Strange at lunch, and on the fatal Sunday he did his best to pump Mr. Strange. ‘Has Tomkins come out top?’ he pleaded wistfully. ‘I should so like to know, sir.’

‘My dear Cork,’ said Mr. Strange, ‘I can’t make you out. You don’t usually condescend to take the least interest in your work or anybody else’s. What’s in the wind?’

Cork was understood to say that the honour of the house was very dear to him, and that while he was doing his best for the house at footer, he expected Tomkins as the star scholar to do his best for the house in school. Mr. Strange asked him if he was feeling the heat.

That afternoon a murmur of excitement ran round the form-room when Mr. Strange appeared. Besides the sweepstake, most of the Lower Fifth had contracted a number of side-bets on the result of the Fortnightly Order. Tomkins and Rolland both carried money, and for the first time in their school careers their respective achievements were a matter of general interest. Cork had despaired of Tomkins, and had vainly tried to ‘sell’ him for half a crown. But there were no offers.

Glover and Taylor, who had both been working a little harder and cribbing a great deal more thoroughly, were each convinced that they had beaten the other. Five to four against either of them was freely quoted. Glover was sure that Taylor would be bottom and that he would therefore win the prize allotted to the lucky drawer of the bottom man. Taylor was no less confident that Glover would occupy that ignoble position.

Mr. Strange glanced round the room before beginning to read out the Order, and remarked drily, ‘I am flattered, but a little surprised, at the sudden interest which some of you seem to be taking in the Form Order. This is such a contrast to your usual attitude of bland indifference that I really wonder whether you’ve been betting on it. The only objection to this theory is that I don’t suppose for a moment that any of you consider your school work of sufficient importance to risk a spare sixpence on it.’

Mr. Strange, it will be seen, was a cynic. Only cynics understand boys.

The Form Order was a surprise and a shock to a good many people.

Cork gave a resigned snort when Tomkins was read out second, but Cork’s disappointment was mild compared to the fury of Glover and Taylor, who, thanks to their sudden zeal, had risen ten places and were bracketed fifteenth. Never was promotion less welcome. ‘This is most gratifying,’ said Mr. Strange—‘most gratifying. Our stalwarts, our Arcades Ambo, have at last shown what they are capable of. I always suspected, my dear Glover, that it was energy rather than brains that you lacked; and you, Taylor, have, I feel sure, done yourself an injustice in the past by your pathetic insistence on your small intellectual endowment. This improvement must be maintained. I shall be very angry with you if you sink back to bottom again.’

Glover and Taylor began to devise some effective punishment for Villers. Villers and his rotten sweepstakes! Good Heavens, just think of it! They had been bamboozled out of a prize, and they had set themselves an impossible standard of hard work for the future.

The Form Order contained yet another sensation.

‘Sweep’ Villers had sunk from twelfth to twenty-fifth. Curiously enough, when his name was read out bottom of the form a smile of relief seemed to cross his face. Mr. Strange caught this smile. It did not improve matters. ‘Don’t sit there smiling,’ he said. ‘It’s no use trying to carry off this disgraceful exhibition with an affectation of jaunty indifference. You don’t deceive me, I assure you.’

None the less, he was deceived. For Villers’ smile was a smile of genuine and unaffected joy. You see, he had drawn himself in the sweepstake, and, as he had managed to come out bottom, he had won twelve shillings.

_THE VOICE OF THE GUNS._

BY F. J. SALMON.

What man, unless he be entirely devoid of imagination, has not been profoundly impressed when, for the first time, he hears the distant roll of the guns? How many a soldier makes it the theme of his first letter home? It is the first intimation his relatives get that he is really at the front. And yet, from the sound alone, he will get very little idea as to how far off the line really is. The conformation of the ground, the wind and possibly other climatic conditions affect the transmission of sound in an extraordinary way. One can often hear the guns from very far back, whereas from closer up nothing can be heard at all. If there is a bombardment on, the noise is continuous but varies in intensity either with the wind or according to the number of heavy pieces that are firing at the same instant.

Later on, if he is observant, the soldier may get to know the individual voices of some of these guns and recognise the bursts of their shell.

On first coming into the line he is unable to distinguish the meaning of the various sounds, and the report of one of our own field-guns firing behind him is likely to cause him more alarm than a Boche rifleman sniping at his unwittingly exposed head. The 18-pounder field-gun makes a most ear-splitting crack for those who stand in front of the battery, and, moreover, the sound seems to come from only a few yards away. The sniper’s bullet will strike the parapet with a resounding crack, followed by the whirr of its passage through the air, and a new-comer might easily imagine that one of our own men had fired from the next traverse.

The German field-gun, in common with our own 18-pounder, and, in fact, all high-velocity guns, always sounds a good deal nearer than it really is, and as the shell travels very fast and reaches the front-line trenches very shortly after, or, sometimes, even before, the whizz of its approach, it gives the infantry the impression that the battery is in some impossible position just behind the German support line.

