Page E
? DID IT
HAPPEN?
IS name was Arthur
H
Hathersage. At least that is what I shall
call him here, be- cause there must be many
alive who were followers of Sussex cricket in the years before the 1914-18 war, and if I wrote the name more exactly they might identify. him; he played twice for their country on that lovely Eastbourne ground, the
Saffrons.
He and I were schoolmasters then
at one
THE
THE CHINA MAIL, TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1955.
TABLET
16 B'FACT or FICTION?... Did this story, in our meet the truth ́sories by famous writers really happan? . Towarrow the answer will be published.
IN THE HILLS.
that carried
IN Tell England-bis classic novel about the
1914-18 wxr-Ernest Raymond drew extensively not only on his years of active service as an Army chaplain, but on the idyllic pre-war days when be was assistant These master at Glengarse, Eastbourne. &or the setting of this story. married. the sage la now sixty-six and lives at Hampstead Heath. Favourite recreations? Climbing and watching erteket.
by Ernest Raymond
Twice
we
العمر
sady height as clambered over
the walls and then threaded through the innumerable boulders above, And of a sudden Hathersage sald: "D'you know old man: once when
I was mouching
ini about
place
upon
This
came
big
tablet Axed to
H IL was
metal plaque hardly six inches square.
and
it
humanity
th
bad been put
re in
memory
of someone
of
that rock"
"Died?" I ex-
claimed.
from
conviction to me. Hathersage took me that first both young I think that once I was rather time.
of shaken by something we got
The Emberdale valley (again a planchable board. Eastborne's prep-schools, but he from
this is not the true name) at its in was my senior and better
Also, like all tough, hearty upper end leaves every way: twenty-five years old, whereas I was but nineteen young schoolmasters he would behind and forks into three long or so: a graduate of Cambridge, spend the Easter holidays in stretches of desolation in each
left the Lake District messing about which there is little but a stony school; and a fine athlete with mountains and the Christmas path, a scurrying beck, and the strewn with several "caps" whereas I have holidays in Switzerland on skis. green fell-oreasts never been invited to play at And one Lent term--was it 1909 boulders
that I anything for any institution in or 107-it's all sy long ago
con hardly remember he said all my life.
to me, "Tell you
whereas
had only just
A duck
what, yourg Ray; you'll come with me these hols. Yes, you will. And F'll guarantee that once you've tried the game you'll never be able to give it up. It's a drug, like which whisky
or
women of
I sow him play for Sussex, Saffrons ground, I sat on the with twenty small boys on either side of me in their pink blazers naturally you know nothing." and pink caps, and we watched him make
and a a fourteen duck. That was the second and
last time he played for the
courty.
Mountain faith
I said I couldn't afford it, but he told me the cost, and I said, "By gosh, Arthur. I'll come."
11
Volcanic.....
One of these long combes is quite a lively place because it is a highway for all the climbers in Lakeland; the midmost one is haunted, or as near as makes no for not a bird stirs difference, there; and the third is the least shorter. being impressive, shalower and wider, with fell- breasts that do not mount to stormy crags but to green and gentle skylines. Nevertheless, this is the one that holds our story Guiler Combe, let us call
Like many young men, whose chief interest is sport, he was a
So I went with him; and, well, and like tough, hearty pye; many tough, hearty types he if he'd completely failed to make. professed
unquestioning me believe an belief in what he called "super phenomena,
who'd died under
"Yes. cold and ex- haustion. He had fallen and limb, broker a and his friends must have tald
rushed him there while they
Mali
away in search The of help. plaque said he died in petice unter the shelt- er of this rock."
Auch interest- ed, I asked him
And the
for
me, but he answer- ed. The extraordinary thing
・
Lablet
in his supernormal It is a long trough shaped like is I have never been able
not too often, because it was Church, mildly fanatical, trom
among
these
almost a religion with him, and that Easter till today. Not that ends and frightened. Couldn't you And out, something
Bozan
h
SUPPLYING THE JUNGLE FIGHTERS
HENS GO BY PARACHUTE
By William Fish
Kuala Lumpur. field, and soon we were Over Ta police fort deep in broken to the horizon.
hilly Jungle that stretched un-
Indeed. after 10 or years I had quite forgotten his existence, as one usually does with friends of school or college the jungle of eastern But not quite unbroken. days.
