‘See if you can find the major,’ the adjutant said to one of the two runners. ‘I can see you have been wounded,’ he said to Nick.
‘In various places,’ Nick said. ‘If you are interested in scars I can show you some very interesting ones but I would rather talk about grasshoppers. What we call grasshoppers that is; and what are, really, locusts. These insects at one time played a very important part in my life. It might interest you and you can look at the uniform while I am talking.’
The adjutant made a motion with his hand to the second runner who went out.
‘Fix your eyes on the uniform. Spagnolini made it, you know. You might as well look, too,’ Nick said to the signallers. ‘I really have no rank. We’re under the American consul. It’s perfectly all right for you to look. You can stare, if you like. I will tell you about the American locust. We always preferred one that we called the medium-brown. They last the best in the water and fish prefer them.
The larger ones that fly making a noise somewhat similar to that produced by a rattlesnake rattling his rattlers, a very dry sound, have vivid coloured wings, some are bright red, others yellow barred with black, but their wings go to pieces in the water and they make a very blowsy bait, while the medium-brown is a plump, compact, succulent hopper that I can recommend as far as one may well recommend something you gentlemen will probably never encounter.
But I must insist that you will never gather a sufficient supply of these insects for a day’s fishing by pursuing them with your hands or trying to hit them with a bat. That is sheer nonsense and a useless waste of time. I repeat, gentlemen, that you will get nowhere at it. The correct procedure, and one which should be taught all young officers at every small-arms course if I had anything to say about it, and who knows but what I will have, is the employment of a seine or net made of common mosquito netting. Two officers holding this length of netting at alternate ends, or let us say one at each end, stoop, hold the bottom extremity of the net in one hand and the top extremity in the other and run into the wind.
The hoppers, flying with the wind, fly against the length of netting and are imprisoned in its folds. It is no trick at all to catch a very great quantity indeed, and no officer, in my opinion, should be without a length of mosquito netting suitable for the improvisation of one of these grasshopper seines. I hope I have made myself clear, gentlemen.
Are there any questions? If there is anything in the course you do not understand please ask questions. Speak up. None? Then I would like to close on this note. In the words of that great soldier and gentleman, Sir Henry Wilson: Gentlemen, either you must govern or you must be governed. Let me repeat it. Gentlemen, there is one thing I would like to have you remember. One thing I would like you to take with you as you leave this room. Gentlemen, either you must govern—or you must be governed. That is all, gentlemen. Good-day.’
He removed his cloth-covered helmet, put it on again and, stooping, went out the low entrance of the dug-out. Para, accompanied by the two runners, was coming down the line of the sunken road. It was very hot in the sun and Nick removed the helmet.
‘There ought to be a system for wetting these things,’ he said. ‘I shall wet this one in the river.’ He started up the bank.
‘Nicolo,’ Paravicini called. ‘Nicolo. Where are you going?’
‘I don’t really have to go.’ Nick came down the slope, holding the helmet in his hands. ‘They’re a damned nuisance wet or dry. Do you wear yours all the time?’
‘All the time,’ said Para. ‘It’s making me bald. Come inside.’
Inside Para told him to sit down.
‘You know they’re absolutely no damned good,’ Nick said. ‘I remember when they were a comfort when we first had them, but I’ve seen them full of brains too many times.’
‘Nicolo,’ Para said. ‘I think you should go back. I think it would be better if you didn’t come up to the line until you had those supplies. There’s nothing here for you to do. If you move around, even with something worth giving away, the men will group and that invites shelling. I won’t have it.’
‘I know it’s silly,’ Nick said. ‘It wasn’t my idea. I heard the brigade was here so I thought I would see you or someone else I knew. I could have gone to Zenzon or to San Dona. I’d like to go to San Dona to see the bridge again.’
‘I won’t have you circulating around to no purpose,’ Captain Paravicini said.
‘All right,’ said Nick. He felt it coming on again.
‘You understand?’
‘Of course,’ said Nick. He was trying to hold it in.
‘Anything of that sort should be done at night.’
‘Naturally,’ said Nick. He knew he could not stop it now.
‘You see, I am commanding the battalion,’ Para said.
‘And why shouldn’t you be?’ Nick said. Here it came. ‘You can read and write, can’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Para gently.
‘The trouble is you have a damned small battalion to command. As soon as it gets to strength again they’ll give you back your company. Why don’t they bury the dead? I’ve seen them now. I don’t care about seeing them again. They can bury them any time as far as I’m concerned and it would be much better for you. You’ll all get bloody sick.’
‘Where did you leave your bicycle?’
‘Inside the last house.’
‘Do you think it will be all right?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Nick said. ‘I’ll go in a little while.’
‘Lie down a little while, Nicolo.’
‘All right.’
He shut his eyes, and in place of the man with the beard who looked at him over the sights of the rifle, quite calmly before squeezing off, the white flash and club-like impact, on his knees, hot-sweet choking, coughing it on to the rock while they went past him, he saw a long yellow house with a low stable and the river much wider than it was and stiller. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I might as well go.’
He stood up.
‘I’m going, Para,’ he said. ‘I’ll ride back now in the afternoon. If any supplies have come I’ll bring them down to-night. If not I’ll come at night when I have something to bring.’
‘It is still hot to ride,’ Captain Paravicini said.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ Nick said. ‘I’m all right now for quite a while. I had one then but it was easy. They’re getting much better. I can tell when I’m going to have one because I talk so much.’
‘I’ll send a runner with you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. I know the way.’
‘You’ll be back soon?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Let me send—’
‘No,’ said Nick. ‘As a mark of confidence.’
‘Well, Ciaou then.’
‘Ciaou,’ said Nick. He started back along the sunken road toward where he had left the bicycle. In the afternoon the road would be shady once he had passed the canal. Beyond that there were trees on both sides that had not been shelled at all. It was on that stretch that, marching, they had once passed the Terza Savoia cavalry regiment riding in the snow with their lances. The horses’ breath made plumes in the cold air. No, that was somewhere else. Where was that?
‘I’d better get to that damned bicycle,’ Nick said to himself. ‘I don’t want to lose the way to Fornaci.’
THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER
It was now lunch-time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining-tent pretending that nothing had happened.
‘Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?’ Macomber asked.
‘I’ll have a gimlet,’ Robert Wilson told him.
‘I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,’ Macomber’s wife said.
‘I suppose it’s the thing to do,’ Macomber agreed. ‘Tell him to make three gimlets.’
The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.
‘What had I ought to give them?’ Macomber asked.
‘A quid would be plenty,’ Wilson told him. ‘You don’t want to spoil them.’
‘Will the headman distribute it?’
‘Absolutely.’
Francis Macomber had, half-an-hour before, been carried to his tent from the edge of the camp in triumph on the arms and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner and the porters. The gun-bearers had taken no part in the demonstration. When the native boys put him down at the door of his tent, he had shaken all their hands, received their congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the bed until his wife came in. She did not speak to him when she came in and he left the tent at once to wash his face and hands in the portable wash basin outside and go over to the dining-tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the breeze and the shade.
‘You’ve got your lion,’ Robert Wilson said to him, ‘and a damned fine one too.’
Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an extremely handsome and well-kept woman of the beauty and social position which had, five years before, commanded
