"Did he stop to see Mrs. Bathurst at Worcester ?" I asked.

"It's not known. He reported at Bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into the trucks, and then 'e disappeared. Went out - deserted, if you care to put it so - within eighteen months of his pension, an' if what 'e said about 'is wife was true he was a free man as 'e then stood. How do you read it off?"

"Poor devil!" said Hooper. "To see her that way every night! I wonder what it was."

"I've made my 'ead ache in that direction many a long night."

"But I'll swear Mrs. B. 'ad no 'and in it," said the Sergeant, unshaken.

"No. Whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, I'm sure o' that. I 'ad to look at 'is face for five consecutive nights. I'm not so fond o' navigatin' about Cape Town with a South-Easter blowin' these days. I can hear those teeth click, so to say."

"Ah, those teeth," said Hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat-pocket once more. "Permanent things false teeth are. You read about 'em in all the murder trials."

"What d'you suppose the captain knew -- or did?" I asked.

"I've never turned my searchlight that way," Pyecroft answered unblushingly.

We all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing "The Honeysuckle and the Bee."

"Pretty girl under that kapje," said Pyecroft.

"They never circulated his description?" said Pritchard.

"I was askin' you before these gentlemen came," said Hooper to me, "whether you knew Wankies - on the way to the Zambesi - beyond Buluwayo?"

"Would he pass there - tryin' to get to that Lake what's 'is name ?" said Pritchard.

Hooper shook his head and went on: "'There's a curious bit o' line there, you see. It runs through solid teak forest - a sort o' mahogany really - seventy-two miles without a curve. I've had a train derailed there twenty-three times in forty miles. I was up there a month ago relievin' a sick inspector, you see. He told me to look out for a couple of tramps in the teak."

"Two?" Pyecroft said. "I don't envy that other man if--"

"We get heaps of tramps up there since the war. The inspector told me I'd find 'em at M'Bindwe siding waiting to go North. He'd give 'em some grub and quinine, you see. I went up on a construction train. I looked out for 'em. I saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting in the teak. One of 'em was standin' up by the dead-end of the siding an' the other was squattin' down lookin' up at 'im, you see."

"What did you do for 'em?" said Pritchard.

"'There wasn't much I could do, except bury 'em. There'd been a bit of a thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as black as charcoal. That's what they really were, you see - charcoal. They fell to bits when we tried to shift 'em. The man who was standin' up had the false teeth. I saw 'em shinin' against the black. Fell to bits he did too, like his mate squatting down an' watchin' him, both of 'em all wet in the rain. Both burned to charcoal, you see. And - that's what made me ask about marks just now - the false-toother was tattooed on the arms and chest - a crown and foul anchor with M. V. above."

"I've seen that," said Pyecroft quickly. "It was so."

"But if he was all charcoal-like?" said Pritchard, shuddering.

"You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was like that, you see. We buried 'em in the teak and I kept . . . But he was a friend of you two gentlemen, you see."

Mr. Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoatpocket - empty.

Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child shutting out an ugliness.

"And to think of her at Hauraki!" he murmured -- "with 'er 'air ribbon on my beer. 'Ada,' she said to her niece . . . oh, my Gawd!" . . .

"On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms,
And all Nature seems at rest
Underneath the bower, 'mid the perfume of the flower,
Sat a maiden with the one she loves best.

sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.

"Well, I don't know how you feel about it," said Pyecroft, "but 'avin' seen 'is face for five consecutive nights on end, I'm inclined to finish what's left of the beer an' thank Gawd he's dead!"

Return to Anthology Home Page

[[60 miles NE of Cape Town. I.e., did he see her on the screen again?]

[[Zambesi river, northwest border of Zimbabwe; Victoria Falls is on it. There is a Hwange up near Victoria Falls, which is possibly Kipling's Wankies. Map of Zimbabwe. Note the long nearly straight stretch of road leading northwest of Bulawayo.]

[[This is probably Lake Kariba, on the NW border of Zimbabwe.]

[[railroad line]

[[As say the readers. A key enigma of the story is the identity of the other tramp. Some believe it was simply another tramp (Tompkins, Gilbert). Some believe it was Mrs. Bathurst (Ferguson, in The Colophon (Feb. 1932).) Others actually believe it was Mrs. Bathurst returned from the dead. (Bodelson). All these interpretations have their difficulties, especially the latter. The argument against "another tramp" is that in a key scene such as the approaching climax, Kipling would not introduce an unknown, insignificant character gratuitously. The argument against the other tramp being Mrs. Bathurst is that Kipling nowhere gives any evidence that she was a woman, and he would have implied it somehow. I believe that if she had been alive, Vickery would not have been so tormented. He would have simply married her. Furthermore, the sequence with Pyecroft at Cape Town shows that Vickery did like to have a companion in his torment.]

[[The final surreal image of the false teeth.]

[[Another enigmatic detail. Tompkins argues, quite convincingly, that the purpose of the seated tramp is to show that the suicidal Vickery was also seated, then stood up to intentionally attract the lightning. Bodelson, working on the second tramp as Mrs. Bathurst theory, argues that she is looking up at him as a gesture of inclusion and redemption.]

[[The "other tramp as Mrs. Bathurst" school argues that this climactic outburst makes no sense unless Pritchard was thinking of her horrifying death with Vickery. Instead, we should probably take it as evidence for Pritchard's fixation on Mrs. Bathurst.]