Gunner James Collis.
Gunner James Collis tells his story in these words:—
On the twenty-seventh of July, 1880, we were encamped at Khushk-i-Nakhud, in Afghanistan. At 4 a.m. that day we—Battery E, Battery B Brigade—marched with the rest of the force on Maiwand to meet Ayub Khan. About 9 a.m. we came in sight of him in position under the hills. We were on the open plain. Major Henry Blackwood, commanding my battery, gave the order "Action front." I was a limber gunner that day. We began firing with common shell from the right of the battery. After we had fired a few rounds, their artillery replied. The first shot struck the near wheel of my gun, killing a gunner, wounding another, and Lieutenant Fowler.
The limber box upon my gun was smashed by a shell which also killed the wheel horses, but did not touch the driver. Several riding horses of my battery were killed, and a good deal of damage done to guns and carriage. Four gunners and Sergeant Wood, the No. 1 of my gun, were killed, and two men wounded, leaving only three men to work the gun. I took Sergeant Wood's place.
At about 1.30 p.m., some of Jacob's Rifles, who were lying down about ten yards in rear of the trail, began to be panic-stricken, and crowded round our guns and carriages, some getting under the carriages. Three got under my gun. We tried to drive them away, but it was no use. About that time we ceased firing a little, the enemy having set the example. During that pause the enemy on the left got pretty close. To check them, General Nuttall formed up the 3rd Bombay Cavalry and the 3rd Scinde Horse to charge. Gunner Smith of my gun, seeing what was going to be done, mounted his horse and joined the cavalry. General Nuttall led the charge, Gunner Smith being at his side. After going about 300 yards, the enemy being about 200 yards off, the whole line, with the exception of the General, the European officers, and Gunner Smith, turned tail, forming up when in line with the guns. General Nuttall with the officers, finding themselves deserted, returned, General Nuttall actually crying from mortification. Gunner Smith dashed on alone, and was cut down.
About 4 p.m. a large body of the enemy's infantry charged the left of the battery, the men of the left division 5 and 6 being compelled to use their handspikes and charge staves to keep them off. Major Blackwood on this ordered the battery to limber up and retire. When Lieutenant Maclaine heard this order he said, as I was afterwards informed, "Limber up be damned! Give them another round." We limbered up and retired at a gallop about 2,000 yards. In the meantime Major Blackwood remained behind with Lieutenant Maclaine's guns and was killed, Lieutenant Osborne by his side, Lieutenant Maclaine fighting to the last. At length, seeing no use in stopping, he galloped after us—we had got separated from the right division—and called out to us, only two guns, "Action, rear." We fired two rounds with shrapnel. Captain Slade, who had been in temporary command of the smoothbores, finding Major Blackwood dead, came up with his smoothbores and took command of all the guns. Colonel Malcolmson a moment later ordered Captain Slade to retire, saying, "Captain Slade, if you and the Lieutenant keep those two guns, he will lose them the same as he has lost his own." We then limbered up and went off. Just then a shell burst open our treasure chest. Many of the troops and camp followers stopped to pick up the money and were overtaken and killed. Just after that some of the enemy's cavalry caught up the guns. One of them wounded me on the left eyebrow as he passed. He wheeled round and came at me again; I took my carbine, waited till he was within four or five yards, and let drive, hitting him on the chest and knocking him off his horse. As he fell his money fell out of his turban, and Trumpeter Jones jumped off his horse and picked it up. He escaped, and is now corporal R.H.A., and wears the Distinguished Service medal for his conduct at Maiwand.
It was now beginning to get dusk, and I got off to walk by the side of my gun. Seeing a village close by, and some men at a well, I followed them and got some water. Just as we got to the well the enemy charged and drove us off, killing a good many.
On my return I missed my gun, and picked up with No. 2, which I stuck to till I reached Candahar. It was now dark, and we were with a stream of men of all regiments, camp followers, camels, and waggons. Going along I saw a lot of sick and wounded lying by the side of the road, and I picked them up and put them on the gun and limber. I had about ten altogether; they were all 66th men, and a colonel whose name I do not know and never heard of.