The ‘whizz-bang’ and the ‘pip-squeak’ are terms applied to the same German field-gun by people who are shot at by him at different ranges.

In the first case there is a warning whirr of approach, but the shell reaches the man who is ‘pip-squeaked’ while it is still travelling faster than sound, and he gets the ‘pip’ of the explosion first and the whizz afterwards—if there is enough of him left to hear it!

The voice of the German 77-millimetre field-gun can usually be distinguished from the various other guns, trench mortars, bombs and shells that are continually heard along the line. It sounds like two planks being banged together in a courtyard where there is some echo from the walls.

The heavy howitzers make far less noise, and the report cannot always be detected, but the sound of the shell in the air is unmistakable. It is a curious, intermittent, hollow, rushing sound, with an ever-deepening note which dies away, if it is not coming near you, just before the rending ‘crump’ of the explosion.

This ‘crump’ is a sound-phenomenon which I am unable to explain. Whereas the lighter shell goes off with an ordinary ‘bang,’ the 15-centimetre and larger projectiles sound like a whole family of explosions going off not quite at the same instant.

The German light field-howitzer in its acoustic effects is much like a smaller edition of its larger brothers. Of the huge 42-centimetre shells I have had, I am glad to say, no experience so far.

Another sound that one gets to know with experience is the report of the trench mortar. This is not distinguishable if there is much noise going on, and is best likened to the ‘clap’ of a pigeon-trap. My ear has been somewhat trained by much _shikar_ in Ceylon jungles, and this has held me in good stead on at least one occasion, when, after blowing a mine, the Germans fired four trench mortars at a group of miners and myself in a front-line sap. I distinctly heard the ‘clap’ of the report and was able to give the warning to disperse. There was not much cover, but we had good luck and no one was hit.

A pleasant ‘drawing-room’ voice is that of our beautiful little field-howitzer. It goes off with more of a puff than a bang, and the shell sails away with a soft whirring note which is lost in the distance long before the formidable crash of the burst is wafted back from the German lines.

An alarming sound that one used to hear earlier in the war, when ammunition was of a lower quality than it is now, was that of a shell with a ‘stripped’ driving band. Such a shell will whirl through the air at any angle and will land, possibly base first, a mile or two short of its mark.

One of the most encouraging of sounds is the dull thud of a German ‘blind’ shell, especially if, as often happens, they are coming over in appreciable numbers. We are sometimes treated to furious ‘strafes’ with shells of the ‘toy-shop’ quality, of which only a small percentage detonate properly, while a somewhat larger proportion go off with an impotent pop, and the majority fail to explode at all.

‘Smoky Bill’ used to fire such shells. ‘Smoky Bill’ was a funny old thing dating back from the ’seventies. A vast column of smoke rising from behind a certain wood in the German lines was the first signal that he had fired, and this was followed by a fearsome whirr in the air, and then, five times out of six, by a dull thud and nothing more! We knew where ‘Smoky Bill’ was, but nobody ever fired at him—he was one of the side-shows of that sector and never did anyone any harm.

Now ‘Percy’ is another fellow altogether. ‘Percy’ is the long 13-centimetre high-velocity German gun. At most ranges ‘Percy’ comes quicker than sound, and there is no warning of his approach. He goes off with a mighty bang, and his shell, when you do hear it, comes along with a terrific shriek. The only encouraging thought about ‘Percy’ is that he is not very common down the line, whereas we have many guns that must give the enemy similar thrills.

In order to feel thoroughly optimistic about the war one must hear the voice of the French ‘75’ when he is really angry. I happened to be at an observation-post down in the French lines one evening when word had come down from the front line that enemy trench mortars were very active in a certain sector. Two batteries of ‘75’s’ immediately took on the offenders. One or two rounds for _réglage_ were sent over from the _première pièce_ of each battery, there was a slight correction for range (‘_diminuez de cinquante!_’), and then they literally pummelled the Hun trenches for about a minute and a half. A confused roar of ear-splitting cracks, a wild swirl of shells, and two continuous rows of black spurts shot up from the German trenches. There was one gap in the wall of bursting melinite, which gradually narrowed, and then the firing stopped. A few words down the telephone, and then, with a loud crash, two salvoes went into the remaining gap. The captain in the observation-post merely remarked ‘_Bon!_’ and sat down to record his targets. These short vigorous strafes must be very disconcerting to friend Hun, and although, of course, every round did not actually hit the mark, the shooting was remarkably accurate and the majority did get some part of the trench. One can imagine the effect of the last two salvoes on the previously unstrafed portion where seekers after shelter would have gathered!

On another occasion, at the beginning of one of the minor battles of the war, I was at the same post, and these two batteries were firing at a most remarkable speed, the general principle being to return anything that was sent over by the enemy with interest—a thing that the Frenchman always seems able to do unless his guns happen to be hopelessly outnumbered by some local concentration of the Germans.

