To
Her Royal Highness
The Duchess of Connaught and Strathearn,
This Little Story of ‘Foreign Service’
Is, by Permission,
Respectfully Dedicated.
Now, Gerald,’ said mother, as she closed ‘Little Arthur’s History of England,’ ‘nurse is busy this morning, so you may take your hoop and run about a little, only don’t go beyond the lines.’
Gerald lived in a wooden hut in Aldershot Camp. The rooms were so small that in some you could almost poke the fire, and shut the window, and open the door, without getting up. The fireplaces were all of the same pattern, with V. R. stamped upon them, which, you know, stands for the Queen, and showed they were Government property. Likewise, each fireplace had its square ugly coal-box, stamped with V. R., which a squad of soldiers in dirty coats came to fill every Saturday. They called it ‘coal fatigue.’
Gerald’s father was a captain in the Loyal Dumbartonshire Regiment, commonly called the ‘Drabs,’ and Gerald fully believed there was no finer regiment in the army, and no finer sight in the world than father going to church or a full-dress parade in his glory of scarlet and gold.
Mackinlay was the ‘bât-man,’ or soldier servant, a stiff old Scotchman; his wife was the cook; and as nurse said she was going to marry a soldier some day, and Gerald never thought of playing with any toys except his tin soldiers and his sword and drum, you will see they were quite a family of soldiers. Baby could not talk, but as she always crowed at the sight of a redcoat, she may be considered as of a soldiering turn too.
The ‘Drabs’ were quartered in K and L lines, in the South Camp. The little streets running through the blocks of toy-like wooden houses were named after the letters of the alphabet. The next hut to the Grahams’ was the officers’ mess, where they dined, and the band played Gerald to sleep on guest-nights. Beyond the mess-house four roads met, and in one corner stood the guard-room.
Gerald bowled his hoop up and down the road a few times. Various interesting things were going on. Savoury smells came over from the hut marked ‘Cook-House,’ where the hunks of beef were being boiled for the men’s dinners. The soldiers’ wives were washing in the ‘Wash-House’ hut, but that was steamy, and smelt of soap-suds. The Colonel came out of the orderly room, and a prisoner he had been trying was marched away, without arms or belt, by a file of the guard. Two of the officers went in to the mess and nodded to Gerald, asking if his tin soldiers had had any more victories. For Gerald was a great general—in the nursery.
Presently a tramp was heard down the road. It was a sergeant and a few men coming back from relieving sentries. Gerald ran off to the guard-room. He was just in time to hear the sergeant shout:
‘Halt! Front!’
The men drew themselves up stiffly like a row of tin soldiers.
‘Right turn, dismiss!’
They all became limp live men again, and slouched into the guard-room.
But Gerald had noticed Mike O’Flannagan among them. He was a great friend of nurse’s and Gerald’s, and often came out walking on Sunday afternoons, and helped to push the perambulator. So the boy decided with himself that the guard-room was the centre of attraction at present.
The sentry was marching up and down with his bayonet fixed and his rifle over his shoulder. Two or three men were sitting idly talking on a bench in front of the guard-room. Mike came to the door lighting a pipe. At his heels came Tangle.
Tangle was the guard-room dog. No one knew exactly why the homeless, friendless little mongrel Skye terrier had attached himself to the place, but there he had been to be found ever since the ‘Drabs’ came to Aldershot. He subsisted precariously on the leavings of the men’s dinners. When you saw his face under his thick fringe, it was honest and kind, and his bushy stump of a tail was most expressive.
The men on the bench called to Tangle, and, for want of something better to do, one of them put him through his tricks. Tangle had been well educated during idle hours on guard, and could beg, and catch, and lie dead.
A surly-looking fellow, called Smithers, at the far end of the bench, was talking to his neighbour, the while tossing in the air a half-sovereign he had just won in a bet. Suddenly it fell towards the ground, and mistaken Tangle, imagining it was being thrown for his benefit, made a dart at it, and caught it in his best style. Then, being a light-hearted dog, he executed a little gambol across the parade-ground with the half-sovereign in his mouth.
There was a shout of laughter from the onlookers, an oath from Smithers, and a cry from Gerald, who was standing afar off admiring Tangle’s performances.
‘Ah, the brute!’ cried Smithers. ‘Catch him, one of you chaps, and make him drop it!’
Someone whistled, and Tangle trotted up obediently. Smithers seized him and shook him roughly, forcing open his mouth.
‘Drop it, you brute, drop it!’
Tangle opened his little red mouth, showing all his white teeth. It was empty.
Smithers flung the dog away in a rage, so violently that Tangle gave a yelp of pain. Then he set to work to look for the half-sovereign where Tangle had run. But the parade-ground was dusty and sandy, with here and there rank tufts of grass. He searched, and the others searched, but nowhere could they see the lost coin.
Smithers got more and more angry. In his rage he left off looking and went for Tangle.
The dog came up to him obediently—for he was always obedient, being a soldiers’ dog—but somewhat mistrustfully. He didn’t like the look in Smithers’ eye.
He was seized by the back of the neck, and received a kick that made him howl with pain.
‘There, you brute! Take that, will you? And that!’ and he raised his foot to kick the dog again.
But the howl had gone to Gerald’s heart, for Tangle was an old acquaintance, and rushing forward, he flung himself between Smithers and his victim.
‘You shan’t! You shan’t! You cruel man!’ he cried, in a towering passion.
‘’Ullo, youngster!’ cried the vindictive one, pausing and eyeing him.
‘Why, it’s the Cap’n’s little lad!’ said one of the men.
‘Let him go! Let him go!’ shrieked Gerald, throwing his arms round Tangle, who yelped and gurgled worse than ever, making sure he was being throttled.
Smithers reluctantly let go, but muttered sulkily:
‘Beggin’ your parding, sir, but this ’ere dawg ’as gone and lost my ten bob, and I means to give it him!’
Gerald looked up imploringly at the group of redcoats standing round.
‘Oh, someone, tell him not to! Poor Tangle! he didn’t mean to.’
‘Bless ’is little heart!’ said an old soldier, a family man. ‘Why, what’s the odds? The dog don’t belong to no one; it’s only the guard-room dog.’
‘Mike! Mike!’ sobbed Gerald, as he saw Smithers’ relentless hand stretched out to seize the dog again.
‘Faith, Masther Girald,’ said Mike, ‘and don’t ye be afther takin’ on so about the baaste. Shure, and it’s poor men we are, and it’s not so many half-sovereigns we’ll be gettin’ that we can afford to lose one all along of a dog!’
‘No, indeed,’ growled Smithers, getting angry. ‘So please you ’and over that there cur.’
‘And it’s gittin’ along home ye’d better be afther. It’s yer mamma will be wantin’ ye!’ suggested Mike kindly.
An idea seemed suddenly to strike Gerald. He jumped up, still clasping the struggling Tangle, and with a kick driving back Smithers’ arm, took refuge under Mike’s colossal form.
‘Look here!’ said he, addressing the enemy from this point of vantage. ‘Look here! If it’s the money you want, I tell you what, I’ll give you mine. Yes, mine. I’ve got a half-sovereign at home in my money-box. Godmother gave it me on my birthday. Say, will that do?’
The men smiled, and there were murmurs: ‘Well done, little un!’ ‘Chip of the old block, eh?’
Smithers sniggered unpleasantly, and remarked he didn’t mind if he did.
‘It’s agreed then, honour bright,’ cried Gerald triumphantly. ‘Then look here!’ and he shoved Tangle into Mike’s arms, ‘I’ll run home and get it, and you, Mike, mind you hold Tangle tight, ‘and don’t let that horrid man get near him. Now, promise, or I’ll tell nurse of you,’ he added.
Then, almost without waiting for Mike’s word, he was off up the road.
Mother was sitting at her work-table, when Gerald tore in and almost upset it.
‘Mother, the key of my money-box—quick, please! I want my half-sovereign.’
‘What for?’ inquired his mother, naturally.
Gerald was almost too much excited to explain.
‘It’s a matter of life or death, mother dear. Do, please, be quick, or it may be too late! That wretch is waiting for it, and I’ve promised, and he’s promised, and Tangle—— I can’t wait to tell you all, but, indeed, I’m not doing anything naughty; indeed I’m not. Father wouldn’t mind. It’s being kind to dumb animals, you know—— Oh! quick, mother, quick!’
Half-sovereigns were not so plentiful in the family that one had ever found its way into Gerald’s money-box before, or was likely to do so again for a long time. His mother hesitated, thinking he might be spending it foolishly. Finally, however, her little son’s incoherent explanation decided her to let him have his own way with his own. Children, she argued, must buy their experience as well as grown people.
‘Godmother is gone to India, Gerald, remember, and won’t be here to give you another half-sovereign on your next birthday.Have you forgotten that it was to go towards buying you a watch when you went to school?’
‘Mother, mother, I don’t care! I could not stand by and see Tangle——’ and he burst into a passion of agonized sobs.
Mrs. Graham took out the ha]f-sovereign, so new and glittering, and Gerald vanished.
Five minutes later he was back again, and pushed open the door. Father was back from barracks and standing with his back to the fire. He put up his eyeglass and exclaimed:
‘What on earth have you got there, Gerald?’
The boy deposited on the rug a woebegone panting mass of hair, and flinging himself down beside it, cried imploringly:
‘Say I may have him for my very, very own, father, do! I’ve saved his life; it’s Tangle, the guard-room dog!’
It was a bitterly cold Christmas night, about a year before. Cold even in the well-lighted barracks; cold in the guard-room, where the relief slept soundly in their greatcoats, and coldest of all in the sentry-box, just outside the barrack-gate. The driving sleet came stinging against his face, and his fingers were so numb that the sentry could hardly hold his rifle.
‘Shure, and if it ain’t warmer walking up and down!’ Mike O’Flannagan muttered to himself at last, after vainly trying to get a little circulation into his feet by means of a vigorous stamping of his ammunition boots. And with these words he ventured once more out into the track beaten in the slushy roadside, bending his head against the gale.
At the corner of the barrack-wall he turned and retraced his steps. It was quieter at the corner, and, as he turned, he caught faintly the sounds of merriment wafted across from the barracks. There was singing and choruses, rising and falling on the winds, wild explosions of noisy laughter, and occasional volleys of clapping. In the warm bright barrack-room the Christmas fun was now at its height after the mid-day feast.
‘Faix! an’ it’s hard lines it is to be on guard on Christmas Day!’ muttered O’Flannagan to himself, in anything but an amiable tone or satisfied frame of mind. ‘It’s bad luck you’re havin’, Micky me bhoy! But it’s shure they’ll be kapin your share o’ the pudden! There’s no fear o’ that at all, at all!’ and to cheer up his drooping spirits still further, Mike, who was by no means of a musical turn of mind, began to whistle softly to himself ‘Yow, row, row!’ the march past of the corps in which he had the honour of serving.
Whether it was because of the whistling or not he never knew, but at that moment Mike became aware that he was being followed. There were sounds coming behind him in the silence and the darkness of the snowy night.
Mike forgot all about his grievance, and the jolly fun going on on the other side of the wall, and stopping short in his tramp, brought his rifle up to the port and listened attentively. He strained his eyes through the sleet, expecting to see some form loom through it, but in vain.
‘Shure, an’ me ears played me a trick!’ he muttered at last to himself. ‘No one ’ud be abroad a night like this as had got a house to stay in!’ and resumed his tramp.
The steps came after him, patter, patter, patter, footfalls in the mud.
Mike O’Flannagan halted again. Ideas of Fenians and of dynamiters about to blow up the barracks during the Christmas revelry came into his head. He again brought his rifle to the port.
‘Who goes there?’ he cried very valiantly into the darkness.
No answer. Mike waited awhile in vain.
‘I’d best be kapin’ on the alert,’ he thought to himself. ‘Maybe the fellar’s a-dodgin’ me behind the corner.’ And on he tramped, every nerve at attention.
Patter, patter, after him came the sound of footsteps.
Mike shivered slightly, and not with cold. Fenians and dynamiters he was ready to face with his rounds of ball-cartridge ready, but as for something he could not see, only hear——
Mike O’Flannagan, good Catholic that he was, crossed himself devoutly as he paused again and looked around.
Two bright eyes were watching him by the gaslight which shone over the barrack-gate.
A small rough terrier, bespattered with mud till his long hair was covered, and he had become of one uniform drab colour, stood shivering by the sentry-box, his bushy stump of a tail curled lightly between his legs.
‘Arrah now!’ exclaimed Mike in a tone of undisguised relief. ‘An’ it’s you yourself, is it! The poor baaste! An’ ye look as if ye’d not had anny Christmas dinner entoirely, no more nor me! Ztit now! Come in here wid ye!’
And he snapped his fingers at the little dog and stepped into the sentry-box himself.
The new-comer followed him with alacrity, and huddled into the furthest corner, sheltering behind Mike’s boots.
Boom! The clock on the market-place of the town below sounded eleven through the driving storm, and the sound fell pleasantly on O’Flannagan’s grateful ears.
The next moment the great gates of the barracks swung open, and a party of three men and a corporal passed out, muffled in their great-coats.
Mike O’Flannagan sprang to attention in his sentry-box.
‘Who goes there?’ he cried.
‘Relief!’ replied the corporal.
‘Pass relief, and all’s well,’ responded O’Flannagan, falling back to the ‘easy.’
Then as the men tramped away down the lane, splashing and scrunching in the slush, he muttered to the little terrier, which crouched, startled, at his feet: ‘An’ it’s not sorry I am to see ’em at all, at all, nor ye neither, I’ll go bail!’
In five minutes the corporal returned. Two of his men he had left at the other two posts, and he brought back the sentries he had relieved. The third man took O’Flannagan’s place in the sentry-box.
‘An’ now, corporal,’ began the last named, ‘an’ here’s a little bhit of a dog, as is nearly starved to death with the cold. You’ll be letting me take him into the guard-room? He’s a nice little baaste!’
The corporal muttered an assent. It was not a night to stand and talk in; and so, reinforced by O’Flannagan and the dog, he hurried his party through the gates, and they were soon pulling off their steaming great-coats in front of the blazing guard-room fire. The dog had sneaked in after them, and now poked his wet nose in among the wet boots crowded round the fender, seeking a share of the warmth.
His advent created a pleasant diversion. Time is apt to hang heavy on hand on guard, especially on Christmas night, when debarred from, and yet within sound of Christmas fun.
Many were the speculations as to whence the little animal came, but he could throw no light on the subject; that he was hungry, however, there could be no manner of doubt. He sniffed about till he reached the table where O’Flannagan and the others’ supper had been put aside for them—such a supper!—the remains of the Christmas dinner, boiled beef, roast goose, plum-pudding quite black with plums.
It was hard to resist the pleading of the black bead-like eyes, as the muddy little wretch watched the soldiers eat. He was not disappointed, you may be sure. He got his Christmas supper like the rest, and didn’t he do justice to it!
Then he lay down in front of the fire and snoozed. The heat dried the mud on his coat, and one of the men fetched his clothes-brush out of his cleaning-bag and began brushing him.
‘He’s a nice little dawg, he be,’ he remarked, as the animal in question sat up wriggling under the treatment.
‘Never knew a fellar yet so glad to come on guard,’ laughed O’Flannagan. ‘Shure, you won’t turn out again when yer turn comes!’
And Tangle wagged his tail as if he understood the joke, and stretching his full length in front of the fire, went sound asleep.
Whose he was, whence he came—lost, stolen, or strayed—the regiment never knew. But with the tacit consent of all ranks, from that time out the shivering waif of that Christmas night became the ‘Drabs’’ ‘guard-room dog.’
