I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And I said, “Wait a while, Child, and thou shalt sleep.” But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my eyes, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And Sikandar Khan said, “Is it too heavy?” and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.

  So we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while, for we could not shape any words. Then I heard Sikandar Khan open his water- bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me and said, “We are absolved from our vow.” So I drank, and together we waited for the dawn in that place where we stood—the ropes in our hand. A little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gun wheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched fell in and blazed before the windows. And I said, “What of the wounded Boer-log within?” And Sikandar Khan said, “We have heard the order. It is a Sahibs’ war. Stand still.” Then came a second shell—good line, but short—and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer—yes, pompom the Sahibs call it—and the face of the house folded down like the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the house lay down. Then Sikandar Khan said, “If it be the fate of the wounded to die in the fire, I shall not prevent it.” And he passed to the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded Boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. And I said, “What hast thou done?” And he said, “I have neither spoken to them nor laid hand on them. They follow in hope of mercy.” And I said, “It is a Sahibs’ war. Let them wait the Sahibs’ mercy.” So they lay still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. Then began the known sound of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at random. But I said, “Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs’ war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war.” They did not understand my words. Yet they abode and they lived.

  Presently rode down five troopers of Kurban Sahib’s command, and one I knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to Calcutta often with horses. So I told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of Sahib would understand; and at the end I said, “An order has reached us here from the dead that this is a Sahibs’ war. I take the soul of my Kurban Sahib to witness that I give over to the justice of the Sahibs these Sahibs who have made me childless.” Then I gave him the ropes and fell down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty, except for the little opium.

  They put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while I understood that they had fought against the Boer-log for two days and two nights. It was all one big trap, Sahib, of which we, with Kurban Sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. They were very angry, the Durro Muts— very angry indeed. I have never seen Sahibs so angry. They buried my Kurban Sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the ridge overlooking the house, and I said the proper prayers of the faith, and Sikandar Khan prayed in his fashion and stole five signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave as if it had been the grave of a saint on a Friday. He wept very bitterly all that night, and I wept with him, and he took hold of my feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from Kurban Sahib. So I divided equally with him one of Kurban Sahib’s handkerchiefs—not the silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and I also gave him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that Kurban Sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into his bosom. The rest I have here in that little bundle, and I must get the baggage from the hotel in Cape Town—some four shirts we sent to be washed, for which we could not wait when we went up-country—and I must give them all to my Colonel-Sahib at Sialkote in the Punjab. For my child is dead—my baba is dead!… I would have come away before; there was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the rail, and the Durro Muts were as brothers to me, and I had come to look upon Sikandar Khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse and I rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. God knows what they called me—orderly, chaprassi (messenger), cook, sweeper, I did not know nor care. But once I had pleasure. We came back in a month after wide circles to that very valley. I knew it every stone, and I went up to the grave, and a clever Sahib of the Durro Muts (we left a troop there for a week to school those people with purwanas) had cut an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and is was a jest such as Kurban Sahib himself would have loved. Oh! I have the inscription well copied here. Read it aloud, Sahib, and I will explain the jests. There are two very good ones. Begin, Sahib:—

  *

  In Memory of

  WALTER DECIES CORBYN

  Late Captain 141st Punjab Cavalry

  *

  The Gurgaon Rissala, that is. Go on, Sahib.

  *

  Treacherously shot near this place by

  The connivance of the late

  HENDRIK DIRK UYS

  A Minister of God

  Who thrice took the oath of neutrality

  And Piet his son,

  This little work

  *

  Aha! This is the first jest. The Sahib should see this little work!

  *

  Was accomplished in partial

  And inadequate recognition of their loss

  By some men who loved him

  *

  Si monumentum requiris circumspice

  *

  That is the second jest. It signifies that those who would desire to behold a proper memorial to Kurban Sahib must look out at the house. And, Sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank which they call dams, nor the little fruit-trees, nor the cattle. There is nothing at all, Sahib, except the e two trees withered by the fire. The rest is like the desert here—or my hand—or my heart. Empty, Sahib—all empty!

  WHIRLWIND SQUADRON, by Robert W. Nealey

  The lid was on. At 25,000 feet, the British Westland Whirlwinds of No. 43 were only shadowy rockets in the bleak November sky. In the big book there is not much information about these first two-engined pursuits, but the Whirlwind has four 20-mm. cannon in her nose and she can fly rings around a Spitfire.

  Hymie Kaplin tugged at his chin strap and moodily wondered if he could cheat the Lord out of a life, and if so, for how long? He had always been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that opportunity existed throughout this great, spreading world for the fellow who played the lone-wolf with a little derring-do.

  Confidentially, though, Hymie Kaplin was a great disappointment to his mother in Brooklyn, and he had to do something desperate, like joining the R.A.F. to save face. He cupped his headphones over his ears and listened to Squadron Leader Whiteley answer the Intelligence geezer at the advanced spotter station somewhere below.