We had been fighting all day, marching all night and next day without a bit of food or a drink of water. I did not feel it so much, as I was so occupied, but I saw several dying by the roadside from thirst and fatigue. About four in the afternoon of the 28th, we came to a place called Kokeran, 7-1/2 miles from Candahar; I saw a village where I could get water for the men who were with me. I went off and brought the water back and the men with me. On going to the village I saw Lieutenant Maclaine mounted; when I came back I saw two horses without a rider. I then went again for more water. I was about 150 yards from the gun when I saw ten or twelve of the enemy's cavalry coming on at a slow pace towards the gun. The gun went off and I lay down and allowed the gun to pass me, and began firing with a rifle which I had got from a wounded 66th man, in order to draw their fire upon myself, and stop them from going forward with the gun. I was concealed in a little nullah, and I fancy they thought there was more than one man, for they stopped and fired at me from the saddle. I shot one horse and two men. After firing about thirty-five rounds General Nuttall came up with some native cavalry, and drove them off. When I first saw the enemy they were about 300 yards off, when they left they had got 150 yards. General Nuttall asked me my name, saying, "You're a gallant young man, what is your name?" I said, "Gunner Collis, of E. of B, R.H.A." He entered it into a pocket-book and rode off. I then followed up my gun, which I found some 500 yards distant by the side of a river. The enemy's fire, which had been going on all the way from Maiwand, now became hotter, the surrounding hills being full of them. Some of the garrison of Candahar met us about four miles from the Fort and escorted us in. I arrived about seven p.m.
On the occasion of the sortie from Candahar in the middle of August, 1880, the fighting was going on in the village situated about 200 yards from the edge of the ditch of the fort. I was standing by my gun on the rampart, when General Primrose, General Nuttall, and Colonel Burnet came up. I heard them talking about sending a message to General Dewberry, who had succeeded General Brooke, who had been killed. I spoke to Colonel Burnet and said that I would take the message over the wall. After a little hesitation General Primrose gave me a note. I was let down a distance of about thirty or forty feet to the bottom of the ditch by a rope. When half down I was fired at but not hit by matchlock men about 250 yards distant, and I scrambled up the open side of the ditch and ran across to the village. I found the officer commanding in the middle of it, and fighting going on all round. I delivered the note and returned. When half way up the rope I was fired at again, one bullet cutting off the heel of my left boot. General Primrose congratulated me and Colonel Burnet gave me a drop out of his flask, for what with not having recovered from the fatigues of Maiwand and the exertion and excitement of this trip, I was a bit faint.
I was recommended for the Victoria Cross without my knowledge about September 10, by Sir F. Roberts, on the report of General Nuttall and Colonel Burnet. It was given to me July 28, 1881.
(To be continued.)
How Novelists Write for the Press.
HOW authors work—what methods are peculiar to each individual in preparing MS. for the printer—is a question on which, we think, the following fac-similes, of the same size as the originals, of the work of four representative novelists of the present day, will throw an interesting light. William Black, Walter Besant, Bret Harte, and Grant Allen—here is a page from the manuscript of each. Mr. Black's, with which we commence, fine and careful as it is, is however only a rough draft, which is afterwards re-copied, with slight alterations, for the press.
Fac-simile of a page of MS. from Mr. WILLIAM BLACK'S Prince Fortunatus.
Fac-simile of the last page but one of the MS. of Mr. WALTER BESANT'S novel, Children of Gibeon.
Fac-simile of a page of the MS. of Mr. BRET HARTE'S story, The Twins of Table Mountain.
Fac-simile of a page of the MS. of Mr. GRANT ALLEN'S story, Jerry Stokes (see next page).
Jerry Stokes.
By Grant Allen.