Now followed the happiest period of Tangle’s life. He became the pet of the Graham household, and the especial idol of the nursery. But to his little champion, above all the others, did the poor little dog testify his gratitude by special affection. He and Gerald were inseparable companions.
Tangle shared Gerald’s meals and walks and play, and Gerald nicknamed him ‘Brother Tangle.’ Twenty watches could not have given Gerald half the pleasure he derived from the little reclaimed waif.
For reclaimed he was. No longer a matted and dishevelled, but a sleek and silky Tangle. Mackinlay grumbled at first at having to perform his toilet, and said he was as much trouble to brush and comb as a child. But Tangle was so sweet-tempered and affectionate no one could think him a trouble long, so Mackinlay got reconciled to the brushing, while Mrs. Mackinlay lavished on him such tit-bits as he had never dreamt of in his guard-room days.
But into the middle of this blissful state of things burst a bomb-shell, like a thunderclap out of a June sky.
The ‘Drabs’ were ordered off to the war in Egypt, and ordered off at three days’ notice, too.
Words cannot describe the hurry and bustle and the heartaches that ensued. Gerald hardly saw his father except at meals, so busy was the latter with his company. Mother cried till she could cry no more, and then went about the hut, packing up her husband’s things in dumb misery. Gerald surprised nurse weeping over a lock of red hair which looked suspiciously like Mike O’Flannagan’s. To Mackinlay’s inexpressible disappointment he was pronounced unfit for service, and ordered to the depot, with the women and children.
Big vans from the town came up and carried off gradually all the furniture with which Mother had made the hut so pretty, and nurse and Baby were bundled off to Grandmamma’s.
Gerald and Tangle wandered about the busy lines, oppressed with vague fears, and yet fired with martial ardour. Gerald, as he packed up his tin soldiers in the box with his clothes, of course made believe that they were being sent off to the war too.
But Gerald’s great attraction was the armourer’s shop, where the hurrying grindstones worked early and late, sharpening the officers’ swords.
The last morning came. Mother wished to go down to Portsmouth to see the regiment sail, so Gerald went too, ‘to take care of her.’
It was early on a dull, raw February day; they drove down to the station, which was besieged by a crowd chiefly composed of women who were to be left behind. Three special trains were drawn up waiting in the station, and presently the regiment came swinging into the station yard to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ played by the bands of other regiments come to see them off.
Gerald hardly knew the ‘Drabs,’ no longer in smart scarlet tunics, but in a dull service uniform of gray serge, and with tall white sun-helmets on their heads. Even the goat, which always marched so proudly beside the fat old drum-major at the head of the band, was left behind with the women and children.
Almost last of all, when the men had been packed into the trains, Father and Mother and Gerald and Tangle got into a carriage with some of the officers. The train steamed off to the accompaniment of ringing cheers and wavings of pocket-handkerchiefs. No one talked much all the way to Portsmouth; Tangle behaved very well, considering it was his first railway journey.
As they drew nearer and nearer to the sea, Father took Gerald on his knee and held him tight, as he used to do when the little fellow was getting better after he had been so ill with the measles. Presently he began to talk to Gerald in a low voice. He asked him to be a good boy and obey Mother-in everything, and never to give her a moment’s worry. He told him to be kind to Baby, and never to be afraid to speak the truth. He asked him never to forget Father, even if he should not see him again.
Then Gerald put his head down on Father’s shoulder, and began to cry softly. But very soon they steamed into Portsmouth dockyard, and Father pointed out the forest of masts in the harbour. Gerald had not thought there could be so many ships in the world, and lying there by the jetty was the great vessel which was to carry the ‘Drabs’ away.
Now all was bustle and confusion again. The men swarmed out of the trains, and formed up on the jetty in companies. Thence they filed, like a long procession of gray ants, up the gangway and through a doorway into the side of the ship.
Mother and Gerald and Tangle went on board, the two latter staring about them in amazement at the ship. They found out which was to be Father’s cabin, and got Mike, who was to be his servant, now Mackinlay was gone, to bring in the luggage. Then Mother unpacked and arranged Father’s things herself. There was very little room. The bed was so small that Gerald could not think how a big long man like Father was going to lie in it.
Poor Father! going away from them all, all alone. A lump came into Gerald’s throat again. How he wished he had never vexed him when they were all quiet and happy at home! How he wished he had never been disobedient and mischievous! And then Father had said something about never coming back. Gerald knew officers were often killed in battle, and he knew it was to a real battle-field the ‘Drabs’ were bound with their swords sharpened, and no blank cartridges in their pouches, as on Aldershot field-days. Oh, Father, dear Father! what could his little boy do for him?
An idea struck Gerald. Suppose he gave him Tangle. What if Tangle went out to the war also? then Father would be no longer lonely, and Tangle might prove a useful watch-dog in camp. The Arabs might be afraid of him, for certainly Tangle had a very fierce bark for so small a dog. Yes, Father should have Tangle, the dearest, most valuable gift his little boy could bestow.
Gerald confided the idea to Mike, who received it with delight.
‘Shure and we’ll take the poor critter wid us, and be proud, Masther Girald.’
‘You see, Mike,’ added Gerald, ‘I’ve got Mother and Baby to look after, so I can spare Tangle to Father, for he’s got no one. But I shall miss him!’ and Gerald hid his face in Tangle’s long hair and shed a few tears over him.
Then he made him a comfortable nest in Father’s bed, where no sailor could find him and turn him off the ship, and covered him with Father’s cloak.
‘Good-bye, Tangle, dear Tangle! Don’t forget me. I’m glad you’re going, Tangle, to take care of Father, as you’re the only one of us that can go. But don’t forget me, Tangle; you know I saved your life.’
‘Masther Girald, you must be comin’. The saints be wid ye, and shore it’s the greatest care I’ll be takin’ of Tangle!’
So saying, Mike dragged him through the now empty saloon on to the crowded poop. His Father and Mother were waiting by the gangway. Some of the officers said, ‘Goodbye, Gerald, take care of yourself!’ but Father took him up in his arms and kissed him without a word.
Then a stern-looking sailor said:
‘Any more for shore?’
Mother grasped Gerald’s hand so tight that she hurt him, and they hurried down the plank on to the jetty, which was crowded with cheering, waving spectators.
Then the gangway was pushed off, and the great ropes that moored the vessel were unfastened. The space between the ship and the jetty widened. She was off.
Then arose from those brave men on board the great vessel a truly British cheer. The crowd on the jetty answered them in tones which almost drowned the music of the band as it played ‘Auld Lang Syne.’
Father and the ‘Drabs’ were off to the war, and Tangle had gone with them.
Now came a change in Tangle’s life.
What with the heat and the flies and his long warm coat, he had a bad time of it in Egypt. But he was just as nice a little dog as ever, and always ready to play with his master when the flies left him leisure. He passed the long hours of heat lying full length in the tent panting, with his little tongue stretched out to its fullest dimensions. Father was rather glad Gerald was not there to see how his little dog suffered.
He liked the nights best, when the Captain went out into the cool desert with his company on picket-duty. He trotted round at his master’s heels as the latter posted the chain of double sentries a hundred yards or so in advance of the picket. When they got back Tangle lay down among the armed men in the sand, by his master’s side, and slept soundly in the cool night ah’. Only the distant baying of a pariah dog roused him momentarily, and perhaps, like those around him, he dreamed sweet dreams of home, of English brooks and meadows.
But neither Tangle nor his master was allowed to rest long. The sentries had to be visited at intervals. The Captain roused himself, buckling his sword tighter, and drawing his revolver out of its case. Then he strode off through the deep yielding sand, and Tangle laboured after him. The night was dark, save for the bright stars in the blue-black eastern sky.
One after another the outposts were visited. Through the still night air rang out the sentry’s challenge:
‘Who comes there?’
‘Rounds,’ answered the Captain.
‘What rounds?’
‘Visiting rounds.’
‘Stand, visiting rounds. Advance one and give the countersign.’
The Captain gave the word which was the countersign for the night.
‘Pass, visiting rounds, and all’s well!’
The next sentry was separated from the last by a dry, stony watercourse, over which the Captain had to pass. The banks were covered with low scrubby bushes. Once at the bottom, Tangle and his master were hidden from sight and sound of the picket and sentries. The thorn bushes scratched Tangle’s nose, and in avoiding them he fell a little behind.
Suddenly, against the sky line, a swarthy face and a white turban reared itself for a m ament,
Bang!—ping!
The Captain staggered, with a smothered cry strode on a few steps, and then fell heavily among the bushes.
Tangle was up to him in a moment. His master neither spoke nor moved.
The little dog smelt him carefully all over, and then proceeded to lick his hand. No sign. He licked his face. Still no sign.
Tangle could not make it out. Drawing back a little, he looked into his master’s face and gave a little bark.
Was his master playing with him? Tangle himself had been taught to ‘lie dead.’ Would he jump up presently and catch him? That was how Gerald used to play with Tangle in the nursery at home.
The bark had no effect in rousing the Captain. Tangle sat down in the sand with his head a little on one side, and considered. He grew very puzzled with his master’s behaviour. It was getting beyond his doggie mind to understand.
He sat there some time, hesitating to leave the prostrate form, but at last put his tail between his legs and set off at a steady trot, with his nose on the ground, as fast as his short legs could carry him over the stones and bushes, back to the picket.
Mike was lying on his back, with his full-moon face turned up to the stars, snoring lustily. So soundly did Mike sleep that Tangle had to lick his face and then scratch and tug at his sleeve before he could rouse him. Tangle got a kick for his pains, and gave a little howl, but tried again.
Mike raised himself hurriedly on his elbow.
‘Why, it’s the dog! Down, ye varmint!’
But Tangle was not to be put off now he had wakened Mike. He scratched, he pawed, he whined, and danced round.
Some of the men woke up.
‘What ails the dog? I thought as he’d gone with the Cap’n on his rounds.’
‘Hasn’t the Cap’n come in yet?’
The sergeant looked at his watch and roused the lieutenant. It was time to relieve the sentries; where was the Captain?
There was a general commotion. Tangle, delighted, ran off, and then returned.
‘It’s potted the Cap’n is by some o’ thim black rascals, and the knowin’ little critter is afther fellin’ me!’
So saying, Mike seized his rifle, and, followed by others, ran after Tangle, who scampered on ahead, pausing every now and again to look back and see if they were following.
Thus did the plucky little dog lead the way to where his master was found lying unconscious in the watercourse.
Tangle followed dejectedly as they bore him to the hospital-tent in the rear of the camp, and took up his position by the stretcher bed.
By morning the fame of Tangle’s exploit filled the camp. Everyone would have made much of the brave little fellow who had saved his master’s life. They tried to entice him out to be petted, but Tangle would not leave his master’s side. Mike had to bring him in his food and water.
But Tangle had his reward.
When the Captain came back to life and consciousness, Mike, with a ‘brogue’ that his excitement made hardly intelligible, and with a sob in his voice, told him the story of Tangle’s heroism; The Captain stretched out a weak hand and fondled Tangle’s soft head.
‘Tangle, poor Tangle! good old man! How pleased Gerald will be to hear of this.’
But both Father’s and Tangle’s fighting days were over. The former was so severely wounded that he was ordered to the hospital at the base, thence to be sent to England—when he could travel.
Two days later a camel-train of sick and wounded prepared to leave the camp. Each camel carried a huge pannier on either side. The gaunt awkward animal was made to lie down by its driver, who tugged at the rope in its nose, and kicked and adjured it in choice Arabic. The Captain was lifted up, bed and all, not without much suffering, and deposited in the pannier. An awning was arranged over his bead to ward off the fierce Eastern sun. Then the other pannier received its occupant.
Feeling himself loaded, the camel suddenly got up with two awkward jerks, causing exquisite pain to the wounded men.
But in the fuss over his master Tangle had been forgotten.
There he stood on the sand, gazing wistfully up to where his master lay aloft.
The camel began to shamble on, and Tangle realized he was being left behind. With a little yelp of despair, he tried to jump up into the pannier. Failing, he fell back, and the camel turned its ugly, vicious-looking head to see what was happening. Then he let fly with one of his great horny hoofs at poor Tangle.
The kick caught the dog and stretched him on the sand, uttering a heart-breaking howl of agony.
Mike ran forward with a shout, but it was too late.
The Captain raised himself painfully.
‘Give him to me!’
Once in his master’s arms, Tangle stopped howling. He tried to lick his hand, wagging his tail feebly. The Captain ordered the camel to kneel down again, and all the doctors in charge of the column of sick and wounded collected round Tangle, with almost as much interest as if he had been one of the men himself. They felt him all over through his thick hair, to discover any broken bones. One of his little hairy legs hung down limp and powerless.
Carefully and tenderly they strapped up the wounded limb, and set it in splints, Tangle, all the while, whining gently and licking his master’s hand, as if he understood they were doing their best to help him, and was trying to bear it, like the little hero he was. . .
Then Tangle went on his homeward way, lying in the camel-litter by his master’s side.
Many brave hearts and true suffered in the Soudan, but surely none more faithful in their way than he who was ‘only a guard-room dog.’
It was a happy day for Gerald. He stood on Portsmouth Jetty, holding Mother’s hand and watching the hospital-ship Ganges, with the sick and wounded on board, from Egypt, slowly thread her way into Portsmouth Harbour. Through the narrow entrance between the white forts, past the towers of Haslar Hospital, where the sick sailors lay; under the bows of the grand old Victory, Nelson’s ship,—a splendid relic of a war of long ago, past the St. Vincent, another ancient three-decker, where boys training for the navy eagerly looked out upon the in-coming vessel; among steamers, yachts, and row-boats of every size, came the Ganges—and brought Father and Tangle home once more.
Now, I dare say you are exceedingly anxious to know if Tangle, after this long separation, knew his little master again. It was now some months since they parted. Tangle had seen many strange and new things, and done some wonderful deeds, as we know.
A doggie’s life is short; is his memory short, too? You cannot be more anxious on this subject than was Gerald himself. How many times, during the quiet evenings, when Baby was gone to bed, and he and Mother sat in front of the fire, reading over for the hundredth time Father’s last letter from camp or hospital, had they not asked themselves this great question! And now the moment had come to have it answered. Gerald’s heart beat fast, and he turned almost sick with fear lest Tangle should have forgotten him,
‘I’ve thought of him, Mother, always, many times a day, ever since he went away. I gave him up to Father because he was the dearest thing I had. It will be dreadfully hard if——’
Gerald stopped short, and never finished his sentence.
The great black ship had stopped by the jetty’s side, and Mother was not listening to him in the very least. She was eagerly scanning the rows and rows of faces, mostly pale and wan and stubbly with unkempt beards, which were peering over the side of the ship. Gerald looked up, too. For a few moments he recognised no one. Then a familiar voice called his name, and that ghostly-looking face, so worn, that weak figure leaning on a stick—could it indeed be Father? Gerald’s heart tightened with a sudden awe, and he clean forgot all about Tangle.
A few minutes more and they were on deck, and Gerald was immensely relieved to find that, if Father looked strangely altered, he talked and laughed, and hugged and kissed, just the same as ever, even though he was rather bristly. And then Gerald remembered. He looked up in Father’s face.
‘And Tangle?’ he asked, half dreading the answer.
‘Come and look for him,’ was the reply. ‘You gave me a useful present, after all, didn’t you, old man?’ laughed Father. ‘You could not have given me one more useful!’
Gerald shoved his hand into Father’s, looking up at him with a smile of happiness too great for words, and they started to find Tangle.
It was somewhat a lengthy business. Father was so lame that, even with the help of his stick, he walked slowly. Down the long steps which led from the poop-deck to the fore-part of the ship he could only take one step at a time.
