gorge and scramble up another smell of baboon indicated we in ever-increasing with the sharp intimacy were passing by one of their glided away as we approached. grass and fastnesses. Two big snakes rushing water to which we nearer. the sheer descent, with nothing between us and the seething torrent I found my heart thumping. below, or the anger of the In a few minutes our toil was Djinn of the falls that he to be rewarded, and the Falls feared, we do not know, but more re Not many obstacles lay be of years unseen, would be re- up his voice and wailed aloud and we were on the summit of turned to safety. vealed to us. Another moment until we had once a cliff that overlooked the river as it rushed tempestuously be- tween the falls and the St tween its granite walls, gather- Andrew's cross, and as ing impetus for a plunge of 60 retraced our steps to camp feet down either side of a huge that night we were able to rock-girt basin congratulate The reverberation was the work of exploration was boulder into a below. tremendous, and drenching clouds, promise peace spray rose in complete. to their and, as if to ence, a rainbow shone through we ourselves that M. Bertaut has kindly exturbul- pressed his wish to name the Falls after me-"Les chutes a MacLeod"-and as Commandant Maillard, then acting for drops, making a the across estormiest strife the military territory of Chad, Scrub trees had confirmed his suggestion, I can the glistening and through of waters. partially sight, and down the veiled as we from our only say how greatly I ap sought precipice, a a way preciate the honour they have strong done me. WHAT THE MOON SAW. THE MUD MAJOR AND THE PERFORMING FLEA. BY OLD GUARD. I LIKE soldiers and sailors very much, said the Moon. In Harvest Week last year I saw quite a lot of them, and it was really quite interesting. For days and nights the country had been crowded with soldiers. There were swarms of them everywhere. They would start, thousands of them, a long way apart, and they would crawl and crawl for hours until they ran into each other, and then they would lie flat on the earth and point guns at each other, and their guns would make a loud noise and give the stars headaches. And then, hours and hours after, men on horseback with white caps would gallop over fields and up roads on to hilltops, where they would look all round and talk earnestly to each other. After that some one would blow a trumpet, and all the noise would cease at once. The soldiers would then give a feeble little cheer, and would crawl slowly into fields, where they would huddle together in the wet grass till the morning, when everything started again in the same way. My sight is not very good by day, and I was rather in the dark as to what all this meant until I met the Sun one day in an eclipse, and he told me that these things go on all through the summer. "Manœuvres " I think he called them. He said that often just before turning in he used to see the soldiers lying exhausted on the ground, and in the morning the first things that met his eye were the same men still lying just where they had fallen the night before. Often and often he thought them dead, so still did they lie-quite frightened him, he said, more than once, and made him cold all over. I made up my mind I would try and see one night for myself, and, as I had been feeling rather gibbous for some time, I thought a change would do me good. So I got up rather earlier than usual one evening, meaning to have a good look round. I looked down, and saw a field in which hundreds and hundreds of soldiers were lying with their faces turned up towards the sky, all with the expressionless look of men in the last stages of exhaustion. Although it was very cold they seemed to have no bedding or blankets, and they were huddled together in groups, just like the way I have seen wild animals in Šiberia and Patagonia. And they were so young, too! Most of them were mere boys, and their lips and hands were blue with cold. I could not help thinking how silly they were to lie out at night in a What the Moon Saw. cold, wet 45 discovered, were the officers of And there was a village the regiment. They were all just beside them, too. a light on to it and counted what I first took to be a too a school, and a hall, so that there would have to be a fire. been lots of room. parish I saw afterwards it was meant the houses and saw the villagers smoke which made the officers And then I sodden sticks and fragments of snoring peacefully soldiers. in warm cough now and then. Other stiff out in front towards the beds, and I wondered why all wise they were strangely silent. of some of them wanting to be their feet and hands stretched men were not villagers instead They sat hunched up, with I am very fond of villagers, tiny glow, and blinked wearily They are the kind- as the smoke drifted in their est people you could possibly faces. Sometimes one of them after night they would fill a pipe with damp and pigs trembling fingers, and, having you know. meet. Carefully Night will put their cows and poultry Cover, and their nearly always night near the fire. have under lit it, would puff drearily for a dogs, too, few minutes. a place by there was little sign of life, and soldiers. are so kind to often cheer them when They a silence like the grave. Suddenly one of them spoke march through the villages, in a quick kind of way, but to and, if the band is playing, nobody in particular. a turnip to forsaken tommy-rot. Thirty "Eighteen hours of this God Sometimes green apples and the men. lage I myself actually give once a star But he was one an old away tracts, and told old 8 me he had shocked. I've