we ran on a chance bank up north), field cashier's draftbook (in case we didn't), officer's blue-book (record of service), keys, watch, a piece of string, spare bootlaces, somebody's miniature, pencil and notebook, and five pounds in cash. I slept. I woke. I stood in my pyjamas. Valise, straps, clothes, even boots, were gone! Fifteen officers slept, I say, in the house. The garden, indeed the whole neighbourhood, was thick with sleeping soldiers and bristled with sentries. Our Syrian friend, Bedouin or townsman, had got away with an unstrapped valise so bulky that a man could not get his arms around it, plus a pile of clothes, without disturbing a soul. They are thieves in Syria. My emotions, as I opened my uniform-case (away in the waggon-lines) with a chisel and extracted a lamentably insufficient reserve kit, are not germane to this story. Now, my men at Homs camped in the open by the station, half a mile from the town. They had bushels of stores in their sheds; but they had Richard. Such prizes as my sheds held were too good to be overlooked. The "Beddo" did try one raid. One visitor perhaps two-did pass the single strand of barbed wire. A big white form leapt from a bell-tent, sprang-fore-legs outstretched, jaws glistening white at the Beddo's chest, and held on. Two rifle-shots woke the men. A friend, knowing the raid was over, but wishful to rescue his leader, fired twice at Richard in the dusk, and hit him twice. (They can bring down a running jackal from the saddle of a galloping Arab.) Richard held on. 66 The 'Beddo served his term in the local jail, and Richard put in a fortnight at the field veterinary hospital with two "G.S.W." in the chest. (A year afterwards he met his R.A.V.C. nurse some hundreds of miles down-country, and welcomed him with a joyful knock-down bound.) My camp was raided no more. Two events, notable in Richard's history, occurred simultaneously soon after. My wife came out, and the last British soldier of my little contingent demobilised, leaving me with only locally-enlisted Syrian "babus." Before he left, the last man handed Richard into my care. More welcome gift was never made. There were no stores now to guard, for the Division was under orders to move, and all save the barest and most portable of necessities had gone down-country to Palestine under escort. But my wife's temporary lodging was a Turkish flat-roofed house, with a sea of flat roofs around, and I had to be away o' nights now and then. Thrice before she came thieves had dropped over the wall, though there was then nothing to steal. Even a strand of barbed wire, hung loose a One visit was made. The wire did not succeed in preventing the visitor's entry into our courtyard. The Syrian record for the high jump is now held by the "Beddo "" who, hearing Richard's low growl and swift rush, leapt for the wall, and hung in the wire just long enough to provide our guardian with a large piece of bulgy Levantine trouser as memento of the occasion. Richard went down-country with our goods and chattels in open truck. Burrowing among the tarpaulins, beneath an chairs and tables, our suffragi 1 and cook led a sort of troglodyte life for days on end. (Goods are not transported in Syria by grande vitesse.) Had Richard not shared their vigils, we should have lost at least half our household stores. Syrian railway thieves have been known to rip the wood bottom out of a truck during a momentary halt, collecting the fallen spoil when the train passed on. As they sidled up at isolated stopping - places, searchers after loot encountered not only two moderately hefty Egyptian servants, but, emerging perhaps from the bowels of a dismantled bedroom suite, a beast whose front view consisted mainly of two rows of gleaming white teeth. Honesty was the best policy. II. JOY OF BATTLE. Our next halt, at Sarona, was, for Richard, one long holiday. There were lovely fights to be had; but, best of all, he found a companion to relieve him of his only burdens in life-his puttee and his boudoir cap. Shortly before he came to us Richard had a notable fight. Evidence showed (a bite near the nostril) that he had been engaged in honourable warfare when a third party had joined the fray. His tail, in consequence-I said it was just two inches too long,-was bared to the bone for at least four inches, and badly chewed. While this triangular contest was in progress a native had, presumably, tried to settle matters with a hatchet, for Richard had been scalped to the extent of about four square inches by a glancing blow, which had apparently shaved off a thin layer of bone from the top of his skull. (A human parallel to this can be seen, or could years ago, in the Museum at Dublin. It is the skull of an Irish warrior, recovered from a crannog -a prehistoric lake fortress. It bears, I think, twelve swordcuts, one of which practically trepanned the owner. From 1 Butler. It was the position of them, he must in a Yeomanry mess. presented to me without guar- Richard's wounds caused us some anxiety; him none, except when they had to be dressed. He knew, and loathed, the smell of iodine and the sight of a basin of water on the floor with lint beside it. We bound them up. Hardly had he left the operating theatre when he pulled the bandages off. Science however, must prevail. My wife devised a "boudoir cap -and sewed him into it!which could not be removed; likewise a puttee for his four inches of chewed tail, which defied his rotary efforts to dislodge it. Richard, a Porthoscum - Don - Juan among dogs, was compelled to take the air in these effeminate trappings. Not until he found a companion at Sarona (by which time, fortunately, the matter of dressings had become less urgent) did he get rid of the loathed millinery. Richard was his playfellow and mentor from the start. For half an hour at a time we would watch the elder, with the assiduity of a boxing " pro," putting the puppy up to all the points of doggy sparringthe swerve after the swift bite, which leaves the return snap to expend itself on the hard muscle-armed shoulder; the savage flying butt behind the foreleg, which bowls the adversary over and lets you get at his throat. But, first of all, he