‘Why, you are just like Baby,Daddy; that’s the way she gets downstairs. Oh! I forgot! I’m sorry, but I am such a good forgetter, you know,’ he apologized to Mother, with a crimson face, for, in his excitement, he had blurted out Baby’s secret! She had been learning to walk while Father was away, as a surprise for Father, Gerald said.
Down, down, on the other deck, among the sheep-pens and the poultry-coops, they found him. He was curled up in a hairy ball, nose to tail, on an old sack, tight asleep in the noontide siesta in which all dogs indulge. Gerald looked at him a moment in surprise. If Father and the other sick soldiers seemed untidy and unkempt, Tangle, indeed, would have been the better for a bath and a brushing. Never had he so deserved his name—such are the hardships of active service. But Gerald did not contemplate him long.
At his eager call the little dog opened a bright eye shining out of a mass of hair, and then sprang up with alacrity, and bounded out of the sheep-pen. There was a moment’s hesitation, then a wild scurry of delight, a volley of short, sharp barks of joy, and Tangle rushed for Gerald, and began jumping up at him. Gerald was quite happy now.
Yet how changed both his dear ones were since he said good-bye to them! Father was white, and wan, and weak, and getting about feebly with a stick, and Tangle, dear Tangle, was invalided, too! The same bright, affectionate little dog Gerald had sent out to take care of Father, but with a limp in his wounded leg which he would carry till his dying day.
‘It’s his medal, Father, his medal, to show he’s been at the war! But, look here, I’ve got a real medal for him! Here, Tangle!’
And he clasped round the dog’s neck a new collar, on which was engraved, ‘Tangle, V.C.’
‘I hope it’s not against regulations, Father, and that the Colonel won’t object? But I think he has as much right as anyone to the V.C.; you always told me that it was for saving life in action, and he saved yours, didn’t he? Mother told me the doctor said you would have bled to death if Tangle had not shown them where to find you.’
So Tangle was duly decorated, and bore his somewhat irksome honours—for he did not like a collar—-with a very good grace.
Altogether it was a happy meeting, and it would be hard to say which was the most pleased to see the other—Father or Mother or Gerald, or Tangle, or Mike.
For Mike had come home, too, invalided, though he didn’t look very bad now. But among the last batch of sick and wounded from the front came Mike—knocked down, not by the enemy’s bullet, but by the Englishman’s quite as bitter foe, the Eastern sun, and raving incoherently in the broadest brogue about the ‘ould counthry,’ and unable to recognise his master, or even Tangle.
However, Mike was himself again now, and quite equal to enjoying his first evening on shore, which he prepared to do when he had seen his master comfortably settled in the hotel. Gerald was in bed, fast asleep after his exciting day, his hand resting on Tangle’s shaggy coat. But the latter was in no mood for sleep. He had had quite enough of that during the last fortnight on board ship, and hearing Mike passing by the open door, followed him downstairs, hoping for a run. He was not disappointed. Mike went out into the street, quite unaware that Tangle was trotting at his heels.
Of course, it was altogether very wrong and foolish of Tangle, but he paid dearly for it, as you will see, and the only excuse I can give for him is, that in camp he had got out of the way of going to bed early like Gerald.
Mike had not gone far before he met a friend, who gave him an enthusiastic greeting, which resulted in their turning in to a public-house to drink each other’s good health. Then they went on their way together, Tangle following, and presently met a third friend. They turned in again to repeat the performance, but by this time the drink had begun to tell on Mike’s head, weakened by the sunstroke. Before very long he got quite tipsy, and Tangle couldn’t make him out at all. He was so noisy and quarrelsome, so unlike himself in every way. At last they were turned out of the public-house, and his friends helped Mike into a fly and drove off, leaving Tangle alone on the pavement disconsolate.
He found himself quite alone in the world, as alone as he had been in the long ago before he became the Drabs’ guard-room dog.
Next morning when Gerald awoke he missed the little hairy mass under his arm. Imagine his dismay when the dog was nowhere to be found. But Gerald would not believe that he had strayed.
‘It’s all very well for you to say, Father, that Tangle, V.C., is absent without leave—is a deserter. I won’t believe it. It’s not his fault. Someone has enticed him away and has stolen him. But a dog who has behaved as Tangle did in the war is above running away from his master, I’m sure. But anyhow he’s gone, and I dare say we shall never know how it happened, for I don’t suppose we shall ever see him again!’ and Gerald fairly broke down.
Mike was quite as sad as Gerald. His sorrow, combined with a bad headache, made him a really pitiable object as he stood apologizing to Mother and to Gerald, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Now, don’t ye go for to take on like that, Masther Girald, acushla! Shure, and ye’ll break me heart! I wouldn’t have had it happen not to be made Commander-in-Chief! It’s little I dreamt that the dog was after followin’ me, as the gintleman of the hotel sez he did. Och! and it’s a blackhearted scoundrel that I am to have done it after the Cap’n’s kindness, and the way ye’ve trated me, Masther Girald! To bring him safe home to ye agin, and then for to lose him! But it’s yourself, Masther Girald, as will be knowing that it was not at all my fault, at all, at all. It was all the fault o’ the whusky—may the saints’ curses light on ’t! It’s the first time as iver I’ve got tight since St. Patrick’s Day come two years—last St. Patrick’s we were in Egypt, worse luck, and ne’er a drop o’ the craythur to be seen abouts, nothin’ only rations o’ commissariat rum, and precious little o’ that!—and I’ve just been thinkin’ as how it shall be me last; and, if the misthress would be after helping me to it, I’d just like for to sign the pledge, and wear the blue ribbon. It won’t bring Tangle back, sorra’ a bit! But it’s just punishing myself I’ll be, for I can’t abide to see the child cry.’
A dirty, ragged little boy lay asleep on a dirty doorstep in a back street in Portsmouth. How long he had been asleep he could not tell, when the cold and the hardness of his bed awoke him. Jim rubbed his eyes. The street was dark and deserted. It must be the middle of the night, he thought, for he felt so very hungry. But then poor Jim had had nothing to eat all day, since a very meagre breakfast, which seemed an immense while ago.
Jim shivered—his clothes could not keep him warm, they were so thin and ragged—and plunged his numbed hands into his trouser pockets. Oh, joy! there was something hard in one. It was a dry crust of bread. Here was indeed a lucky find.
Jim was gnawing away with great gusto, when he perceived that he was not alone on the doorstep.
A small, shaggy, tangled terrier was watching him with intense interest from the lowest step.
‘’Ullo! you seem ’ungry, too, puppy!’
The voice was kindly, though thin and weak, and there was a look about the face and figure, despite the ragged clothes and the wan, thin appearance, that reminded Tangle—for of course it was Tangle—faintly of Gerald. A piece of the crust fell at his feet, but, as he was devouring it eagerly, a heavy tread came along the pavement, and a bull’s-eye lantern flashed on to the pair.
‘Now then! what are you doin’ ’ere? No good, I’ll be bound. You just move on.’
So Jim, with his bare, sore feet, limped down the street, and Tangle followed.
He followed—and carefully this time, for he did not want to lose his newly-found friend as he had lost Mike—along great thoroughfares, silent as country lanes, through dimly-lighted alleys and slums, till Jim disappeared down a flight of steps into a dark cellar under a rag and bone shop. Tangle followed warily, at a little distance.
He was glad he was not near, however, for as the boy entered a horrid-looking old Jew roused himself from a wretched bed in the corner, and began to scold him in angry, guttural tones, and in bad language. Then he turned Jim’s jacket and pockets inside out as he stood trembling before him, and, finding them empty, turned away with a muttered oath, and bestowed a parting blow on the boy which nearly felled him.
Now, Tangle was not going to stand that sort of treatment of one who had shown him a kindness. He rushed forward in the gloom and made a successful grab at the Jew’s bare leg with his sharp little teeth, but he paid for it, for, with a yell of pain, the man turned upon him with a kick that sent him flying.
It was some time before Tangle dared to venture back. The place was quiet now—the Jew snoring in the corner; and a sound of low sobbing told of poor Jim’s whereabouts. Tangle went up to him and rubbed his cold nose and hairy little face about the boy’s. Jim stopped crying a little, and clasped the dog to his lonely little heart in a frenzy of affection and despair.
‘Puppy,’ he said—Tangle didn’t much like being called a puppy, but he concluded Jim did not know any better; in truth, even had it been light, Jim would have been unable to read Tangle’s name and rank on his collar, for he did not know even his letters—‘Puppy, you’re a well-plucked ’un. I’m glad you went for ’un, puppy. He’s a brute, he is! I tell you what, puppy, we’ll run away from ’un; we’ll go to sea, puppy. I want to be a sailor; there’s nothing; so fine in the world as a sailor.’ (If Tangle had understood him, he would have said he knew better, and preferred soldiers.) ‘Just you bide a bit quiet, and when the old ’un is sound asleep, we’ll slip off.’
Out again into the silent city, quieter than ever now, with the stillness that precedes the dawn. Down on the Hard absolutely the only sound was the lap of the rising tide against the quay and eight bells sounding on the deck of a steamer at the jetty.
On board the Frances Jane, moored by the quay, the Blue Peter flying at her masthead, ready to slip out of the harbour when the tide turned, all was silent as the grave. The sleepy man on watch at the stern never noticed the dark little figure of Jim slip on board, followed by Tangle, and disappear like a thief down the open hatchway into the hold. There they hid themselves in a snug place behind bales of some cargo, and, lulled by the rocking of the tide, both were soon fast asleep.
Thus when morning broke, and Gerald awoke to miss Tangle, in vain were all Mike’s researches, in vain Father’s advertisements and inquiries at the police-stations; in vain all offers of reward; for Tangle was sailing down Channel with Jim in the Frances Jane.
Before the Frances Jane bad been twelve hours at sea, Mactavish, the boy, who had been sent by the cook to fetch some potatoes from the hold, returned with a white scared face and with empty hands, for, like most Highlanders, he was very superstitious.
‘I’m thinkin’ it’s one o’ ye big laddies will just have to gae below, for ye winna ketch me there agin.’
‘What’s up, Mac?’ asked someone.
‘It’s naught else but the de’il hisself down there! Aye, mon, it wur a terrible noise!’
They laughed at Mactavish, and the cook said the potatoes he must have. But, nevertheless, Mactavish looked so frightened that they couldn’t help thinking that there might, after all, be something in it, and there was a manifest reluctance to investigate further.
However, one, bolder than the rest, dived down the ladder, and there was a period of suspense.
Presently he returned, holding with one hand by the nape of his neck a half-starved, terrified-looking boy, and with the other a shaggy mongrel.
‘There’s your “de’il” for you, Mac,’ he cried, holding up Tangle, who yelped piteously, though in his secret heart he rejoiced once more to see the light of day.
Poor Tangle! he was not fond of going down to the sea in ships, and after his recent, long voyage he pitied himself extremely when he found the familiar rocking going on again, and in the very tight quarters into which his fidelity to Jim had led him. The sheep-pen of the Ganges had been luxurious compared with the hold of the Frances Jane. The latter smelt of bilge water, combined with a concentrated essence of all the cargo stowed away in it. Cockroaches abounded, and had no respect for the persons either of Jim or Tangle. Then the rats! They were all very well on dry land, and Tangle, though not exactly of a sporting disposition, had often enjoyed a hunt after one, in company with other more adventurous dogs. But on board ship it was just too tantalizing to smell them and hear them so distinctly, and not to be able to get at them. Added to all this, Tangle soon began to feel both hungry and thirsty, and in spite of all Jim’s persuasions and even threats, he lifted up his voice and howled.
Being interpreted, that howl meant, ‘If you are such a donkey as to stop here, I am not. I want to get out, if you don’t.’
But Mactavish, who did not understand dog-language, put, as we have seen, a different construction on the howl, and the release of the voluntary prisoners ensued.
Tangle, when he found himself once more free, scampered gleefully about the deck, as if he did not care a rap for the stern-looking skipper of the Frances Jane, in his blue pilot coat and peaked cap, before whom they dragged poor frightened Jim. The skipper spoke as gruff as he looked, from the depths of a huge beard, and with a voice hoarse with shouting orders through all weathers. But his bark was worse than his bite, and the kindly gray eye that peered beneath his bushy brows belied his voice. Tangle marked that eye, for dogs are rare judges of character, and are seldom deceived. So, taking comfort, he smelt his boots carefully, and then scampered round him appreciatively, till he felt himself roughly seized from behind.
‘And a little cur he’s brought.aboard, too!’ cried Mactavish to his mates. ‘Like his cheek! Here, I’ll just pitch him overboard!’
He might have suited the action to the word, for his Scotch temper was roused by his comrades jeering at him for his scare, and he felt ready to vent it on the first thing that came handy. But a piteous cry came from Jim.
‘Please leave him alone! Please do! He’s just a stray thing like me, without a ’ome, and ’ungry, and he follered me aboard,’ implored the boy.
But the skipper bellowed in a voice of thunder:
‘Unhand that dog, Mac, and mind your own business! And you, you young scamp of a stowaway, hidin’ aboard my vessel,’ he roared to the trembling Jim, ‘what do you mean by it? I’ve just a precious good mind to have you pitched overboard, you young good-for-nothing. Anyway, you deserve a bit o’ rope’s end!’
‘Oh I please, sir——’ Jim began very faintly, for it was so long since he’d had any food. But his voice failed, and he began to cry feebly. He looked such a wretched little object that the skipper pitied him. But he didn’t care to show that he did so, for discipline had to be maintained. So he roared louder than before:
‘Yes, rope’s end is what you’ll get, d’ ye hear? You don’t know what you let yourself in for, what the law says about stowaways! I’ll just land you at the next port we touch at, d’ ye hear? Don’t stand blubbering there.’
Jim made a mighty effort, and found his voice.
‘Please, sir, I didn’t go for to mean any ’arm, indeed I didn’t! It was all along o’ old Nat whackin’ of me. I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I runned away. And please, sir, I wants to be a sailor; will you take me as a boy? I’ll do all as I’m told, and not give no trouble; and please, sir, I’m that ’ungry——’
Here his voice failed again, and poor little Jim sank down in a heap, fainting from exhaustion.
The skipper had two boys of his own at home, in Paradise Row off the Hard, about Jim’s age, and double his size and strength. So he turned away abruptly, and bade the mate see to the little chap and give him some victuals. Then he went and slackened a rope quite unnecessarily, and bellowed at the man at the wheel.
Presently, down in the fo’castle, he came upon Jim gnawing away at hunks of biscuit and salt beef, as if he had never tasted food before. But to every two mouthfuls he took he gave one to Tangle, who sat by him with his head on one side, watching him intently.
‘’Ow do you come by ’im, my lad?’ asked the skipper.
Jim explained, and the skipper, in patting Tangle, came upon his collar hidden among his thick hair.
‘Why, he must be a ginnleman’s dawg with a collar like that! Strayed away, most like, and I shouldn’t wonder if there was a reward offered for him. “Tangle, V.C.” Well, he be rightly named!’
‘Is that his name?’ cried Jim. ‘Tangle! Tangle!’
There could be no doubt of it, and it would have been hard to say which was the most glad, Tangle, to hear his name once more, or Jim, to find it out.
‘V.C., V.C.’ repeated the skipper, thoughtfully, ‘that beats me altogether. For that’s what old Martin, my neighbour, the Crimean man, calls his medal like an iron cross. But that don’t hold good for a dog, nohow.’
Which shows how little the skipper knew about it.
By this time both Jim and Tangle’s hunger was satisfied, and the former stood up, and drawing himself up as straight as possible, pulled the forelock on his bare head.
‘Thank yer kindly, sir. I feels a deal fuller like, now. Old Nat he did keep ’un awful short! And now, please, sir, may I be a sailor? Will you give I summat to do?’
