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Updated: June 29, 2025
If Orth'ris manes to desert now, and will desert now, an' you, sorr, who have been a frind to me an' to him, will help him to ut, I, Terence Mulvaney, on my oath which I've never bruk yet, will report as you say, But" here he stepped up to Ortheris, and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his face "your fists help you, Stanley Orth'ris, if ever I come across you agin!"
Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd. The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
That same evening no day is so long as the day of a murder I met Ortheris with the dogs, and he plunged defiantly into the middle of the matter. "I'll be one o' the witnesses," said he. "I was in the verandah when Mackie came along. 'E come from Mrs. Raines's quarters. Quigley, Parsons, an' Trot, they was in the inside verandah, so they couldn't 'ave 'eard nothing.
He released the little Londoner, took back his pipe, filled it, and his eyes twinkled. He has the most eloquent eyes of any one that I know. 'Did I iver tell you, he began, 'that I was wanst the divil av a man? 'You did, said Learoyd with a childish gravity that made Ortheris yell with laughter, for Mulvaney was always impressing upon us his great merits in the old days.
Mulvaney came out of a reverie he was lying down and flourished his heels in the air. 'You're a man, Learoyd, said he critically, 'but you've only fought wid men, an' that's an ivry-day expayrience; but I've stud up to a ghost, an' that was not an ivry-day expayrience. 'No? said Ortheris, throwing a cork at him. 'You git up an' address the 'ouse you an' yer expayriences.
We were too lazy to continue shooting. Ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his stomach with his head between his fists. Then he swore quietly into the blue sky. "Fwhat's that for?" said Mulvaney, "Have ye not drunk enough?" "Tott'nim Court Road, an' a gal I fancied there. Wot's the good of sodgerin'?"
Never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein Ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well; when Learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel on the management of 'tykes, and Mulvaney, from the crook of the overhanging pipal, waved his enormous boots in benediction above our heads, delighting us with tales of Love and War, and strange experiences of cities and men.
North, East, South, an' West! Jock, ye quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink. But Learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins in his neck, was begging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, and the giant revived.
Often and often when he was goin' from Jesse's I'd set him a bit on the road. 'See 'im 'ome, you mean? said Ortheris. 'Ay. It's a way we have i' Yorkshire o' seein' friends off.
An' yet I wud be mortial sorry if ye did not any time though I am ould enough to know betther. But I will do penance. I will take a dhrink av wather." Ortheris squeaked shrilly. The butler of the Forest bungalow was standing near the railings with a basket, uncertain how to clamber down to the pontoon.
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