  “…Messerschmitts at twenty thousand plus,” the duty officer’s voice was casual. “Check over Number Nine Kite, due N. W.” These English guys were always too, too utterly casual to satisfy Hymie Kaplin. He wondered now if the D. O. knew No. 43 had been detailed to down a new ME-109-G, or how the task was to be accomplished?

  “All right, Red Flight,” Whiteley’s tone was hardly less bored. “Section B line up for wedge-attack. No chasing Jerry across the gulley. I’ll concentrate on the one-oh-nine-Gee.

  The lid was off!…Hymie was reminded that he had come out of the needled beer and wonderful nonsense era of American history, and in order to show that he did something partially legitimate for a living, he had stepped up in a direct and forthright manner and taken a welterweight named Al Winger from his manager.

  He had simply leveled a pistol-like look at the manager, and told him, in the quaint verbiage of 1930, to ooscray umbay, and with this one laudable stroke of keen business he had become a full-fledged fight manager.

  Thereupon Al Winger had knocked out Hammy Randell for the welterweight crown in the suspiciously swift time of 1m, 32s, and it had set the fight mob to debating the momentous question; “Did Randell fall or was he pushed?”

  So Hymie had lost cast and standing with his adored mother, and nothing that he had done could regain for him that high place in her affections and esteem, until the war came along and he had joined the R.A.F. He loved his mother, but he had always made his own way, feeling he could get along better that way. That was what he liked about Whirlwinds.… You made your own way.…

  Now Hymie gave a mild and plaintive moo and turned on his air. He used oxygen as he had once used the solace of beer after a particularly bitter defeat of the Dodgers by the Giants. Why was it Whiteley always refrained from chasing the Ratzi across the Channel? Whiteley, they said, had won the D.S.O. and D.F.C. at Dunkirk, and had been among those few—now mostly dead—to whom Mr. Churchill said so many owed so much.

  A hero, and still only a squadron leader! Hymie reflected upon this for the steenth time and decided the guy just didn’t have any push.

  * * * *

  The steel cables coming up from the London streets below were invisible now and the fat, friendly barrage balloons floating at their spliced ends were behind. Whiteley turned and climbed fast, and Hymie decided that had he been boss here he would have headed straight out over the white cliffs of Dover and climbed from there.

  The appearance of four new German high performance warplanes on the world’s battlefronts in the past few weeks indicated, the brass hats insisted, that Reichmarshal Goering had achieved a major retooling swap-over in the German aircraft industry.

  There had appeared a Heinkel 177 four-motored, two-propellered heavy bomber; a pressure-cabined Junkers 86-P bomber-reconnaissance plane with a ceiling above forty thousand feet; a new Focke-Wulf 190—and the new Messerschmitt 109-G, described by the nervous brass hats as a high altitude, partly armored plane with a liquid-cooled 1,700 horsepower engine.

  Whiteley had devised the wedge formation to assure their getting one of these new Messerschmitts that the ground men seemed so anxious to examine at close range. Whiteley led off because, as he explained, an experienced leader should recognize the 109-G more quickly than anyone else, and if he had to center downing one for the brass hats, he was entitled to a little personal protection. To Hymie it all seemed like a lot of foolish rah-rah stuff from the Rugby fields of dear old Oxford.

  * * * *

  They spotted the crooked black crosses winging in over Southend. Whitley swung south, still climbing, and the Whirlwind formation followed suit so that Hymie, in No. 2 slot, could see the Heinies better. There was a triple line of twin-engined ME-115’s behind which huddled a formation of Heinkels in what appeared to be a Lufberry defense circle.

  Hymie’s headphones crackled. “In place astern, take the fighters first.” Whiteley’s voice was no longer suave. “Take one each, then double up, lads. You shadow me, Kaplin.”

  That meant that if Whiteley was kayoed, Hymie was to take over and try to burst the liverwurst Whiteley had been kiting after.

  Hymie frowned. Why had Whiteley selected him for his rudder-runner? Damn it, he’d put in three months outside of the reserve gang. He’d been blooded in a battered old Bristol Beaufighter almost six months ago. Now he was in No.2 slot in Section A, with his first full row of braid and commanded to tail the S. L.… This because the big shots wanted a 109-G.

  Luzon in Section B was bragging about weightlifters again. Luzon was a burly French-Canadian who loved to flex his biceps. There was the solid squareness of a Quebec house about Luzon. He had a voice a like a bullfrog with a sore throat, and he was always telling the world how weightlifters could do everything else better than anyone else. He believed this of course.

  “Sometime soon, Luzon,” Whiteley was saying, “the W. C will take you on a rhubarb raid over Abbeville!”

  “I betcha John Davis, the American heavyweight weightlifting champion could outpress Herr Josef Manger, the German record holder.”

