One Too Many
It was a hell of a night. Thunder enough to wake the “Jacko” dead, and raining fit to swamp old Solomon’s Pool. I was a good ten miles from camp, and it was with a dinkum bullocky’s curse that I swung into the saddle again and turned the pony’s nose for home. For about an hour we battled along, and then the supply dump at S—— hove in sight. Glad of a brief respite, I guided him toward it, and for a few minutes we rested in the shelter of a huge stack of tibbin.
The rain had eased off, and for a brief second a sickly-looking moon gazed down on things earthly. That was what started the trouble.
An Algerian guard was on duty, and, to the initiated, there is no need to say more than that. You might trick a Tommy or induce a Billjim to look the other way, but the man who beats an Algerian is going some.
But, as I was saying, it was the moon that caused the trouble. When she took that peep from behind her cloud bank she gazed fair on to four shadowy figures, each surmounted by a bag of barley and a felt hat.
Chuckling a little, she dodged behind the clouds again; but it was too late. The mischief had been done, and in a trice the “shadowy figures” found themselves surrounded by about a dozen sons of the Sahara and a like number of business-like bayonets.
The result was a confused babble of voices for ten minutes, and then a procession to the Supply Officer’s tent. From where I was standing I could see and hear everything that passed, and everybody seemed to be trying to talk at once. As the “shadowy figures” could not speak a word of Arabic, and the Algerians vice versa, the result was laughable. But with the advent of the Supply Officer things took a different turn. He had been wakened from a sound sleep, and was arrayed in the pink pyjamas the girl had sent him, and a desire to be “firm in the matter.” He had no knowledge of Arabic, and was placing the “shadowy figures” under guard pending the arrival of an interpreter in the morning.
That would have been serious for the said “shadowy figures,” so I decided to see whether I could help them at all. I had borrowed a cobber’s flash civvy raincoat in the morning, and that and the Jacko pony I rode must have made the S.O. think I was an officer. Anyhow, he greeted me very decently; and when I told him I could yabber Arabic pretty fluently, he was more than delighted at my arrival.
Well, for a good ten minutes I did the interpreter stunt, and then I got him to dismiss the guard.
Then I opened the case for the defence. I pictured to him the love of the Colonial for his horse, the long night rides, and a dozen other pitiful things, and altogether put up such a beautiful tale that even old Judge Jeffreys would have had to declare the accused “Not guilty.” So the S.O. decided to give the “shadowy figures” a stern lecture, take their names and numbers, and refer the matter to their O.C. next morning. Forth came the note-book and down went the particulars. I am pretty hard in the dial, but I was glad he was not looking my way then. For every one of the four had a number with six figures in it and belonged to the 19th Light Horse Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.
Luckily, he was a new man out, or the bluff wouldn’t have worked. But it did, and that was all that mattered then. He gave them the lecture, and in it repeated often, “I’ve been one too many for you fellows this time, what!”. Then he let them go, and as they left the tent the last one winked at me, and in that wink there was a world of mystery.
Five minutes later I was in the saddle again and thinking hard. I was wondering where the “shadowy figures” had left their horses, and whether they would bump further trouble on the way home. Then I remembered a young wady that runs by the side of the dump and turned the pony’s head toward it. Half-way to it, I met them coming back. But where there had been four “shadowy figures” there were SIX, and where there should have been four horses there were ten. And the spare nags were loaded heavily, too. The chap who gave me the wink told me the rest of the yarn, and here it is.
Two of them had acted as horse-holders while the other four had carried out the raiding part of the business. Three times they had returned without mishap, and it was on the fourth trip that the moon peeped out and made a mess of things.
It started to rain again then, so we parted; they to their bivvies and I to a sharp trot home.
Two hours after the sun came up, the chap who was “one too many” rolled out of bed and prepared his report for the O.C. 19th Light Horse Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.
