Part 3 (1/2)
”n.o.body. What is 'lunge'? Will you buy me a little baby-camel to play with and teach tricks? Perhaps it would sit up and beg. Do camelth lay eggth? Chucko does. Millions and lakhs. You get a thword, too, and we'll fight every day. Yeth. All day long----”
”Good morning, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton, bustling into the verandah from the nursery. ”He's as mad as ever on swords and fighting, you see. It's a soldier he'll be, the lamb. He's taken to making that black orderly pull out his sword when he's in uniform. Makes him wave and jab it about. Gives me the creeps--with his black face and white eyes and all. You won't _encourage_ the child at it, will you, Sir?
And his poor Mother the gentlest soul that ever stepped. Swords! Where he gets his notions _I_ can't think (though I know where he gets his language, poor lamb!). Look at _that_ thing, Sir! For all the world like the dressed-up folk have on the stage or in pictures.”
”You haven't let him see any books, I suppose, Nurse?” asked the Major.
”No, Sir. Never a book has the poor lamb seen, except those you've brought. I've always been in terror of his seeing a picture of a you-know-what, ever since you told me what the effect _might_ be. Nor he hasn't so much as heard the name of it, so far as I know.”
”Well, he'll see one to-day. I've brought it with me--must see it sooner or later. Might see a live one anywhere--in spite of all your care.... But about this sword--where _could_ he have got the idea?
It's unlike any sword he ever set eyes on. Besides if he ever _did_ see an Italian rapier--and there's scarcely such a thing in India--he'd not get the chance to use it as a copy. Fancy his having the desire and the power to, anyhow!”
”I give it up, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton.
”I give it upper,” added the Major, taking the object of their wonder from the child.
And there was cause for wonder indeed.
A hole had been punched through the centre of the lid of a tobacco tin and a number of others round the edge. Through the centre hole the steel rod had been pa.s.sed so that the tin made a ”guard”. To the other holes wires had been fastened by bending, and their ends gathered, twisted, and bound with string to the top of the handle (of bored corks) to form an ornamental basket-hilt.
But the most remarkable thing of all was that, before doing this, the juvenile designer had pa.s.sed the rod through a piece of bored stick so that the latter formed a _cross-piece_ (neatly bound) within the tin guard--the distinctive feature of the ancient and modern Italian rapiers!
Round this cross-piece the first two fingers of the boy's right hand were crooked as he held the sword--and this is the one and only correct way of holding the Italian weapon, as the Major was well aware!
”I give it most utterly-uppermost,” he murmured. ”It's positively uncanny. No _uninitiated_ adult of the utmost intelligence ever held an Italian-pattern foil correctly yet--nor until he had been pretty carefully shown. Who the devil put him up to the design in the first place, and the method of holding, in the second? Explain yourself, you two-anna[6] marvel,” he demanded of the child. ”It's _jadu_--black magic.”
”Ayah lothted a wupee latht night,” he replied.
”Lost a rupee, did she? Lucky young thing. Wish I had one to lose. Who showed you how to hold that sword? Why do you crook your fingers round the cross-piece like that?”
”Chucko laid me an egg latht night,” observed Damocles. ”He laid it with my name on it--so that cook couldn't steal it.”
”No doubt. Look here, where can I get a sword like yours? Where can I copy it? Who makes them? Who knows about them?”
”_I_ don't know, Major Thahib. Gunnoo sells 'Fire's' gram to the _methrani_ for her curry and chuppatties.”
”But how do you know swords are like this? _That_ thing isn't a _pukka_ sword.”
”Well, it'th like Thir Theymour Thtukeley's in my dweam.”
”What dream?”
”The one I'm alwayth dweaming. They have got long hair like Nurse in the night, and they fight and fight like anything. Norful good fighters! And they wear funny kit. And their thwords are like vis.
_Egg_zackly. Gunnoo gave me a ride on 'Fire,' and he'th a dam-liar. He thaid he forgot to put the warm _jhool_ on him when Daddy was going to fwash him for being a dam-fool. I thaid I'd tell Daddy how he alwayth thleepth in it himthelf, unleth he gave me a ride on 'Fire'. 'Fire'
gave a _norful_ buck and bucked me off. At leatht I think he didn't.”
Major Decies' face was curiously intent--as of some midnight worker in research who sees a bright near glimpse of the gold his alchemy has so long sought to materialize in the alembic of fact.
”Come back to sober truth, young youth. What about the dream? Who are they, and what do they say and do?”
”Thir Theymour Thtukeley Thahib tellth Thir Matthew Thahib about the hilt-thwust. (What _is_ 'hilt-thwust'?) And Lubin, the thervant, ith a _white_ thervant. Why ith he white if he ith a Thahib's 'boy'?”