Malaya, 40 miles from Twenty minutes later a voice Most years I went to the moun the nearest road, a. lieu from the ground called us on the
the sky ahead and almost' -im-
tains, but rarely to Emberdale,
learned having to perfer Wast tenant sat on a log smoking radio, A. Verey light soared lato Langdale or his pipe and reflecting how mediately we were over Fort dale' Butterinere,
We of Dungeon Ghyll And the best
of bamboo f. 50 years went by, and much more comfortable it Legap-a huddle. part then in 1939 when the war was would be to sit in an arm- huts set in a country once do- minated by Communists, Three imminent
times wo roared over the fort, and I'd a fancy to chair. have one more mountain holiday
The lieutenant knew it dropping the week's supplies, before the world' was blown to pieces, I found myself in Ember would be six months before At the end of it men in the fort "Everything arrived
dale again because all the other he could leave the forest, so radiood:
sately. Thanks."
valleys were full.
he radioed divisional head- Not even then, however, did I
quarters about his needs. give much thought to the man who'd first brought me here: pot Two days later an armchair 11 one day, one particularly was parachuted from a low lovely day, when the sunlight flying RAF Valetta to land washed the rocks like water and on the lieutenant's bamboo the cloud-shadows lay like blue velvet on the green slopes, and was walking
again in Guber Co:nbe.
'In memory...............
doorstep. I
I
At another equally remote"
for fort the men liked eggs breakfast, Three consignments of eggs were parachuted, but each time they broke, so that not even the most expert cooks in the fort could make even an the resulting
NEW-LAID
NO TRICK
We turned north.
"Now for
the difficult part of our inlesion," said Squadron Leader Kerwin
We have to locate a patrol 70
miles from here.”
It seemed an impossible task, but the navigator worked ceaselessly on his maps and, sure we eventually saw a enough," wisp of smoke rising through the trees dead ahead, and the radio voice reached us from the ground: "I have you in sight."
The message assured us that the fire was lit by the patrol we were seeking and not, as has frequently happened, by Com- munists trying to obtain the supplies by a trick,
The patrol had cut down per- a dozen trees to make a baps
looked hardly
But, as you can imagine, you who know your Lakeland, it amelette out of this day was lovely, the one mess of shell and yoke. The before it had been 20 hours of mea radioed: "Forward six rain, with the result that the hens," lower slopes of the combe, ali bog myrtle and cotton grass, sphagnum moss, were one con
Early next morning, before tinuous. oozing sponge,
Brmer To And
the first cock had time to crow, clearing, which going climbed hither above the as it were, six hens, neatly bigger than a boxing ring from intakes, through the boulders, packed in straw-Alled boxes, above. In the fuselage of the and almost to the feet of the were drifting earthwards from a Valetta four men of No. 55 Air Slabs as climbers call the tall Valetta circling 300 feet above Dispatch outcrops of volcanic rock. These, the fort. Later the men I now saw, were much more ported immediate success precipitous than I had thought. their poultry (one hen laid on plane's They sixwed on their faces the the way down), and added: man was fastened to the Boor. worn footholds of rock climbers' Forward cockerel." Their first by a long safety line. pitches, and I guessed that most chickens are due to hatch soon, of those climbs were graded as
Without the supplies which ing "Severes" or "Very Severes."
skles reach them from the
shrilly, Walking on, and thinking not security forces could not mighty heave that sent it hurt
at
war against
to push re-Service Company, Royal Army
the first crate"
open doorway. Each
with
Com-
all of ancient days before|tinue their the Old War, I suddenly saw, munist terrorists in the Maleyan at no great distance below me, jungle.
