"Good Heaven! why?" I queried apprehensively, backing away from him.
"Say, don't be afraid," he answered, laughingly. "We only mean to kill him with kindness. The fact is that we have just been on leave through India and Burma; and your fellows were so good to us everywhere we went that we have been looking for any stray officer of your army to give us an opportunity of returning their hospitality."
"That's so," said his companion. "Now, what can we do for you? Dine you, wine you, or lend you money?"
And when I told them that the unbounded kindness of their comrades in San Francisco had left me nothing to desire, they were very disappointed.
Between the soldiers of every nationality there is a bond of brotherhood; and never have I found it so strong as between American officers and ours in the too few occasions on which they have met.
"Blood is thicker than water"; and in the China War of 1900 Uncle Sam's troops and the British seemed to form one army. Side by side they fought in the grim combats around Tientsin. On the day when the city was stormed, when the pouches of the gallant 9th United States Infantry were empty, their brave colonel, Liscum, and a score of men killed, and four officers and seventy-two men wounded out of total of two hundred Americans engaged, a British officer, Ollivant, was killed in trying to replenish their ammunition, another, Major Pereira, was wounded in trying to bring in their injured, and Lieutenant Phillimore and his bluejackets of H.M.S. Barfleur helped them to hold their ground, and brought back their wounded.
In less strenuous days in North China after the fighting, our American friends there told us that they found us very different to their preconceived ideas of the English officer, whom they had pictured as a languidly haughty individual, inseparable from his eyeglass, and prefacing every remark by "I say, by Jove!" They frankly admitted that they had come prepared to dislike us, but had found us on acquaintance not such bad fellows after all.
Similarly Captain Brees confessed to me that he had been obliged to reconstruct all his preconceived ideas of British military men as soon as he had met them. Before his departure from Manila I had sent him letters of introduction to many of our officers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo and Calcutta. He told me that on arriving in Hong Kong he had hesitated to avail himself of them but, hardening his heart, had at last dispatched them to the addresses.
"I can tell you, major," he said, "that, with the ideas I had of what your fellows would be like, I was considerably surprised when several of them swooped down upon me in my hotel and insisted on my transferring myself and my baggage at once to their quarters, where they entertained me royally for the rest of my stay in Hong Kong. The same in Singapore. And when my ship reached Calcutta, two British officers came on board as soon as the anchor dropped, took me ashore, and gave me a bully time there. I tell you that after this you can just inform any of your army friends that, if they visit America, their address is '1st United States Cavalry.' And don't you forget it!"
"Jimmy" Brees was one of the most charming men I have ever known; and everywhere he went in India he made a most favourable impression on all our officers who met him. In Buxa we could not offer him any social gaieties; but we made him free of the jungle, taught him to ride on and shoot from elephants, and did the little we could to entertain him.