Many and interesting are the various sound-phenomena of the battlefield. Why is it, for instance, that once when a certain battery was firing over my head from behind a crest the rush of the shell was heard going away in an opposite direction, so that it seemed, at first, as if the breech had blown out; and that when I approached the battery the shells sounded as if they were going straight up in the air? Why is it that, from some positions, the shells from our own batteries are heard to give forth a crackling sound instead of the usual swirl when speeding over to the enemy? This last effect may occasionally be due to a badly centred shell, but, I think, not always. One is too busy in war-time to look into these interesting details, and in peace-time one has not the opportunity!

I remember an occasion when the guns made a very effective accompaniment to a song. I was lunching below ground in an observation-post dug-out, and a very pleasant-voiced lady was singing to us from a gramophone. I forget what the song was, but the regular bang and whirr of a battery firing overhead certainly improved the effect. We shouted up to the observer to know if the shells were ‘ours’ or ‘theirs,’ and elicited the interesting information that it was the Germans who were supplying the accompaniment!

The sound of the enemy shells is all too well known to most of us out here, but there appear to be not many who have actually seen one in the air. I have seen German shells coming towards me on two separate occasions, but have, so far, never met anyone who has had the same experience. This seems strange, for there is no reason why it should not happen fairly frequently. It is quite an easy matter to see one of our own shells leaving a howitzer, and sometimes a gun, if one stands straight behind it, and it should only be a question of happening to look in the right direction to see one coming the other way.

It was in the spring of last year near ‘Windy Corner’ that I first saw a German shell on the wing. I had not been long at the front, and I instinctively looked up when I heard it coming. What I saw was a minute but very rapidly increasing speck in the sky, moving so fast that I was somehow unable to judge where it was going to fall. I accordingly made myself as small as possible, but it burst in a farm at the comparatively safe distance of some 150 yards. It was from a 15-centimetre howitzer, and was immediately followed by another, which I again saw by looking in the same direction. As this was followed by a flight of ‘whizz bangs,’ and as I had no pressing business there at the moment, I hurried from that well-known and unwholesome spot.

It was many months before I again had a similar experience, and this time it was rather more thrilling. I was walking over some open country towards the trenches in company with my sergeant-major, and the Germans had started shelling a battery behind us. They were firing with the ordinary 77-millimetre field-gun, and the first few rounds were short and unpleasantly close to us. The Hun battery must have been some way back, as we heard the report and the warning whistle of the shell some two or three seconds before it arrived. At the next report I looked up instinctively to gauge the direction in which the shell was going. The range had been increased, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of a tiny speck in the sky which grew larger and disappeared close over my head in a small fraction of a second. It did not appear to come straight, but described a ‘googly’ curve. How much of this was due to its actual path, and how much the mere effect produced on the eye by its extreme speed, I cannot say, but I know that shells do not travel straight but affect a kind of ‘slice.’

On such occasions those who duck or take cover are usually too late. The rush of its near approach reached my sergeant-major after I had seen it go over, and though he has a delightful contempt for Germany’s efforts to destroy him, which I am not always able to share, on this occasion it was I who stood up apparently unconcerned while he crouched on the ground waiting for a shell which had already burst in the battery some 200 yards behind us!

When a shell passes very near to one its whistle increases to the roar of an express train, and when there is anything like a heavy bombardment on it is only those shells which pass dangerously close that one can hear above the general din.

More disconcerting than the actual burst of the shell is the ‘whirr’ of the splinters or, in the case of shrapnel, the loud ‘miaow’ of the flying bullets. I suppose our gallant airmen have more shrapnel fired at them than anyone else, and the loud ‘clump, clump, clump’ of the bursting ‘Archies,’ followed by the whine of three hundred bullets flying from each shell, is an almost continuous tune down the line even on the quietest of days.

Happily, man can accustom himself to most things, and to the seasoned soldier these sounds arouse little more interest than the rumble of London traffic to the Cockney—unless, of course, he is actually being fired at himself!

But to-day (July 1) the distant sound of the guns is once more stirring me as it did on my first morning in Flanders over a year ago. The rumble is more persistent and continuous than it has ever been. Yesterday my work took me down to the line, and I witnessed some pretty ‘strafing,’ but it is only back here at head-quarters that the true meaning of things is borne in upon me. Whichever side of the hill I stand, and according as the breeze varies, the thud and roar is continuous—it comes from three points of the compass. It is useless to speculate, but, whatever may happen in the future, this, at least, is a black day for Germany—the voices of the mighty guns of Britain and of France are raised in such a chorus as was never heard before.

_‘DO’-NO-WHO’._

It is over a year ago since an Irish private, known to his pals by the above rather obvious contortion of the proper name of Donohue, was brought into hospital. He came with a convoy of British who, nearly all, were suffering from gas poisoning as well as wounds. Those being the early days of ‘the gaz,’ as Do’-no-who called it, arrangements for its defeat were not yet altogether successful. After all, who could then have foreseen such a devilish invention of war? However, the poor, panting, choking, indeed in some cases retching, men who came to us had been given some kind of protection. Each one clung still to his particular mask, limp, blackened, flimsy affair that it was.

