Zane said nothing. He stood quietly while Jackson complimented Croft on his zeal, his courage.

  Then he waved both men aside, to write their combat reports.

  When Zane handed in his, Major Jackson looked up at him, his mouth hanging slightly open. For the first time since his return from battle Zane smiled. “I don’t believe you did as much damage as this report indicates?” snapped the major.

  “I don’t believe, sir,” Zane said softly, “that regulations require that I permit my veracity to be questioned. Are you sure you doubt the truth of my report, which I have said is an estimate, only, of the damage?”

  “I spoke hastily!” said Jackson, flustered. The orderly came bustling into the tent.

  “A flight of enemy planes, flying low, sir,” he said to Jackson, “heading this way. Look-out thinks they’re practically on the air route taken home by Captain Croft and Captain Zane.”

  Croft rose. Zane made no move. Jackson looked from one to the other.

  “What do you make of it, Zane?” he asked.

  “We may have been trailed, sir. Anyway, the Nips would like to rid themselves of certain pests—Croft and me, I imagine!”

  “Well, why not get out and meet them?” snapped Jackson.

  “Might I suggest, sir, that we wait for them to go past the field, or turn back? I like to hit Jap formations when they least expect it, when their backs are turned!”

  * * * *

  The formation, six strong, of Nipponese, fled across the secret field without slowing down, or circling, or noting anything unusual about the jungle where the field was hidden.

  Then Zane led the way out. His face was unconcerned. Croft was again the raging fury. The two crates took off, as soon as the look-out signaled. They had been serviced, were again ready for all-out action.

  They shot up to ten thousand feet. The Japs were heading away.

  Croft waited, with such patience as he could manage, for Zane to take the offensive. Then, when Zane started his slash down the sky, Croft was right on his port side. And the Japs did not even see them until one of their number had been savagely blasted, and was falling into the jungles below. Nothing down there, Zane knew, but head­hunters—and any Jap who bailed out over that jungle would have reason to be sorry.

  Croft got another crate, diving down and coming up from below. Zane, so composed, he was hardly blinking, got his second crate on the way-down. He zoomed, banked, corkscrewing into place as the Japanese formation, attacked from below and above, broke apart.

  Croft was again the slashing, swashbuckling savage of the skies. Zane was the cool, calm, sure—executioner!

  Three Japs gone. Half the Jap force done for, two of whom had parachuted into the jungle to horrible death. But there was no mercy for them in the hearts of Zane and Croft.

  Three planes left. They must not get back, to report about where they had encountered the two Airacobras. None must survive, to make trouble for the secret fields.

  Savagely Croft slashed at the remaining planes, now swiftly and desperately scattering, as a convoy breaks up when attacked by sub-packs. Methodically, scientifically, Zane knocked down two more planes. Croft, the raging demon, accounted for the other. So fiercely swift had been the battle that parachutes were still visible above the green jungle when the two captains realized that the only ships aloft were their own.

  They flew back to their secret field. Major Jackson told them that the Jap invasion force had been driven off temporarily. They could rest.

  But again Jackson glared at Zane.

  “What you could do,” he declared, “if you had some real fighting spirit! You’re a machine. If you had the heart to go with it you would be one of the greatest—”

  The orderly came in to make a breathless report.

  “Look-out reports capture of two Japanese pilots, sir. They’re being brought in now. Should be here in maybe an hour.”

  “You got your first ones that close?” asked Jackson.

  Zane shrugged. Croft’s face looked grim, black.

  “How come the cannibals didn’t get them?” Croft said. “Major, there are other Japs close— jungle troops! These flyers know their way around these jungles. How do we know these men who have been captured are even flyers? They couldn’t be spotted this soon after we get back from miles away. It’s a trick!”

  Zane smiled.

  “Japs who know the jungles would naturally be chosen for the job those Nips were sent to do,” he said softly. “What’s remarkable about it?”

  “I suppose you’ve the answer to everything!” said Jackson.

  Two hours later Jackson sent for Croft and Zane. The Nip pilots had been brought in.

