From the others, Bertram learnt that Wavell was, among other things, a second Burton, having penetrated into Mecca and Medina in the disguise of a haji, a religious pilgrim, at the very greatest peril of his life. He had also fought, as a soldier of fortune, for the Arabs against the Turks, whom he loathed as only those who have lived under their rule can loathe them. He could have told our Foreign Office many interesting things about the Turk. (When, after he had been imprisoned and brutally treated by them at Sanaa, in the Yemen, he had appealed to our Foreign Office, it had sided rather with the Turk indeed, confirming the Unspeakable One’s strong impression that the English were a no-account race, even as the Germans said.) So Wavell had fought against them, helping the Arabs, whom he liked. And when the Great War broke out, he had raised a double company of these fierce, brave, and blood-thirsty little men in Arabia, and had drilled them into fine soldiers. Probably no other Englishman—or European of any sort—could have done this; but then Wavell spoke Arabic like an Arab, knew the Koran almost by heart, and knew his Arabs quite by heart.
That he showed a liking for Bertram was, to Bertram, a very great source of pride and pleasure. When Wavell went out on a reconnoitring-patrol, he went with him if he could get Major Mallery’s permission, and the two marched through the African jungle discussing art, poetry, travel, religion, and the ethnological problems of Arabia—followed by a hundred or so Arabs—Arabs who were killing Africans and being killed by Africans, often of their own religion and blood, because a gang of greedy materialists, a few thousand miles away, was suffering from megalomania. . . .
Indeed to Bertram it was food for much thought that in that tiny boma in a tropical African swamp, Anglo-Indians, Englishmen, Colonials, Arabs, Yaos, Swahilis, Gurkhas, Rajputs, Sikhs, Marathas, Punjabis, Pathans, Soudanese, Nubians, Bengalis, Goanese, and a mob of assorted shenzis of the primeval jungle, should be laying down their lives because, in distant Berlin, a hare-brained Kaiser could not control a crowd of greedy and swollen-headed military aristocrats.
* * * * *
“Your month’s tobacco ration, Greene,” said Berners one morning, as he entered Bertram’s hut, “and don’t leave your boots on the floor to attract jigger-fleas—unless you want blood-poisoning and guinea-worm—or is it guinea-fowl? Hang them on the wall. . . . And look between your toes every time you take ’em off. Jigger-fleas are, hell, once they get under the skin and lay their eggs. . .” and he handed Bertram some cakes of perfectly black tobacco.
“But, my dear chap, I couldn’t smoke that,” said Bertram, eyeing the horrible stuff askance.
“Of course you can’t smoke it,” replied Berners.
“What can I do with it, then?” he asked.
“Anything you like. . . . I don’t care. . . . It’s your tobacco ration, and I’ve issued it to you, and there the matter ends. .. . You can revet your trench parapet with it if you like—or give it to the Wadegos to poison their arrows with. . . . Jolly useful stuff, really. . . . Sole your boots, tile the roof of your banda, make a parquet floor round your bed, put it in Chatterji’s tea, make a chair seat, lay down a pathway to the Mess, make your mother a teapot-stand, feed the chickens—oh, lots of things. But you can’t smoke it, of course. . . . You expect too much, my lad. . . .”
“Why do they issue it, then?” asked Bertram.