Poor old Do’-no-who’s condition was pretty desperate. You could hear him breathing fifty yards away. He was sustained from first to last by the most indomitable fighting spirit I ever came across. During a struggle of several days’ duration there was only one order which he utterly declined to obey. Nothing would, nobody _could_ keep him from talking—even in his sleep. I am bound to say it chiefly took the form of endless ejaculation. As, for instance, when with intense difficulty he managed at first to gulp down a little champagne, it was like this—‘Isn’t that fine now?’ ‘Grand!’ or ‘That’s killin’ the divil’s own gaz’—a word at a time between every sip.

Soon realising that every known resource was being tried to relieve his sufferings, old Do’-no-who did his level best to respond to it and to cheer us on. ‘Och, I’m finely now,’ or ‘It’s only the gaz that’s hindering ye’s all,’ he would say, with a sorry attempt to smile. But sometimes there would be anxious moments, when he would lie back only partially conscious. Then it seemed as though he was engaged in some most exciting and exhausting struggle. Little exclamations of despair or joy in turn would escape him.

‘Sure this gaz’ll defate me!’ ‘Deed it will that!’

Then, after renewed panting, the perspiration would pour down his cheeks, and ‘I have it!’ ‘Isn’t it weighty now?’ and the puff! puff! puff! greater than ever made one wonder what huge burden he thought he was lifting.

‘I’m afraid he’s a little delirious,’ said the doctor, as he put his finger again on the patient’s pulse. Old Do’-no-who seemed to hear this. He would open his eyes and say in a tone of triumph: ‘Sure! Won’t I be comminded for conspicuous gallantry!’ So, whilst some doubted, others could only see conviction in his clear steady blue eye as he again thankfully attempted to inhale more oxygen. His hands were continually seeking and fingering a little string of beads that lay beside him: ‘It was me rosary brought me t’rough,’ he said, as he relapsed into a painful sleep.

Once he overheard some remark that rather pleased him, and he cut in rather unexpectedly: ‘Yes, prayer is the foundation of all graces.’

In spite of the constant and hideous strain of the breathing, we were amazed at the way his constitution bore him along. Also he had certain intervals of marked improvement and we almost dared to hope. So did Do’-no-who. ‘Sure we’ll niver die!’ he said, and his eyes shone with such confidence and joy that we began to think he was right.

Even in his worst agony he had always managed to fling an occasional word of wit or chaff towards his companions. Now it was impossible to suppress him. Carried outside in his bed in the glorious sun, he and several of the patients quite revived under the influence of that soft May air.

It was a pathetic little row of beds; some of the men’s faces so deadly white, others still of that dark uncanny colour which tells its own story of asphyxiation. Yet few there were, indeed hardly one of those men within earshot of Do’-no-who, that did not shake with weak giggling if he so much as opened his lips or looked across at them. There indeed was the medicine of the merry heart.

Alas! for us all when one morning Do’-no-who began to show signs of relapse. He had had a bad night and was unmistakably low in his mind. Instead of the usual radiant smile and the variable welcome ‘I’m grand!’ or ‘Sure, I’ll be rightly sune,’ it was a kind of beaten look that greeted us. His glad expression had suddenly changed to one of unutterable sadness. He gravely shook his head without a word, and then sank back on the pillow.

Every effort was still being put forth to relieve him, but oxygen, ‘dry-cupping,’ and various other remedies seemed this time to have lost their power. Only, strange to say, the doctor found his pulse had lost little of its strength. He told him so.

‘Mebbe, yer honour, but I’m greatly fataagued,’ murmured Do’-no-who, as he wearily closed his eyes.

The truth was he had given himself up. Once a man does that it is little use to argue with him. Poor old Do’-no-who’s Gethsemane took the form of dire disappointment. ‘Sure, I’ll miss mi rewa-r-rd,’ he faintly whispered.

Spite of all our attempts to keep bright, an atmosphere of depression was gradually creeping over the ward. The sudden change in Bed 14 was responsible for it all. Do’-no-who lay there perfectly helpless, his painful breathing sounding more like the regular sawing of a piece of wood than anything else.

In the afternoon there was little change, except that his pulse at last showed signs of weakening, the light had gone out of his eyes, and he was unable to swallow anything.

By this time some of the patients were beginning to get along well: so much easier was their breathing they were able to sleep in comparative comfort. Others, however, were wakeful. They only wished to lie quiet. Some indeed tried to look at picture papers, but you could tell by the quick anxious glances they gave towards Bed 14 from time to time that their thoughts were centred entirely on one person.

As the hours progressed we found that Do’-no-who’s strength was gradually waning. His pulse was faint and fluttering, he had fallen into a heavy drowsy state, and his breathing came in short light puffs. Yet all the time, strange to say, he would insist on keeping that great strong arm of his right up at the back of his head which lay so still on the pillow. He remained like that for hours, whilst the breathing gradually slowed, faltered and went on again, till it was almost inaudible and the fluttering pulse could scarcely be felt. Then—quite suddenly—as he slept the tired head fell over and the big hand relaxed. He had stepped over the border without a struggle. We placed his hand gently beside him, and took the rosary from the other one and hung it round his neck.

