The Green Flag and Other Stories of War and Sport - The Three Correspondents Part 1

Kevin Owens (0:00)

Section 13 of The Green Flag and Other Stories of War and Sport. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by Kevin Owens. The Green Flag and Other Stories of War and Sport by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Section 13, The Three Correspondents, Part 1

There was only the one little feathery clump of dompalms in all that great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the bank, and below it the brown nile swirled swiftly towards the ambigual cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beading down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the pith hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than themselves. Phew! cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead. You would pay five shillings for this at the hum-hums? Precisely, said Scott. But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a whole Christmas tree full of things dangling from you. The hothouse at Kew is excellent as the conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and halt until evening. Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere were the same black-burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of man's handiwork in all that desolate scene. It's palm trees or nothing, said Scott. Well, I suppose we must, and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the force up. What would our editors say if we were late for the action? My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn't need to be told that no sane modern general would ever attack until the press is up. You don't mean that, said Young Honorly. I thought we were looked upon as an unmitigated nuisance.

Newspaper correspondents and traveling gentlemen and all that tribe of useless drones? Being an extract from Lord Wolseley's Soldier's Pocket Book? cried Scott. We know all about that, Honorly, and he winked behind his blue spectacles. If there was going to be a battle, we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I've been in fifteen and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter's table. That's very well, but the enemy may be less considerate, said Mortimer. They are not strong enough to force a battle. A skirmish, then? Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case, we are just where we should be. So we are. What a score of a router's man up with the advance! Well, we'll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms. There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies. Reuters was thirty miles ahead. Two evening pennies upon camels were twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of the public, the great silent millions and millions who had paid for everything and who waited so patiently to know the result of their outlay.

They were remarkable men, these body servants of the press. Two of them already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades. This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo pony, was Mortimer of the Intelligence. Tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with khaki tunic and riding breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund and a skin tanned to the red of a scotch fur by sun and wind and mottled by the mosquito and the sandfly.

The other, small, quick, mercurial, with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch, forever flicking in his left hand, was Scott of the Courier, who had come through more dangers and brought off more brilliant coups than any man in the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay. Each dove-tailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other's weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon, slow, conscientious and deliberate. Scott was Celtic, quick, happy-go-lucky and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military history. Scott had done Plevena, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Saukham. Mortimer had seen the Bear War, the Chilean, the Bulgarian and Serbian, the Gordon Relief, the Indian Frontier, Brazilian Rebellion and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavor to their talk. There was none on the second-hand surmise and conjecture which formed so much of our conversation. It was all concrete and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.