RGL e-Book Cover©
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover©
Pocket Magazine, October 1898,
with "The Personally-Conducted Duel"
THE five gentlemen in black were arranging the preliminaries of an orderly fin de siècle duel. Captain Kettle came upon them quite unexpectedly.
Captain Owen Kettle had left the little French seaport far behind him. The noise of the mixed nationalities working cargo on the Sultan of Borneo, and the rattle of her winches, had faded from his ears. He was giving his brain an afternoons holiday from his thoughts of crew-driving, percentages for pace, owners' secret instructions, and in fact from every matter in the least connected with nautical commerce. He had turned his heels on wharves and cranes and brokers' offices, and was walking out over the sand-dunes for the purpose of communing with Nature. Such lapses from the routine of his life were rare to him, and sweet accordingly.
A man who has only three hours in the country per annum, can skim the cream of its beauties without gathering so much as a hint that discomforts lurk beneath. The land birds, the whispering tufts of the grass, the yellow curves of the dunes all appealed to him. In his eyes they were new, and full of a strange beauty; and they awoke in him the mood poetical. His brain simmered with the commencement of sonnets. His lips were puckered into a noiseless whistle, as his thoughts set themselves to music. Even the sight of the duellists and their escort did not bring him to earth all at once.
They had met in a shallow valley of the sand, these five men, where they were ringed in by the grass-tufted mounds. A hundred yards away, Kettle was ignorant of their very existence. He walked up the slope of a dune, and saw them beneath him, as black marks against a sunlit background.
If they had held their tongues, even then he would have passed on his way only dimly conscious of the rencontre. But they took a very sure way of bringing him back to earth from his poetical soarings. They bade him with shouts and screams to go—to run away, to vanish. And when he gazed back on them, unanswering, they were foolish enough to add threats.
A change came over the little red-bearded man on the sky-line above them. He blinked his eyes a time or two, and seemed to grow more compact. He put a cigar between his teeth, bit off the end, and lit it.
The men in black repeated their threats, raised weapons, and cried out that they were five to one. Captain Kettle put one hand behind his loins, puffed cheerfully at the cigar, and walked down the slope of the dune towards them. He kept his eyes on the group as he walked, and at a dozen paces whipped out a long-barrelled revolver with the dexterity of an expert. Then he dropped it lightly into his right-hand jacket pocket.
"And now," said he, in fluent and ungrammatical French, "let's have no more of this foolish talk. If it comes to shooting, I can snip the buttons off any of your coats without cutting the cloth."
"But, monsieur, you are intruding."
"I hear you say it," retorted Kettle. "Does any one of you gentlemen possess a park?"
There was a pause, and then a short, stout man, who exhaled a faint odour of frangipanni, said: "None of us here is so fortunate. But my uncle does, monsieur, if that will help you."
"Quite so. And may I ask, sir, if this place where we are standing now is the park of your uncle?"
"Certainly not. It is, so far as I know, common land."
"Then there you are," said Captain Kettle, and he sat down on a tuft of grass. "I am not trespassing, and as it suits me to look on at your show, here I stay till it is over. I never had a chance before of seeing how a regular kid-glove law-and-order duel was fixed up. So wade in, gentlemen, as soon as you like—don't let me hinder you any longer."
The five men in black seemed to be of different opinions. They were collected in three little groups.
"As a medical man, monsieur, and a non-combatant—" began the one in the tall hat, who stood by himself.
"This intrusion, monsieur, upon our rights—" said the fat, black-muzzled man whose uncle had a park.
"You are a stranger, unversed in the customs of France, monsieur," began the tall, tired-looking man in the spectacles and the baggy clothes.
"A stranger?" said Kettle, jumping up and taking off his hat. "Oh, if that's what the trouble's about, we'll be through with it in two shakes. My name is Owen Kettle, and I'm master of the steamship Sultan of Borneo, now loading in your port yonder. Very glad to see any of you gentlemen on board, if you'll come and have a glass of whisky with me after this little affair is over."
The five men in black bowed at different angles, and the two pairs consulted together anxiously. Finally, the man with the tall hat, who stood alone, laughed in rather a strained sort of way, and took upon himself to speak.