But the skipper eyed the pale, thin lad with a sad smile.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint ye, lad, but we don’t make sailors o’ the likes o’ ye. Ye’ve got to eat a lot, and grow a lot, and get stronger, afore ye can do a day’s work as a hard boy.’
He turned away, and poor Jim buried his face in Tangle’s rough coat, and wetted it with his tears.
A few days later the Frances Jane came into Cork Harbour, where Jim and Tangle were put ashore; the former with a half-crown in his pocket the skipper gave him.
Tangle, though glad enough to find himself once more on terra firma, was hardly as easy in his mind as Jim. Certainly, for one thing, he did not carry in his pocket such untold wealth as half a crown was to a boy who had never had more than a sixpence of his own, and even that a fleeting possession at the best, liable to be seized by old Nat.
Jim, having got over his disappointment about sailoring, enjoyed his first day ashore at Cork amazingly. Barefoot, ragged urchins abound in Ireland, and the police are lenient.
But Tangle bad something on his mind.
He was restless, starting off on false scents which led nowhere, following strangers who repulsed him, when he would return to Jim very downcast. Once he met a red-headed soldier in scarlet uniform, and astonished Jim by his frantic exhibition of joy, and it was not till the soldier pretended to kick him that he could be induced to find out his mistake and leave him. For mistake it was, though by this time Jim was sure the dog was always looking for someone, someone whom be couldn’t find. However, he had grown too fond of his four-footed travelling companion to like to think of parting with him, and did not trouble himself much about it.
That night they slept under a boat on the beach, and, in the morning, Jim, with a proud consciousness of affluence, wended his way to an eating shop he had marked down the night before, in search of breakfast, determined to enjoy his meal to the utmost. Jim stood awhile before the shop window and gazed rapturously at the contents.
‘What shall it be, Tangle? A slice of that there cold beef—that do look prime—and some ’am with it. I’ve heard tell as ’ow ’am is awful good. And, oh! my eye, look at them pork trotters—I had some once. Tangle, you shall have some grub fit for a king!’
He walked in solemnly, half awe-stricken with the magnificence of the place, and the plenty that reigned within. Then he stood awhile before the counter, hesitating between a steaming stew of liver and a pork pie.
But the young lady behind the counter was somewhat haughty.
‘Git out, ye varmint!’—this to Tangle.
‘And what ’ll ye be wantin’, ye dirthy gossoon?’
‘Please, miss,’ began Jim, ‘Tangle and I wants a jolly good blow out, and we’ll begin on some o’ that there stew.’
‘Faith, and it’s the colour of yer money I’ll be seein’ first,’ replied the damsel warily.
‘No fear,’ said Jim; ‘I’ve got ’alf-a-crown ’ere, but we don’t want to eat it all to-day!’
So saying, he felt in his pockets, one after the other, but the money was nowhere to be found! Yet he felt sure he had put it so safely into the pocket which old Nat had sewn up for him to put his begging earnings in, and which only had such a very little hole. He hunted again and turned them inside out; but in vain, the money was gone.
At first, the shop-woman smiled: ‘Ah! ye impedint little spalpeen, but it’s not me ye’ll be desaving so aisy. You just git out o’ this, or I’ll call the masther.’
But she noticed the dejected look on Jim’s face, and the sob in his voice as he turned sorrowfully to Tangle:
‘Come on, Tangle, old boy. I’m sorry, but us won’t get no breakfast to-day.’
Her heart melted as she tossed him a pork pie.
‘There, there, be off wid ye, or the masther ’ll catch ye!’
The pair sat down on a quiet doorstep and discussed the pie. When it was finished; every crumb of it, Jim began to think matters over, and probably Tangle did, too, in his own way, for he looked very wise. Then, somehow, the skipper’s remark about Tangle probably being a gentleman’s lost dog for which a reward would be offered came into Jim’s mind, and rather reluctantly he came to a determination.
‘Listen, Tangle, I can see ’as ’ow you be a gennelman’s dog, with that there collar on, and is used to lots o’ good wittels. It ain’t no use your stoppin’ and starvin’ along o’ me. Well just go back to Portsmouth and find your master. Perhaps he’ll give the reward skipper talked of, or anyways summat for me to do. But we must keep clear o’ old Nat, Tangle, and I think we’ve had enough of ships, so we’ll just foot it back.’
You see, Jim’s education had been entirely neglected, and his knowledge of geography was nil.
Tangle did not disagree, and, by mid-day, the two found themselves well out in the country among green lanes and meadows. It was very delightful to Jim, who could hardly ever remember being in the country before, or seeing a wild flower or a green wood. But he felt tired, and hungry, and footsore, and then be had lost that half-crown! It seemed a long way to Portsmouth. At last, in a corner of a field, he came on an untidy little hayrick, and curling himself up on the inviting sweet-scented bed, fell asleep. Tangle, nothing loath, did likewise.
Jim woke up first, to find the evening shadows lengthening over the meadow. The birds were singing their good-night songs, and the lambs bleating in the fold. Across the lane stood a (for Ireland) well-to-do looking, two-storied stone house, with a dung-heap in front of the door, where cocks and hens were pecking. An old woman came out of the house with a shawl over her head and looked anxiously down the lane. There was a kindly expression in her face, and she wiped her eyes with her apron, as though they were blinded with the setting sun. Jim fancied she looked kind enough for him to ask her for a drink of milk, and limped across the lane, and then hid under the hedge, wondering if he should venture to do so.
As he hesitated he heard a sound of wheels, and presently an outside car, drawn by a shaggy pony, came trundling down the lane, driven by an old man in a battered wideawake, a blue tail-coat with brass buttons, drab breeches and gray knitted stockings. On the other side sat a smart young soldier in a new scarlet tunic, with his glengarry cap perched quite on one side of his well-brushed carroty head.
No sooner did she see the car coming than the old woman leant against the doorpost as if to steady herself, and wiped her eyes more vigorously than ever. But almost before it stopped, the soldier had jumped out and had run up to her, and she was sobbing on his shoulder, while he called her ‘mother.’
Now Jim could never remember a mother of his own, but he thought to himself, as, from his hiding place in the hedge, he watched that happy meeting, that they couldn’t be bad things to have, and felt quite sure that the old woman would be kind and give him some milk.
But, just at that moment, Tangle, whom Jim had left asleep in the haystack, and who had been roused by the sound of the car, came tearing across the lane, and, to Jim’s amazement, began jumping up and down on to the smart soldier in a frenzy of delight. At first, the latter rather resented it, and then a cry of surprise broke from him:
‘Tangle! The powers be wid us! It’s Tangle!’
And then, regardless of his new tunic, he took the dog up in his arms and hugged him.
When Mike put him down—for of course the smart soldier was Mike, and Tangle knew that, if you don’t—the little dog danced round him with sharp barks of joy, and then hurried back to Jim, trying to make the latter understand, in his doggie way, that he had found a friend.
Jim came forward shyly. He felt rather out in the cold with all this meeting and greeting going on, for poor Jim could never remember anyone caring for him, except Tangle.
‘That’s the lad as belongs to the dog, Mike, honey,’ said the old mother. ‘I saw ’em both asleep in the rick an hour ago.’
‘Begorra!’ said Mike, ‘and this is a raal miracle, and no mistake! Though, how the dog can have turned up here, bates me altogither. Faix! perhaps it’s the gossoon ’ull be explainin’ of it. Come here, ye spalpeen!’
‘Shure, an’ he looks hungry,’ interrupted the mother, with her heart overflowing with joy and kindness. ‘Let’s give him a sup o’ taties, and then let him talk.’
They sat Jim down before a steaming bowl of potatoes, which loosened his tongue, for, before he had finished, he had told Mike the story of how Tangle had attached himself to him at Portsmouth. Mike, with the dog on his knee, listened attentively, and Tangle corroborated the whole by much wagging of his expressive stump of a tail.
Night had fallen almost before Jim had ended his story, and the neighbours began to drop in to see O’Flannagan’s boy who had come back from the wars. Mike found himself the centre of an admiring crowd, who patted him on the back and wrung his hands. He was a hero indeed. Old O’Flannagan took down a black bottle from the shelf, and put some glasses on the table.
‘Here, bhoys!’ said he, ‘here’s a drap o’ the craythur, and it’s to the lad’s safe return we’ll be drinkin’, an’ many on them! Mike, me son, I’m proud of ye, an’ here’s yer good health!’
Mike put out his hand to take up the glass and return the good wishes he heard all round, when something stopped him. It was Tangle, who whined at his feet, wanting to jump on his knee again. Mike set down the glass.
‘Faith, an’ shure I was forgittin’, and the poor baaste reminded me! Bhoys, I can’t drink wid ye; for ye see here this bit o’ blue ribbon beside me medals, that’s the pledge as I took the day afther I lost Tangle, all along o’ gittin’ drunk. I promised Masther Girald, I did, that I’d niver touch a drap agin, and no more I will, plaze God. Tangle, old man, I thank ye kindly for remindin’ me.’
But when they had all dispersed, Mike asked his mother:
‘Mother, is it an’ ink-pot ye’ve got in the house now?’
‘Powers above! and what does the lad want with an ink-pot? But shure an’ I have though! Didn’t I walk into Cark for to git it, the day after we heerd tell o’ the big battle, when I got Biddy McCarthy’s girl to write me a letter to ask ye if ye was kilt entoirely?’
Eventually also a piece of paper and a pen were forthcoming, and Mike, squaring his elbows and twisting his neck to match, penned, by the light of the solitary tallow candle of the establishment, the following epistle with much care and consideration. Mike had never got beyond a third-class certificate in the regimental school.
‘Masther Girald, sir,
‘May it plase yer honor, I have found Tangle, V.C., or rayther Tangle has found me. He will report himself along of me when my furlo is up, come next Sunday for weaks. Tangle sends his duty and so do Mike.
‘Your obedant sarvant,
‘Michael O’Flannagan,
‘Private B Comp.,
‘Loyal Dumbartonshire Regiment.’
There now followed for poor Jim the happiest time he had ever known. Mike was so grateful to him for being the means of his finding Tangle again, that he begged his parents, who were not loath to do anything their son asked, to keep him on at the farm. He did odd jobs, helping the old man, but to Mike in particular he attached himself with a doglike devotion. He would sit and look at Mike with intense admiration when he was dressed in his uniform, and his delight knew no bounds when Mike allowed him to help clean the said uniform, which suffered somewhat in Mike’s agricultural occupations. Jim would spend hours polishing up buttons and buckles, and pipeclaying the belts. Thanks to Mrs. O’Flannagan’s good milk and pork and potatoes, a marvellous change came over the boy. His spare thin form filled out, his cheeks grew round and rosy, and I verily believe if old Nat had chanced to meet him he would not have known him.
But there hung over Jim the dread of what was to become of him when Mike should depart, taking Tangle with him. He could hardly bear to think of it, and yet, day by day, the end of Mike’s furlough drew nearer. Till he had found Tangle he had never had a friend in the world, and through Tangle he had found his kind friends the O’Flannagans. And now they must separate.
One day Mike found him dropping big tears over the white collar he was cleaning, spoiling it as fast as he did it.
‘Shure, and what’s up now, young un?’
‘You be goin’ away and Tangle, and what’s to become o’ me?’ said poor Jim.
‘Faix! and I’ll ask the feyther to kape ye on here. He’s gittin’ auld, and ye earns yer vittels.’
Jim reddened with pleasure and pride, but shook his head.
‘But I shall miss Tangle, and the sight o’ ye in this,’ and he patted the scarlet tunic affectionately.
Mike scratched his head meditatively, and then went and smoked a pipe, buried in deep thought.
Next day he walked into Cork, taking Jim with him, and sought out the recruiting sergeant.
The result was that when Mike’s furlough was up, and Tangle returned with him to Ballybrumagem, where the ‘Drabs’ were now quartered, they did not go alone.
Jim went with them, clad in a red uniform, his whilom bare feet encased in ammunition boots, his face well washed, and his hair cut short, and neatly plastered down. He looked a new creature, enlisted as a drummer in the ‘Drabs.’ No fear of Nat recognising him, had they happened to meet.
The day after his return, Tangle was to be seen running about with a bunch of recruiting colours—red, white, and blue—hanging from his collar.
‘He doesn’t much like them, Father; he tried to scratch them off,’ explained Gerald. ‘But it’s regulation for him to wear them, for has he not enlisted a recruit?’
It was Christmas Day in the Ballybrumagem barracks. All the clay before the cooks in each barrack-room had been as busy as bees, making plum-doughs, in which arduous task they were assisted by willing helpers. Breakfast was scarcely over, when already savoury smells of boiling and roasting beef and geese began to arise from the cook-houses, and mingling with the damp raw air, to encourage the troops getting ready for church parade. Several of them had been up all night, and these were chiefly bandsmen, who had been round to the officers’ quarters, and the houses of the married officers, singing ‘carols.’ But everyone moved about cheerfully and briskly, in anticipation of the great feast to follow. What a pity it is that, good fellow as the soldier generally is, he should so usually look upon Christmas Day merely as an occasion for eating and drinking too much, and fail to perceive its higher meaning!
Gerald and Baby had been awake before it began to get light, for they had hung out, he his long knitted stocking, and Baby her tiny white sock, and they had not been disappointed. Santa Claus had come down the chimney, and had so stuffed these articles of apparel with toys that there was positively no room for Tangle on Gerald’s bed, when he came in with the hot water to wish his little master a merry Christmas, and to find him sitting up in bed, cold but delighted, arranging his presents.
Gerald had had very funny dreams. He had dreamt it was Christmas Day, and that he had gone to church. There was a sound in his dream as of soldiers in ammunition boots tramping near, but no rattle of swords. Then voices, harsh, untrained men’s voices, began to sing:
While shepherds watched their flocks by noight
Hall seated hon the ground,
The hangel of the Lord came down
And gloiry shone haround.’
It sounded so near, so distinct, that Gerald woke up. There was no mistake about the singing, however, but the room was quite dark, and it felt like the middle of the night. A sort of fear seized the little boy. Could it be the angels singing? Had they come down with Santa Claus, who, his mother had told him, was really St. Nicolas, the children’s saint, a good man who died long ago? Gerald felt if it really were an angel, he should be dreadfully frightened to see one, and was intensely relieved when, in the next verse, he recognised Corporal O’Flannagan’s voice:
‘To ye in David’s town this day
Is barn o’ David’s loine.’
And while he was wondering over it, he fell asleep again.
When, after breakfast, he went into the kitchen to give Mrs. Cook a Christmas card he had bought for her, Gerald heard a giggling at the back door. A huge mass of scarlet blocked up the doorway, and presently nurse came out of the back kitchen, with a gay card in her hand.
‘Oh, nurse! what a lovely card! Who gave it you?’
‘Never you mind, Master Gerald,’ was nurse’s rejoinder, as she went upstairs to Baby. But Gerald had run out to Mike.
‘Mike! Mike! a merry Christmas to you!’
‘An’ the same to yerself, Masther Girald, and a powerful eatin’ o’ roast turkey and mince pies to ye!’
‘You’ll be having a big dinner in barracks, too, won’t you, Mike?’
‘Faith! an’ we will, thanks to the Cap’n’s kindness! There won’t be a finer spread than that of B company in any barrack-room to-day. You’ll be coming to see, Masther Girald, when the officers come round the dinners?’
‘I’ll ask Father,’ answered Gerald, and then he ran off, for it was getting near church time.
The tinkle-tinkle of the bell of the Roman Catholic Chapel in Ballybrumagem, which had been going on since dawn, now began again. It was accompanied this time by the clang of the bell in the schoolroom, which stood in the barrack-square and formed the garrison chapel for the soldiers. But both sounds were soon half-drowned by the band. This took up its position in the middle of the square, and the sweet strains of the tune known as ‘Christchurch Bells’ pealed forth.