BUT just then we saw a young 2 shepherd coming down from the tops. He came towards us with his heavy-booted trams and a tiny tablet let into a large Fach day aircraft of the Far I whispered?"
boulder. And I read: "Ask him he'l
East Transport Wing. fying know where it is... enduring memory of Arthur from Kuala Lumpur, mar over Gray Hathersage who fest from security force camps and police the Striated Slab above and died
he was completely a ship's empty hull. Once the to find it again. I have searched normal phenomena," telepathy successful in converting me to dry-stone intake walls gathered and searched and telekinesis and precognition the faith and practice of moun- in much of the lower slopes, but boulders, but no, not a trace of
tain climbing.
most of these walls are fallen it anywhere.”. and so on. "A very unquestion
Tзins and "What was the name on it? ing belief." I used to scoff-but I have been a devotee of that now the thrashing
sheep having long since about it that way?"
Above the "I don't think it had a name. "Nay I can't say as I know cwt he could get hot about it. in those days either of us had worked their ruin.
steeps are on it. As far as I remember, it about any plate mesein-nay. 1 earned the title "clim intakes the grassy
doan't and I been He liked to think he had some really
on tells since wur a bairn. Serry psychic power, and our bers' we didn't climb the rock cluttered with grey boulders of said only. In memory of a com-
in Common Room at Eastbourne he faces with ropes and karabiners, every shape and size; and here panish and friend.
or the mester. Happen it war in some
other place, Aye, mebbe.... made
with but only rambled up to the peaks and there the smooth grass gives someone removed us experiment
of green weather has, or--" thought transference, table by caired and foutworn paths. way to tall slabs. turning. post-hypnotic sugges- It was to farmhouse at the volcanic rock,
knows what head of Embordale, right under.. Lion, and Lord else, but never with any results the frowning mountains,
a
Well, one bright morning we that walked up this combe, making
Give
Your Memory
a Holiday
with the Seamaster Calendar
The new self-winding Seamaster Calendar watch is the most faithful servant of time ever devised by watch making science, telling the exact time and day of the month... accurately, automatically.
Automati-
You can discard your wall calendar, you can forget old-fashioned stem winding. The Seamaster Calendar winds itself with every flick of your wrist. cally, too, the date mechanism changes every 24 hours. it's simple, sturdy, foolproof.
ROMEGA
Suisse
tember
12
13
14
75 M
Seamaster Calendar
Pour Indunne—— Horlogère
OMEGA ★ 1/1508
-Geneva,
vitzerland.
it
Perhaps
The shepherd
There It was.
"To the
in the shelter of this rock forts all over the country drop- There it cer- ping food, ammunition, and the (ainly was, of some metal sold "luxuries of life, such as hair and real and much as I seemed cream and notepaper, for which
the men themselves pay to remember him describing it, have never been able to and Could it again," he had said. So we thanked him and went
it be, perhaps, that he had only on, and Hathersage, after
dreamed of it? Or that I had silence of his Own, 'said, "Strange-I don't know--but I dreamed that he told me? sometimes wonder. Ray, could. I WORLD COPYRIGHT RESERVED perhaps have dreamed It all?"
2
But just then, we saw a young shepherd coming down from the tops, with a long ash-staff in one hand and two collie dogs at his heels. He came towards us with his heavy-booted tramp and I sunny day. To his exact words whispered. "Ask him. He'll will not swear, because, behind So Hather two wars, it all seems like a hundred years ago..
Something like that was what She said to me on this bright,
know where it is."
the
and man sage stopped inquired. Did he know on which at these boulders there was a Plaque....3.
tablet...a metal -plate to someone who'd died
"Plate?" The man nodded three times and was silent.
We imagined that his silence was pregnant with knowledge, that no news was good news but when he came out of it, he said
R
We went, I think, three times then the to Emberdale, and 1914-18 war came and I lost all touch with Arthur Hathersage. For some years I wondered it he'd been killed in France: he was of just the right age for that and of just the right tempera- Acol- ment, venturesome and hardy; but I never heard of any such thing.
▾
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
NO
Put your tick in the spoce obora gäd keep this pone! by "you" und) tomorrow when the answer will be givenweith another story in this caries by...