"Time is moving," he said. "I fancy you gentlemen had better get to work if you do not wish to be interrupted. M'sieur," he added to Kettle, "you have stumbled upon the most celebrated duel of the year. You will have seen it spoken of every day during this last week in the papers."
"Unfortunately, I never read them," said Captain Kettle. "Let's see, sir your name is—er—you said—?"
"I," said the man in the tall hat, drily, "am merely on the ground as surgeon; so humble an individual, that my poor name is not worthy of remembrance. But in the two principals here, I have the honour to present to you Monsieur Camille Legrand, member of the Chamber of Deputies" (here the stout man bowed) "with his second, who is likewise a politician, and also to Monsieur Crève, editor of the Mot de Paris.
The tired-looking journalist with the spectacles nodded, and Kettle said he was very pleased to make his acquaintance.
"A man who has printed in his filthy paper the most unwarrantable insults about me," observed M. Legrand, bitterly.
"I have nothing to retract," said the journalist. "Truth is frequently unpalatable to scoundrels."
"Presently, Monsieur Englishman, you will see this hireling liar screaming for pardon."
The lean journalist began to say something about "a sacred pig who lived on what he thieved from widows and rag-pickers," but the two seconds intervened, and insisted that their principals should desist. It was most unseemly that they should blurt out their differences upon the ground. It was against all the laws of the duel's etiquette.
Captain Kettle was rather sorry. He loved to hear a good quarrel and to watch the ensuing fight. But he did not interfere. There was something about this disagreement which he did not understand. Words had been spoken, and still the weapons had not been levelled. Instead, two disinterested assistants busied themselves with a measuring tape. And in the background, the sardonic doctor, with an instrument-case bulging his pocket, picked at the petals of a pink sea-daisy with a botanist's interest.
The seconds measured the ground twenty times before they found a range to suit them, and M. Crève meanwhile (through force of habit) made notes of current events upon a paper block. But at last two positions were found equally advantageous as regards sunlight and background, and two pegs were driven into the sand to mark them.
"Twenty-three yards!" exclaimed Captain Kettle in admiration. "By James, you gentlemen must be lovely shots or you wouldn't risk missing one another over such a distance as that. Or perhaps it is rifles you are going to fight with?" he added tentatively.
M. Legrand breathed hard as though he were going to say something, but changed his mind, and only sent over a faint puff of frangipanni by way of reply. And after a pause, as no one else seemed inclined to speak, the doctor took upon himself to reply:
"Monsieur," he said, gravely, "we employ pistols for our duels here, so cleverly fabricated, that with due care they always give the result we wish for."
He lifted his hat courteously as he spoke, and Captain Kettle returned the salute. The little Englishman did not quite understand what had been said to him, but concluded that the fault lay with his own imperfect knowledge of the language. He could not help noticing, however, that the two duellists and their seconds did not appear to like the doctor's explanation. Indeed, the journalist started as though he had been pricked by a pin. But the ground was marked out; it was time for the seconds to place their men: and the side issue was swamped by the main interest of the meeting. The principals took their stand beside the little pegs, the doctor set off at a brisk walk at right angles to the proposed line of fire, and the seconds set about extracting weapons and ammunition from a mahogany box.
But at that moment Captain Kettle's attention was drawn elsewhere. A hail came from behind him, a formal command to surrender. He turned and looked up, and on the rim of the dunes above saw a couple of beautifully spick-and-span gendarmes, with authority on their faces and swords at their hips.
The retreating doctor halted and lit a cigarette; the four men in the valley of the sand stood as if they were frozen; and the representatives of the Law advanced with wooden looks and without hurry. They were perfect creatures of routine.
But of a sudden a change came over the group, quick as a scene in a harlequinade; a dust of sand rose in a cloud which slightly obscured the view; and when the air was clear again, there was one of the beautiful gendarmes face downwards on the ground with Captain Kettle astride of his shoulders, whilst the other stood dazed, like a man waking out of a bad dream, with his eyes converging upon the muzzle of Captain Kettle's revolver.
"Now," said Kettle to the duellists, but without turning his head, "wade in, gentlemen, and get your shooting over. I'll see you are not interfered with."
There was no reply.
