Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/576
OF GASES.
(To the enemy, who has given praise to Heaven for the gift of poison.)
Not such as cleanly chokes the breath,
But dealing, just for cruelty's sake,
A long-drawn agony worse than death;
Nor do you deem it odd
To vaunt its virtues as a gift from God.
(Although its humour seems remote);
They peg the patient's mouth and send
A soporific down his throat;
And, like a child at dawn,
Waking, he finds a stump or two withdrawn.
Gives you to deaden pain and fear;
They take and prize your jaws apart
When gaping wide for Munich beer,
Press-gag your mouth and nose,
And pump and pump till you are comatose.
Down your receptive maw you gulp,
Until the opiate seals your eyes
And Reason gets reduced to pulp;
So well the vapours work,
Like hashish on your torpid friend, the Turk.
Sore with a sense of something missed,
And want to know who drugged your brain,
I envy not the anæsthetist;
You'll raise a hideous rout
On finding all your wisdom-teeth are out.
O. S.
THE BOMBSTERS.
Billy was gravely occupied in splashing vivid colours on to the persons and dresses of fashion-plate ladies. To him came Dickie and watched the process with a supercilious air.
"Ladies don't have green cheeks," he remarked.
"Tired of pink," said Billy tersely.
"I've thought of a game," observed Dickie.
"I know: me be Germans an' you bay'net me with the sword what Uncle Ted gave you. Don't want to play."
"It isn't that; it's quite new."
Dickie drew nearer.
"Wouldn't you like to play at being a bomb, while I pretend to be a village?" he said persuasively.
"A English bomb?"
Dickie looked a little anxious.
"I meant you to be a German bomb, so as you wouldn't have to hurt me much," he admitted.
"You hurted me quite a lot with your sword," said Billy.
"Only pretence hurt."
"No, real hurt."
"Well, will you play?" urged Dickie, waiving that point. "You'll have to climb a tree to be a bomb."
Billy's eyes lit up.
"Why?" he asked.
"So's you can drop properly," explained his brother. "Come on."
Billy surrendered, and the two ran into the garden and made for the apple-tree.
"Who's to drop me?" asked Billy.
"Yourself will drop you, of course," Dickie replied with some impatience. "I'm a village. I can't be in the Zeppylin as well. The tree's the Zeppylin. First, you're the German soldier what throws you an' then you're the bomb."
"Can't I be English?"
"No; you might kill me, an' then what would mother say?"
"A village can't be killed."
"Well, but I'm everything in the village. The postman, an' the cocks an' hens, an' the doctor, an' they might be killed. At least, they might if you could aim straight, but, anyway, you can't be a English bomb, 'cos they aren't dropped 'cept where it's all right, you know. On forts an' things."
"You be a fort, then, an' I'll be a English soldier what can aim," persisted Billy.
"No, you mustn't. You've got to miss, an' bounce, or make a hole in a soft place," said Dickie, firmly. "Or you can be the village if you like, only I thought you'd like to be allowed to climb the tree first."
"All right, then. May I make a loud bang?"
"Yes, a very loud one, if you like."
So Dickie assisted his brother up the lower part of the tree, and then left him to scramble along a forked branch.
"Now you're a German in a Zeppylin, an' I'm the village," said Dickie, proceeding to walk about below, playing the doctor, the postman, cocks and hens, or a cottage, as the fancy seized him.
Suddenly there was a rending of twigs, and Billy was on the top of him. The impact was considerable, and they both rolled over. The bang was forgotten.
"You s-shouldn't have hit me," gasped Dickie, rubbing his head while indignant tears stood in his eyes.
"C-couldn't h-help it," sobbed Billy. "I wented by accident."
They sat looking at each other in the true enemy spirit for some time.
"I don't like this game," Billy sniffed resentfully.
"I'll be the bomb, then," decided Dickie, getting up on his feet. "You'll like the village better. There's so many things you can be, all at once.'
"I'll be a motor-car dashing through," said Billy, cheering up. "Lots of motor-cars, all dashing through, with men inside what have letters for Lord Kitchener."
"All right," agreed Dickie, pulling himself up into the Zeppelin.
Billy proceeded to dash through" with great vehemence and much snorting of engines.
"You sound like a train," remarked Dickie.
"Well, p'r'aps I am a train now," said Billy the versatile. "There's a station in my village."
Dickie hummed gently up aloft.
"I'm the Zeppylin making noisos," he said; then added with extraordinary courtesy: "Coming!"
And he did come, not forgetting to shout "Bang!" as he reached the ground, which was harder than he had expected. He also bit his tongue rather severely.
"You didn't bounce much," observed Billy, callously.
Dickie withheld his speech for several seconds.
Then he said, "I've had enough. Let's go in."
"No, I want to be a bomb again," pleaded Billy. "You see if I can't do it."
When their mother came out to fetch then in to tea, she was welcomed by two small ragamuffins owning between them four grazed knees, two pairs of scratched hands, a bumped forehead, a swelled lip, one whole pair of knickerbockers, and a couple of perfectly cheerful countenances.
"My dear children!" she exclaimed; "what have you been doing to yourselves? Oh, your knickers, Billy!"
"We've been bombs," they explained; "but it's difficult."