In the Guardianship of God

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall.

And with him, as the catch phrase runs, "lay" Joe Banks, the Yorkshireman; tall, stolid, silent. Good-looking also, with a thick close crop of curly brown hair and hard, honest blue eyes. He was not stupid by any means; only phenomenally silent, except when the talk turned on women, and then, as Craddock put it tersely, he "damned free"; perhaps because, as the latter worthy used to add with a suspicion of sympathy in his drink-blurred face, he had "cared a sight deal too much for one woman to 'ave much likin' left for the lot."

To one side of the breastwork lay a dry ravine where every day the vipers used to sun themselves on the hot red rocks. Just across it, within range, rose a small Mahomedan shrine amid sparse brushwood, which thickened a bit till it was barred by the ruined wall of a garden where the slow oxen circled round the well, sending runnels of slippery-looking water to the scented shade of citrons, roses, and mangoes, heedless of the great cannon-balls which sometimes came trundling, like playthings, down the wide walks. Not often, though, for the stress of strife lay at the other angle of the breastwork which faced the city wall.

Still, those who came to smoke a hard-earned pipe in what was the safest spot in the outpost, soon found that the pious-looking shrine, the peaceful garden, were not always so innocent as they looked. In the dusk of dark or dawn they were tenanted by what, after a time, the men agreed to call the "most nailin' bad shot in creation." "The direction wasn't, so to speak, so bad, sir," Craddock used to explain to me. "'E'd about 'ave 'it the sea-serpent for length; it was the elevation which, as Bull's-eyes said, savin' your presence, sir, was d----ficient. The top o' the Monument was about in it, sir, an' that was why the only feller as really use langwidge was Joe Banks; for 'e was a 'ead and shoulders higher than the lot o' us." So when, in the dark, a flash used to glimmer for a second among the brushwood like a firefly, the men learnt to sing out, "That's for you, Joey," "Duck, my darlin', duck," and other witticisms of that kind, until the big Yorkshireman's face darkened beyond jesting-point: for he had the devil's own temper when roused. It was this, joined to his extreme good looks and a somewhat hazy recollection of the Bible and the classics among the volunteers, which earned him the nickname of Apollyon. So to soothe him, some of the wilder spirits would organise a charge over the ravine, scattering, perhaps, a few drowsy adders which had forgotten to go to bed; but nothing else. The blind old fakeer in the shrine was always fast asleep, the bullocks in the garden circling slowly, driven by a drowsy lad curled up behind them.

So the days passed; and, despite practice, the Most Nailin' Bad Shot shot badly as ever. The odds, however, as the men pointed out gravely to Apollyon, kept on improving; so that sooner or later there must be a "casualty" in the garrison of Number One outpost. Joey, too, would get careless; he wouldn't smart enough, etc., etc. And, sure enough, one evening just as the moonlight was mixing with the daylight, and Joey Banks had risen to his full height in a huff because Craddock for once had sided against him in the perennial argument as to whether it was worth while fighting for women who didn't know what they would be at, and hadn't the pluck of a mouse, one of these firefly flashes was followed by a sudden clapping of the giant's hands to the very crown of his head.

"We looked, sir," Craddock used to say gravely, with that reminiscent biblical knowledge of his which had doubtless supplied Apollyon, "for 'im to fall dead; as 'e deserve rich; for 'e'd been damnin' uncommon free, sir. But 'e only use it worse. And then, savin' your presence, sir, we see that 'e'd 'ad, so ter speak, a narrer-gauge line laid down thro' 'is jungle--right through 'is curls, sir. Lordy! 'ow we laughed. It was a lady, we told 'im, as wanted some locks an' no mistake. It sorter made 'im mad, for 'e just stooped and gathered the lot--bein' fair, you could see it shinin' in the dust--together.

"'She shall 'ave 'em, never fear,' 'e says, quiet like. 'Yes! the person who fired that shot shall 'ave more o' my 'air than he reckons for.'"

Just at that moment, however, one of those sudden alarms which for three months kept the men and officers before Delhi on the alert by day and night broke up the company, and so Joe Banks' loss passed out of most minds. Except his own, of course. It lingered there, aided by that narrow gauge over his brain on which the cool night wind blew pleasantly.

So when the alarm passed, instead of coming back to rest, he crept out surreptitiously by the back of the breastwork, for such sorties were strictly out of order, and so by a slant downwards across the ravine. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and he caught the sparkle of many a deadly pair of eyes among the rocks. But he was in no mood to step aside from any danger, and once beyond fear of recall he strode along straight as if the whole place belonged to him; it might have, for all the opposition he met. The fakeer was asleep as usual, the oxen circling round the well, and in the scented shade of the roses and citrons he could find nothing save some drowsy birds who fluttered and twittered helplessly as his tall head forced a way through the thickets.

Feeling ill-used, he set his face back towards the breastwork, until the extraordinary peace of the moonlit scene, which, as Craddock asserted, used in the interval of onslaught to make the beleaguered city look like the New Jerusalem, brought him to a standstill; first to look, then to take out his pipe; finally to sit on a rock and think vaguely of the Yorkshire wolds and of some one, no doubt, who had not had the courage of her convictions, for after a bit he murmured, "She were a raight down coward, that's where it is, aw'm thinkin'."