JERRY STOKES was a member of Her Majesty's civil service. To put it more plainly, he was the provincial hangman. Not a man in all Canada, he used to boast with pardonable professional pride, had turned off as many famous murderers as he had. He was a pillar of the constitution, was Jerry Stokes. He represented the Executive. And he wasn't ashamed of his office, either. Quite on the contrary, zeal for his vocation shone visible in his face. He called it a useful, a respectable, and a necessary calling. If it were not for him and his utensils, he loved to say to the gaping crowd that stood him treat in the saloons, no man's life would be safe for a day in the province. He was a practical philanthropist in his way, a public benefactor. It is not good that foul crime should stalk unpunished through the land; and he, Jerry Stokes, was there to prevent it. He was the chosen instrument for its salutary repression. Executions performed with punctuality and despatch; for terms, apply to Jeremiah Stokes, Port Hope, Ontario.
"HE WAS A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR."
Not that philanthropy was the most salient characteristic in Jerry's outer man. He was a short and thick-set person, very burly and dogged-looking; he had a massive, square head, and a powerful lower jaw, and a coarse, bull neck, and a pair of stout arms, acquired in the lumber trade, but forcibly suggestive of a prize-fighter's occupation. Except on the subject of the Executive, he was a taciturn soul; he had nothing to say, and he said it briefly. Silence, stolidity, and a marked capacity for the absorption of liquids without detriment to his centre of gravity, physical or mental, were the leading traits in Mr. Stokes' character. Those who knew him well, however, affirmed that Jerry was "a straight man"; and though the security was perhaps a trifle doubtful, "a straight man" nevertheless he was generally considered by all who had the misfortune to require his services.
It was a principle with Jerry never to attend a trial for murder. This showed his natural delicacy of feeling. Etiquette, I believe, forbids an undertaker to make kind inquiries at the door of a dying person. It is feared the object of his visits might be misunderstood; he might be considered to act from interested motives. A similar and equally creditable scruple restrained Jerry Stokes from putting in an appearance at a court of justice when a capital charge was under investigation. People might think, he said, he was on the look-out for a job. Nay, more; his presence might even interfere with the administration of justice; for if the jury had happened to spot him in the body of the hall, it would naturally prejudice them in the prisoner's favour. To prevent such a misfortune—which would of course, incidentally, be bad for trade—Mr. Stokes denied himself the congenial pleasure of following out in detail the cases on which he might in the end be called upon to operate—except through the medium of the public press. He was a kind-hearted man, his friends averred; and he knew that his presence in court might be distasteful to the prisoner and the prisoner's relations. Though, to say the truth, in thus absenting himself, Mr. Stokes was exercising considerable self-denial; for to a hangman, even more than to all the rest of the world, a good first-class murder case is replete with plot-interest.
THE PRISONER.
Every man, however, is guilty at some time or other in his life of a breach of principle; and once, though once only, in his professional experience, Jerry Stokes, like the rest of us, gave way to temptation. To err is human; Jerry erred by attending a capital trial in Kingston court-house. The case was one that aroused immense attention at the time in the Dominion. A young lawyer at Napanee, it was said, had poisoned his wife to inherit her money, and public feeling ran fierce and strong against him. From the very first, this dead set of public opinion brought out Jerry Stokes' sympathy in the prisoner's favour. The crowd had tried to mob Ogilvy—that was the man's name—on his way from his house to jail, and again on his journey from Napanee to Kingston assizes. Men shook their fists angrily in the face of the accused; women surged around with deep cries, and strove to tear him to pieces. The police with difficulty prevented the swaying mass from lynching him on the spot. Jerry Stokes, who was present, looked on at these irregular proceedings with a disapproving eye. Most unconstitutional, to dismember a culprit by main force, without form of trial, instead of handing him over in due course of law to be properly turned off by the appointed officer!
So when the trial came on, Jerry Stokes, in defiance of established etiquette, took his stand in court, and watched the progress of the case with profound interest.
The public recognised him, and nudged one another, well pleased. Farmers had driven in with their waggons from the townships. All Ontario was agog. People stared at Jerry, and then at the prisoner. "Stokes is looking out for him!" they chuckled in their satisfaction. "He's got no chance. He'll never get off. The hangman's in waiting!"