GEOFFREY COTTERELL
• Did yesterday's 'itory-The Enemy at the Door, by Hesketh Pexesom...... actually happen? The answer is YES.
pregrough the
As we roared over the clear- for the first time a bell rang with one accord the
four men gave the crate
&
ing into space. During the next 10 minutes, as the Valetta twisted and turned between the Hills, returning again and again to the target
area, the men dispatched 10 crates.
VOLUNTEERS
the at base I asked volunteers all, why they
Back
took on the job.
Said Cpl. G. Braithwaite, of Men in the jungle order sup. Flies by radio, and it is the Air Lady gate, Beverley, Yorkshire: "This way we can really help the jungle war effort. We fý Force's boast that delivery can be made anywhere in the coun try within 24 hours, and, even every third day, spending the time packing quicker in an emergency. But to rest of
rapplies and relaxing." maintain this service means that Driver C. Lawrence, of 23 aircraft frequently have to fr
Alice
Street, Chester-ic-Street, two or three missions each day. County
added: Durham, "There's a lot of excitement in
JUNGLE FORT
Each mission presents the pilots with new problems as they take their machines over jungle clad mountains and down mist
swathed valleys to search of the wandering patro mission with
I New on such a
OLLY
this work." He didn't mentioni that there is often danger, too. into the jungle are collected and All supplies to be dropped packed by the men of No. 35 Company Their commanding officer, Major W. C. Grierson, mong sure that troops get the told me: "Our biggest task is
It's no
Squadron leader B. V. Kerwin, right kind of rations."
Malayan personnel, for stance,
a veteran Australian pilot com- use dropping Gurkha ration to manding No. 48 Squadron. The. Squadron Leader turned our Valetta eastward as we pulled away from Kuala Lumpur air-
THE NILE FRIENDS ARE NOW
ENEMIES
•
By Peter Kirk
With a bland smile, Saleh Salein, their old friend, informed the Egyptians had them that
the
a
, n
Major Grierson's depot is gigantic warehouse wherein every article used in the jungle et some time be found The day I W there, twa soldiers were carefully packing
may
a bottle of champagne
by
requested
મ "policeman intent
celebrating firthday. But
In this cast the "custome" had little too far. На
gone
wanted the champange leed! So the soldiers wrote *ica" on
SLIMMING
poem and should be FOR DOGS
When the Sudanese delegation, What had happened was that tiny scraps of paper and packed ELATIONS between Egyptian Government without
Egypt and the Sudan, tears of anger coming into his headed by Sayed Kaider Hamad, a Sudanese poet, inspired by them round the bottle.
Minister of Irrigation, the achievements of General eyes, and the anger is directed the which, at one time, chiedy against that same Major arrived in Caire, however, a Naguib, the deposed president of Egypt, had written a poem were so close that it looked Saleh Salem who put them into shock awaited them," "
in
honour
which as if the Sudan would join office only 14 months ago.
Minister thought was rather And it's all because of the Egypt when she received
good waters of the Nile,
engraved, full freedom have
a scheme for The Nile is the only form worked out reached a breaking point. of rigation thereabouts. For creasing the Sudan's share by
since the days of 100 percent. The cordial feeling which centuries
Cleopatra, the waters had been persisted up to a short time going to waste, until the 1920's, ago has been washed away when the British and the Egyp- ONLY EIGHT
built a dam at literally by the waters of tians together
Aswan, in the Sutam the Nile.
now
in-
As there are no engravers in the Sudan he had brought the
poem, with him to Cairo to find someone to do the job there.
BY CHAPMAN PINCHER
A
SLIMMING diet for overweight dogs, first
An Egyptian spy found the tested on humans at a poem In his luggage and told London hospital, is being The Sudanese, worked it out Salem. As aby praise of prescribed by veterinary But it was controled by the and saw that, instead of the Naguib is now--regarded 115 This is one of the most Egyptians, who insisted that the 20,000,000,000 gallons. which treason in Egypt, Salem kept it surgeons.