  “Will you,” demanded Whiteley, “forget about weightlifters for fifteen minutes?”

  “Fifteen minutes? Golly, he couldn’t forget ’em for—” began young Freddie Hayward, but Whiteley shook his fist and they went into the scrimmage.

  The fighters looked like yellow hawks. There was a mad stew of struts, clouds, metal, and exhaust smoke as the Whirlwinds slammed after them.

  Hymie brought his wing tip up close to Whiteley’s rudder and hung on. He watched the S. L. execute a perfect buzz saw against a monster Heinkel’s stabilizers. He could see the Squadron Leader’s propeller slice through startled fabric like an angry circular saw going through a board.

  The 177 flopped like a stricken whale and sounded for the depths, twisting, and out of control.

  “Watch that fighter coming down at you, Hastey!” Whiteley warned a Section C man.

  Hymie’s eyes swiveled nervously. He wondered how Whiteley did so much and saw so much at the same time.

  “Shadow me, Kaplin! Hang on, Yank! There’s one—see? That blighter with the shark’s nose! This way, Kaplin!”

  Hymie kicked up his tail and followed. Followed through the Whirlwinds, jibed over hard and belted after the short-winged Mess-up that flaunted a swastika on its rudder. Hymie saw the quick bursts of a saffron flame coming from the two guns, and the belch of the 20-mm. cannon in the Boche’s nose.

  Hymie blundered into a batch of slipstream from Whiteley’s prop. His red brows like miniature bushes over his pale blue eyes, he grinned happily, ruddered hard, overcontrolled and came up his guns full on a two-seater Jaguar’s snout. He pressed the button and his Whirly recoiled behind the ugly snarling of his eight-gun broadside. There was a dull explosion, a burst of liquid flame and the Jaguar threw away an engine, then swiftly began to chase it to the ground—spewing pilot and gear as it did so.

  “It’s a long way down,” Hymie yelled. “It’s a very long way down, bums!”

  He swung his ship around, his teeth square and white against the red of his face. A burning Whirlwind tumbled past his greenhouse and Hymie’s lips came down tight and thin over his grin.… It was Whitley’s Whirly!

  That was the S. L. going down with the draft open wide.… The enemy had flamed Whiteley—Whiteley, the Squadron Leader!

  The realization clouted Hymie like a fist to the mandible.

  “I rode your rudder as long as I could, pal,” he mumbled. “It was damned tough luck all around—still, I got that Jaggy.”

  He wandered through Whiteley’s smoke scarf, and with the others, popped away at Mess-ups and bombers, mainly to erase a persistent screen before his eyes that kept writing, “You burst a liverwurst, louse—but Whiteley went a flamer.”

  The enemy ships suddenly turned tail and headed back over the Channel and Hymie felt something uncomfortable at the nape of his neck now, like unto prickly heat and the barber’s itch. He found himself leading the squadron back home and wondered how he got there. He reached up and dragged the hatch back and let the wind slap some of the guilt off his homely face.

  He switched his flap-mike off and muttered, “In my league it’s always been every man for himself. Why was I made responsible for Whiteley? Him and his teamwork! They’ll tear a stripe off me for this. Well, I did the best I could.”

  The Whirlies ran in and lined up along the patch worn out of the turf by the churning of heavy lorry wheels and the splash of lubricating oil. Cornish, the Senior Adjutant, came along in front of a hustling crew of aircraftsmen. Hymie tried to ignore the question marks on their upturned faces. He gathered up his gear and waddled, rubber-legged, past the crash-truck.

  Cornish had been in the other war and didn’t have much to say. But he wanted his convictions confirmed. “What happened?”

  Then Broadfoot, the sloppy tramp who acted as Intelligence, appeared. Broadfoot had once written a book—which accounted for his know-all air. He stood beside Cornish now, fat hands on his big, bouncy hips.

  Hymie shrugged out of his Mae West. “Dunno what happened.” He strode into the briefing room. “I was shadowing him, then lost him and had a jab at a Jaguar.”

  “All we got was the business of going after the One-oh-nine-G,” bayed Broadfoot. “Did Whiteley order you to follow him?”

  “Whiteley was snapping all over the sky. I couldn’t follow him. I tell you I don’t know what happened. I don’t even know if he got the One-oh-nine-Gee.” The others circled him in the hut, peered at him out of puzzled orbs. His jaw dropped open like the tailboard of a G. S. wagon. He could just make them out in the dim light. There was Luzon, Freddie Hayward, Ingerowski, Stengel, Norton and Swifty Morris. All these guys had come up from gunnery school with him, yet they acted like strangers. There was Smith and Butler he had known in New York. Hastey and Doorn, the Hollander, who flew like something out of a Flash Gordon adventure. Now they were all ruthlessly trampling his finer feelings under foot. His sensitive nature was mortally wounded.