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The Drums Of The Fore And Aft

The Drums Of The Fore And Aft image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
August
Year
1899
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT.

By RUDYARD KIPLING.

The Fore and Aft band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin and Lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them 50 yards in the rear, and by the time the band had mixed with the regiment they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported.

"Get back to that rock," gasped Jakin. "They won't see us there."

And they returned to the scattered instruments of the band, their hearts nearly bursting their ribs.

"Here's a nice show for us," said Jakin, throwing himself full length on the ground. "A bloomin fine show for British infantry! Oh, the devils! They've gone an left us alone here! Wot'll we do?"

Lew took possession of a cast off water bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.

"Drink!" said he shortly. "They'll come back in a minute or two--you see."

Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the regiment's return. They could hear a dull clamor from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Gurkhas fired at them.

"We're all that's left of the band, an we'll be cut up as sure as death," said Jakin.

"I'll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on Jakin's.

" 'Old on! I know somethin better than fightin," said Jakin, stung by the splendor of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum. "Tip our bloomin cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away. Come on, Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife an give me the drum. The 'Old Step' for all your bloomin guts are worth! There's a few o' our men comin back now. Stand up, you drunken little defaulter! By your right--quick march!"

He slipped the drum sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the "British Grenadiers."

As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse. Their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of a level ground dotted only by the wounded.

The tune settled into full swing, and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Ghurkhas.

"Come on, you dogs!" muttered Jakin to himself. "Are we to play forever?" Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on parade.

And in bitter mockery of the distant mob the old tune of the old line shrilled and rattled:

Some talk of Alexander
And some of Hercules,

Of Hector and Lysander
And such great names as these!

There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Gurkhas and a roar from the highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by British or Afghan. The two little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to the enemy's front.

But of all the world's great heroes
There's none that can compare

With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,
To the British grenadier!

The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance into the plain. The brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day staid to watch the children.

Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the assembly, while the fife squealed despairingly.

"Right about face! Hold up, Lew; you're drunk!" said Jakin. They wheeled and marched back.

Those heroes of antiquity
Ne'er saw a cannon ball

Nor knew the force o' powder--

"Here they come!" said Jakin. "Go on, Lew!"

To scare their foes withal!

The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known, for neither officers nor men speak of it now.

"They are coming anew!" shouted a priest among the Afghans. "Do not kill the boys! Take them alive and they shall be of our faith."

But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face. Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft carne forward, the maledictions of their officers in their ears and in their hearts the shame of open shame.

Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open order, and they did not fire.

"This," said the colonel of Gurkhas softly, "is the real attack, as it ought to have been delivered. Come on, my children."

"Ulu-lu-lu-lu!" squealed the Gurkhas, and came down with a joyful clicking of kukris--those vicious Gurkha knives.

On the right there was no rush. The highlanders, cannily commending their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired according to their custom--that is to say, without heat and without intervals--while the screw guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards on the heights.

"Charrgin is an unfortunate necessity," murmured the color sergeant of the right company of the highlanders.

"It makes the men sweer so, but I am thinkin that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firin into the eye of the sun, and he'll not take any harm for government ammuneetion. A foot lower and a great deal slower! What are the English doin? They're very quiet there in the center. Runnin again?"

The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and stabbing, for, though one white man is seldom physically a match for an Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet through the pressure of many white men behind and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They then selected their men and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies and realized for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan attacking, which fact old soldiers might have told them.

But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.

The Gurkhas' stall at the bazaar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged--to a nasty noise, as of beef being cut on the block--with the kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet, well knowing how the Afghan hates the half moon blade.

As the Afghans wavered the green standards on the mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally, which was unwise. The lancers, chafing in the right gorge, had thrice dispatched their only subaltern as galloper to report on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion he returned with a bullet graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in Hindustanee and saying that all things were ready. So that squadron swung round the right of the highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons of its lances and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of wavering.

But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the Afghans intended to retreat, and down the track that the lances had made streamed two companies of highlanders, which was never intended by the brigadier. The new development was successful. It detached the enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock and left him ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. And as a sponge is chased round the bathtub by the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans chased till they broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than large masses.

"See!" quoth the brigadier. "Everything has come as I arranged. We've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces."

A direct hammering was all that the brigadier had dared to hope for, considering the size of the force at his disposal, but men who stand or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning chance into design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper, cantering forward, cleared his point. The lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The highlanders gave the fugitives 200 yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking, ere they could reach the protection of the bowlders above. The Gurkhas followed suit, but the Fore and Aft were killing on their own account, for they had penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats.

They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the hills by hundreds when there were only 20 bullets to stop them. On the heights the screw guns ceased firing--they had run out of ammunition--and the brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were fired the litters were out in force looking for the wounded. The battle was over, and but for want of fresh troops the Afghans would have been wiped off the earth. As it was they counted their dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft.

But the regiment did not cheer with the highlanders, nor did they dance uncouth dances with the Gurkhas among the dead. They looked under their brows at the colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted.

"Get back to camp, you! Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one day? Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for," said the colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all that mortal commander could expect. They had lost heavily because they did not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward.

A young and sprightly color sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself a hero, offered his water bottle to a highlander whose tongue was black with thirst. "I drink with no cowards," answered the youngster huskily, and, turning to a Gurkha, he said "Hya, Johnny! Drink water got it?" The Gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. The Fore and Aft said no word.

They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the brigadier, who saw himself a knight in three months, was the only soul who was complementary to them. The colonel was heartbroken and the officers were savage and sullen.

"Well," said the brigadier, "they are young troops, of course, and it was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit."

"Oh, rny only Aunt Maria!" murmured a junior staff officer. "Retire in disorder! It was a bally run!"

"But they carne again, as we all know, " cooed the brigadier, the colonel's ashy white face before him, "and they behaved as well as could possibly be expected--behaved beautifully indeed. I was watching them. It's not a matter to take to heart, colonel. As some German general said of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all." To himself he said: "Now they're blooded, I can give 'em responsible work. It's as well that they got what they did. Teach 'em more than half a dozen rifle flirtations that will--later--run alone and bite. Poor old colonel, though!"

All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain 40 miles away. And in the evening there arrived--dusty, sweating and sore--a misguided correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village burning and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while.

"Let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please. It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign," said the correspondent to the brigadier, and the brigadier, nothing loath, told him how an army of communication had been crumpled up, destroyed and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom and foresight of the brigadier.

But some say, and among these be the Gurkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.