taught "N.Y.D." the fascinating game of tearing off your opponent's lint bonnet and unwinding the puttee from your comrade's tail. At Sarona Richard found a world of love, life, and laughter; found, too, as humans have found since, that the lot of the victor in battle is not all his fancy paints. There is the "after the war" period. . . "Mad as a March hare" conjures up a picture of merry madness, of mere spring-time ecstasy. "Mad as a May jackal" is mad indeed-seeingred mad, running-amok mad. Sarona in May abounded in mad jackal. Risks of contact with His companion was a black rabies-faint enough, perhaps ; pup, one of a colossal litter but as our I.M.S. doctor said, if which had recently been born you had ever seen hydrophobia 1 "Not Yet Diagnosed." (N.Y.D. died in the flower of his youth, of distemper). VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCC. I 2 Such trifling additions to the menu as neighbouring Jaffa afforded - things were better later, when you could get a chicken for a shilling-were gathered every other day by a shopping tour; and Richard, on a long lead, was always of the party. you would not want to take topping it is to taste something even a faint risk-sent quite a that is not bully!" (And it few people down-country for was bully!) an unpleasant preventive inoculation treatment. (How the bravest dread the needle about the twentieth day!) When Richard came back from a wellspent morning, grinning reminiscently, regardless of a tattered ear (you should have seen what the other fellow got!), we had spells of keen anxiety, and Richard spells of irksome restraint and reflection. Each fight meant ten days on the end of a rope, lest signs of rabies should appear. We were told later that forty-eight hours would have settled the matter; but ten days was the custom then, and how many terms Richard served! It would have been a dog's life indeed but for Abdul the cook. Richard's attitude to natives in general was not conciliatory. I think the baggy trouser was an almost irresistible temptation. Once admitted to the bosom of the household, however, Richard showed them a genial tolerance that evoked almost adoration in return. None loved him more dearly than Abdul, prince of cooks-magician who, when the railway had been washed away thrice in a month, and bully had been served out in rations twenty-nine days out of thirty-one, could produce such a sea-pie as made my colonel, dropping in for lunch without warning from a station thirty miles away, say, How Abdul was, sartorially, a grotesque. His shopping rig was a galabieh,1 over which he wore a blue reefer coat; boots without laces, and, crowning everything, a gigantic Wolseley helmet which he had found on some army scrap-heap, and which, having no inner rim, sat down almost on his shoulders, concealing his features even more completely than does the cloche hat of to-day's feminine fashion. The sight of him returning from market with three full baskets, miscellaneous bundles of greenstuff tucked under his arms, and Richard's lead wound about his person in a manner that would have puzzled Houdini, brightened the dullest day. Another alleviation of Richard's quarantine miseries was that he could, if really put to it, break any tether we succeeded in procuring; or, at need, slip his slim smooth head through any collar. At night, his post in our cottage (our village had been taken over from a German agricultural colony) was at the end of a cord tied to the foot of the 1 A kind of white cassock, reaching to the ground. banisters, long enough to en- Tenderly we laid him on a able him, through the open doors, to reach any groundfloor window. One night he heard a suspicious noise in the garden-whether a "Beddo " out for spoil or a jackal we never discovered. There was a fierce bound, the snapping of hemp, and a musical twang. Richard, breaking his tether with a mighty effort, had leapt clean through the kitchen's wire window. He returned at breakfast-time a little scratched about the nose, but grinning complacently. This sentry-post at the foot of the stairs cost us something in crockery too. Twice Bustawi, our stately suffragi, was encircled in Richard's rope as he mounted the stair with an early morning cup of tea and giant Jaffa oranges, and we awakened to a crash and a shortage in our already in sufficient china. Richard found soldiering a healthy life. Only once was Only once was he on the sick-bed. We were walking some two miles from home. Richard, seeing a bit of inviting turf-the turf of Sarona was a joy to view rolled ecstatically. He did not realise he was on the edge of a little dry wady until he rolled over and landed on his back with a bump six feet below. He crawled out with difficulty, lay down, and was sick. No coaxing would fetch him along. There was nothing but to carry him, his great forelegs dangling over my shoulder-no negligible burden! straw bed. Our cheery vet., a sworn friend of Richard's, diagnosed a broken blood-vessel, and prescribed rest and quiet. Abdul brought his most welcome offering, an eggy rice pudding, which Richard adored. He ate it mincingly while we watched in great distress. That afternoon a General called with his bulldog. Richard saw him, broke his rope, had a rousing fight, and emerged they took some tugging apart -fit and well. Almost his best fight took place in those Sarona days. We were riding through a peaceful French agricultural colony, my wife and I, with L J, a cheery yeoman neighbour whom Richard had admitted to terms of warmest friendship. Five local dogs, each of his own size, rushed at him in a pack. Richard needed no second invitation. His tactics were Napoleonic. Leaping the leaders, he literally fell on the hindmost dog, bowling him over before the others could turn. J—, standing in his stirrups, delightedly whooped and holloaed him on. One by one, by the sheer momentum of his great torpedo body, he butted them apart from the crowd and dealt with them, sending them scurrying off with dismal howls, himself returning to my stirrup with a grin such as a batsman wears when a stout drive upsets the lunchtable in the pavilion. "Pretty neat, that-what?" Hardly less spectacular was |
