Traffics and Discoveries Part 31

They can all invite their friends if they choose to pay for them. That's where we make our profits. Look!"

Near one of the doors were four or five tables crowded with workmen in the raiment of their callings. They ate steadily, but found time to jest with the uniforms about them; and when one o'clock clanged from a big half-built block of flats across the street, filed out.

"Those," Devine explained, "are either our Line or Militiamen, as such ent.i.tled to the regulation whack at regulation cost. It's cheaper than they could buy it; an' they meet their friends too. A man'll walk a mile in his dinner hour to mess with his own lot."

"Wait a minute," I pleaded. "Will you tell me what those plumbers and plasterers and bricklayers that I saw go out just now have to do with what I was taught to call the Line?"

"Tell him," said the Boy over his shoulder to Burgard. He was busy talking with the large Verschoyle, my old schoolmate.

"The Line comes next to the Guard. The Linesman's generally a town-bird who can't afford to be a Volunteer. He has to go into camp in an Area for two months his first year, six weeks his second, and a month the third.

He gets about five bob a week the year round for that and for being on duty two days of the week, and for being liable to be ordered out to help the Guard in a row. He needn't live in barracks unless he wants to, and he and his family can feed at the regimental canteen at usual rates. The women like it."

"All this," I said politely, but intensely, "is the raving of delirium.

Where may your precious recruit who needn't live in barracks learn his drill?"

"At his precious school, my child, like the rest of us. The notion of allowing a human being to reach his twentieth year before asking him to put his feet in the first position _was_ raving lunacy if you like!" Boy Bayley dived back into the conversation.

"Very good," I said meekly. "I accept the virtuous plumber who puts in two months of his valuable time at Aldershot----"

"Aldershot!" The table exploded. I felt a little annoyed.

"A camp in an Area is not exactly Aldershot," said Burgard. "The Line isn't exactly what you fancy. Some of them even come to _us_!"

"You recruit from 'em?"

"I beg your pardon," said Devine with mock solemnity. "The Guard doesn't recruit. It selects."

"It would," I said, "with a Spiers and Pond restaurant; pretty girls to play with; and----"

"A room apiece, four bob a day and all found," said Verschoyle. "Don't forget that."

"Of course!" I said. "It probably beats off recruits with a club."

"No, with the ballot-box," said Verschoyle, laughing. "At least in all R.C. companies."

"I didn't know Roman Catholics were so particular," I ventured.

They grinned. "R.C. companies," said the Boy, "mean Right of Choice. When a company has been very good and pious for a long time it may, if the C.O. thinks fit, choose its own men--all same one-piecee club. All our companies are R.C.'s, and as the battalion is making up a few vacancies ere starting once more on the wild and trackless 'heef' into the Areas, the Linesman is here in force to-day sucking up to our non-coms."

"Would some one mind explaining to me the meaning of every other word you've used," I said. "What's a trackless 'heef'? What's an Area? What's everything generally?" I asked.

"Oh, 'heefs' part of the British Const.i.tution," said the Boy. "It began long ago when they'd first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds--we call 'em Areas for short--where the I. G. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word 'heef' became a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There are two Areas in Ireland, one in Wales for hill-work, a couple in Scotland, and a sort of parade-ground in the Lake District; but the real working Areas are in India, Africa, and Australia, and so on."

"And what do you do there?"

"We 'heef' under service conditions, which are rather like hard work. We 'heef' in an English Area for about a year, coming into barracks for one month to make up wastage. Then we may 'heef' foreign for another year or eighteen months. Then we do sea-time in the war boats----"

"_What-t?_" I said.

"Sea-time," Bayley repeated. "Just like Marines, to learn about the big guns and how to embark and disembark quick. Then we come back to our territorial headquarters for six months, to educate the Line and Volunteer camps, to go to Hythe, to keep abreast of any new ideas, and then we fill up vacancies. We call those six months 'Schools,'

Then we begin all over again, thus: Home 'heef,' foreign 'heef,'

sea-time, schools. 'Heefing' isn't precisely luxurious, but it's on 'heef' that we make our head-money."

"Or lose it," said the sallow Pigeon, and all laughed, as men will, at regimental jokes.

"The Dove never lets me forget that," said Boy Bayley. "It happened last March. We were out in the Second Northern Area at the top end of Scotland where a lot of those silly deer forests used to be. I'd sooner 'heef' in the middle of Australia myself--or Athabasca, with all respect to the Dove--he's a native of those parts. We were camped somewhere near Caithness, and the Armity (that's the combined Navy and Army board that runs our show) sent us about eight hundred raw remounts to break in to keep us warm."

"Why horses for a foot regiment?"

"I.G.'s don't foot it unless they're obliged to. No have gee-gee how can move? I'll show you later. Well, as I was saying, we broke those beasts in on compressed forage and small box-spurs, and then we started across Scotland to Applecross to hand 'em over to a horse-depot there. It was snowing cruel, and we didn't know the country overmuch. You remember the 30th--the old East Lancas.h.i.+re--at Mian Mir?