The suspected man took his place in the dock. Jerry Stokes glanced across at him—rubbed his eyes—thought it curious. "Well, I never saw a murderer like him in my born days afore," Jerry philosophised to himself. "I've turned off square dozens of 'em in my time, in the province; and I know their looks. But hanged if I've come across a murderer yet like this one, any way!"
"Richard Ogilvy, stand up: are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the clerk of assigns.
And the prisoner, leaning forward, in a very low voice, but clear and distinct, answered out, "Not Guilty!"
He was a tall and delicate pale-faced man, with thoughtful grey eyes and a high white forehead. But to Jerry Stokes' experienced gaze all that counted for nothing. He knew his patients well enough to know there are murderers and murderers—the refined and educated as well as the coarse and brutal. Why, he'd turned off square dozens of them, and both sorts, too, equally. No; it wasn't that—and he couldn't say what it was—but as Richard Ogilvy answered "Not Guilty" that morning a thrill ran cold down the hangman's back. He was sure it was true: he felt intuitively certain of it.
From that moment forth, Jerry followed the evidence with the closest interest. He leaned forward in his place, and drank it all in anxiously. People who sat near him remarked that his conduct was disgusting. He was thirsting for a conviction. It was ghastly to see the hangman so intent upon his prey. He seemed to hang on the lips of the witnesses for the prosecution.
But Jerry himself sat on, all unconscious of their criticism. For the very first time in his life, he forgot his trade. He remembered only that a human soul was at stake that day, and that in one glimpse of intuition he had seen its innocence.
Counsel for the Crown piled up a cumulative case, very strong and conclusive against the man Ogilvy. They showed that the prisoner had lived on bad terms with his wife—though through whose fault they had lived so, whether his or hers, wasn't very apparent. They showed that scenes had lately occurred between them. They showed that Ogilvy had bought poison at a chemist's in Kingston on the usual plea, "to get rid of the rats." They showed that Mrs. Ogilvy had died of such poison. Their principal witness was the Napanee doctor, a man named Wade, who attended the deceased in her fatal illness. This doctor was intelligent, and frank, and straightforward; he gave his evidence in the most admirable style—evidence that told dead against the prisoner in every way. At the close of the case for the Crown, the game was up: everybody in court said all was finished: impossible for Ogilvy to rebut such a mass of damning evidence.
Everybody in court—except Jerry Stokes. And Jerry Stokes went home—for it was a two days' trial—much concerned in soul about Richard Ogilvy.
It was something new for Jerry Stokes, this disinterested interest in an accused criminal; and it took hold of him with all the binding and compelling force of a novel emotion. He wrestled and strained with it. All night long he lay awake, and tossed and turned on his bed, and thought of Richard Ogilvy's pale white face, as he stood there, a picture of mute agony, in the court-house. Strange thoughts surged up thick in Jerry Stokes' soul, that had surged up in no other soul among all those actively hostile spectators. The silent suffering in the man's grey eyes had stirred him deeply. A thousand times over, Jerry said to himself, as he tossed and turned, "That man never done it." Now and again he dozed off, and awoke with a start, and each time he woke he found himself muttering in his sleep, with all the profound force of unreasoned conviction, "He never done it! he never done it!"
Next morning, as soon as the court was open, Jerry Stokes was in his place again, craning his bull-neck eagerly. All day long he craned that bull-neck and listened. The public was scandalised now. Jerry Stokes in court! Jerry Stokes scenting blood! He ought to have kept away! This was really atrocious!
Evidence for the defence hung fire sadly. To say the truth, Ogilvy's counsel had no defence at all to offer, except an assurance that he didn't do it. They confined themselves to suggesting a possible alternative here, and a possible alternative there. Mrs. Ogilvy might have taken the rat-poison by mistake; or this person might have given it her somehow unawares, or that person might have had some unknown grudge against her. Jerry Stokes sat and listened with a sickening heart. The man in the dock was innocent, he felt sure; but the case—why, the case was going dead against him!