‘The strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained
And the barriers fall.
...
Sudden the worst turns the best to the brave
The black minute’s at end.’

BROWNING.

Before very long some orderlies came and fetched Do’-no-who. It was touching to see the patients—all who could—standing at attention as the stretcher came down the ward and was carried out through the door. Even those in bed managed to raise a weak hand to their forehead as the big frame of Donohue wrapped in a Union Jack passed along.

One, Murphy, a quiet little Irishman with ferrety eyes who occupied the adjoining bed, had scarcely spoken all the time. We were not surprised, for he too had suffered badly from the gas, but judging by the way he kept his eyes rivetted on Do’-no-who we felt he took more than ordinary interest in his case. Now, as the sad little procession disappeared, Murphy turned right over on his pillow and quietly covered his face with his sheet. When a little later we told him we had put his supper near him, he left it untouched, and silently declined to emerge from his retreat.

That night when most of the others had gone to sleep, Murphy was seen to uncover his face, and as the night Sister passed down the ward he signalled to her.

Most pitifully red and tear-stained though he was, he had evidently something important to say. He began abruptly:

‘I’m spakin’ God’s truth to ye, Sister, I tell you I saw him miself.’

‘Saw whom, Murphy?’

‘Yon man,’ waving toward the empty bed. ‘Don’t ye mind what he told ye about conspicuous gallantry?’

‘Oh to be sure. You mean poor Donohue? But didn’t the doctor say he was delirious?’

‘God’s truth,’ again said Murphy. ‘Do’-no-who was no man for lying. I’ll tell ye all I saw, Sister.’

‘Don’t you think you had better try and sleep now? We can talk better in the morning.’

‘Deed no, it’s little sleep I’ll get till me mind’s relaised,’ and poor Murphy looked so distressed and worried the Sister saw it was best to let him have his way. This is what he told her.

‘Do ye mind the day we was brought in? It was that fore-neune we’d had the biggest gaz battle that iver ye saw. Sure, we’d shtarted attackin’ finely. We Irish boys was with the Highlanders. We’d quit our trenches and was for dashing right across to the Boches, when all in a minute we seemed to come intil a gaz cloud. It set us shtrugglin’ and imprecatin’ and shplutterin’. Do’-no-who was beside me. We would have suffocated entoirely, so we got to runnin’. Do’-no-who, strong boy that he was, was prancin’ along past me, chokin’ and trying to git his mask fix’d on him, when he stopped all of a sudden. He might have been par’rlised.

‘“Come along,” ses I, what with the gaz.

‘“Divil a bit,” ses he. “I’ve just moinded the machane-gun. We’ve left it for the Boches.”

‘“How could we help ’t?” ses I. “Think o’ yiself and quit troublin’ about machane-guns.”

‘“I _am_ thinkin’ of miself,” ses Do’-no-who. “Sure I’m the boy that can fetch it out.” With that, he lept off and back into the gaz cloud, whilst I did nothin’—may the holy Virgin forgive me! I went on runnin’ and shtrugglin’ to get clear o’ the gaz which was killin’ me.’

Here Murphy broke down and sobbed aloud with the memory.

‘After a wee while,’ he went on presently, ‘whin I’d joined the boys and was for settin’ beside thim, where we was all coughin’ and chokin’ and shpittin’, I saw the stritcher bearers comin’ along. They had been pickin’ up several of us and on the last stritcher of all didn’t I see puir old Do’-no-who? Ooh! but he was pantin’ like a shteam roller and black in the face.

‘“Are ye dead?” ses I intil his ear as he passed me.

‘“I’m not,” he whishpor’d, “only spacheless.”

‘That was all, and I shtaggared on after them. ’Twas the divil’s own tramp to the dressin’ station. I could see them takin’ Do’-no-who in. After a while one of his stritcher bearers came out, so I got spakin’ till him.

‘“Yon’s a grand man,” ses he.

‘“He is. Where did ye find him?” ses I. “I lost him in the misht.”

‘“We caught sight of him comin’ thro’ the gaz,” ses he. “He was rollin’ and shtumblin’ like as he was in drink, but he was bringin’ somethin’ along on his shoulders. We couldn’t see what it was at first. It seemed weighty—he was doubled up under it like a camel. We’d got near him, about fifty yards off, when he giv another big shtumble and over he trip’t and fell over all in a big wee bonch. When we got till him he was shtretched out flat and a machane-gun was lying beside him. Ochone, it’s done for him I’m thinkin’, but sure, hadn’t he the divil’s own pluck to bring it that far?” ses he.’

Murphy lay very quiet after he had finished his tale, but he was now distinctly relieved. He submitted to having his bed made comfortable and his pillows shaken, and he let the Sister give him a little soup before settling off.