"By James!" said Captain Kettle, "you'd better put a bit of hurry into it, or some of these beauties' friends will be coming to look for them, and I can't guarantee to keep the whole of France off the premises."
"We are interrupted!" said the politician. "We have been betrayed! It is a device of this loathly newspaper man to escape my vengeance."
"Well start in right now, you goat, and murder him," said Captain Kettle.
"You have baulked me now," said Crève, bitterly; "you have squirmed away from punishment with your usual trickery; but do not think you shall escape scot-free. I shall seek you again when this has blown over, and I shall leave my mark upon you."
"Then, why in mischief's name don't you do it now?" asked Kettle, sourly. "You tall man in the spectacles, I'm speaking to you. What's stopping you? Why doesn't this fight go on? By James, answer me; or you'll have a new quarrel on hand to keep you warm."
"This duel is stopped, sir," said the journalist, "because even for the sake of punishing this reptile I cannot consent to undergo a dozen years' imprisonment. And that is what it would entail. I am a known man, sir."
"He flatters himself," sneered M. Legrand. "Not ten people who see daylight have even heard of him outside his little garret office."
"And yet," retorted the journalist, "the animal who has just spoken complained that I have made France ring with his name. If you know anything at all about the circulation of the various Paris newspapers, sir "
"I don't," said Kettle, "and I don't want to. I dropped in here this afternoon to see shooting, and I've heard nothing but talk. And if you want my opinion of the pair of you, it's here, packed small: One of you's frightened, and t' other darn't."
"Sir!" shouted both of the duellists, for once in their lives agreed.
"Oh, that wakens you, does it?" said Kettle. "Well, then, see here. I'm in a way grown to be interested in this scuffle, and I'll make you this offer: give the whole thing over into my hands, and I'll see it through so that it shall be an affair a man can be proud of afterwards; or refuse, and go away with your tails between your legs, and I'll bill-post half France, to tell everyone that can read you're a pair of sheep-livered cowards. Come now, there you have it."
M. Legrand listened unmoved, but the tall man in the spectacles flushed.
"Sir," he said, "you'd better have a care for your words."
"Sir," retorted Kettle, "I allow my vocabulary to be overhauled by no man living."
"Then, sir," said the journalist, "you will force me to call you to account for your language."
"I shall be entirely at your disposal," said Kettle grimly, "after I have seen you stand up to this gentleman here who carries the scent. But not before. I have an objection to fighting with anyone who might turn out to be a woman in disguise."
"That, sir," said the journalist, "is quite sufficient You Islanders are eccentric, but you will find out that eccentricity may sometimes cost you dear. I accept your condition of arranging my duel with M. Legrand merely for the sake of being able to shoot you afterwards."
"Monsieur," said Captain Kettle, "you are a man that I am beginning to like. And now, M. Legrand, you have heard what has been said. Are you willing to chip into this tea-party, or are you going to shuffle away back to your eating and drinking at Paris, and let me kick you before you go?"
M. Legrand shook his cheeks.
"You English pig," he cried, "I will come. You shall watch me kill the liar, Crève, and then you shall suffer whilst I kill you also, slowly and frightfully."
"Good," said Kettle, and looked at his watch. "This is getting more like business, and the sooner we are clear of this beach, the less likely we are to find hitches. I've ordered steam for five o'clock, and it's four-thirty now. So we can march from here straight on board of my steamboat, and be clear of pier-heads in less than an hour's time. But in the meanwhile these gendarmes must be bottled, so that they can't interfere. Doctor, I'll trouble you for all your bandages."
The S.S. Sultan of Borneo was running merrily eastward in the roll of a short steep Channel sea. She was flying light, and the propeller was racing half its time, and on the upper bridge the elderly second mate's oil-skins were kept perpetually new, varnished with the spindrift. In the little chart-house Captain Kettle, with all his hospitable instincts roused, was endeavouring to entertain a couple of temporary guests.
The guests were just then not at their best. A Jove would cease to be majestic if he were suffering from "mal de mer." But Kettle was taking this into account; he was kindness itself in trying to counteract the effect of wobble of sea #; and he had a theory that if one keeps the mind of the sufferer thoroughly interested, the more material part of him ceases to feels its ills. And as a consequence he tried to adapt himself to the particular style of each of his guests.
