An awfully big adventure

The late afternoon sunlight was slanting across the heather when the "Mantis" came puffing round a bend of the river.

Contrary to the established custom and traditions of British men-of-war, her crew maintained a breathless and high-spirited dialogue with the Captain, who seasoned it with shrill invective directed at a routed enemy, invisible and presumed to be in full flight amid the bracken.

At the bend alluded to, the Captain of the "Mantis" turned and shouted encouragement to the "Moth," who, some hundred yards astern, was negotiating some rapids and presumably under heavy fire.

"I say, do buck up!" he cried. "The Turks are retreating like anything!"

"I can't buck up," wailed the Captain, officers and ship's company of the "Moth." "There's a bramble all caught up in my petticoat."

"Take the beastly thing off then," commanded the Senior Officer, and turned to con his ship through the tortuous shallows of the Upper Reaches.

The fir-clad and boulder-strewn slopes of the valley had given place to the open moor, where the stream abandoned its headlong course and broadened into wide pools and shelving beaches of gravel strewn with bleached twigs.

The "Tarantula" was discernible still among the cataracts, while in the far distance the Main Army clambered deftly from boulder to boulder and fended off the onslaughts of flies with a frond of bracken.

Although the fire of the enemy had perceptibly slackened, the casualties aboard the "Mantis" mounted steadily. Three times the Commanding Officer quitted his ship to wallow in his gore on the springy turf, only returning on each occasion to find the Quartermaster on his knees in the shallows, delivering valedictory rhetoric at his post as his life's blood ebbed.

The barred and speckled trout fled up-stream like bronze flashes as the irresistible advance continued. The shrill bark of the "Mantis's" gun searched the hollows and peat bogs for the possibly lurking rearguard of the rout, and sent the shy kingfisher darting ahead of the bedraggled white ensign in the van of the pursuit.

Finally the "Mantis" dropped anchor from sheer lack of breath and prepared to disembark a landing party. Her Captain, carrying the ensign and armed to the teeth, climbed on to a lichen-scarred boulder in quest of the remainder of the Naval Forces.

"_Come_ on!" he shouted, and the sound of his voice was swallowed by the vast solitude of the moor.

The "Moth" had forsaken the waterways and from discreet glimpses afforded by a furze bush bordering the stream was proceeding in execution of previous orders.

The "Tarantula"--it was useless to disguise the inglorious fact--was engaged in picking blackberries and sharing them with the Main Army. Far out of reach of hail or reproach, the advance guard of that historic force, hitherto invisible, was alone unquenched in spirit and energy, and rushed to and fro with wagging tail among the bewildering blend of scents left by the passage of rabbit, vole and otter.

The Captain of the "Mantis" permitted his nostril to curl contemptuously.

"Pouf!" he said, and added--for the benefit of the officers and men of the landing party, desperadoes all--"what can you expect from girls?"

His fellow-desperadoes, presumably from motives of chivalry or disgust, vouched no reply, and their leader turned to sweep the path of the retreat through a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses, suspended from his neck by a piece of string. Then instinctively, like a wild animal surprised, all the supple grace of his young body stiffened tense and rigid. Not fifty yards up-stream sat a man nursing a rifle across his knees.

He was a youngish man, clean-shaven, and he sat, apparently deep in thought, purring a pipe. Not even the tumult of the advance upon Bagdad appeared to have disturbed his reflections, for he had not turned his head.

The Senior Officer of the Naval Forces lowered his mother-of-pearl opera glasses and scrutinised the stranger with his unimpeded vision for nearly a minute. Finally, casting a glance down-stream, he clambered from his place of vantage and advanced.

The boy was about ten paces distant when the stranger turned his head. He was of a lean, rather lantern-jawed cast of countenance, and his reddish-brown eyes showed not the faintest surprise or curiosity at being suddenly confronted by a small sunburnt boy, bare-legged and dripping wet, who wore a brass-hilted sword bayonet (relic of the Franco-Prussian war), cutlass-wise, a leather pistol holster (empty), a soda-water bottle, a bandolier made of corks, and the aforementioned opera glasses all distributed about his person, and who carried a white ensign on an ash-plant.

"'Evening," said the stranger; the safety catch of his rifle went over with a little click.

The boy stood perfectly still, and there was a moment's silence. Then, planting the flagstaff in the sandy margin of the stream, he came closer.

"What's your name?" he inquired.

"Jakes," replied the seated figure. He removed his pipe from between his teeth and blew meditatively into the bowl, contemplating the tendril of smoke issuing from the mouthpiece with the air of an alchemist preoccupied with a phenomenon.

"Graeme Jakes," he added in a lower tone, as if speaking to himself. "Sometimes called 'Mouldy.'

"Mine's Cornelius James Halliday," volunteered the boy. Whatever he read in the stranger's face apparently banished the lurking fear of ridicule from his sensitive and imaginative heart. "I'm the 'Mantis,' you know," he continued, "coming up the river to Bagdad. The 'Moth' and 'Tarantula' are away back in there----" He jerked his hand towards the bend in the stream as if the gesture made the explanation quite clear and sufficing.

The man evinced no apparent surprise at the information; he replaced his pipe between his teeth, took a couple of deep puffs at it and nodded gravely:

"What about the Army?" he asked.

"Oh, she--it's back there too. Miss Mayne's the Army. She's our governess, and her brother was killed in the retreat from Mons, so we always let her be the Army. He was in the Guards, and she only cried once; she'd be here now only Georgie--Georgina, you know, my sister--made her stop and pick blackberries. Georgina swanks rather nowadays when we have games--she usen't to, but she's getting old. Jane doesn't swank, only she got foul of some brambles, and she's coming on in her knickerbockers when she's got her skirt off."

The dilatory advance of the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force having been satisfactorily explained, Cornelius James sat down and clasped his hands about his small scarred knees. His eyes were drawn and held by the magnetism of the lethal weapon which lay idly upon the man's knees.

"Is that loaded?" he queried.

"Yep."

"What do you shoot with it--mostly--hereabouts?"

From his tone the conversation might have been conducted in a country where tiger predominated among the fauna.

"Rabbits," replied the other, adding after a pause: "sitting." He jerked open the breech of the miniature rifle, picked up the tiny shell that flicked out on to the turf and handed it gravely to his interrogator.

Cornelius James accepted it with equal gravity.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "What's up with your hand? Why is it all bandaged? Have you been wounded in the war?"

Graeme Jakes surveyed the grubby folds of lint and the maimed fingers of his left hand. For the first time the shadow of a smile played about his mouth.

"Yep. Long time ago. Nothin' much, only it wouldn't heal. Went bad on me. Bit of poison gas shell."

"Oh," said the boy, and contemplated his new acquaintance with renewed interest.