She passed him half an hour afterwards and was thankful to see that the ferrety eyes were closed. By the difficult but regular breathing that came from that tired little body she knew that sleep, in merciful pity, had wiped out the memory of the machine-gun tragedy—for a few hours at any rate.

DOSIA BAGOT.

_BALLIOL MEMORIES._

BY THE HON. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY.

On March 28, 1916, in a blizzard of snow and a tempest of wind, which might bear comparison with the storm during which Oliver Cromwell passed away, celebrated by Tennyson’s ‘Talking Oak’—

‘When that wild wind made work
In which the gloomy brewer’s soul
Went by me, like a stork’

—the gentle and loving spirit of James Leigh Strachan-Davidson passed away. During his early manhood his health had been so weak that he had been regularly compelled to winter abroad, and few would have anticipated that he would have exceeded by three years the Psalmist’s allotted span of threescore and ten; but his dauntless courage, serene patience, and strong sense of duty carried him through a long career of usefulness.

I had known and loved him for more than half a century, and when I saw the news in _The Times_ of the following morning my thoughts went back to the last occasion when we met at a rather remarkable gathering of old Balliol contemporaries which had taken place annually during all that period, nothing but the sternest necessity keeping any of us away. We had dined together once every year since 1867, generally on the second day of the University cricket match, and we met for the last time under the presidency of Sir Horatio Shephard, long a distinguished Indian Judge, on July 6, 1914. Although there was a full attendance, two or three had dropped out of our ranks since the last meeting, when twenty-three out of a possible twenty-four had been present, but gaps were to be expected when the youngest of the gathering, myself, was on the verge of seventy, and I voiced a pretty general feeling when I proposed that after our next dinner (actually the 46th) we should wind up voluntarily, finishing in 1915 with a special Jubilee Festival. My resolution was carried unanimously, but, alas for the vanity of human wishes! in one short month Armageddon was upon us, and in 1915, when the day came round for the University match and our dinner, the rival blues, both sides one khaki-clad phalanx, were fighting side by side ‘somewhere in France’ or on the shrapnel-swept heights of Gallipoli; and we ourselves, with sons and grandsons at the front, had no heart for festivities. Our ‘Balliol dinner’ was fated to die a natural death, but it should not be allowed to come to an end ‘without the meed of a melodious tear.’ I typed a copy of the book in which all our meetings are recorded in the hands of the successive presidents, from the first dinner, under the presidency of Archer Clive, in 1867, at the Castle Hotel, Richmond, with all the names of those attending, excuses for absence, and comments upon the quality of the menu, the wine, and the waiting. We were forty-three in all from first to last, and the bright promise of that generation of Balliol undergraduates had in many cases ripened into fulfilment. Among politicians we numbered the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Earls of Morley and Jersey, Matt Ridley, afterwards the first Lord Ridley, and Sir William Anson, even more distinguished as an embodiment of the spirit of Oxford, Warden of All Souls, Vice-Chancellor, and historian of the Constitution, than as a member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, and Minister of Education. We had altogether three Heads of Colleges, Anson, our dear Master of Balliol, and Wright Henderson, Warden of Wadham; Wood was Head Master of Harrow, while Raper and Papillon held their place high among choicest representatives of Oxford scholarship. John Julius Hannah, Dean of Chichester, Canon Argles, and a round dozen of beloved Rectors and Vicars, doing excellent and unostentatious work in various country parishes, represented the Church. Then we had the head officials at the table of both Houses of Parliament; Sir Henry Graham, Clerk of the Parliaments, was and still is leading luminary in the House of Lords, and Sir Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert occupies a similar place as first Clerk in the House of Commons. Other lesser luminaries distinguished in the Civil Service were Sneyd Kynnersley, who has recorded his career as a School Inspector with rich humour in that amusing book ‘H.M.I.,’ and Charles Vertue and Hamilton Hoare, of the Education Office. Sir Francis Horner was a successful Commissioner of Woods, and the well loved ‘Mike,’ R. A. H. Mitchell, the mighty cricketer of the ’sixties, did useful work as one of the best and most popular of Eton House Masters. Truly a goodly company! And there were others of a promise as bright which never had time to ripen: Barratt, the Rugby Scholar who obtained the unprecedented number of five first classes, Classical and Mathematical ‘Mods’ and Greats, and Law and History, then the only other final school, and only stopped because, like Alexander, he could find no more worlds to conquer, and Archer Clive, the brilliant son of a distinguished Herefordshire family, who gained the highest honours at the University and a fellowship at Lincoln, but never attained that success at the Bar which his great intellect led his contemporaries to expect. He was chosen with Henry Northcote (the late Lord Northcote) to accompany Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues to America as Secretary to the Mission which negotiated the Alabama Treaty, and gained great credit from his chief in that capacity. A singular incident, now almost forgotten, occurred in the year when he took his degree at Oxford. After the examination some practical joker sent a forged ‘Greats’ Class List to _The Times_. It failed in its object of deceiving anyone who really knew anything about the prospects of Honour Candidates, for it placed Archer Clive in the Third Class, which, as Euclid would have put it, was absurd. He ‘devilled’ at the Bar for Lord James of Hereford, whose pupil he had been and who entertained the highest appreciation of his abilities, but soon after his return from America he developed symptoms of pulmonary disease, which shortly afterwards proved fatal.