To M. Camille Legrand he spoke upon French politics as he himself had observed them through the light of harbour-side conversations. He did not profess to have a thorough grasp of his subject, and he talked more as a seeker after knowledge than as its possessor. But on the topic of corruption in politics he was strong; he gave his views with clearness and detail; and he wound up a most eloquent diatribe by telling the bulky deputy that a splendid opening lay before him.
"You get up in your parliament in Paris, sir," said Captain Kettle, "and say this swindling by public men has got to stop; and then you mention their names out loud and call them dirty thieves, and believe me, you're a made man. All the rest of France will look up to you."
But the suggestion did not cheer M. Legrand as much as Kettle had hoped; and perhaps the fact that he had been mercilessly exposed in the Mot de Paris that very week for being himself the chief actor in this identical offence, had something to do with his continued depression.
So the little sailor turned to Crève and approached the task of interesting him with a lighter heart. He was surer of his ground here; for were they not both (in a way) literary men, although it was true that his own poems were for the most part written in the alien tongue of English. But Captain Kettle had confidence in his powers, and to show the tunefulness of his verse, he got down the accordion and sang by way of introduction a ballad which went to the tune of "Greenland's Icy Mountains," and a little "Ode to Spring," which he had set to a pleasing ditty translated from the music halls.
He offered to go through the rest of his repertoire, but the journalist said he could see from the specimens that they were beautiful, and when the little shipmaster proposed writing a series of sonnets in French to be run through the pages of the Mot de Paris at a ridiculously low rate of pay, M. Crève accepted the offer with alacrity, on the sole condition that the poet should there and then begin to write.
Captain Kettle murmured bashfully, "Anything to oblige," and took up his pen at once. And he began to have a sincere regard for M. Crève from that moment, and to regret more and more that so discerning a man should suffer so acutely from the torments of mal de mer.
But enamoured though the master of the Sultan of Borneo might be with the gentle occupation of building stanzas to a poppy, and sonnets to the eyebrow of some lady he had met in the Family Herald, he was not forgetful of more weighty business which he had taken in hand. His steamboat was working up-Channel in sight of the French coast, and a dozen times he went on deck and peered through the bridge binoculars at patches of beach which lay beyond the frill of surf. But none were desolate enough for his purpose, and each time he returned to the chart-house and let his tobacco smoke wrestle with the frangipanni and the smell of paint. His manuscript grew with strides. Never before had he felt so brilliantly inspired. The difficulties of language were as nothing. The words came to him tripping, as he drummed out the metre with his fingers on the mahogany of the chart table, and the tunes seemed to jingle of their own accord. It was his first chance of publication, and his heart swelled within him at the thought that his opportunity had come at last. He almost wished he had asked the Mot de Paris a few francs more for the right of publication. It was such good, such brilliant poetry. It was fit to make the fortune of any newspaper.
The ship's bell clanged out the half-hours, and the watches changed, but the occupants of the chart-house did not sleep: the Frenchmen could not, and as for Kettle, the ecstasies of composition had whirled him to a region where sleep was a thing undreamed of. But when midnight had long passed, and eight bells pealed out dimly through the wind, the mate put his head inside the chart-house door, with a rush of cold salt air, and made an announcement.
"Very well," said his captain. Ring off engines, and get the port quarter-boat in the water, and a Jacob's ladder shipped. The second mate and two hands for the boat; you stay here in charge. We shall be about an hour gone."
"Aye, aye, sir," said the mate, and closed the door and shut off the supply of air. Kettle turned to the table and began to page and fold his manuscript. Something that was half-groan, half-voice, addressed him by name from behind.
"Captain."
"Yes."
"Are we—oh—going—ashore?"
"Ah, is that you, M. Crève? Glad to see you pulling round so nicely, sir. In thirty minutes you'll hear French shingle gritting under your feet, and in forty-five we'll have your little affair with M. Legrand fixed up one way or the other. After that I believe you want to make practice on me; and I shall be very much at your service, and believe me, sir, I shall feel honoured to stand up with a gentleman so intimately connected with literature as yourself."
The journalist groaned in acquiescence.