seen the Flood, gave a soldier a drink of water. Mafeking night, and things of I smash But I am getting some the diabolical ferocity of that a bit thing in the voice seemed curi out of my orbit-wandering ously familiar to me, and with away corner group my subject, you an effort I looked down steadily 1 cause I've known him for many years. Thirty years ago I first saw him one night on the deck of the old Crocodile going out to India to join his regiment, and you may take it from me that he was as keen as mustard —and I've seen Hannibal and Genghis Khan and all that lot, too. Well, he remained about eighteen years out there, and I saw him often and in different places. One time he was in Madras, then I saw him at Calcutta, after that I next saw him in hospital at Agra, where he nearly died of cholera, and then he did several years of frontier fighting somewhere up in the North-West. After that I lost sight of him for a bit, till one night I was taking a stroll over Africa, and down in a corner there seemed to be a scrap going on. Anyway, just outside a place called Colenso was my friend, lying groaning on the ground, very white and inclined to be ill, and whispering, "Water-oh God! water!" So I squeezed a cloud over him, and he just managed to roll over on his face and drink two puddles dry. He got two medals and a limp out of that war, and at the age of forty-two he had another bit of luck. He got a rise of thirty-six pounds ayear, which brought his pay up to £250, the privilege of wearing spurs on swagger occasions, and the right to be called "A Mud Major." Although he was rather poor, he was at that time very happy, very keen, very popular, but he was dotty on one subject. He was as sane as the Sun on every conceivable topic but this-he believed in what he called "sticking to his regiment!" Now people may say I'm cold, and all that sort of thing, but I have a warm corner in my heart for my major. I must tell you how he looked by the fire. He was forty-nine years old, and had quite white hair, which made him look sixty. His cheeks were sunken, and though he was spruce and smart-looking in an old-fashioned way, still, there was something decayed-I cannot describe it any other way-about him. And he looked tired and worn, too; but then, you know, when a man of forty-nine has to march on his flat feet and on an empty stomach for eighteen. hours he is bound to show it a bit. As I beamed pityingly on him he shivered once or twice, and I heard his teeth chatter, and I knew what that meant. Eighteen years of India, forty-nine years of age, and thirty-one miles of foot slogging with a wet field and an empty stomach at the end of it, spell Fever with a big "F." I wasn't born yesterday. But the Major still blinked drowsily at the miserable fire. He had unwound his dank putties, and was scratching his bare shanks with a kind of dreamy delight at the relief from eighteen hours of prickly irritation. On one leg I could see a queer purple mark. He scratched that leg rather carefully, I noticed, and then I guessed why he always limped, What the Moon Saw. and what had made him so of my own. 47 But in a soldier, thirsty those ten years ago in initiative may be very proper, South Africa. Here was forty-nine, an old man of I call him old, and the Major was allowed about as much of it as a performing flea. You don't understand me? a wound don't make people Aquarium? No? Well, I am service, three campaigns, and You've never been to the old young,-and he was still only surprised! It used to be in Company Commander, a post London near the Houses of those days. keep can he had held for twenty years. Parliament, but, dear me ! it's He had to drag his old, bat- changed since tered, fevered frame through However, if you long hot days at the head of awake a bit longer, I'll tell you his company of thirty-one what I mean. soldiers, every one of whom Many years ago I was look might have been his children ing down through the glass in point of age. All his affec- roof of the Aquarium, and I tion of the old days for his Corps was unrealised by his through a door marked "Per saw a lot of people walking juniors. " Why doesn't old Stick-in-the-Mud go?" they So I went round to a window forming Fleas. Admission 2d." would say. get command." "Never get com- a large round white sheet of mand," he would mutter sadly paper, like the top of a drum, and had a peep in. There was mand! He had about as much fleas, which did all kinds of thistledown has in running the flea in particular which quite curious tricks. There was one Solar System. interested me. He was on the Mind you, I think that all box-seat of a dear little four-inthis gush about "initiative" hand, and was driving as smart in many ways can be carried and level a team of fleas, all but I don't hold with initiative He had a little whip, too, which too far. I may be old-fashioned, browns, as you'd wish to see. too much. I've got to be a he used to wave, and the tinislave to routine myself, and I do est little reins imaginable. Althink I'm punctual. I wonder together it seemed the most what some of you people would delightful free-and-easy sport say if I took to "thinking for ing life any one could wish to "the have. I must say I got a shock when I saw they had But you needn't worry. I'm chained the wee sportsman to much too old for that kind of his seat, but this may have thing now. When one is three been to prevent the little chap hundred million years of age coming to grief in his exciteone sees the hollowness of it all. Besides, they let me run the tides, which gives me a job ment. Anyway, I found myself quite wishing I could change places with him. It seemed so |