"Their Guard Battalion had been 'heefing' round those parts for six months. We thought they'd be snowed up all quiet and comfy, but Burden, their C. O., got wind of our coming, and sent spies in to Eschol."

"Confound him," said Luttrell, who was fat and well-liking. "I entertained one of 'em--in a red worsted comforter--under Bean Derig. He said he was a crofter. 'Gave him a drink too."

"I don't mind admitting," said the Boy, "that, what with the cold and the remounts, we were moving rather base over apex. Burden bottled us under Sghurr Mohr in a snowstorm. He stampeded half the horses, cut off a lot of us in a snow-bank, and generally rubbed our noses in the dirt."

"Was he allowed to do that?" I said.

"There is no peace in a Military Area. If we'd beaten him off or got away without losing anyone, we'd have been ent.i.tled to a day's pay from every man engaged against us. But we didn't. He cut off fifty of ours, held 'em as prisoners for the regulation three days, and then sent in his bill--three days' pay for each man taken. Fifty men at twelve bob a head, plus five pounds for the Dove as a captured officer, and Kyd here, his junior, three, made about forty quid to Burden & Co. They crowed over us horrid."

"Couldn't you have appealed to an umpire or--or something?"

"We could, but we talked it over with the men and decided to pay and look happy. We were fairly had. The 30th knew every foot of Sghurr Mohr. I spent three days huntin' 'em in the snow, but they went off on our remounts about twenty mile that night."

"Do you always do this sham-fight business?" I asked.

"Once inside an Area you must look after yourself; but I tell you that a fight which means that every man-Jack of us may lose a week's pay isn't so d.a.m.n-sham after all. It keeps the men nippy. Still, in the long run, it's like whist on a P. & O. It comes out fairly level if you play long enough. Now and again, though, one gets a present--say, when a Line regiment's out on the 'heef,' and signifies that it's ready to abide by the rules of the game. You mustn't take head-money from a Line regiment in an Area unless it says that it'll play you; but, after a week or two, those clever Linesmen always think they see a chance of making a pot, and send in their compliments to the nearest I.G. Then the fun begins. We caught a Line regiment single-handed about two years ago in Ireland--caught it on the hop between a bog and a beach. It had just moved in to join its brigade, and we made a forty-two mile march in fourteen hours, and cut it off, lock, stock, and barrel. It went to ground like a badger--I _will_ say those Line regiments can dig--but we got out privily by night and broke up the only road it could expect to get its baggage and company-guns along. Then we blew up a bridge that some Sappers had made for experimental purposes (_they_ were rather stuffy about it) on its line of retreat, while we lay up in the mountains and signalled for the A.C. of those parts."

"Who's an A.C.?" I asked.

"The Adjustment Committee--the umpires of the Military Areas. They're a set of superannuated old aunts of colonels kept for the purpose, but they occasionally combine to do justice. Our A.C. came, saw our dispositions, and said it was a sanguinary ma.s.sacre for the Line, and that we were ent.i.tled to our full pound of flesh--head-money for one whole regiment, with equipment, four company-guns, and all kit! At Line rates this worked out as one fat cheque for two hundred and fifty. Not bad!"

"But we had to pay the Sappers seventy-four quid for blowing their patent bridge to pieces," Devine interpolated. "That was a swindle."

"That's true," the Boy went on, "but the Adjustment Committee gave our helpless victims a talking to that was worth another hundred to hear."

"But isn't there a lot of unfairness in this head-money system?" I asked.

"Can't have everything perfect," said the Boy. "Head-money is an attempt at payment by results, and it gives the men a direct interest in their job. Three times out of five, of course, the A. C. will disallow both sides' claim, but there's always the chance of bringing off a coup."

"Do all regiments do it?"

"Heavily. The Line pays a bob per prisoner and the Militia ninepence, not to mention side-bets which are what really keep the men keen. It isn't supposed to be done by the Volunteers, but they gamble worse than anyone.

Why, the very kids do it when they go to First Camp at Aldershot or Salisbury."

"Head-money's a national inst.i.tution--like betting," said Burgard.

"I should say it was," said Pigeon suddenly. "I was roped in the other day as an Adjustment Committee by the Kemptown Board School. I was riding under the Brighton racecourse, and I heard the whistle goin' for umpire--the regulation, two longs and two shorts. I didn't take any notice till an infant about a yard high jumped up from a furze-patch and shouted: 'Guard! Guard! Come 'ere! I want you _per_fessionally. Alf says 'e ain't outflanked. Ain't 'e a liar? Come an' look 'ow I've posted my men.' You bet I looked. The young demon trotted by my stirrup and showed me his whole army (twenty of 'em) laid out under cover as nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. He kept on shouting: 'I've drew Alf into there. 'Is persition ain't tenable. Say it ain't tenable, Guard!' I rode round the position, and Alf with his army came out of his cowhouse an' sat on the roof and protested like a--like a Militia Colonel; but the facts were in favour of my friend and I umpired according. Well, Alf abode by my decision. I explained it to him at length, and he solemnly paid up his head-money--farthing points if you please."