Then they played ‘Hark, the Herald Angels,’ with a great swing, and, by that time, the dress for parade had long ago sounded, and it was time for the ‘fall in.’ The close ranks of the red uniforms massed gradually, thickened and widened, and arranged themselves with the precision of wooden toy soldiers. The officers came up, and the gray-haired Colonel. There was an inspection, a few short words of command, and then away marched the band, and behind it the drums and fifes. Among the drums and fifes came Jim, a proud boy indeed. He never remembered any Christmas morning in his life before like this. Christmas was associated in his mind with cold and hunger, and an intense and hopeless longing for the good things displayed in the shops. Now, he felt all this no more, and, above all, he was proud of himself and his position, and would not have changed places with a king.
Through the gates came Gerald and his mother, and passed into the schoolroom. Tangle came as far as the door, and then waited outside, looking at the men as they filed in. The poor little schoolroom had been decorated as well as was possible by the chaplain and Mother and some other ladies. At any rate, though it was not a beautiful edifice, it did not look the same as it did every day, which was something. The men stamped in; the Captain clanked up with the other officers, and sat down by Gerald and his mother, and the service began.
When it was over, Gerald slipped his hand into his father’s.
‘Father, may I go round the dinners with you? Mike says it will be a beautiful sight.’
‘Not all the dinners, my son; but you may come to B company’s dinner.’
So away he trotted, Tangle following. Gerald hardly recognised B company barrack-room. ‘The men had spent nearly the whole of the day before decorating it with wreaths of greenery. The Captain’s crest adorned one end of the huge whitewashed wall, flanked on either side with mottoes in white letters on a red ground: ‘Long life to the Captain.’ ‘Happiness to his lady.’
The men were already hard at work at the dinner when the Captain and Gerald entered. There was such a clatter of knives and forks. Many of the men had prepared for the fray by taking off their jackets. Everyone stood up as the officers came in, and there was a great filling of glasses. Then the Captain made them a little speech, and told them how pleased they all were to be back again at home, and how he hoped they were enjoying the good fare he had provided. Then they cheered till the rafters rang, and the company colour-sergeant, a fat man with many chevrons and medals and a scarf, got up and proposed the Captain’s health.
The words were hardly out of his mouth before the men cheered till the glasses jingled.
Then, when the Captain had thanked them another sergeant said:
‘Three cheers for the Cap’n’s leddy!’
And they shouted again. But when the noise had subsided, Corporal O’Flannagan was heard to exclaim from the far end of the room:
‘Now, lads, three cheers for Masther Girald! God bless him!’ and Gerald got as red as a turkey-cock, and little Jim, the drummer-boy, yelled till he was hoarse.
Then suddenly Gerald felt himself seized and hoisted on to the table. It was Mr. Larkins, the subaltern, who had done it.
‘Now, Gerald, you must return thanks, you know.’
Gerald looked at Father, and Father nodded with a smile. So he made himself as tall as he could, and tried to speak loud enough for Mike to hear, at the far end of the room.
‘Thank you very much, B company. I hope you like your dinner, and are having a jolly Christmas. I always have a birthday treat, you know, a cake, or my pet pudding; and this is Christ’s birthday, you know, and we soldiers ought to enjoy ourselves on it, for the Bible says He’s our great Captain, and He likes to see us happy. Thank you for having cheered me, and now I’ll ask you to give three cheers for Tangle, V.C.’
Gerald jumped down, and someone put Tangle in his place, and didn’t the men cheer him! As for Tangle, he threw back his head, and, sticking his nose in the air, joined in with a melodious howl.
After that the officers withdrew, and the rattle of the knives and forks began again with renewed vigour.
But, after his own dinner, Gerald, as he passed upstairs to the nursery, was surprised to find Mike O’Flannagan looming again in the back door. Nurse was there, too, and this was what the corporal said to her:
‘Do you know, Mary, afther what the little chap said to us about enjoyin’ ourselves on the great Cap’n’s birthday, I feel somehow as if I couldn’t go on ’atin’ over there like a phig and gettin’ dhrunk like a baaste. So you just get lave to come out for a quiet walk wid me, an’ perhaps the misthress ‘ll be askin’ me in to tay wid ye.’
So Gerald went out for a walk with his father, and Baby played all the afternoon down in the drawing-room with Mother.
‘Shure an’ I don’t like it at all at all!’
Mike O’Flannagan stood in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his barrack-room, polishing up his buttons, and giving his tunic a final brush. The ‘dress for parade’ bugle had sounded long ago. There was a stir and a bustle all over the barrack-square, and men were falling-in for parade from all directions.
He spoke to Tangle, who, his head cocked sagaciously on one side, sat watching O’Flannagan dress, as if he understood what he was saying.
‘I don’t moind foightin’ o’ them Arabs,’ Mike continued, ‘but I’ll be hung if it seems natural to be sint agin’ me own people like this! It’s precious hard loines, that’s what it is; an’ faix, if I’d known what the ould counthry was comin’ to, blessed if I’d taken the shillin’!’
And Mike buttoned up his tunic, shaking his head with some asperity.
At that moment Mrs. Slattery, the quartermaster’s wife, came out of her quarters and crossed the barrack-square, on her way down town to do some shopping. With her came Weezums, her little fat, puffy, longhaired King Charles spaniel.
Now, if there was a dog in the whole regiment that Tangle had a contempt for, it was Weezums. His appearance excited him instantly. Like an arrow from a bow he was off after him.
Weezums couldn’t run to save his life; he could only waddle. Another minute, and Tangle would have been upon him and have shaken all the breath out of his fat little body. Mrs. Slattery stood still, agitating her umbrella and urging her darling to hurry.
But at that moment Mike O’Flannagan’s whistle sounded across from the barrack-room door.
‘Whist! now, Tangle craythur!’ he shouted. ‘Have a care now! Come here wid ye, yer spalpeen!’
Tangle paused. The temptation to roll Weezums over was tremendously strong.
But Mike whistled again.
Then, with dejected tail, Tangle wheeled round and trotted back again to his master, looking up in his face with a deprecatory wag.
‘Faix!’ muttered Mike, hurrying to take his rifle down from the rack, ‘an’ it’s just tachin’ o’ me obadience the dumb baaste is! An’ me wid me good conduct stripe, too! Shame on yer, Mike O’Flannagan, to be afther questionin’ and doubtin’ o’ yer orders!’
As he spoke, the ‘staff’ bugle sounded, and Mike (he was a corporal now) hurried off to take his place in the ranks.
Now, smart and brave soldier as Mike had shown himself to be when the regiment was in Egypt, the duty on which he was at present detailed went much against his inclinations. And the duty was just this.
A few miles from Ballybrumagem was a small farm, the tenant of which had been recently turned out because he did not pay his rent. The National League, which had then taken upon itself to arrange the affairs of landlords and tenants, sided with the evicted farmer, and issued an order that no one in the neighbourhood was to take over the vacant farm. That it might not stand empty, the landlord put in a caretaker named O’Rooney, who came from another part of the country. O’Rooney had been subjected to every imaginable kind of persecution on account of his having taken charge of this farm. No one would buy his cattle or his poultry, would grind his corn, or help him to get in his crops. Not a shopkeeper in Ballybrumagem would sell him anything. He was what is called ‘boycotted.’
With much difficulty, and with the help of some men from the next county, he had, at last, late in September, cut his field of barley and stacked it into ‘stooks’—the miniature stacks with which every Irish hay or corn field is covered for weeks ere it is carried. But, one night, while he was asleep, a party of two hundred men, ordered by the National League, came and carried off O’Rooney’s stooks, and placed them among his neighbour’s in the next field. When O’Rooney got up next morning his own field was bare, while his neighbour’s had twice as many stooks as it could possibly have grown.
But this was not all. Every day O’Rooney received threatening letters, warning him that he would be shot and his farmhouse and stacks burnt if he remained there any longer.
Worse followed. Things came to such a pass that the farm actually was attacked one night by a party of armed men in black masks; but they were, fortunately, put to flight by a party of police, who happened to be returning to Ballybrumagem that way. But O’Rooney had recently been warned that the attack would be repeated, and by a stronger force. So he had asked for and obtained the protection of a guard of soldiers. Of these, Mike O’Flannagan was ordered in command, as corporal, and, as we have seen, it went against him, Irishman as he was, to be fighting against his own people.
It was growing dusk the afternoon of the day that Tangle had unwittingly recalled Mike to a sense of obedience, and the little dog was busily engaged in hunting for a bone which he had hidden that morning in a tangled flower-bed in front of the sergeant’s mess; but he could not find where he had hidden it. Tangle felt annoyed.
‘It’s that cat,’ he growled to himself, as his sharp little nose and paws burrowed vainly among the dead leaves; ‘it’s that cat; she’s always about the cook-house! I’ll be even with her if I set eyes on her!’
But, just at that moment, something made him forget all about the lost bone and the delinquent cat, and cock his ears and pause, listening.
A tramp of ammunition boots was heard going towards the barrack gates. The corporal’s voice rang out short and sharp through the dusk:
‘Eyes right! Shoulder-r’arms!’
The guard at the gate turned out, and the men tramped through, and the corporal shouted again: ‘Eyes front! Slope harms!’ and off they tramped down the road.
But Tangle had spied Mike O’Flannagan. Without a moment’s hesitation he scampered across the barrack-square, slipped through the gates just as they were being closed, and by the time the order had been given to march easy and pipes were being lit, Mike found Tangle trotting at his heels.
‘Shure, and it’s Tangle! Come along thin, auld chap, you’ll be company for us.’
But it was a longer walk than Tangle had anticipated. Before long he fell to regretting that bone and the barrack-room fire. The roads were wet and muddy, and the men splashed him. However, when at last they reached O’Rooney’s farm, where they were regaled with eggs and bacon, washed down with hot whisky and water, Tangle was not forgotten. For the hundredth time O’Flannagan related the story of Tangle’s winning his V.C., and they all drank his good health and long life to him. Then the corporal posted one of his men as sentry at the door; the others lay down in a shed, on some straw, but the corporal and Tangle returned to O’Rooney’s kitchen.
It was a very dark night, with a fine rain falling. But the turf fire blazed cheerily, and O’Rooney found Mike a sympathetic listener, as the two discussed the troubles of the ‘auld counthry,’ and wondered together over what ‘Oireland was comin’ to!’
All this was profoundly uninteresting to Tangle, who curled himself up at O’Flannagan’s feet under the table and went to sleep. He was woke much later by an odd noise. It sounded like the sepulchral cluck of an asthmatic hen, but Tangle was utterly at a loss to know whence it proceeded. At last he perceived, by the dim light of the dying fire, O’Rooney’s cocks and hens roosting, Irish fashion, on the beams overhead. One of the hens had dreamed she had laid an egg, and clucked in her sleep.
Tangle was fairly awake now, but the others slept soundly. The corporal had his head on the table by the side of his helmet; O’Rooney had stretched himself in front of the hearth.
Tangle got up, shook himself, and proceeded into the outhouse in search of a drink of water which had not been offered him. The back door was open, and he stepped out. It was still dark and raining. From the shed came a chorus of snores, echoed by O’Rooney’s nose on the hearth. No wonder that old hen had had a nightmare!
But amid the snoring and the soft patter of the rain, Tangle’s sharp little ears detected yet another sound.
It was that of stealthy footsteps squashing through the mire in the yard.
Tangle felt it his business to find out what this might mean. A very few steps of investigation showed him several men with guns, and their faces blacked, approaching O’Rooney’s ricks of corn.
Tangle’s bristles went up, and he stopped short defiantly.
As he did so one of the men struck a match and there followed a flare at the corner of the ricks.
‘Bow, wow, wow!’
That was Tangle giving the alarm to the sentry.
It was answered by a shot, and ping! a bullet whistled past him. But it missed him in the darkness and buried itself in the straw.
Then the sentry, his rifle at the charges rushed round from the other side of the house, shouting at the door of the shed as he passed:
‘Guard, turn out!’
Tangle, seized with the spirit of the excitement, made a spring at the man with the matches, and caught him by the trouser. Taken by the surprise, the man slipped up in the mud and fell heavily to the ground, nearly crushing Tangle, who, however, held on to him heroically.
By this time the corporal and his men were up and out and after the intruders. But the latter, favoured by the darkness, made good their escape, all except the one whom Tangle’s teeth held fast.
‘Faix! an’ ef Tangle here ain’t made the only prisoner!’ cried Mike, as he stumbled over their prostrate forms and collared Tangle’s victim after a struggle.
When the soldiers had searched the premises, and had made sure that the ‘moonlighters,’ as the miscreants are called, had made off, and when the flames of the burning rick had been extinguished, the corporal marched his prisoner into the kitchen, Tangle following.
‘An’ I’m not at all sure but what I was dozin’ a bhit,’ muttered Mike.
‘It wur the dawg has guv the halarm,’ remarked the man who had been on sentry. ‘Hi was round t’other side o’ the ’ouse, and couldn’t see nor ’ear nothink.’
Shure, an’ he’s a wonderful craythur entoirely!’ exclaimed O’Flannagan, as he fondled the dog’s head. ‘What wid comin’ on guard and doin’ sentry-go, and then finishin’ by takin’ a prisoner. Well done, auld Tangle!’
And when next day Tangle got back to barracks, the men of O’Flannagan’s room gave him a dinner fit for a king, and he no longer grudged the cook-house cat the bone she had stolen.
One day, when the post corporal, after leaving barracks, called for the letters at the Captain’s, he took one directed in Gerald’s best round hand. And this was what it contained:
‘My Dear Grandmamma,
‘It is very kind of you to ask me and Baby to come and stay with you. We shall enjoy it very much. I want to know if we may bring Tangle. Tangle is my own dog, I bought him with my own money—godmother’s half-sovrin. He’s always been with me everywhere except when once I lent him to go on service, and take care of Father, and once when he got lost. I think it would be very nice if he could take some furlo now and come and stay with you. For Tangle is a V.C.—that means Victoria Cross, you know—and does everything like a real soldier. Father and Mother are going to pay visits, and Mike is away on furlo, so that poor Tangle has no one to stop with, except little Jim, the drummer boy he enlisted, and he’s got no home to go to, the regiment is his home now, and Jim says he’s glad.
‘Your affectionate grandson,
‘Gerald.
I forgot to say that we had a wedding here on Tuesday. Mike—he’s a full corporal now—married our nurse. We went to the wedding and so did Tangle, and Tangle wore a large white favour on his collar. Baby is very sorry nurse is gone, and cries every night when she goes to bed.’
The result of this epistle was that Tangle went to stay at Grandmamma’s, too. Grandmamma lived in a house in a street in a large town, and, at first, both the children and Tangle felt rather strange. They missed the cheery bustle of the barracks, they missed their country walks. Grandmamma was very kind, and amused the children in many pleasant ways, but Tangle was decidedly dejected. Grandmamma was not very fond of dogs, and, I think, but for Gerald’s asking her, would never have consented to receive Tangle. He did his best to behave well, but a town house in muddy weather is a trying place for a long-haired dog, and the clean whitened doorstep, with which cook took such pains every morning, suffered much from Tangle’s paws. One thing, however, sustained his spirits, and that was the feeling he had a duty to perform. I positively believe that Tangle imagined that, in a new place, among a crowd of strangers, and with a new nurse, the entire responsibility of Gerald and Baby devolved on him. He went out walking with them regularly, marching solemnly by the side of the perambulator, and not running about at all. He would even accompany them upstairs, and see them safe back in their nursery.
