Page images
PDF
EPUB

Browne saluted and tramped mechanically away to where his Sikhs were collecting under cover. They looked tired, a little dazed too, many of them; several had two rifles, eloquent signs of the day's casualties.

As he passed the picquet he saw the subaltern standing by the door.

"Keep the filthy brutes off the ridge if you can, Jones. We've got several men lying out. Poor old Billy's there.' "God! I'm sorry," said Jones. "We'll do our best."

[ocr errors]

Browne fell-in his company and marched off down the hill. The fire had slackened in front now, but the enemy, foiled of further advance, sniped steadily from the cover on the right, "smack-smack-smack," on the picquet walls, and once one of the picquet crumpled up slowly at his loophole, to slide inertly to the ground in a pool of frothy blood.

The drone of an aeroplane sounded overhead: "Cr-r-rump or-rump-or-r-rumpc-r-rump, ,"followed by the prolonged chatter of a Lewis gun. The ground fire died away, and the Garhwali company on the flank fell back quietly in line with the rest.

The remaining wounded were despatched homewards, and then, platoon by platoon, the covering troops followed towards camp. The infantry subaltern watched them go, and then turned into the picquet. The men along the N.-E. face were firing intermittently into the bushes five hundred yards away, where oocasional enemy figures showed,

but all was over bar the shouting.

The day's work was finished satisfactorily, another picquet built and held, another halfmile of the road made goodas usual, at a price-while some of those who had paid it lay out in the rooks and bushes yonder, where the watching Mahsuds prowled, waiting for night to enable them to gather in something for their day's labour. They might attack the picquet at night-Jones half hoped they would-his wire was passably strong, and he would lay out some of the swine. "Poor old Billy!"

Later the darkness came down, and the men in the new picquet stood to arms at their firing-places, tensely alert, and heard the Mahsuds calling to one another, and once for a while the voice of a wounded man calling, calling, until it suddenly stopped.

The Very lights ourved heavenwards, throwing great black shadows and vivid white radiance over the hillside; and from time to time the spattering crackle of rifle fire and the burst of bombs told the camp down-stream that "X" picquet was still holding good.

But Browne lay wide-eyed in the dark in his little 40-lb. tent thinking of Billy as he last saw him and of all the past years they had spent together, while a bitter black hatred against the hand of Fate seethed in his heart as he listened to the distant shots and thought of the enemy's ghoulish movements that drew them. (To be continued.)

THE FAGS' APPEAL TO GOD.

BY C. R. L. FLETCHER.

the

MOST people who have visited the magnificent seventeenthcentury quadrangle at Braningham School know that the famous Fags' Dormitory, commonly abbreviated into "Fags' Dor," or "Fags," lies on the left hand of the great gate, and on the first floor. Over the gateway itself is the Common-room of the Sixthform boys, and beyond that, to the right of the gate, the studies and bed-chambers of the same Olympian personages. These rooms together fill up the western wing of the quadrangle. At right angles to "Fags," and forming southern wing, come the three successive "dors " of the Lower, Middle, and Upper Fifth-form boys, and each "dor' communicates with the groundfloor by its own staircase; while the northern and eastern wings of the quadrangle are occupied by the Chapel, the Schoolhouse dining-hall, sundry schoolrooms, and the entrance to the Cloister Garth, Part of the ground-floor of the southern wing is taken up by the private rooms of the Master of the Schoolhouse, familiarly known as "Schoolhouse Cad" -for the Headmaster, who is by right head of the Schoolhouse, lives in dignified state in a private house beyond Cloister Garth, and keeps a "oad" to perform for him the duty of looking after the hun

[ocr errors]

dred boys who inhabit the Schoolhouse. My readers will be kind enough to note that the word "cad" is not used in any offensive sense; in school phrase it merely means "one whe performs the work of another"-a Regent would be described at Braningham as "a King's cad.” Mr Snow, or "Snorkins," the "cad" at the time of my tale, was a wise and popular master.

The interior arrangements of the four great dormitories are all upon the same plan : on one side of each is a row of little divisions with desks, not unlike the "toys" at Winchester, and on the other side a corresponding number of beds, washstands, and chests of drawers; curtains supported on iron pillars conceal the row of beds in the daytime. In the centre on each side is a gap, and in these gaps stand, opposite to each other, a large fireplace and coal-box, and a large baize-covered table, with a few battered basket-chairs, which can always be carried across to the fireside. In "Fags," at least, whatever may be the custom in Lower, Middle, and Upper "Dors," it is in this central space that the twenty occupants do chiefly congregate. There la basse justice is administered (with the back of a long-handled bathbrush, the viotim kneeling with his trousers tight on

the ancient coal-box) by the captain of fags; there the events of the day are discussed after evening school, oricket or football sides are made up, and plots are hatched. It is the Delphi, the oμpaλós of fagdom, the centre of its earth. One of the first rules at the Schoolhouse is that no fag may, proprio motu, enter Lower, still less Middle or Upper Fifth "dors." It might almost be called an unnecessary rule, for no fag is likely to wish to enter those abodes of savage men, nor ever does SO save when he is sent thither with a message by one of his lawful masters of the Sixth form; then, indeed, he is protected by privilege, and his person is as sacred as that of a herald in medieval, or an ambassador in modern, times: it would be the actual duty of a fag to sneak (indeed it would not be sneaking at all) if any Fifth-form boy laid hands on him while he was so fagging, A less easily upheld rule is that no Fifth-form boy might come into "Fags"; for, although standing at right angles to it, "Lower" is only separated from "Fags" by a narrow space into which open two little rooms inhabited by specimens of that strange sex known as Schoolmaids; in odd half-hours in the summer, when all doors are open and dormitory cricket in full swing, a ball from "Lower" is quite apt to cannon off into "Fags," and will then

1

usually be retrieved without scruple. "Fags" may not retrieve a ball from "Lower."