"But there's one thing I've been thinking of," Kettle went on, "that we ought to fix up before we go any further. You see, sir, you're going to stand in the way of a good deal of shot during the next hour, and you might—er—you might have a bit of an accident. Now, I am sure it would grieve you to think that these poems of mine should not be used through any misfortune of yours; and so I thought if you wrote a line to your assistant editor at the office, it would be safer. If you like, I'll just jot it down for you, and you can sign it."
"Oh yes, anything," said Crève, and Kettle with a glow of joy wrote the note, handed a wet pen, and had it initialled with a feeble scrawl. Then he put it with the other papers, sealed and addressed the envelope, and gently slipped it into the inner breast pocket of the journalist's frock coat.
"In case of accidents," he murmured gently.
"You'll pardon me, I'm sure. And now, gentlemen, if you please, here's my mate come to tell us the boat is ready and we'll be getting off ashore. "
But prayerfully as the two Frenchmen had wished once more to press their mother earth, when the opportunity came for regaining her they could not move. The fetters of their disease chained them in a deadly lethargy; a bombardment would not have roused them; and they were finally carried to the outer air in the callous arms of quartermasters. It was obviously impossible to expect them to enter the lunging quarter-boat by that fly's staircase, the Jacob's ladder; so a chair was bent to a derrick chain, and steam given to the winch, and they were hoisted out and stowed away on the wet gratings on the boat just as though they had been (to quote the mate's simile) two carcases of New Zealand mutton.
Then Kettle slipped nimbly down and took the tiller, the second mate and the two deck-hands threw out their oars, and the quarter-boat crawled crawled slowly on over tne roaring Channel seas towards the low French shore.
The landing was made stern-on, and through a wet surf. The boat was full to the thwarts when she hit the beach. And the two passengers lay on the stern gratings with the swill of brine going over them as it pleased. But once the thrill of the earth came to them through the quarter-boat's timbers, a change set in; and from that moment they began to return to life and mischief. They roused of their own accord and began to recoil from one another. They rose to their feet. They left the boat at different sides.
"At last!" the journalist hissed from between his white lips.
"Now, poltroon, you shall not escape me," snarled the Deputy, as he pressed a wet, scentless handkerchief to his chilly nose.
"If only we had seconds—"
"If we but had seconds and a doctor. I would not permit you to leave this ground alive. This fight should be à l'outrance. I would insist on my right to fire on you so long as breath remained in my body."
"Go it!" said Captain Kettle cheerfully. "That's your sort. I'll have things all fixed up in a minute, and then you can wade in handsomely. This is a rare good pistol-box of yours; not a drop of wet has got inside."
"You waste time, Captain," said Legrand. "We cannot fight here now. We have no seconds. It would be irregular."
"Not a bit of it," said Kettle. "I will be second to both of you."
"It is not permitted by our laws of duelling," said Crève. "Each principal must have at least one friend to watch his interests."
"Right O," said Captain Kettle. "Here's my second mate quite handy, and a most worthy man, gentlemen. He holds a master's ticket, and has commanded his own ship before he met with misfortune. He'll hold the handkerchief for one of you whilst I give a knee to the other."
M. Legrand frowned and shook his bullet head. "But, Captain," he said, "you forget; we have no doctor."
"I," said Kettle, "am a competent surgeon for temporary bandaging; and," he added sourly, "I could offer my services as undertaker if I thought they would be needed."
"Sir," said Legrand, "your remark is suited to my adversary, but to me it is an insult."
"Then please log it down as such and remember it when you and I stand up together after this affair is over. Please, sir, to plant yourself here and take this pistol. By James! do you hear me? I'm bossing this fight now, and it's got to be carried through as I say. The man who doesn't do as he's bid will be shot in very quick time. It's all South Shields to a tin-tack I lose my berth on that steamer for putting in here at all. So I'm not inclined to stick at trifles. Now, Mr Mate, you bring up your man, and give him his gun, and put him by that green stone yonder."
The Deputy's voice rose to a scream.
