Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls

by Rudyard Kipling

To this his officer replied: “If you don’t get up behind me, I’ll get off and give you such a licking as you’ve never had in your life.” The man was more afraid of fists than of assagais, and the good horse pulled them both out of the scrape. Now by our Regulations an officer who insults or “threatens with violence” a subordinate in the Service is liable to lose his commission and to be declared “incapable of serving the King in any capacity,” but for some reason or other the trooper never reported his superior.

The humour and the honour of fighting are by no means all on one side. A good many years ago there was a war in New Zealand against the Maoris, who, though they tortured prisoners and occasionally ate a man, liked fighting for its own sake. One of their chiefs cut off a detachment of our men in a stockade where he might have starved them out, and eaten them at leisure later. But word reached him that they were short of provisions, and so he sent in a canoeful of pig and potatoes with the message that it was no fun to play that game with weak men, and he would be happy to meet them after rest and a full meal. There are many cases in which men, very young as a rule, have forced their way through a stockade of thorns that hook or bamboos that cut and held on in the face of heavy fire or just so long as served to bring up their comrades. Those who have done this say that getting in is exciting enough, but the bad time, when the minutes drag like hours, lies between the first scuffle with the angry faces in the smoke, and the “Hi, get out o’ this!” that shows that the others of our side are tumbling up behind. They say it is as bad as foot-ball when you get off the ball just as slowly as you dare, so that your own side may have time to come up.

Most men, after they have been shot over a little, only want a lead to do good work; so the result of a young man’s daring is often out of all proportion to his actual performances.

Here is a case which never won notice because very few people talked about it—a case of the courage of Ulysses, one might say.

A column of troops, heavily weighted with sick and wounded, had drifted into a bad place—a pass where an enemy, hidden behind rocks, were picking them off at known ranges, as they retreated. Half a battalion was acting as rear-guard—company after company facing about on the narrow road and trying to keep down the wicked, flickering fire from the hillsides. And it was twilight; and it was cold and raining; and it was altogether horrible for everyone.

Presently, the rear-guard began to fire a little too quickly and to hurry back to the main body a little too soon, and the bearers put down the ambulances a little too often, and looked on each side of the road for possible cover. Altogether, there were the makings of a nasty little breakdown—and after that would come primitive slaughter.

A boy whom I knew was acting command of one company that was specially bored and sulky, and there were shouts from the column of “Hurry up! Hurry there!” neither necessary nor soothing. He kept his men in hand as well as he could, hitting down rifles when they fired wild, till someone along the line shouted: “What on earth are you fellows waiting so long for?”

Then my friend—I am rather proud that he was my friend—hunted for his pipe and tobacco, filled the bowl in his pocket because, he said afterwards, he didn’t want any one to see how his hand shook, lit a fuzee, and shouted back between very short puffs: “Hold on a minute. I’m lighting my pipe.”

There was a roar of rather crackly laughter and the company joker said: “Since you are so pressin’, I think I’ll ’ave a draw meself.”

I don’t believe either pipe was smoked out, but—and this is a very big but—the little bit of acting steadied the company, and the news of it ran down the line, and even the wounded in the doolies laughed, and everyone felt better. Whether the enemy heard the laughing, or was impressed by the even “one-two-three-four” firing that followed it, will never be known, but the column came to camp at the regulation step and not at a run, with very few casualties. That is what one may call the courage of the much-enduring Ulysses, but the only comment that I ever heard on the affair was the boy’s own, and all he said was: “It was transpontine (which means theatrical), but necessary.”