To return to Strachan-Davidson, the appreciative notice printed in _The Times_ of March 29 says that when he and his friends were disappointed at his being passed over for the Mastership of Balliol on Jowett’s death in 1893 he bore it ‘like an angel.’ The expression is by no means too strong; whatever were his personal feelings, he sank them altogether in the interest of the College he loved, and devoted all his energies to help to make Dr. Caird’s Mastership a success. He was incapable of envy, jealousy, or huffiness, and on the two occasions when I met him and Caird together he showed his fine appreciation of his old friend’s character and seemed to delight to do him honour. The first was that of our Balliol dinner in July 1898, when, for the only time in our half-century of existence, we entertained a guest in the person of our Master, Caird, who was brought and introduced by Strachan-Davidson. A notable gathering it was, under the presidency of Sir Courtenay Ilbert, twenty-six being present out of a possible thirty-one, three of the five absentees being ill, one in India, and one in Norway. The second was that memorable gathering in the Hall of the old College when we celebrated Lord Newlands’ princely gift; and fathers and sons met under the presidency of Caird.

Jowett, great man as he was, did not show a like spirit when Scott was appointed to the place he coveted, and thought he had earned Achilles sulked in his tent and chuckled over the difficulties of his predecessor as long as his reign continued. Certainly Scott, although ever a kindly and courteous gentleman, was rather a figurehead, and had no great influence in the College. There was a story of him—I will not vouch for its truth—that on a well-remembered occasion somewhere about 1865, when three undergraduates, two of them exhibitioners and distinguished and influential scholars, came to him to announce their conversion to Rome, he thought for a moment and then said ‘Have you considered, gentlemen, that the rash step you propose is not merely calculated to imperil your immortal souls, but also to do a great deal of harm to the College?’ Neither of these considerations availed to alter their determination, but the College, which now has many Roman Catholics among its fellows and members, still seems to manage to keep up its reputation, and maintains its high position. I give the story, but do not credit it. Scott, although inclined to be pompous, had a strong sense of humour, as I may evidence by his celebrated charade on ‘Toast-Rack,’ which I give from memory:

‘My first is found where wit and wine
Combine to grace the festive board;
My next, where captive wretches pine
In dungeons of some tyrant Lord.
My whole, alas! contains the doomed;
Twice tried by fire, ere once consumed.’

Many solvers have puzzled over the last line; and yet nothing could more accurately describe a slice of bread toasted on both sides and then eaten.

I think that the thing which struck me most by way of contrast between the Balliol of my own time and the same College when my dear son Alfred was there, and Strachan-Davidson, although not yet Master, was its ruling spirit, was the comradeship and real intimacy and affection which subsisted between the so-called Dons and the undergraduates. Their relations were more like those of elder and younger brothers of the same family than those of tutors and pupils. I remember one occasion when my son was confined to bed with a complication which proved slight, but might have been dangerous. I was written to, and hastened to the bedside, where I found Strachan-Davidson sitting and helping to wile away the irksomeness of the enforced confinement with his bright smile and cheerful flow of conversation and anecdote. I afterwards found that this incident was typical of the relations which subsisted between tutors and undergraduates. My boy always spoke of them with no want of respect, but with all the intimacy and frankness bred by understanding companionship, and he and all his contemporaries, after leaving, voluntarily contributed to the fund so nobly headed by Lord Newlands to increase the inadequate endowment of the College. Perhaps I may be pardoned a reference rather personal to myself, but I cannot forget that my last communication from the Master was a most touching and sympathetic letter when that beloved son fell at the head of his company on the blood-stained field of Loos. ‘Another name,’ wrote Strachan-Davidson, ‘on the list of honour on the Chapel door; no College gathering will ever be the same without our beloved “Tortoise”’; and with his dear words of sympathy he enclosed the prayer used daily at the College services, a model form of thanksgiving and intercession in which I seem to trace his inspiring spirit of lofty courage and resignation:

‘O God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, we give Thee thanks for our brethren the members of this College who have willingly offered themselves, and have laid down their lives for us and for our country, and for the liberty of the world. Give us grace to follow their good example, that we may never lose heart, but may bear with patience and courage, as these have done, whatever Thy Providence calls upon us to endure. Comfort the bereaved, and grant to all of us that our afflictions may purify our hearts and minds to Thy glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

