I've
forgotten
which.
Kipling - Poems
Now and
again a "Special" managed to get slain,--which was not altogether
a disadvantage to the paper that employed him,--and more often the
hand-to-hand nature of the fighting allowed of miraculous escapes which
were worth telegraphing home at eighteenpence the word. There were many
correspondents with many corps and columns,--from the veterans who had
followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo in '82, what
time Arabi Pasha called himself king, who had seen the first miserable
work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up nightly and the scrub
swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked into the business at the
end of a telegraph-wire to take the places of their betters killed or
invalided.
Among the seniors--those who knew every shift and change in the
perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest
Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk
a telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of
a newly appointed staff-officer when press regulations became
burdensome--was the man in the flannel shirt, the black-browed
Torpenhow. He represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the
campaign, as he had represented it in the Egyptian war, and elsewhere.
The syndicate did not concern itself greatly with criticisms of
attack and the like. It supplied the masses, and all it demanded was
picturesqueness and abundance of detail; for there is more joy in
England over a soldier who insubordinately steps out of square to rescue
a comrade than over twenty generals slaving even to baldness at the
gross details of transport and commissariat.
He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a recently
abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a clump of
shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.
"What are you for? " said Torpenhow. The greeting of the correspondent is
that of the commercial traveller on the road.
"My own hand," said the young man, without looking up. "Have you any
tobacco? "
Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had looked at
it said, "What's your business here? "
"Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be doing something
down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else I'm in charge of the
condenser on one of the water-ships.
I've forgotten which. "
"You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with," said Torpenhow, and took
stock of the new acquaintance. "Do you always draw like that? "
The young man produced more sketches. "Row on a Chinese pig-boat," said
he, sententiously, showing them one after another. --"Chief mate dirked
by a comprador. --Junk ashore off Hakodate. --Somali muleteer being
flogged. --Star-shell bursting over camp at Berbera. --Slave-dhow being
chased round Tajurrah Bah. --Soldier lying dead in the moonlight outside
Suakin. --throat cut by Fuzzies. "
"H'm! " said Torpenhow, "can'tsay I care for Verestchagin-and-water
myself, but there's no accounting for tastes. Doing anything now, are
you? "
"No.
again a "Special" managed to get slain,--which was not altogether
a disadvantage to the paper that employed him,--and more often the
hand-to-hand nature of the fighting allowed of miraculous escapes which
were worth telegraphing home at eighteenpence the word. There were many
correspondents with many corps and columns,--from the veterans who had
followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo in '82, what
time Arabi Pasha called himself king, who had seen the first miserable
work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up nightly and the scrub
swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked into the business at the
end of a telegraph-wire to take the places of their betters killed or
invalided.
Among the seniors--those who knew every shift and change in the
perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest
Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk
a telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of
a newly appointed staff-officer when press regulations became
burdensome--was the man in the flannel shirt, the black-browed
Torpenhow. He represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the
campaign, as he had represented it in the Egyptian war, and elsewhere.
The syndicate did not concern itself greatly with criticisms of
attack and the like. It supplied the masses, and all it demanded was
picturesqueness and abundance of detail; for there is more joy in
England over a soldier who insubordinately steps out of square to rescue
a comrade than over twenty generals slaving even to baldness at the
gross details of transport and commissariat.
He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a recently
abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a clump of
shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.
"What are you for? " said Torpenhow. The greeting of the correspondent is
that of the commercial traveller on the road.
"My own hand," said the young man, without looking up. "Have you any
tobacco? "
Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had looked at
it said, "What's your business here? "
"Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be doing something
down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else I'm in charge of the
condenser on one of the water-ships.
I've forgotten which. "
"You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with," said Torpenhow, and took
stock of the new acquaintance. "Do you always draw like that? "
The young man produced more sketches. "Row on a Chinese pig-boat," said
he, sententiously, showing them one after another. --"Chief mate dirked
by a comprador. --Junk ashore off Hakodate. --Somali muleteer being
flogged. --Star-shell bursting over camp at Berbera. --Slave-dhow being
chased round Tajurrah Bah. --Soldier lying dead in the moonlight outside
Suakin. --throat cut by Fuzzies. "
"H'm! " said Torpenhow, "can'tsay I care for Verestchagin-and-water
myself, but there's no accounting for tastes. Doing anything now, are
you? "
"No.
