that moment when an Arab, made up the street, doing a bearing a sack, insolently or hundred yards over the cobbles carelessly jostled my wife as in, I should say, ten dead. we were peering into the dim Richard laid at my wife's feet, recesses of a Jaffa carpet-shop, reassuringly, about a square with our backs to the street. yard of trouser. Before I had time to turn there was a sound of ripping cotton, a crash, and a howl. Dropping his sack, the Arab Escort? She might have marched through the darkest bazaar in Syria with Richard at her side; and, in fact, did. III. AIRS AND GRACES. It must not be thought that, in his warlike youth, Richard neglected the social arts. His grace before meat was a model to Christians. I would appear with a plate containing-oh! a scrumptious meal. Unvaried formalities followed. 66 singing a passionate solo to their accompaniment. The Indian bandmaster, not understanding the soul of a bull terrier, seemed grateful when I rode up and enticed the vocalist away. Like many great fighters, What a lovely dinner for a Richard had a catholic but dog!" A jump. Then Richard would lift his voice and his lovely nosein song. It really was song. Some folk think a dog howls when he hears music; but Richard adored melody, and joined in with hearty baritone passages after his kind. Later, in Kantara, when the band of an Indian marching regiment would retire into the desert to wrestle with the (to the Eastern musician) queer eccentricities of London dance music, Richard could always be found, seated beside the bandmaster, his eyes half-shut in reverie, isn't she the loveliest thing and the post-bag buzzed with ever! my fevered inquiries, till at last a leave- bound gunner earned a sovereign by bringing him back. Kantara was almost as happy Those who brought out feminine dogs of wondrous ancestry and worth rued the day. There was a Bedlington . No amount of chaperonage. a place for fighting as Sarona. Love laughs at chains and collars, no less than at locksmiths. Yet Richard, you brute, you forgot her! Did not you, when we had settled in Kantara, board a troop-train and travel to Ludd, 200 miles away, in company with a terrier belonging to a north-bound battery Hearing of this, I rode at six in the morning to the station. The first train and Richard-had gone. More units than one had coveted Richard and laid violent hands on him. He came back times without number strangely clean and minus collar, which he had left as a memento of his short stay in the lines of some passing battalion. Suspecting mala fides, therefore, I sought out the major of the battery and emphasised, as far as due subordination would allow, that the white bull-terrier was my dog; that he was known all over Palestine; that my many friends up-country would recognise him at once; that no collar or cord would hold him against his will; and that, in fine, I meant to have him back. As things turned out, a policeman friend did recognise him and captured him. Thrice he slipped his collar and found his way back to his flame of the moment, while the line There was the canteen doga tough proposition, but not quite tough enough. There was-it might have been unfortunate for me-my own colonel's dog. He, a handsome black-and-tan houndish sort of creature, once saw fit to intervene when Richard and the canteen champion were having a set-to. Richard's jaws being occupied, the colonel's dog bit him neatly through the cheek -one fang beneath the upturned lip, and one just below his eye. The fangs met. Richard, extricated before he could exact vengeance, was confined to barracks for the usual ten days with a face swollen like a melon. On the eleventh day the colonel's dog strayed through our compound. Richard saw him. They went through our rush wall with the speed of a telegram. Thereafter, to get the colonel's dog into his house-indeed, beneath the bed—it was only necessary to call "Dick!" bed, talking to us through the him off. Best of all, he loved open bedroom door. A failure of the camp electric plant (this was in civilised days) left us with only two candles-one for her and one for us. As a dutiful host, I offered Gizeh a meal from a huge bag of bones, recently left by my company cook for Richard's consumption. Gizeh was half-through a welcome meal when Richard returned, hungry, to find himself supplanted, a stranger on the hearth, his very dinner being wolfed by an interloper. Dog nature could stand no more. With a shout of rage he chased Gizeh through our bungalow, under the beds, knocking over my wife's candle, around the dining-room, extinguishing ours, while the padre danced, uttering ecclesiastical formulæ, and I tried to separate them with the only weapon to hand -the still weighty bag of reserve bones. Crockery crashed, chairs collapsed, the house was a shambles until Gizeh, spying a newly-opened door, dashed out into the Egyptian night. Bathing in the Suez Canal gave a new fillip to Richard's never - jaded life. Swimming out to whichever of us called him, with sweeping strokes of his mighty forelegs, he would greet us with transports of joy and fierce blows upon the shoulders. This, in my wife's case, meant probable