Gerald wrote to nurse, who was away with Mike, staying with the old O’Flannagans, at the farm where Tangle had been found again. This is what he said:
‘Dear Nurse,
‘I hope you are quite well. We are quite well and send our loves to you and Mike. This is a big town, as big as London, I should think. I have been to a cirkus, and to a tea-party. There are no soldiers here. We miss them, and so does Tangle. It’s so dull not hearing any bugles when we wake up in the morning. There is only the milkman. The postman wears uniform, but he’s not well drilled; and he’s not a real soldier. One day we heard a big drum and marching, we were out for a walk. Tangle and I ran round the corner to see. They wore uniform and marched, but there were women among them. It was the Salvation Army. At first Tangle thought they were soldiers and ran up to them wagging his tail. But when he found they were not, he stood still and barked at them.
‘Your loving
‘Gerald.’
Tangle had not been more than a day or two at Grandmamma’s before he was subjected to what appeared to him to be a frightful indignity. The cook, who was no friend of his on account of her clean steps, approached with a wire something in her hand, which she attempted to clasp over Tangle’s mouth. He was not going to stand this and growled. Then Gerald came up.
‘Here, cook, let me put it on. He’ll let me do it. Come, Tangle darling, poor old boy! You must wear it, you know. It’s the law here. All dogs have got to be muzzled, or they can’t go about the streets.’
Of course Tangle submitted, but there was a look in the honest brown, eyes, under the fuzzy fringe, that said plainly ‘I’ll wear it to oblige you, and because you put it on! Nothing else would induce me to!’
Then he ran away and hid under a table and had a good scratch and rub, to try and get it off.
Poor Tangle! the muzzle spoilt all the pleasure of his walks. His tail got out of curl, his head drooped. A hundred times a day he wished himself back in the barrack-square at Ballybrumagem. One day, when his muzzle was off, he felt he could stand it no longer, and, taking advantage of the back door being open, while the cook talked to the baker, he slipped past her, out into the street. Freedom was delightful! Tangle raced hither and thither, exploring this and that, making acquaintance with other less fortunate and muzzled dogs, when——
A tall black figure, erect and stiff, something like a soldier in his great-coat clipped into the ink, tramped after him down the pavement. Nearer and nearer he approached the unconscious Tangle, and, when quite close, clicked his fingers at him coaxingly. Tangle unsuspectingly came up to him with a friendly wag. But the myrmidon of the law pounced down upon him and tied a piece of string to his collar.
Now Tangle felt what it was like to be a prisoner! How devoutly he wished he’d never left the house. But there was no help within sight. He had run some distance, into a street where he was not known. Gerald, the cook, nurse, Grandmamma, were nowhere to be seen. They all thought he was asleep in the kitchen, except cook, who thought he was asleep in the nursery.
Poor Tangle had to allow himself to be dragged along ignominiously at the policeman’s heels, and, on arriving at the police station, was shut up in an out-house.
There were three other dogs there. One was a poor half-starved-looking beast, whom Tangle, wretched as he was, could not help pitying; he reminded him so of his vagabond years, before he become the ‘Drabs’’ guard-room dog. Another had had a bad blow on the leg, and could hardly move; and the third was so ill-tempered and snappish, that Tangle thought he was going mad, and kept at a respectful distance from him.
A little supper was brought them. The ill-tempered dog declined any, and the hungry-looking one was so ravenous, that Tangle would have been obliged to have had a pitched battle with him to obtain his share, so he let it alone, feeling too sad to be very hungry. He passed a melancholy night, disturbed by the yapping of his cross companion, and meditating over his folly in leaving Gerald.
Words would fail me to describe the grief and despair which reigned at Grandmamma’s when Gerald’s bedtime came and Tangle was found to be missing. The house was searched high and low, and even grandmamma herself put on her spectacles, and looked into all sorts of impossible places, where Tangle was much too big to have got in. The cook, forgetting all about his dirty paws, flung her apron over her head and went half down the street calling him. But no patter of little feet came in response, no little rough head rubbed itself against Gerald’s legs. At last, Gerald, worn out with crying, was persuaded to go to bed. Grandmamma, coming to bid him good-night, found him clasping Tangle’s muzzle—the muzzle he had so hated, and which he had bent on one side in his efforts to rub it off. It was all that was left of the little dog, and it comforted Gerald somewhat to hold it.
‘My dear little boy!’ said Grandmother, ‘you must really leave off crying, and go to sleep. As Tangle has slipped out without his muzzle, if we go and inquire for him in the morning at the police-station, we shall probably find him. The police have orders to take up any unmuzzled dogs.’
But she did not like to mention, for fear of grieving Gerald, that, owing to the scare of mad dogs, the police had orders to destroy any stray ones they found.
Morning dawned on Tangle in his prison cell. With it came a, new policeman, whom Tangle had not seen, and who had a kind face, and with him the inspector. They stood eyeing the three captives for a few seconds. Then the inspector issued his orders.
‘That one looks dangerous,’ he said, pointing to the snarling retriever; ‘let him be killed at once. And that one also,’ pointing to the starveling; ‘he evidently don’t belong to nobody.’
Then there was a pause, and they looked at Tangle.
‘He’s got a kind o’ collar like on,’ remarked the policeman.
‘Any name?’
‘“Tangle, V.C.”’ read the policeman.
‘What’s V.C. stand for? It’s no address.’
‘When I was in the service,’ said the policeman, drawing himself up, ‘V.C. stood for Victoria Cross.’
‘I don’t see what that can have to do with a dog,’ laughed the inspector. ‘But, anyhow, let him wait a bit. He looks well-fed, and quiet; he may be claimed with that collar on.’
And claimed he was. Not long afterwards the door of Tangle’s prison opened again. He was up and listening. He had caught the sound of footsteps, and with a little yap of delight threw himself on to Gerald, who hugged him.
‘Oh! Tangle, Tangle! here you are safe and sound! And I dreamt last night a horrible dream, that Smithers had got you again, and had killed you!’
‘Which wasn’t far from coming true, young sir,’ said the inspector. ‘Our orders are to kill all unmuzzled dogs. But seeing he had a collar on, we kept him a bit.’
‘And perhaps you can be telling us what’s written on his collar, sir?’ asked the policeman.
‘Tangle, that’s his name. And V.C. stands for Victoria Cross. He’s a soldier’s dog, and he saved my father’s life in the Egyptian war; so I gave him brevet V.C.,’ explained Gerald, and told the story of Tangle’s heroism breathlessly, to the delight of the policeman who was an old soldier.
‘Well,’ added the inspector, when Gerald finished, ‘it was just that collar saved his life, I can tell you!’
‘Oh! Here! Hi! Tangle, Tangle! Hie seek! Hie seek!’ and Gerald brandished an old ball that had once been gaily painted, but which was now much the worse for gnawing, and held it up for Tangle’s inspection. Then he ran into the night nursery and hid it securely under Baby’s bed.
Then the game began. It was by no means a new one, but one which always much delighted the children and Tangle included, especially on wet days when they could not get out and wanted, all three of them, a good romp.
Tangle was a famous finder. How he hunted for that old ball, scurrying here, crawling in there, all round in both rooms, till at last, with a vicious bark of triumph, he got it out from under the bed, and, half mad with joy, raced with it to Gerald’s feet! The latter shouted approvingly to him:
‘Well done, Tangle! Good old boy! I do declare, nurse, Tangle’s better fun at hide-and-seek than any children are!’
And Tangle looked up, his tail wagging fast and his shaggy sides heaving with excitement and exertion.
‘I know what I’ll do now!’ began Gerald again; in a mysterious whisper. ‘You watch; nurse, and you’ll see a joke now!’
And Gerald began moving stealthily about the nursery, calling just outside the doors and under the furniture, ‘Bob! Bob!’
The effect upon Tangle was instantaneous. Had he been a bull-pup, and had you called ‘Rats!’ it would not have roused him more. He cocked his head and his tail, and stood rigid at attention, listening to Gerald intently. Suddenly he gave a low growl of defiance, as at an invisible enemy.
‘Hi! hi! fetch him out, Tangle! Have at him! Bob! Bob!’ shouted Gerald.
Tangle darted forth like an arrow from a bow, with short, sharp barks of rage, hunting hither and thither all over the place for the mysterious Bob. Baby, who was always rather alarmed at this somewhat rough game, held out her arms to Mother to be taken up, and looked much relieved when she found herself securely perched on the table above, while Tangle, egged on to fury by Gerald, tore about the room, endeavouring to find and fight Bob, who did not exist, and, indeed, never had existed!
How the game had begun, Gerald did not quite know. Whether, in some former circumstances of his unknown life, Tangle really had had an arch dog-enemy by the name of Bob, no one but himself could of course say. Anyhow the mere mention of Bob seemed to rouse him to frenzy, and he only gave up the imaginary chase when both he and Gerald had landed in the old armchair, both quite breathless from racing and barking and shouting.
But they did not sit still long. Suddenly from down in the road arose a ‘rub-a-dub’ of drums and the squeak of the fifes, and Baby from her point of vantage stretched out a chubby finger at the window and cried:
‘’Ook, Derald, ’ook!’
By the windows of the little house at Ballybrumagem the ‘Drabs’ were marching past, going for a ‘route march’, or ‘out for a walk,’ as Gerald termed it. It was a dull, rather drizzling winter’s morning, not conducive to cheerfulness, and as the last redcoat turned the corner of the muddy lane and the squeak of the drums and fifes was heard no more, Gerald turned away and sighed:
‘Of all the saddest things I know, there’s nothing sadderer than saying good-bye!’.
But Baby, who did not understand, only remarked:
‘All muddy out doors. Men’s daiters all ’plashed—dirty men. Why don’t de dardeners in front clear ’way all nas’y mud?’
‘You little goose! The “gardeners” in front, as you call them, are the pioneers. They are supposed to be wanted to clear the way for the regiment in a difficult country.’
But Baby wouldn’t be convinced.
‘Dey’s gardeners,’ she said. ‘Dey’s got ’pades and pickaxes.’
Gerald was too depressed to answer her. And what saddened him so was this. He knew he had seen the ‘Drabs’ march by for the last time. For they were under orders for India. In a month’s time they would have sailed. And Gerald?—Gerald was to go to school.
‘It’s not school I mind, Mother,’ he said, coming and sitting down by her, and leaning his head against her arm. ‘I like the idea of Eton suits, for I think I am really a little too big for sailor things any longer. And then there’s the football and the cricket! That’ll be jolly! But, mother, I don’t like going away from the dear old “Drabs.” I shall miss it all dreadfully. There’s no such fun as soldiering; and you see, it—it will be a terrible long time before I can be a soldier. Father says it will be ten years, even if I pass very well in all my examinations, before I can get my commission. Ten years is an awful long time, mother. Do you think any of us will be alive then?’
Mother smiled. ‘I hope so, my son! But very likely Tangle, who is not a young dog now, may not be.’
‘Ah, now! and that’s just why I’ve decided that he’s to stick to the regiment. He’s a thorough soldier, you see, and he is too old to wait for me to join. If he stopped with you and Baby he’d be dull, and they would not have him at school. Yes, he must go with the old colours. But it’s very hard to say good-bye.’ And Gerald broke down and sobbed over Tangle’s rough head.
Mother hardly knew what to say to him. At this sad moment it was Tangle who proved the best comforter, and in this way. For a few moments he stood still and let Gerald cry over him; but when the maid opened the door and brought in the tray with the children’s dinner, he abruptly withdrew himself, and began to take the keenest interest in her proceedings.
‘Now then, Master Gerald, aren’t you coming to sit down?’
‘I don’t think I want any dinner, thank you,’ answered Gerald lugubriously.
‘That’s hardly fair on Tangle, is it?’ asked Mother. ‘You know very well that Tangle won’t eat his till you sit down and begin,’ she reminded him.
Which was indeed the case. Tangle’s plate had been placed on the floor beside his little master’s chair, and he himself, with his head cocked and one ear turned inside-out in the jauntiest manner, looked up imploringly at Gerald, as much as to say:
‘Don’t you see I’m starving?’
‘Well, then,’ said the little boy, ‘I suppose I’d better.’
And he sat down and began upon his roast mutton, which he found nicer than he had expected (or was it that he was hungrier than he allowed?), and Tangle fell upon his platter of bones and soup with an avidity which left no manner of doubt as to his appetite.
Then, when he had finished his dinner, Tangle awaited permission to go and look for what Gerald called his ‘dessert.’
‘Biscuit? Tangle, biscuit?’ he asked.
And the little dog understood perfectly. He trotted off to the chiffonier, opened the half-ajar door with his nose, and from the tin kept on purpose in the corner took out a biscuit and brought it back in triumph.
To-day, however, when this performance was over, Gerald patted his little pet silently and sadly. Then he went himself to the chiffonier and investigated the contents of the tin.
‘Not quite half full, Mother; and, at one a day, I think it will just last till—till——’
And he broke down and began to cry again.
At sea once more! Poor Tangle was tied up in an empty horse-box, among the sheep and the poultry, and he missed his liberty exceedingly. He was very popular, however, and nearly all day long he was surrounded by officers or men, talking to him as they smoked.
All went well the first part of the voyage. The great white troopship Alligator, with the regiment on board—a huge floating village, containing some sixteen hundred souls, men, women and children—steamed across the boisterous Bay of Biscay, past the Rock of Gibraltar, and through the Mediterranean, when the weather began to get pleasantly warm. Then she entered the Suez Canal, and steaming very slowly, for fear of damaging the sandy banks with the wash of the great wave following her, anchored for the night, when the sun set over the desert, tied up with hawsers to huge piles on the shore.
After dinner some of the officers went for a walk in the desert, delighted with the chance of a little exercise after the long confinement on board ship. The Captain was among them, and he remembered, before he started, that there was someone else who would enjoy a run, and he unchained Tangle.
How the little dog did enjoy himself! How he scampered and gambolled about, rolling himself in the soft, yielding sand, and uttering short, sharp barks of joy.
It was a lovely moonlight night, still and balmy. Jim, who, like the rest, of the soldiers, was not allowed to leave the ship, sat upon the bulwark in the fore-part of the vessel, enjoying the scene. Had the ship been in motion, his position would have been a dangerous one; but she was at anchor, the stagnant waters of the canal lapping against her sides.
It grew late. Most of the soldiers turned in below. Only the watch on deck and a marine sentry paced to and fro on the opposite side to that on which Jim sat. Gradually the silence of the night told upon him; he leant his head against some rigging and dozed.
He did not hear the voices of the returning walking party, or the dip of the oars as they rowed across to the ship, and flocked up the ladder on to the deck. Neither was he aware of the patter of four small feet, nor did he notice Tangle, who came and stood upon his hind legs and sniffed at him inquiringly.
No, Jim slept soundly. But his uncomfortable position gave him a bad dream. He thought he was once more back in old Nat’s cellar, and that the latter had seized him, and was going to beat him.
He woke with a start, lost his balance, and, slipping over the side of the ship, disappeared into the deep, sullen waters below.
Tangle gave a low whine as his friend vanished, and then, quick as thought, ran further aft, and jumping upon a locker on a level with the bulwark, stood peering anxiously down to see what had become of him.
The noise of a short, sharp bark, following the heavy splash in the water, brought the sentry round from the other side of the deck, and the cry of ‘Man overboard!’ rang out into the still night air.
‘Where? Which side did he fall?’ asked the watch.
‘There, where you see the dawg a-lookin’ over,’ was the reply, and Tangle added all the information that he could, in the shape of another whine, as he still stood motionless on the locker, regardless, for once in his life, of the Captain whistling for him all over the after-part of the vessel.
The canal is deep and Jim had never learnt to swim. Moreover, as he fell, he hit his head against a hanging chain, and was knocked senseless. Happily, the water was so still that he rose again almost at the same spot where Tangle, and Tangle alone, had seen him sink.