“ANON”
[top]
WADY NIMRIN
Along whose banks the A.L.H. had many sharp fights
[middle]
ARAB AGENTS ARRIVING FROM A TRIP ACROSS THE DEAD SEA
[bottom]
GERMAN PRISONERS IN JERICHO
MEAL TIME
“SHE’S BOILING”
“The Light that Failed”
(And some that didn’t)
Among the many examples of ingenuity displayed by Billjim on service, the manufacture of illuminants, if you will pardon the prolixity, shines out the most brilliantly. The Sun itself is considered to be a pretty perfect and economical source of light, but it is not infallible. The annoying habit it has of dodging off about sundown excludes it from the category of the perfectly perfect, and Billjim is forced to procure a substitute to enable him to relieve the tedium of his evenings with the exhilarating influence of two-up, poker, swapping yarns and other harmless pursuits.
The issue candle is, of course, the recognized form of illuminant; but by the time the Greatest, the Sub-Greatest, the Q-Emmer, the Orderly-Room Ogre and the Sigs get their cut, the stock is usually depleted to a mere skeleton of its former fat self, and the insignificant stump that is left to shed its radiance around the humble bivvies of the rank and file, is, as often as not, irretrievably lost to sight owing to the shortage of telescopes in the unit’s equipment. Hence the exercise of Billjim’s ingenuity.
Some devices were truly efficient, others resembled the seeds that fell on stony ground; while one I know of was positively dangerous. The one in question was disapproved of from its very inception. The wise ones shook their heads dubiously, and opined that it was sheer flying in the face of Providence to use one’s issue of rum for the sacrilegious purpose of making air-gas for a blooming light. After the explosion occurred, and the blasphemous one was struck off the strength, they said, “I told him so,” and everybody was satisfied.
The most popular form is the slush-light, which is simply composed of any old thing that will hold grease, and any kind of grease that will fit into it; first, a layer of sand or clay is dumped into the jam, milk, cigarette or other tin; then a wick made of “3 x 2,” or issue flannelette, wrapped around a thin pine stick, is stuck upright in the middle of the sand or clay; and finally the grease is introduced, the quantity being governed by the amount one has been able to acquire. It is on record that some chaps have had the effrontery to use dubbin, yes, “dubbin!” but, of course, this is not official, just common furphy.
Next to the slushie comes the bottle-o; but to employ this it is necessary to have the above-mentioned rarity, candle. For candle one is not wholly dependent on the “issue” brand, for it has been known to be purchaseable at the canteen—when those institutions are in the vicinity. Supposing the possession of candle to be an established and material fact, the next necessity is a clear-glass bottle; old lime-juice bottles are excellent, and they can be found outside any officers’ mess, or the messes of troopers who “did a trot.” The bottom of the bottle is knocked out by insistent but vigorous tapping with the marlin-spike of a jack-knife till a hole is broken through, and then the rest is chipped off in small instalments till the end is quite out. The candle is then pared at the bottom end to fit the slope of the bottle neck, and a deep groove gouged in it, the candle, to admit air. Apply a match to the candle, drop it into the inverted bottle, and there is your light. If it is not very windy, of course, all that is necessary is to drop some melted grease on someone else’s tin hat, and stick the candle in it; simple, isn’t it?
There are a few of the lesser Edisons who eliminate disturbance by wind by curling a legging around the candle; but only a very narrow chink of light exudes from its gaping edges, and the odour of singeing leather is not pleasant.
One of the finest ideas was a combination of the slushie and the bottle-o. A squat chutney-bottle that fitted snugly into a toffee tin, was found, and the quality and steadiness of the light generated made drawn filament look painfully experimental. Some wire tibbin bands secure the “globe” to the body, at the same time forming a handle.
The designs, elaborations and embellishments of the original idea are practically numberless; they range from the primitive cremation of a religious aunt’s epistles and incriminating love effusions up to the princely slushie-cum-bottle-o; and they radiate in all classes of bivvies, and shed their glory on the tangle of the newly erected as brightly as on the white-stoned splendour of the resident.
With these remarks, and any necessary apologies to the Dinkum Military Scribe, I shall leave them to shine on the just and the unjust, like their mighty lord, the Sun.
“SARG.”
DEFENCES IN THE GHORANIYEH BRIDGEHEAD
THE BRICKMAKER
A TYPICAL ARAB VILLAGE
4th LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE WATERING HORSES AT THE JORDAN