  “Which one of you,” asked one of the Japs, before either captain could say a word, “flies the Airacobra with the slightly heavy left wing?”

  Zane started. Nobody, he was sure, had ever noticed that his plane was slightly inclined to favor the left wing. This Jap hadn’t missed that. Why?

  Jackson read the amazement in Zane’s face, the first real emotion he had ever seen there.

  “I guess it can do no harm to tell, Nip,” Zane said. “I fly that crate!”

  The Japs were covered carefully by men with bayoneted rifles. Their side-arms had been taken from them. They had been thoroughly searched. Yet when Zane answered, the Jap who had asked the question in perfect English, spoke one word in Japanese. Instantly both Japs hurled themselves at Zane—while in their hands were short-bladed knives that must have come out of their sleeves.

  Zane sidestepped. Croft jumped and swung a savage right to the chin of one Jap. The man went over on his back, his neck broken by the blow. An automatic barked, and the English-speaking Jap dropped to his face, rolled onto his back. Sweat beaded his yellow face, but he forced himself to speak—to Lumford Zane.

  “If you have the chance,” he said to Zane, “will you get word to any Jap commander that Matadori—that’s me—died trying to slay one of our greatest enemy airmen? You, sir! Your people call my people murderers, but you, you, with your precision, picking off soldiers—”

  He writhed and died then, his eyes fixed on Zane to the last. And in those eyes was fear. Not fear of death, but of Lumford Zane and of what this American whom he had failed to kill could still do to his people.

  “And I guess, Zane,” Jackson said soberly, “that leaves me nothing to complain about. The enemy risks—and loses—his life to get his most important antagonist. That is recognition.”

  “Well,” Zane said calmly, “we don’t have to be bothered about prisoners. I really ought to have credit for that, since they died trying to get me.”

  And Zane smiled with great gentleness. But nobody else smiled.

  “And I thought I had venom in me!” Croft said wonderingly. “Thank heaven, Zane, that you’re not a Jap, heading this way, and me the only man to head you off!”

  Zane smiled again, and went out to have a look at his Bell Airacobra.

  A SAHIBS’ WAR, by Rudyard Kipling

  Pass? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the rêl from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a—trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first Punjab Cavalry, Do not herd me with these black Kaffirs. I am a Sikh—a trooper of the State. The Lieutenant-Sahib does not understand my talk? Is there any Sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help?… God be thanked, here is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was servant to Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs!… Yes, I will sit by this truck till the Heaven-born has explained the matter to the young Lieutenant-Sahib who does not understand our tongue.

  * * * *

  What orders? The young Lieutenant-Sahib will not detain me? Good! I go down to Eshtellenbosch by the next terain? Good! I go with the Heaven- born? Good! Then for this day I am the Heaven-born’s servant. Will the Heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? Here is an empty truck; I will spread my blanket over one corner thus—for the sun is hot, though not so hot as our Punjab in May. I will prop it up thus, and I will arrange this hay thus, so the Presence can sit at ease till God sends us a terain for Eshtellenbosch….

  The Presence knows the Punjab? Lahore? Amritzar? Attaree, belike? My village is north over the fields three miles from Attaree, near the big white house which was copied from a certain place of the Great Queen’s by —by—I have forgotten the name. Can the Presence recall it? Sirdar Dyal Singh Attareewalla! Yes, that is the very man; but how does the Presence know? Born and bred in Hind, was he? O-o-oh! This is quite a different matter. The Sahib’s nurse was a Surtee woman from the Bombay side? That was a pity. She should have been an up-country wench; for those make stout nurses. There is no land like the Punjab. There are no people like the Sikhs. Umr Singh is my name, yes. An old man? Yes. A trooper only after all these years? Ye-es. Look at my uniform, if the Sahib doubts. Nay—nay; the Sahib looks too closely. All marks of rank were picked off it long ago, but—but it is true—mine is not a common cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and—the Sahib has sharp eyes—that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long worn on the breast. The Sahib says that troopers do not wear silver chains? No-o. Troopers do not wear the Arder of Beritish India? No. The Sahib should have been in the Police of the Punjab. I am not a trooper, but I have been a Sahib’s servant for nearly a year—bearer, butler, sweeper, any and all three. The Sahib says that Sikhs do not take menial service? True; but it was for Kurban Sahib— my Kurban Sahib—dead these three months!