Fortunately, too, the boat which had brought the officers on board was still at the ladder, and in a very few minutes the crew of bluejackets had brought it round to where Jim had now risen for the second time. They hauled him in senseless, but alive, and Tangle met him at the gangway as they carried him up the ladder.
The Captain was among the group of excited spectators.
‘Why, Tangle!’ he cried. ‘You here? I’ve been whistling everywhere for you to come and be tied up!’
‘Lor, sir,’ said one of the watch, ‘the little dawg was a-pointin’ to where the poor lad had gone overboard! But for him we might ha’ rowed all round the ship afore we found him, and picked him up too late!’
After this exploit Tangle became a greater hero than ever both with redcoats and bluejackets on board the Alligator. The latter said he deserved the Humane Society’s Medal for saving Jim’s life. But Jim said:
‘I stood his friend once when he was lost and in trouble, and I think he just thought he’d give me tit-for-tat like!’
It was towards the close of a long, hot day at Guramghur in India. The barracks where the ‘Drabs’ lay—long rows of white buildings with deep verandas and high-pitched thatched roofs, scattered about a large bare expanse of sun-baked plain—were waking up to life again. The sun had set in a magnificent sky of crimson and gold, behind a grove of trees that edged the plains to the west. The men, who had been confined to barracks all the hot hours, got back into their white uniform jackets, and began to creep outside. The band collected and marched, somewhat limply, to play at the band-stand under the trees on the Mall, while the officers and ladies on horseback or in carriages sat round. Groups of white-dressed, white-faced English children emerged from the married quarters of the barracks, and wandered languidly out for a walk, under charge of ayahs and bearers.
Tangle himself rose up from the neighbourhood of the kuskus tatty in O’Flannagan’s quarters, where he had lain all day at full length with his tongue out, and stretched himself lazily. A kuskus tatty is a happy invention to keep a room cool. A thick mat of woven grass is fitted into the doorway facing the direction in which the hot wind blows, and kept wet by pails of water thrown upon it from without. Through it, therefore, the wind blows deliciously cool.
Tangle was somewhat the worse for India and the hot weather. He was thin and his coat finer and less shaggy. A little more of such a climate, and he felt he should no longer deserve his name.
Outside the veranda the world was growing dark, so short is the Indian twilight. The ever-present crows were settling themselves to rest on the line of Millingtonia trees which bordered the roads through the barracks. The crows made a great fuss over going to bed, like some tiresome children do, and disturbed the little owls who came out and hooted shrilly. A smell of peculiar smoke filled the air; it came from the natives’ quarters, where the servants were cooking their daily meal.
Though it was almost dark, the air felt as hot as it had done in the middle of the day,, and the furnace-like wind blew down the open spaces between the barracks with unabated intensity. Nevertheless, at O’Flannagan’s whistle, Tangle got up and accompanied him languidly to the corporals’ mess, where he had many friends, and was made much of by the non-commissioned officers, who were sitting smoking and reading the papers.
From here Tangle strolled over to Jim’s barrack-room to look for the latter. Not finding him, he traced him to the recreation-room, where he found him engaged in laboriously spelling over an old Illustrated London News.
His appearance was greeted with delight. Tangle was put through all his tricks and made an attempt, just to please Jim, of learning to walk on his hind legs, carrying a stick like a rifle with his forepaws. But in vain. The stick would fall out, and Tangle fall down.
‘Never mind, old chap,’ said Jim kindly, ‘it’s much too hot for this kind of work, isn’t it? I feel as if I couldn’t walk a mile to save my life. Sometimes, Tangle, do you know,’ and he bent his head confidentially to the dog’s ear, ‘though I love the Drabs as much as you do, and the wish o’ my life is to be a sergeant, I can’t help feeling—when my head is very bad, and the hot wind scorches my inside like, and I can’t sleep—almost sorry as I’m not back agin in old Nat’s cellar? But there, it was sometimes too awful cold there! Seems, somehow, as if there weren’t no ’appy middle in life!’
Tangle rubbed his head against Jim’s knee as if he understood all about it, and the latter answered:
‘Well, old man, cheer up! We’ll soon be a goin’ back ’ome to old England, I ’opes!’
That night it was quite too hot to sleep indoors anywhere, Tangle thought. It appeared Mike agreed with him, for the latter brought out a mattress, and laid it flown at the foot of the veranda steps. Tangle stretched himself in the dust, a few paces from him. But he couldn’t sleep. A jackal and his companions made night hideous with their noises. They would call to each other from remote corners of the barracks and then meet and have a regular laughing chorus of unearthly yells. Sometimes Tangle, who slept with one eye open, would catch glimpses of them, as they slunk across in the moonlight, from one shadow to the next.
But, after all, as you will see, it was rather a good thing that the jackals did keep Tangle awake and on the alert.
Mike was sleeping peacefully, and all was quiet, when suddenly Tangle became aware of a black something gliding along the veranda. It was too small for a jackal; the squirrels who inhabited the thatch were in bed and asleep. Sometimes the strange object stopped, and then Tangle dozed again, thinking he had been mistaken, and that it was a stick or the punkah-coolie’s shoes.
But it drew nearer and nearer, and at last Tangle’s curiosity was aroused, and he got up to investigate it. As he came close, the creature suddenly sat bolt upright, on its hind legs as it were, and revealed itself to be a snake, a dreaded cobra, with its hood up, ready to strike.
Tangle drew back in alarm, and sniffed uneasily. The snake responded by a slight hiss. Tangle withdrew still further, and the snake proceeded noiselessly and leisurely on its way down the steps.
Tangle ran back to where Mike was lying fast asleep. He felt sure his master ought to be informed of the presence of this strange visitor. The cobra, on the other hand, whose home was in the thatch, and who was going out for a night walk, felt inclined to deal summarily with any object in its way. Now, Mike, asleep on his mattress, was the object in its way.
The snake advanced, hood up defiantly, and hissing. Tangle edged backwards, growling. The snake got down the first two steps, and Tangle could stand it no longer. He barked right out at him.
Mike stirred, turned, and sat up, bewildered.
Tangle turned round, and looked at him and barked again, and the snake again responded with a hiss.
That was enough for Mike. He jumped up with incredible alacrity, and ran back a few paces. A cobra, with its hood up and meaning mischief, and whose bite proves fatal within a few hours, is no pleasant neighbour when you are lying, only partially clothed, on the ground.
Tangle ran back too, barking vehemently. Then Mike went into the house, and returning with a thick stick, disposed of the cobra satisfactorily in a very few minutes.
Tangle smelt the corpse of the intruder over carefully.
Said Mike: ‘Shure, Tangle, and there’s a new sort of varmint for ye! Ye don’t know what to make of it, do ye? But all the same, it’s ye I’ve got to thank that it hasn’t got its fangs into me!’
If you imagined that Mrs. Slattery, the quartermaster’s wife in the ‘Drabs,’ was going to India without her fat pet Weezums, the whole regiment knew better than you did. Tangle, indeed, had hoped that his arch-enemy might not turn up again when they landed at Bombay, and settled down at Guramghur. The Red Sea had been very hot, and Weezums was very fat. He very nearly went off in a fit of apoplexy, but not quite. No such luck. Once at Guramghur, there was the fat dog waddling about after his fat mistress, who loved him like her own child and spoilt him shockingly.
It absolutely disgusted a hardy little fellow like Tangle, a soldier dog in every sense of the word, who had knocked about so much, and seen such ups and downs in life, to notice how the fat, useless little King Charles was pampered. He had his own basket and his own pillow, under the punkah, of course, when the weather grew hot. Then he had a servant chiefly to wait upon him! Imagine that. Mrs. Slattery’s untidy, slouching sweeper-man used to wash him and brush him, and feed him with his fingers, and take him for a walk when the sun went down. Then Weezums’ mistress had made him a little coat to put on in the cool of the evenings: a very smart, red-bordered little coat, with ‘W. S.,’ for ‘Weezums Slattery,’ embroidered in one corner, like a horse-rug. Weezums was disgustingly conceited over that coat, and Tangle despised him much for it. Not, however, but what he himself would not have been sorry, now that it was getting so hot, to have been able to take his own hot, thick little coat on and off.
The pet dogs in an Indian cantonment, taken by their attendants for a walk much in the same way, at sundown, as the children are, congregate round the band-stand like the latter, not, of course, because they enjoy the music, but because the servants want to squat round in a circle, gossiping, forgetful of their charges, who play and squabble and fight to their hearts’ content.
No one, of course, had charge of the Guard-room Dog; but if nothing better offered, in the shape of a walk with O’Flannagan or Jim, he would trot down from barracks with the band, and meet all the rest of the regimental dog-world under the shady trees of the Mall. Here it was that wicked little Tangle’s delight to bully poor Weezums, who did him no harm, but whose only fault was that much eating had made him short of breath and snappish of temper.
Mrs. Slattery was safe out of the way, driving with her husband in their little bamboo cart. The sweeper, to whom she had committed her precious pet, was wont to become so engrossed in his chats with the other servants, over rice and ghee prices, and little thefts, that he forgot all about Weezums. Now was Tangle’s opportunity.
What a life he led that dog one day, when it was so hot that the poor King Charles felt fit to melt! How he chivied and chased him, caring not a bit for all Weezums’ snappings and snarlings, rolling him over and over on the dusty Mall, till he looked as white as a miller, and his poor mistress would almost have had a fit had she seen him.
In his endeavours to get away from his tormentor, poor Weezums slunk further and further away from the band-stand and from his attendant; and at last took refuge in the overgrown garden of a deserted bungalow by the roadside. But Tangle would not let him alone. With his sharp little nose he smelt Weezums out and pursued him, and gave chase again, with short sharp barks of derision. Weezums, hurried and flurried, waddled here and helter-skeltered there, rolling over obstacles, and stopping every now and again to turn and snarl and show his teeth at his persecutor.
On went Tangle, wildly careering, bounding, barking exultingly, not looking where he was going among the tangled beds and weedy walks, and over the rough grass. But as the two reached one corner of the garden, Weezums was surprised to hear the barking suddenly cease, and, looking back, saw that Tangle had utterly disappeared!
Not seeing a sign of his pursuer, Weezums sat down and took breath, which he sorely needed, expecting every moment that Tangle would spring up from some hiding-place and come at him again. Time passed, however, and no Tangle appeared. What could have become of him? He had vanished so suddenly and completely. Weezums made it his business to investigate. With his little snub nose bent on the ground he followed Tangle’s trail, till, in the corner of the garden where his pursuer had last been seen, he came upon a deep dry well, half-overgrown with grass and bushes, so that it was only to be seen when you were close upon it.
Weezums peered over the edge. Something he saw below him made him show his sharp little teeth and give a vicious snarl. Then he turned away and waddled slowly back to the band-stand and his servant, just as if nothing had happened.
The sundown gun boomed from the fort. The short Indian twilight descended apace, and in the shade of the Mall, round the bandstand, the grooms began quickly lighting the lamps of the waiting carriages. Presently the band itself played ‘God save the Queen!’ and marched back, to barracks; but Tangle did not return with them.
It was Jim who missed him first, as he sat in the recreation-room veranda in the cool evening, time hanging heavy on his hands. There was no Tangle to play with and to put through his performances. He went in search of him. At O’Flannagan’s quarters he found the corporal sitting in his shirt-sleeves in a deck-chair outside the little brick oven of a house, and the baby kicking on a rug in the veranda, while Mrs. O’Flannagan scolded her ayah; but no Tangle. Jim sought him in the Captain’s bungalow. It was empty. The photos of Gerald and Baby adorned a very bare white-washed large room, with a camp-bed in the middle, and many boxes and rows of boots round the sides. The Captain was dining at mess; his bearer had gone off to the bazaar; but there was no trace of Tangle. Neither was he in the guard-room.
Jim began to get alarmed after his fruitless search. He raised a hue and cry in barracks, and many others looked and whistled for Tangle. But in vain. First post was sounded in front of the guard-room; second post followed later, and all the regiment returned to their quarters—all but Tangle.
‘Lights out,’ two ‘G’s,’ rang over the now silent barracks; but Tangle was ‘absent without leave.’
And all the time he was a prisoner at the bottom of the well in the deserted garden! In vain had the poor little dog pawed and scratched and struggled. He could not scramble up the steep, crumbling sides of the pit. In vain had he whined and yelped and barked. No one heard him and came to his rescue, for the very best of reasons, that no one knew where he was. No one except Weezums—sly, selfish Weezums, who had waddled home to a good supper and a soft bed, leaving Tangle to starve.
In time Tangle got tired of barking in vain, and making up his mind to make the best of a bad job, curled himself up among the stones and rubble at the bottom of the well, and tried to sleep and forget how hungry he was. The challenges of the sentries every relief, and the hours as they were struck on the bar of iron outside the guard-room, were wafted over to him from the barracks. But no one came near the empty bungalow, and the Mall itself was silent and deserted. Suddenly, however, Tangle was aroused by a rustling in the grass above him. He got up and listened eagerly for a familiar footfall. Someone peeped over the edge of the well, and Tangle gave a low growl. For it was a gaunt pariah dog, a homeless, miserable waif, that he knew well by sight, one of the many half-wild dogs that infest an Indian cantonment.
The pariah was a thorough coward, and, alarmed by Tangle’s growl, he slunk away through the bushes, though he was many sizes the larger. All the same, how willingly would Tangle have changed places with him now!
The night wore on, and Tangle had another visitor, and a very different one. This time, though his bristles stood on end with attention and the little dog watched with acute eagerness, not a sound did he utter, but curled his tail tightly between his legs. Tangle was no coward, as we all know. He was not afraid of skulking Arabs or of hooded cobras; but he afraid now. Something again looked down at him. At first sight you might have thought it was the pariah come back. It was not much larger, and had the same lean lithe form; but its nose was longer and its eyes more keen and cunning, and its fangs more cruel and sharp, as it grinned at Tangle a vicious grin. It was nothing less than a wolf, returning to his den after his night prowl in the direction of the butcher’s yard—a hungry wolf, ready to seize any animal that came in its way; be it dog, deer, or even little brown native child.
Tangle remained perfectly motionless, glaring at the wolf, and the wolf glared at Tangle. Then, probably because he had already had a good supper and thought it too much trouble to go after such a small mouthful as Tangle, the wolf slunk away through the bushes as stealthily as he had come, and Tangle’s tail grew erect once more.
He slept till dawn, and then, when in the early morning the world woke up to life again, the bugles ringing from the barracks, and the bullock carts, heavily laden, came creaking up the Mall, he began to whine and bark afresh. The sun poured down and it began to get very hot at the bottom of the well. Tangle felt like going mad when, in the course of the morning, new and unaccustomed sounds attracted his attention. There sounded all over the garden, now near and now close, a rushing by fits and starts. Was it animal, or human being? Not at all like the latter’s usual way of getting about, but yet Tangle’s keen ear told him it was a man. He began to bark afresh, and the rushing suddenly ceased and footsteps came up to the well.
There was a glad shout of ‘Tangle!’ a frantic bark of joy, and Jim, butterfly-net in hand (he was making one of those beautiful collections the soldiers in India take such a pride in accumulating, and the deserted garden was his happy hunting-ground), came and looked over at him.
In a very few minutes Jim had jumped down and Tangle was safe in the upper world again in his friend’s arms, in a delirious state of delight. He was welcomed back to barracks with effusion by everyone—except Weezums. Dogs can’t laugh, we know. Yet Weezums came very near giving Tangle a derisive smile when next they met in the barrack-square,
Still the pitiless fierce sun blazed down upon Guramghur; still the sirocco wind raged over the parched land, like a furnace blast.