In truth, the enforcement of rules of this kind depends on the wisdom and strength of Sixth form; there have been times not so far back in the history of the Sohoolhousethere was, in fact, such a time when my tale begins-when the boys from "Lower" would invade "Fags" in force, oust the lawful occupants from the seats by their own fireplace, and generally run riot. That was because the Olympians slept, and such invasion was always intensely resented by the little boys.

With their own lawful masters the relation of the occupants of "Fags" was much more cordial. As is well known, there are always twenty Sixth, and always twenty fags, a serf to each master. It is essentially a prædial serfdom, not a slavery: the labour-rents are not heavy, are fixed to definite hours, and cannot be increased ad voluntatem domini. Custom, the one real sovereign of all primitive and barbarous communities, is the surest protection of the fag. The Sixth may go into "Fags at all hours of the day, and indeed it is their duty (very ill-performed as a rule, for they treat it as a supreme bore) to patrol it occasionally. Each fag has also his appointed duties to perform in bis master's own study and in

[ocr errors]

1 The office is hereditary in certain families; the qualifications are great bodily strength and great taciturnity; their names are always either Sarah or Marah or Maria.

the Sixth Common-room, and some kind masters have even allowed good fags to take occasional refuge in their studies and do their lessons there.

"Fags," then, is, or should be, by tradition one of the most privileged places of the School, and it is immensely conscious of the value of its privileges; though it possesses neither charter nor seal, it almost regards itself as a corporate body. As all students of mediæval antiquities know, there are associations of men who by long prescription "acquire the aspects" of corporations, and are very apt to act as if they really were such. Whether they can sue and be sued is a point which even the late F. W. Maitland had hardly been able to determine. I shall now endeavour to show how my heroes went so far as to claim this last great privilege of corporate bodies, and how it came to be granted to them by the highest earthly authority which they acknowledged.

on

1914, all except one of these collections had been merged in a Schoolhouse collection, to which each "dor" made its weekly contribution. "Fags alone stoutly refused any suggestion of such merger-"We began the idea, and we are going to carry it on on our own,' - and it insisted carrying its contribution, by the hands of the captain of fags, to the actual hands of the matron of the hospital at the end of each term. How far this stout attitude on the part of the little boys was influenced by the fact that the matron almost always kept the little contributor to tea with her, and gave him what he described as a "buok feed," it is net for me to say, but it is a fact that successive captains usually managed to bring their contributions to her at about 4.30 P.M. on the last Saturday of each term.

Now in all schools, as most of us know, the line between a voluntary contribution and At the beginning of the a forced levy is obscure and Great War, "Fags," which easily overstepped. "Fags" claimed that it actually had had unanimously voted more fathers fighting than September 21, 1914, that half any other dormitory could its weekly shillings, plus half boast, felt a great patriotio the money each fag brought impulse sweep through its from home at the beginning veins, and one form which of the term, plus half of any this impulse took was the tips that might be acquired collection of money for the during the term, should be "Comforts Fund" of the local contributed to this Comforts hospital. Similar collections Fund. Successive captains were begun in all the dormi- of fags had rigorously entories, and there was a good forced this rule until the end deal of praiseworthy rivalry of the year 1917. Onoe or between these. Before the twice there were small end of the winter term of skulkers who had failed to

pay, but after a public exeoution of one such skulker, detected in endeavouring to conceal a "Bradbury" which a wounded unole had given him, there had been no further trouble. The independence of "Fags" in this matter was well known all over the Schoolhouse, the wise Olympians approved it, and persuaded the Schoolhouse "oad" not only to approve but to undertake the terminal audit of the accounts of the fags' collection as well as of the House colleotion. The keeping of these accounts, and the safe-keeping of the cash (looked in his own desk), were matters which were ill or well performed according (a) to the arithmetical capacity, (b) to the strength of character, of the captain of fags for the time being.

In the year 1917 there was undoubtedly much war-weariness, not only in the nation but even in that heart of all that was best in the nation, the Schoolhouse at Braningham. There were a lot of temporary masters, some of whom had not even been Braningham boys"Squills" they were called (Heaven alone knows the etymology of the word),—and they kept little order. Field-days and drills had been multiplied ad nauseam and became an abomination to most boys. The Sixth were listless, their own time to go and be killed drawing ever nearer, and the Fifth got out of hand. The Lower Fifth had always been a tough lot, for it was in this VOL. CCVIII.—NO. MCCLX.

form that stupid or idle boys most commonly stuck, sometimes until they were seventeen,-at which age they would be superannuated and dismissed from the School if they had not passed into Middle. And there were now no boys in the School over the age of eighteen. There was a spirit of rebellion abroad, occasionally rising almost inte mutiny, against sacred traditions and sacred privileges. Bolshevism cast its shadow before on some of the idle Fifth ferm, who took to reading Mr G. B. Shaw and mistaking the slime which he spreads over his paper for humour. Seme boy brought back a copy of a book called 'The Boom of Youth,' and it was greedily devoured in Lower Dor, which began to model its language upon that used by the charaoters in that astonishing work.

The first sufferers by this state of things were naturally the fags. Neither as a corporate body nor as individuals had they previously been distinguished for piety or for immaculate language; but when they heard their own natural enemies in Lower Dor begin the practice of swearing at large in season and out of season, in imitation of Mr Faugh's heroes, they naturally adopted the opposite course, and set bridle upon their tongues. Indeed, it was gravely discussed in "Fags whether a set of penny fines for each oath should not be imposed; but the state of complete impecuniosity to which the subscriptions to the Comforts Funds had reduced the

21

« PreviousContinue »