  * * * *

  Young—of a reddish face—with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. So did his father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my father’s time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. My father? Jwala Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs—he fought against the English at Sobraon and carried the mark to his death. So we were knit as it were by a blood-tie, I and my Kurban Sahib. Yes, I was a trooper first—nay, I had risen to a Lance-Duffadar, I remember—and my father gave me a dun stallion of his own breeding on that day; and he was a little baba, sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah—all in white, Sahib—laughing at the end of our drill. And his father and mine talked together, and mine beckoned to me, and I dismounted, and the baba put his hand into mine—eighteen—twenty-five— twenty-seven years gone now—Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib! Oh, we were great friends after that! He cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. He called me Big Umr Singh—Buwwa Umwa Singh, for he could not speak plain. He stood only this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our troopers by name—every one…. And he went to England, and he became a young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart, Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers, keen- eyed, jestful, and careless. I could tell tales about him in his first years. There was very little he hid from me. I was his Umr Singh, and when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him Son. Yes, that was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on everything—about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such all.

  We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many box- wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness has created the dak (the post), and that for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. Wherefore, Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we talked together. He said, “There is no haste. Presently we shall fight, and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh. Here he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True—true— true!”

  So did matters ripen—a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand times. We could have done it all so gently—so gently.

  Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, “Ho, Dada, I am sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.” And he winked, and I said, “I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I bring my uniform?” He said, “Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis” (niggers). Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But he was clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am—I was—of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the Colonel) I said, “My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and sick also.”

  And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue, said, “Yes, thou art truly Sikh”; and he called me an old devil— jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again—aie me!

  So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, “What is one Mussulman pig more or less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white shirts for dinner.” Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib, that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war. He said, “They have taken men afoot to fight men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log because it is believed that they are white.” He said, “There is but one fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed us, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.” True talk—true talk! It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.

  And we came to this country, even to Cape Town over yonder, and Kurban Sahib said, “Bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and I will look for employment fit for a sick man.” I put on the uniform of my rank and went to the big dak-bungalow, called Maun Nihâl Seyn, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] and I caused the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place—is it known to the Sahib?—which was already full of the swords and baggage of officers. It is fuller now—dead men’s kit all! I was careful to secure a receipt for all three pieces. I have it in my belt. They must go back to the Punjab.

  Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I knew, and he said, “We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.” Remember, Kurban Sahib was squadron- leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and I was Umr Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, “Thou art a groom and I am a grass- cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?” At this he laughed, saying, “It is the way to better things. Have patience, Father.” (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) “This war ends not tomorrow nor the next day. I have seen the new Sahibs,” he said, “and they are fathers of owls—all— all—all!”

  So we went to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; Kurban Sahib doing the service of servants in that business. And the whole business was managed without forethought by new Sahibs from God knows where, who had never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. They were full of zeal, but empty of all knowledge. Then came, little by little from Hind, those Pathans—they are just like those vultures up there, Sahib—they always follow slaughter. And there came to Eshtellenbosch some Sikhs—Muzbees, though—and some Madras monkey-men. They came with horses. Puttiala sent horses. Jhind and Nabha sent horses. All the nations of the Khalsa sent horses.

  All the ends of the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses oil: with both hands. These needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones—Hubshis—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but they were all Kaffirs —filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a jemadar of mehtars (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and no vengeance was taken. It was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. Guns that slew at half a day’s march, and men who, being new, walked blind into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the Boer-log! As to the city of Eshtellenbosch, I am not a Sahib—only a Sikh. I would have quartered one troop only of the Gurgaon Rissala in that city—one little troop—and I would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss the shadow of a Government horse upon the ground. There are many mullahs (priests) in Eshtellenbosch. They preached the Jehad against us. This is true—all the camp knew it. And most of the houses were thatched! A war of fools indeed!