One day Tangle could not find Jim anywhere. He sought him in his barrack-room; but his bedding was neatly strapped up, as usual, at the head of his bed, and the latter was empty. He sought him in the recreation-room, but in vain. Jim could not be on parade, for there was no drill on the dusty plain in the hot weather. Tangle wondered where he could be.
But one day he caught sight of him.
The band was playing at the band-stand on the Mall, and Tangle had strolled thither with Mrs. O’Flannagan, arrayed in her best dress. A little way beyond the string of carriages drawn up under the trees a large covered cart, dragged lumberingly along by two bullocks with humps, took up its position. The cart was full of soldiers, but soldiers out of uniform, capless, and clad in blue cotton gowns and trousers. They were the men from the hospital, allowed out, such as were fit for it, for an evening drive. Amongst them, Tangle’s sharp eyes spied Jim, worn and wan, his eyes looking twice their usual size.
The little dog rushed up to the cart, and put his fore-paws up against the back.
‘Why, if there ain’t Tangle!’ cried Jim, and his voice sounded weak. ‘Tangle, old man, you’re glad to see me, ain’t you? Here, you chaps, make room for Tangle!’
And the dog was lifted into the cart, and made much of by Jim. He returned with him to the hospital; and when the doctor came on his evening round, there was no difficulty in getting his permission for Tangle to remain there.
‘The dog was so pleased to see him in the cart, sir; he’d hunted high and low for him in barracks, sir, for days,’ said the hospital-sergeant. And he told the doctor the story of Jim’s enlistment, and the end of it was that Tangle was suffered to remain.
He took up his quarters on Jim’s bed. Nothing could induce him to move; and O’Flannagan, on coming down to the hospital to look for him, found it useless to try and get him to come home, and he sent him his dinner down by a servant.
The next day, when, in the dusk, the bullock-cart came round, Jim was too ill to go for a drive. In vain Tangle jumped off the bed, as the waggon creaked and lumbered up the drive, and scampering out into the veranda, seemed, to beg Jim to follow. When he found it useless he came back slowly and lay on the bed again, while Jim’s thin, but hot hand caressed his shaggy head gratefully.
Jim grew worse. There came a time, when the grasp of the fever was on him, that his mind wandered, and he did not know where he was. He would fancy himself back again in the dark cellar at Portsmouth with Nat, and that the old Jew was going to beat him. He would shriek aloud with terror and nothing would soothe him but for Tangle to nestle up close to him.
‘Ah! here’s Tangle!’ he would rave, as he felt the rough coat; ‘dear old Tangle, save me, save me! Don’t let un ketch me, Tangle!’
And his weak arms would clutch the dog round the neck convulsively.
Then again the fever-stricken lad would imagine himself on board ship and drowning, and again would call on Tangle.
‘Tangle, where is yer? The skipper’s a-coming—he’ll chuck us overboard! Let’s ’ide, Tangle! Oh! my head! my head! Ah! the water’s cold—Tangle, I am drowning—the waves are coming—oh! Tangle, save me!’
But, as his strength failed, he grew quieter, and his memory seemed to carry him further back still, to his almost forgotten childhood.
‘Oh! mother, mother,’ he would moan, ‘yer’ve come back at last!—I’ve lost yer sich a while—take me in yer arms—as yer used to do—mother I—the meadows are green—the buttercups and daisies all in flower—here’s Tangle!—come and play, Tangle!—“There is a green hill far away”—sing it, mother—“Where the dear Lord was crucified—He died to save us all—to save us all.” It’s getting nice and cool now, Tangle, isn’t it?—we’re home at last again I——’
Then he sank into a sort of exhausted stupor. Mike, who had come to see him, sat by his bed, and did not go home that night.
It was Tangle’s dinner-time, but Jim was lying so still with his hand on the dog’s head that Tangle did not like to move for fear of disturbing him.
The twilight deepened into night. A large full moon arose, casting inky shadows. The hospital orderlies, and the red and blue turbaned natives, moved noiselessly about the long building, and the night breeze blew in at the open doors. Outside, the jackals yelled at intervals, the little owls screeched in the trees, and there came the occasional bay of a pariah dog from the distance.
Across the barrack-square the sentries’ challenge echoed from post to post.
‘Number one. One o’clock and all’s well!’
‘Number two. One o’clock and all’s well!’
But still Jim lay still, and Tangle slept.
When Tangle awoke the moon had gone right round and was shining into the opposite veranda. It was a slight stir on the part of Jim woke him. The boy’s eyes opened, and he looked at Mike, quite like himself.
‘I’m better now, Mike—Tangle, good dog; take care of Tangle, my best friend—he’ll get home again——’
The hand on Tangle’s head tried to stroke him, and then fell powerless back again.
Mike lifted the dog off the bed, and took him out into the veranda. They walked back to barracks together, in the gray twilight, where the moonlight struggled with the dawn.
That evening a carriage came to the hospital for little Jim. But it was not the bullock-cart. It was a gun-carriage drawn by four horses. In front marched a firing party with their rifles, twenty strong. Next came all the other little drummers of the regiment, their drums draped with crape. Behind marched B company, with the Captain and the subaltern. On to the gun-carriage they hoisted Jim in his coffin, and flung over it the Union Jack. Last of all, they placed his drum, his helmet, his side-arm and his belt on the flag.
Just then Mrs. O’Flannagan, with Tangle at her heels, came hurrying up.
‘Oh! Captain,’ she cried, ‘you’ll let the dog follow, won’t you? He was Jim’s first friend; he always said he owed everything to Tangle——’
And tears dropped on the piece of crape, as she tied it round Tangle’s collar.
Then the band struck up the Dead March, and slowly the procession left the hospital compound. And Tangle walked beside the Captain as Jim’s chief mourner.
Popular as Tangle was with the ‘Drabs,’ as much the Guard-room Dog as the particular pet of the Captain and of the O’Flannagans, he would have missed Jim very much but for an event which gave him the new interest he took in the small, red-headed baby, the exact image of Mike.
Tangle took quite a pride in that baby, who was christened Pat. Of course he did not look upon him in the light of Gerald or Jim, as a companion and playfellow; but rather as something to be guarded and nursed. Tangle seemed to think that the care and protection of little Pat devolved entirely on him.
When the ayah took the baby out walking, tied up in a pillow-like bundle, with his carroty head emerging at one end under his bonnet, Tangle accompanied her. When Pat was laid to sleep in his cot, Tangle sat by his side, as grave as a judge, and snapped at the flies, if they dared to descend on the red down of the baby’s head. Pat’s first toy was Tangle’s shaggy ear, and his tail. He let the child pull him about as much as ever he liked, and pretended to like it.
Pat grew bravely; the Indian climate seemed to suit him. He began to stagger about the veranda, and Tangle would lie and watch him gravely; being always present, too, at his meals, when the ayah and the cook would squat in a corner of the veranda and persuade Pat to sit by them, while they fed him with pish-pash of chicken and rice. For chairs and tables are to Indian babies unknown.
When the hot weather came, however, Tangle had to decide between his duties as a soldier, or as a nurse. Corporal O’Flannagan was ordered to a depot in the Himalayas where sick soldiers and women and children are sent. He was only too glad of the chance of getting little Pat out of the dreadful hot weather. But the question was, what about Tangle?
The Captain had taken some months’ leave for a tiger-shooting trip, on which he could not possibly take Tangle, and so it was decided that the dog should go with the O’Flannagans. For English dogs in India feel the heat almost as much as English people, especially the thick, long-haired ones. Now, the climate of the Himalayas is cool and bracing, more like that of England.
There was no doubt that Tangle did feel the heat very much. But, sharp little dog that he was, he had lit upon a good way of cooling himself.
In the bath-room of the Captain’s bungalow stood a large wooden tub, filled daily with fresh cold water for the Captain to bathe in when he came back from parade. But for some days past he had noticed that the floor of the bath-room, when he went to take his bath, was splashed and soaked with water.
He called up the bheestie.
The bheestie is a man, not an animal; he was the water-carrier. He wore a leathern apron, and carried a goatskin over his shoulder, sewn up all but one little corner, which was tied round to make a funnel. This was his bucket, with which he carried water from the well.
The Captain scolded him for making such a mess in the bath-room when he filled the bath. In vain the man protested that he did not spill any of the water. The next day there was the splash again!
But the following day a slight splashing in the bath-room attracted the Captain’s attention, and he peeped in cautiously.
What do you think he saw in the bath?
Why, just Tangle’s nose and eyes above the water, in which he had completely buried himself!
So now the captain perceived who was in the habit of using the bath-room besides himself!
After the long, hot journey in the train, Tangle was delighted to find himself once more in camp. For the detachment of men going up to the hill-station of Simree marched from the point where the railway came to an end, encamping every night in a grove of trees, by the side of the long, straight, dusty road.
It was a long procession that started every morning at dawn. First came elephants carrying tents, camels bearing loads hanging on either side, and which were tied to each other by a string from the nose of one to the tail of the next. Mules followed, with the men’s kits, screaming, kicking, jibbing, as only mules can. Then came the main body of troops, such as were fit to march, under their officers—cavalry-men, gunners, and foot-soldiers. The rear was brought up by the sick, some lying on straw in bullock-carts; some carried in litters slung on poles, and borne by four men, who jolted them terribly.
Last of all came the women and children, including Mrs. O’Flannagan and Pat. They, too, travelled in bullock-carts, in which were laid, first, each family’s boxes and bundles and cooking utensils. On these came the mattresses and bedding, spread out flat; and over all, as a protection from the heat and the night dews, a hood made of straw thatch.
In this kind of gipsy-van Pat and his mother lived and slept, all day and all night, and the slow, patient bullocks dragged them along, with much creaking of the wide wooden wheels, and shouting and goading from the native drivers. Sometimes Tangle rode with them, which pleased Pat immensely, and kept him quiet. Sometimes he trotted along with the column, at Mike’s heels.
Thus, day after day, they marched along, over sun-baked plains, through marshy swamps, till one evening the huge masses of the Himalayas stood before them and barred the way. The sun, when it rose the next morning, tipped all the snow-peaks with pink, and the sound of a thousand rills and waterfalls cheered the ears of the weary travellers from the plains.
The elephants, the camels, and the bullock-carts were now left behind, and the baggage borne on the backs of the sturdy hillmen. The column, now in loose and broken order, climbed the steep winding mountain paths, through green valleys and forests of ilex and rosy rhododendron trees.
‘Hist! Pat! there’s a sound ye never heard, and one I never thought to hear again in this country,’ cried Mrs. O’Flannagan to her baby, as the deep, bell notes of the koel, exactly like a cuckoo’s, rang across the ravine.
Everybody brisked up. Even the most sick felt more cheerful, and Tangle ran along by the side of Mrs. O’Flannagan’s litter or ‘jampan,’ feeling as if be were once more in England.
By noon the party had reached the barracks, perched up on a pine-covered mountain peak, with wide views on either side of plains, and snows and purple ranges, which were to be their home for the hot months.
Tangle found much that was strange and new in this mountain life. Duty was not heavy at the depot, and Mike had plenty of time for long walks, and Tangle always accompanied him. Sometimes they would roam over the mountain-side after the magnificent many-coloured butterflies that haunt the hills. It was on one of these expeditions that they met with what might have been a very serious adventure.
They were returning home, and had entered one of the forest stretches which were scattered here and there on the hillside. Tangle’s attention was suddenly attracted by a queer little white-bearded old man, as he thought, standing under the shadow of a hoary old ilex tree fringed with ferns and moss. He was a very curious old man, not looking exactly like a hillman, for he wore no clothes, and was covered with gray hair, as Tangle found on closer inspection.
The dog ran up to him barking, when, lo, and behold! the man took to all fours and scampered up the tree in a trice. Tangle remained at the foot barking.
Then he perceived his mistake. It was only a gray-bearded monkey, but taller and different in colour from those to which he had become accustomed around the native houses in the plains.
But this old man of the woods did not evidently relish Tangle’s curiosity. He snarled angrily at him from his point of vantage. Then all his relations, uncles, cousins and aunts, came bounding down the mountain side, leaping from tree to tree with unerring aim, and making the branches shake as if a wind was passing over them.
But Tangle, who had tackled a cobra, was not going to be put out by a troop of monkeys, and he scampered excitedly from trunk to trunk, barking up at the newcomers. Then these retired further up the hill, so as to have the advantage of Tangle, and whiz!— a large stone came past the dog’s head.
Then another and another, a regular volley of artillery from the enemy, well concealed among the stems of the trees.
There was nothing left for it but to beat an ignominious retreat, and, after that, if Tangle met a lungur monkey in the woods, he let him alone.
Pat grew and flourished in the bracing mountain air. His legs filled out as became those of a British baby, and presented a fine contrast to the little brown pipe-stems on which the native juvenile population of Simree walked about. His carroty hair grew apace, and was a marvel and an object of envy of the natives, who often dye their beards a fine red.
Baby Pat grew in wisdom, too. The pine wood which stretched steeply down from the terrace on which the married quarters were built was his play place, and full of mysterious treasures and surprises.
‘Ain’t you afeerd to let the child wander away so by himself,’ asked another mother of Mrs. O’Flannagan. ‘It’s so wild here about in these mountings. Ain’t you afraid of the wild beasteses?’
‘I’m afraid of nothing for him when Tangle’s with him,’ Mrs. Mike would reply; and Tangle, I really believe, fully understood the trust reposed in him.
One evening Pat wandered out to play in the pine-wood as usual. The sun was hot, even in the hills, in the middle of the day, and he was kept a good deal indoors. But his spirit panted for freedom. He wanted to get down, if he could, to the ravine at the bottom of the mountain slope, where there was a waterfall, and where the washermen washed, and whence the bheesties toiled up with their skins, full of water, on their backs. He wanted to pick some of the rosy blossoms off the rhododendrons which dyed the hillside with crimson patches. He wanted a lot of things, in fact, but chiefly to do what he liked, without interference from anyone.
Tangle was not likely to interfere, nor could he, whatever he might think. He could only trot after the little white figure under the darkening trees; for the sun had gone down over the plains in a glory of crimson and gold, and it was growing dark in the jungle facing north.
So they moved on leisurely, the boy and the dog, and two pair of eyes watched them attentively, but with different feelings.
One pair belonged to Mike, who had tracked his little son on his wandering from home, and now followed him, unseen, at a short distance, secretly amused at his doings, and interested in seeing Tangle acting so faithfully as his escort.
The other pair were cunning, yellow and fierce, and they belonged to a leopard. He was a fine lithe animal with a spotted skin of yellow and black, somewhat like a huge cat.
He had just started out on his night’s ramble in search of prey—goats, sheep, deer, dogs, foxes, monkeys—anything that came handy.
And what appeared to come most handy was a rare tit-bit, in the shape of a fat little English child!
Slowly but surely, stealthily and noiselessly, with cat-like action, the leopard, slinking among the dense undergrowth, stalked step for step the unconscious Pat. Not a rustle revealed his close proximity to either the child or to bis father, but a short distance off.
But the leopard had counted without Tangle, and without Tangle’s nose and ears.
Quite suddenly, and without any apparent reason, Mike, in the rear, saw the dog rush forward with a short bark.
It was enough—the leopard’s attention was diverted.
Against the evening sky, Mike, ere he had time to rush to the rescue, or even to utter a warning shout, saw a large, dark, cat-like form spring on to the path at Tangle.
In another second it had disappeared with equal rapidity, and the bushes closed behind it.
But where was Tangle?
There was not a sign—not a sound.
Little Pat turned at his father’s voice, and hardly noticed that Tangle was gone, so quickly did it all happen. But Mike knew that Tangle’s bark had diverted the leopard’s spring from the child on to himself, and that the Guard-room Dog had died a hero’s death.