"But this is most irregular. He is no more than ten yards away. This is murder! "
"You came here for murder, didn't you?" said Kettle. "I'm not going to look on whilst you pop off these humbugging little toys down a rifle range. Here's your weapon, loaded and cocked; and mind not to fire till you hear the word. Now, Matey, stand wide. And listen here, you other two, you've to blaze away when I sing 'Three,' and not before and not after; and the one who breaks that rule will get a shot in him that will mean a funeral."
Captain Kettle stepped back, and ostentatiously pulled a big heavy-bore revolver from his back pocket and cocked it. "Now," he said, "ready? One!—two!— three!"
The shots came almost together, and each of the duellists staggered, and each evidently marvelled to find himself alive. The journalist pulled himself together the first. "I am not hurt," he said. "Load my pistol again."
Captain Kettle stepped forward with a courteous smile. "Certainly," he said. "Gentlemen, I am glad to see you are warming up to your work. Matey, just have the kindness to load up for M. Legrand. There you are. No, cock it, sir: cock it before you shoot. And wait for the word. One!—two!—three!"
Again there was a miss on both sides, and the Second Mate whistled with cheerful contempt. But at the third discharge a patch of red showed on the thumb of M. Crève's left hand, and the Deputy was quick to see it. "Ah!"he cried, "I have wounded him. My honour is satisfied!"
"Then your honour must be a mighty small thing," grunted Captain Kettle.
"You do not understand," said M. Legrand. "I am tender of heart. I do not wish to see him suffer more. I will embrace him, and all shall be forgiven."
"No," said Crève, "it is merely a nail scratch. I demand another shot."
"Bravo, Spectacles!" shouted Captain Kettle. "I always did think there was good in you. Here, you fat man, get back to your mark. By James, sir, get back, or I'll kick you to it. And take this gun Don't splutter. If you've any remarks to address to me, reserve them for afterwards. I can tell you you're not through with this first affair yet."
A fourth cartridge was wasted on each side, a fifth, and a sixth, but in the seventh round the journalist hit M. Camille Legrand in the right shoulder and that worthy fell to the ground howling that death was upon him. Kettle went up and made a quick examination.
"Yes," he said; "bullet in at one side and out at the the other. No bones touched, and scarcely any hemorrhage. You'll be sound again in a fortnight, and you can go on with the game now you like."
"No," said M. Legrand; "I am wounded to the death. The pain I suffer is frightful. But I die in defence of my principles! Let that be known by the papers: 'in defence of my principles'!" Then he fainted, and "sheer funk" was Captain Kettle's summing up of the situation.
"He is not a fighting man," said the journalist. He was pressed into this affair by the custom of our country."
"Then more fool he," said Kettle. But he should go about with less splutter on his tongue, or someone will be kicking him one of these days. And now, sir, as I believe you want to parade me, I must ask you to get along. My time is short."
The tall man in the baggy clothes placed a hand over his heart and bowed.
"Sir," he said, "I used hasty words to you when I was a stranger to your qualities. Since then I have learnt that you are not only a gentleman, but also—er—also a man of letters. It would go against my heart to fight you now, but if you insist—"
"Not at all," said Kettle. "I should be very sorry to make cold meat of a gentleman who said such pleasant things about my poetry. Er—you know, some of these verses may want a bit of the spelling altered and a stop or two put in, but you keep a man in the office to do that, don't you?"
"Several men," said the journalist.
"And you'll send the cheque to care of my owners? Thanks. Ah, there's M. Legrand coming round. I wonder if he wants to have his shot at me before I go? I am quite willing we should both hold our guns with the left hand."
But M. Camille Legrand cherished no more warlike feelings. He was full of forgiveness; he bubbled with it; and he wept in most affectionate style on the journalist's neck and made a lengthy speech, which he insisted that M. Crève should take down verbatim on his paper block. At this point, however, Captain Kettle went away, and was rowed out by the Second Mate and the two deck hands to where the Sultan of Borneo wallowed wetly in the troughs of the Channel seas. But he steered the quarter-boat like a man in a dream. He had seen many fights, but none like this: he had watched many men in anger, but none like these; and if anyone had asked him before if things could fall out as he had seen them then, he would have replied emphatically "no." It was all queer to him past understanding. But he smiled with pleasure, and blushed at one memory which clung to him. He had found a road now by which his poems—his scoffed-at poems—could be given to the world.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.