drowning; so, when Richard was making for her, a spurt on my part was needed to head the frolic on the beach afterwards-his bout of "mad-dogging." First he would rush at the least wary, with a goatlike butt in the small of the back. Many times on the sand, and once in the road, my wife has been bowled over by this too hearty greeting. Then he would seize (when not circumvented) a towel-if it happened to be a complete stranger's towel, well, a pity; but why make a fuss about trivialities ? -toss it in the air, and rush with it for a mile or so, finally worrying it and returning it thoroughly impregnated with sand. I grieve to say Richard was intolerant of all sports save the two-swimming and fighting-in which he excelled. He loathed above all things being taken on a lead to a football match or gymkhana. On such an occasion he would invariably, having wormed his way to the front row-if possible, in the neighbourhood of the General's wife-be sick. did this with such regularity (of course, it was always successful; he was hurried away from the boresome spectacle) that we used to wonder if he put a paw down his throat on purpose. He Nor could he abide hunting. He would tackle any beast, dog or jackal, that came his way, but hunt he would not, nor let others. We managed by great good luck to keep him close confined on every hunting day at Sarona; but at Kantara a bobbery pack, Nor was he undutiful. My passing our doors on the way to meet, was too much for him. Despite my imprecations and the huntsman's whipwhich I had begged him to use unsparingly he would dash into the midst of them with savage cry, and the whole pack were not a match for him. Recapturing Richard caused many delays on hunting mornings. Fighter though he was, he had many graces. Most fascinating of all was his illfeigned penitence and pleading when found on a forbidden sofa-his case conducted entirely with one half-shut eye and his eloquent tail. We would enter the room and fix him with an accusing glance. No more. Flop, flop! (This particular sofa isn't forbidden, is it ?) "Richard!" Flop, flop! (Well, really, I didn't know. Don't you think you could waive it) "Richard, what are youFlop, flop! (-for once?) "-doing on that sofa ? And then, as if he had perched himself there quite somnambulistically, and had no idea of it until we awakened him, he would descend with a world of reproach in his now opened eye. Deck-chairs, however, were not forbidden; and in these he would stretch himself on his back, forelegs planted on the arms, inelegant, but almost human in his appreciation of a really comfortable doze. wife and I both had spells in the camp hospital near our compound. Daily, at an appointed time, Richard would enter the open tent, greet us with a sniff-or, in my wife's case, with the most delicate attention a gentlemanly dog can offer, by snapping gently along her arm to remove possible fleas,-lie beneath the bed for the time appointed by etiquette, and stroll back for lunch in the lines. Richard came with us to Alexandria, and was, unobserved, beneath the bed when my little son was born. The doctor, hastily summoned, trod on him, and my first bulletin, as I waited in the corridor, was, "Take that infernal dog away!" as Richard was unceremoniously handed out. When the procession of mother, nurse, and baby set out each morning to the beach, Richard marched proudly beside the pram. Disaster nearly befel one day. He lay asleep on the seashore in the pram's shade. A native selling some rubbish or other became unduly persistent. My wife, seated reading on the sand, murmured "Dick!" (It was 'Richard " for all formal occasions, "Dick" for emergencies.) With one bound, almost upsetting pram and baby, he was up, with his teeth through the ever attractive trousers. At Alexandria Richard, unless on duty with the pram, was almost permanently lost by day, though he was ever 66 We faithful to us o' nights. lived for a while in a hotel. The other inhabitants, being white, were rapidly admitted as friends. Either he would join them, quite uninvited, in their bathes ; or he would accompany them, unasked and despite the rules, to the Sporting Club, where his exuberance gave ginger to the trial gallop of a race-pony unused to a bull-terrier at its heels; or he would press his company on them in motor or taxi-cab; or (annoying and expensive affair) he would be arrestedhaving been found far from home, and, as often as not, without a collar-by the police, to be bailed out at great cost from their remote dog-jail. IV. HONOURED EASE. We had orders for home, and the problem arose what to do with Richard. The little boy, for whom he would have been so secure a playmate, we left sleeping beneath Egyptian skies. No four-footed friend we are ever likely to have could endear himself to us as Richard did. But would he live in England, and in town? He had no idea of traffic. The only time, in our company, he met a tram-lighted, in a dark suburban road-he fled before it up the track, terrorised by its headlamps, while we waited with our hearts in our mouths. As for motorcars, he lay asleep day after day in the centre of the road they most frequented; grind |
