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Before I became one of the staff of the Obstructor General's Office, I had not given the position of Government clerks a thought, excepting to look down upon them generally as I have previously remarked, and as, indeed, most people are in the habit of doing who are unconnected with the service. Now, however, that I was one of them, I was filled with the most thorough corps feeling.
The usual obstructor soon uses up all his own material and then sends pages of irrelevant matter to the desk for the clerk to read, or he reads himself from the pages of the Record, or from books, but Carter stuck to his text. He was a man of wit and humor.
"Please don't," she said. "It really is not necessary. Be so good as to let me pass, sir," she added, looking her obstructor steadily in the face. He hesitated. "This is all rot!" he declared angrily. "You can't think that I'm fool enough to be put off like this." She glanced at Brendon, who stood by her side, tall and threatening. Her eyebrows were lifted in expostulation.
Once, when they had collided on the companion ladder, Shafto's agility alone had saved him from a heavy fall, and the obstructor had neither looked back nor offered apology. Probably he concluded that charming Miss Leigh, who accompanied his songs with such delicate sympathy, accorded too much of her society to this young man; and, after all, what was he?
From what I can learn, North has been an obstructor, all along, hasn't he?" "I can't say that," said Ford, just, even to an enemy. "To be right honest about it, I shall have to confess that I slurred him entirely went over his head." "For good reasons, no doubt, only you are too charitable to give them. Never mind: as I say, you are going to have a free hand.
In a fortnight, he told me that he considered me "safe" to pass "the board" an assurance which I was by no means sorry to hear; as, independently of my discovering that "cramming" is not the most interesting mode of beguiling one's time, I received at the end of the same period, through the kind exertions of the vicar on my behalf, a nomination to the Obstructor General's Office.
He had to contend against treachery, desertion and want, but rose above all these obstacles, and proved himself the most powerful obstructor that the British columns had to encounter in South Africa. Such a man was a boon to his country, and to him the burghers confidently entrusted themselves and their interests. He has proved himself worthy of that trust. But all were not De Wets.
So saying they turned to the right and prepared to scout round the rock and continue their way; but this did not suit their obstructor. "If ee doan't go back at oncet oi'll knock the heads off thee shoulders." "We can't go back," Tompkins said desperately, "we are both as tired as we can be, and my heel is so sore that I can hardly walk.
Then he comes forward and says to the obstructor and the enemy of right: "Desist, surrender, give way!" and it is only after refusal and a show of hostile force that the soldier shoots his gun, and when he shoots he prefers to wound, disable and capture, rather than to kill.
Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it would give him to submit his case against me in clerkly, cut-and-dried statement to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of "the board," that controlled the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General's Department.
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