It consists of special ruka startling developments in 's share of the water should they claimed, they would get as a useful piece of ammunl-fortified with amino acids and Middle East politics in the go to their country, although only eight.
calcium." The rusks are baked the Nile, for the greater part |last-few-years.
of it course, is in the Sudan and for three days pleaded with Sudanese, without waiting for free from ageno" the bleaching This was too much for the trom wholemeal flour guaranteed not Egypt.
the Egyptians, who remained dinner they rushed back to agent poisonous to dogs but quite unmoved. ́
DANCING MAJOR
The present government of the Sudan, set up just over a year ago, is formed by the Na- tional Unionist Party-and the union they seck is with Egypt. The funds for the party were provided from Cairo,
tho
The Sudanese were furious,
of
far
tion
:
Any fat dog, from a wadding But really the victory is dachshund to a bulking Great theirs, for the Egyptians and in Dana, can be streamlined by particular Salem have over-giving it nothing but a ration reached themselves.
of the ruska for a vetr claim.
Egypt has taken 48,000,000,-
Khartoum, and have remained widely used to improve" white 000 gaflers of water a year out
bread The Sudan, Salem pointed there ever since. out, was doubling its share of the total flow of 84,000,000,- 000, and the Sudon has received
the water, which was a only 4,000,000,000,
first
native greater proportionate, rise than Government Sudanese
Egypt was getting Was fawrned, this Mindsters,
believ- In vain ing that the Egyptians were point, out that their sincere friends, approach ed Colonel Nasser's Government about the Nile waters.
SHOCK
did the Sudanese the Egyptian share would be nine times that INSULTED
of the Sudan Salem remained firm and the negotiations were broken off.
and
their
The amino acids" balance the starch in the diet ensuring that the dog comes to no harza. Egypt's chief rabble-rouser,
Egyptian policy for the last 10 Then, to maintain slimness, the Major Saleh Salem, who made
years has been devoted to rusics are used to replace part history by dancing in his under-
The usual form was pre securing the Sudan for them-of the dog's normal diet, wear before tribe of Dinkaha, A
is The diet the selves. A served, however,
based on a went specially to Khartoum ko
In this,
"devoted allies formula firat tried for human see.. fair play-to see that, no They didn't want, they said, to negotiators retired to matter how much the Egyptians deprive Egypt of any of the hotel to dress for a farewell were the National Unionist use on patients at the Middle-
Party
sex Hospital by Dr. A. Kingsley Intervened in the election, the water he already had, though it banquet.
but But that party now feels itselt Browne. It was successful, British kept their mouths shut was considerably more than half And while they were dressing so insulted both by the negotia- the rents have not yet been
The Prime Minister of the the total now, but suggested they heard coming over the tons over the Nile and by the available to doctor
A special high-protein diet Sudan has frequently and that, if the remaining 32 thous wirelem from the department, extraordinary attack on one of bearfully-recounted the debt of mand million gallons could be again controlled by their old their most respected members has been devised for lean dogg his country and party to Earpt. trapped, as seemed possible it friend, Salch Salem, a violent that they have sworn never to suffering from overwork, such
e-greyhounds and sheep dog memas He proved his loyalty only should be divided between them allack on the Sudanese Minis Join with Egypt
ter, who Salem to
said had been t Which all, gderto
containerVilaciis to show that, few weeks ago by splitting the increasing Egypt's share
printing anti-Egyptian when you are playing for big trates, minerals, liver extracts party and firing four Ministers 64,000,000,000 gallons while the, caur though, per Sudan would have 20,000,000,000.
point that the scord cheap points at the ex-casein. This diet is valuable for dent on Egypt,
The Egyptians said they would It was at this point that the, it is unwise to try and and the milk protein called no Sudanese talk about it and invited a whole proceedings degenerated pense of someone you feel to be aging dogs which are tending
your inferior
'to. lone too: much "weight, Minister can speak of the Sudanese delegation to Cairo, into fazce.
But now,
J
.conces
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.