Traffics and Discoveries by Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"And friendly? Friendly was no word for it. We was brothers in arms.

"Why, I knew those two guns of the Royal British Artillery as well as I used to know the old Fifth Avenoo stages. _They_ might have been brothers too.

"They'd jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough and prize 'emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till I could have wept, Sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up to these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines. One of 'em--I called her Baldy--she'd a long white scar all along her barrel-- I'd made sure of twenty times. I knew her crew by sight, but she'd come switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells like--like a hen from under a buggy--and she'd dip into a gully, and next thing I'd know 'ud be her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin' for us. Her runnin' mate had two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood wheel repainted, and a whole raft of rope-ends trailin' around. 'Jever see Tom Reed with his vest off, steerin' Congress through a heat-wave? I've been to Washington often --too often--filin' my patents. I called her Tom Reed. We three 'ud play pussy-wants-a-corner all round the outposts on off-days--cross-lots through the sage and along the mezas till we was short-circuited by canons. O, it was great for me and Baldy and Tom Reed! I don't know as we didn't neglect the legitimate interests of our respective commanders sometimes for this ball-play. I know _I_ did.

"'Long towards the fall the Royal British Artillery grew shy--hung back in their breeching sort of--and their shooting was way--way off. I observed they wasn't taking any chances, not though I acted kitten almost underneath 'em.

"I mentioned it to Van Zyl, because it struck me I had about knocked their Royal British moral endways.

"'No,' says he, rocking as usual on his pony. 'My Captain Mankeltow he is sick. That is all.'

"'So's your Captain Mankeltow's guns,' I said. 'But I'm going to make 'em a heap sicker before he gets well.'

"'No,' says Van Zyl. 'He has had the enteric a little. Now he is better, and he was let out from hospital at Jackhalputs. Ah, that Mankeltow! He always makes me laugh so. I told him--long back--at Colesberg, I had a little home for him at Nooitgedacht. But he would not come--no! He has been sick, and I am sorry.'

"'How d'you know that?' I says.

"'Why, only to-day he sends back his love by Johanna Van der Merwe, that goes to their doctor for her sick baby's eyes. He sends his love, that Mankeltow, and he tells her tell me he has a little garden of roses all ready for me in the Dutch Indies--Umballa. He is very funny, my Captain Mankeltow.'

"The Dutch and the English ought to fraternise, Sir. They've the same notions of humour, to my thinking.'

"'When he gets well,' says Van Zyl, 'you look out, Mr. Americaan. He comes back to his guns next Tuesday. Then they shoot better.'