"JERRY WATCHED HIM CLOSELY."
Slowly, as he listened, an idea began to break in upon Jerry Stokes' mind. Ideas didn't often come his way. He was a thick-headed man, little given to theories, and he didn't know even now it was a theory he was forming. He only knew this was the way the case impressed him. The prisoner at the bar had never done it. But there had been scenes in his house—scenes brought about by Mrs. Ogilvy's conduct. Mrs. Ogilvy, he felt confident from the evidence he heard, had been given to drink—perhaps to other things; and the prisoner, for his child's sake (he had one little girl of three years old), was anxious to screen his wife's shame from the public. So he had suggested but little in this direction to his counsel. The scenes, however, were not of his making, and he certainly never meant to poison the woman. Jerry Stokes watched him closely as each witness stood up and told his tale, and he was confident of so much. That twitching of the lips was no murderer's trick. It was the plain emotion of an honest man who sees the circumstances unaccountably turning against him.
There was another person in court who watched the case almost as closely as Jerry himself, and that person was the doctor who attended Mrs. Ogilvy and made the post-mortem. His steely grey eyes were fixed with a frank stare on each witness as he detailed his story; and from time to time he gave a little satisfied gasp, when anything went obviously against the prisoner's chances. Jerry was too much occupied, however, for the most part, in watching the man in the dock to have any time left for watching the doctor. Once only he raised his eyes and caught the other's. It was at a critical moment. A witness for the defence, under severe cross-examination, had just admitted a most damaging fact that told hard against Ogilvy. Then the doctor smiled. It was a sinister smile, a smile of malice, a smile of mute triumph. No one else noticed it. But Jerry Stokes, looking up, observed it with a start. A shade passed over his square face like a sudden cloud. He knew that smile well. It was a typical murderer's.
"Mind you," Jerry said to himself, as he watched the smile die away, "I don't pretend to be as smart a chap as all these crack lawyer fellows, but I'm a straight man in my way, and I know my business. If that doctor ain't got a murderer's face on his front, my name isn't Jeremiah Stokes; that's the long and the short of it."
He looked hard at the prisoner, he looked hard at the doctor. The longer and harder he looked, the more was he sure of it. He was an expert in murderers, and he knew his men. Ogilvy hadn't done it; Ogilvy couldn't do it; the doctor might; the doctor was, at any rate, a potential murderer. Not that Jerry put it to himself quite so fine as that; he contented himself with saying in his own dialect, "The doctor was one of 'em."
Evidence, however, went all against the prisoner, and the judge, to Jerry's immense surprise, summed up upon nothing except the evidence. Nobody in court, indeed, seemed to think of anything else. Jerry rubbed his eyes once more. He couldn't understand it. Why, they were going to hang the man on nothing at all but the paltry evidence! Professional as he was, it surprised him to find a man could swing on so little! To think that our lives should depend on such a thread! Just the gossip of nurses and the tittle-tattle of a doctor with a smile like a murderer's!
"IT WAS A SINISTER SMILE."
At last the jury retired to consider their verdict. But they were not long gone. The case, said everybody, was as clear as daylight. In the public opinion it was a foregone conclusion. Jerry stood aghast at that. What! hang a man merely because they thought he'd done it! And with a face like his! Why, it was sheer injustice!
The jury returned. The prisoner stood in the dock, now pale and hopeless. Only one man in court seemed to feel the slightest interest in the delivery of the verdict. And that one man was the public hangman. Everybody else knew precisely how the case would go. But Jerry Stokes still refused to believe any jury in Canada could perpetrate such an act of flagrant injustice.
"Gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoner, Richard Ogilvy, Guilty or Not Guilty of wilful murder?"
There was a slight rhetorical pause. Then the answer rang out, in quietly solemn tones: "We find him Guilty. That is the verdict of all of us."
Jerry Stokes held his breath. This was appalling, awful! The man was innocent. But by virtue of his office he would have to hang him!