The Dons of my time were a distinguished body enough, brilliant scholars, kindly and sympathetic advisers, and inspiring and ardent teachers. No one could lightly underrate such men as ‘Jimmy’ Riddell, Edwin Palmer, Henry Smith, Green, Newman, and the great Jowett. With the last I was never brought personally much into contact, as, conscious of my deficiencies in the requirements for success as a classical scholar, I took the earliest opportunity of transferring my energies to the Law and History School, in which I saw more prospect of success. But I shall never cease to be grateful to him for a piece of advice which he gave me when looking over those weekly essays which were about the most useful part of our ordinary College education. He smiled rather grimly at some turgid and high-flown sentences of which I was inclined to be particularly proud, and suggested that my composition would be improved if I struck out any passage which I was inclined to think particularly fine. I have ever since taken his advice to heart with great advantage, making it a rule, when revising, to apply the pruning knife unsparingly to ‘purple patches.’ Young authors, please copy! But whatever my gratitude may be to my teachers and masters—and I certainly owe my ‘First’ in the Final Schools to the inspiring History Lectures of Newman; his grasp of essentials and power of connoting the relations of cause and effect, in various movements, historical, political and philosophical, and imparting his views and their reasons to his disciples—there was never the frank companionship and confident and equal intercourse which I admired so much in the Balliol of Strachan-Davidson. Perhaps the difference should be ascribed to the times rather than to the persons. The relations between children and parents, and between husbands and wives, have likewise greatly altered during the half-century.

Another member of our dining club with whom I was very intimate at Balliol was Jersey, seventh Earl, born in the same year as myself, and my contemporary both there and at Eton. At school I did not see a great deal of him, as, although he was in the lower division of the fifth form at the same time as myself, he was not in the same house, and had a different tutor. Two things, however, I especially remember about his time at Eton; I heard what was practically his funeral sermon preached! and afterwards saw him win the open mile race. His illness was so severe that the master who was preaching in chapel told us that he wished we were all as ready to face our end as the young companion just about to leave us. It was a rash prophecy, but certainly no one would have expected that the weak-lunged lad was destined to accomplish his seventy years, to shine as an athlete, and to enjoy exceptionally good health almost to the end of his strenuous labours in every kind of public and domestic usefulness. Paymaster-General, Governor of New South Wales, Lord Lieutenant of his County, President of the Royal Agricultural Society, and last, not least, first unpaid Chairman of the Light Railway Commission—in each of these varied spheres of activity he won golden opinions from all who had to do with him. By an odd coincidence I succeeded him in the last capacity, and my brother Commissioners, Colonel Boughey, and Henry Steward, the first Secretary of the Commission, are never weary of singing the praises of the ideal Chairman who gave so much of his valuable time and energy to striving to make Mr. Ritchie’s Light Railway Act a success. For causes which it would be foreign to my present purpose to dwell upon here, the work of the Commission has been light of recent years, but when Jersey first undertook the Chairmanship, he and his colleagues held hundreds of inquiries, travelled thousands of miles, and laid down principles and adopted methods which have stood all tests for twenty years. I have had many opportunities of ascertaining the views of those counsel and solicitors, engineers, local authorities and private individuals, who come before the Commission to promote or oppose Light Railway Orders, and one and all echo the praises of my colleagues. But when writing of Balliol my thoughts of Jersey rather go back to those last six months of my undergraduate life in 1867 when I was reading hard for my class, and used to walk or run round the ‘Parks,’ then ploughed fields, with him every morning before breakfast, and start my five hours’ morning work at nine invigorated and refreshed. I also had many long walks with him, and I particularly remember a Sunday walk I took with him to Henley, when we covered the distance of some twenty miles at an average rate of four-and-a-quarter miles an hour. He was always a good ‘stayer,’ and used to come with a tremendous spurt at the end of a long-distance race. He carried away all the honours for distances from four miles to one at his own University, but had to yield pride of place in the mile to Lawes, and in the four-mile race to the late Viscount Alverstone in the first Inter-University contest held at Cambridge. He also comes into my own début on the running path. My College instituted a half-mile handicap race, for which nearly everyone entered, myself included. I was given seventy yards start, and, being chaffed by a friend, took the odds he offered against me of £150 to £7, and when I began to train it was found that I could do the course in a much shorter time than most of those handicapped as favourably as myself. Jersey of course was scratch, but I was not much afraid of him, as I thought that with thirty-seven starters he would find a difficulty in getting through his horses. On the memorable day I was in good condition and rather a hot favourite, and might have hedged my wager on favourable terms, but I preferred ‘to put my fortune to the touch, to win or lose it all.’ I started at a great pace and kept the lead till nearly the end, when a dark horse, by name Garrett, an Australian, who had received sixty-five yards start, only five yards less than myself, caught me up and beat me. Jersey came with his usual rush at the end, and just got before me on the post, but I think I might have saved the second place had I known he was so near. Garrett afterwards turned out to be quite a good runner, taking the second prize in the open quarter-mile and long hurdles. In the following year I won the event pretty easily, although I had not been quite so generously treated by the handicapper, but I had no big gamble upon the event. I still have the silver-mounted claret jug I won on that occasion, and value it as the only trophy of success on the running path. Jersey might have filled a plate chest with the prizes he carried away.