All being ready, we bared our heads, Michael, with raised hand, solemnly uttered the beautiful words, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if God won't have you the devil must," and, applying a match to the pyre, shoved the long-ship (late French battleship) well out into the middle of the lily-pond.
Here it burned gloriously, the leaping flames consuming the mast and sail so that the charred wreckage went by the board, and we stood silent, envisaging the horrors of a burning ship at sea.
As the vessel burned down to the water's edge, and then disappeared with hissings and smoking, Michael broke the ensuing silence with words that I was to remember many years later in a very different place. (Apparently Digby remembered them too.)
"That's what I call a funeral!" said Michael. "Compare that with being stuck ten feet down in the mud and clay of a beastly cemetery for worms to eat and maggots to wriggle about in you. . . . Cripes! I'd give something to have one like that when my turn comes. . . . Good idea! I'll write it down in my will, and none of you dirty little dogs will get anything from me, unless you see it properly done."
"Righto, Beau," said Digby. "I'll give you one, old chap, whenever you like."
"So will I you, Dig, if you die first," replied Michael to his twin, and they solemnly shook hands upon it. . . .
My gratification for these honours was the greater in that nothing had been further from my thoughts than such promotion and reward. Frequently had I striven in the past to win one of the Band's recognised Orders of Merit--Faithful Hound, Good Egg, Stout Fella, or even Order of Michael (For Valour)--but had never hitherto won any decoration or recognition beyond some such cryptic remark from the Captain as, "We shall have to make John, Chaplain to the Band, if he does many more of these Good Deeds. . . ."
* * *
That evening when we were variously employed in the schoolroom, old Burdon, the butler, came and told us that we could go into the drawing-room.
Claudia and Isobel were there, the former talking in a very self-possessed and grown-up way to a jolly-looking foreign person, to whom we were presented. He turned out to be a French cavalry officer, and we were thrilled to discover that he was on leave from Morocco where he had been fighting.
"Bags I we get him up to the schoolroom to-morrow," whispered Michael, as we gathered round a glass dome, like a clock-cover, inverted over a white velvet cushion on which lay the "Blue Water" sapphire.
We looked at it in silence, and, to me, it seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt as though I could plunge head first into it.
Young as I was, I distinctly had the feeling that it would not be a good thing to stare too long at that wonderful concentration of living colour. It seemed alive and, though inexpressibly beautiful, a little sinister.
"May we handle it, Aunt Patricia?" asked Claudia, and, as usual, she got her way.
Aunt Patricia lifted off the glass cover and handed the jewel to the Frenchman, who quickly gave it to Claudia.
"That has caused we know not what of strife and sorrow and bloodshed," he said. "What a tale it could tell!"
"Can you tell tales of strife and bloodshed, please?" asked Michael, and as Claudia said, "Why, of course! He leads charges of Arab cavalry like Under Two Flags," as though she had known him for years, we all begged him to tell us about his fighting, and he ranked second only to the "Blue Water" as a centre of attraction.
On the following afternoon, the Captain deputed Claudia to get the Frenchman to tell us some tales.
"Decoy yon handsome stranger to our lair," quoth he. "I would wring his secrets from him."
Nothing loth, Claudia exercised her fascinations upon him after lunch, and brought him to our camp in the Bower, a clearing in the woods near the house.
Here he sat on a log and absolutely thrilled us to the marrow of our bones by tales, most graphically and realistically told, of the Spahis, the French Foreign Legion, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, Zouaves, Turcos, and other romantically named regiments.
He told us of desert warfare, of Arab cruelties and chivalries, of hand-to-hand combats wherein swordsman met swordsman on horseback as in days of old, of brave deeds, of veiled Touaregs, veiled women, secret Moorish cities, oases, mirages, sand-storms, and the wonders of Africa.
Then he showed us fencing-tricks and feats of swordsmanship, until, when he left us, after shaking our hands and kissing Claudia, we were his, body and soul. . . .
"I'm going to join the French Foreign Legion when I leave Eton," announced Michael suddenly. "Get a commission and then join his regiment."
"So am I," said Digby, of course.
"And I," I agreed.
Augustus Brandon looked thoughtful.
"Could I be a vivandière and come too?" asked Isobel.
"You shall all visit me in your officers' uniforms," promised Claudia. "French officers always wear them in France. Very nice too." . . .
Next day we went back to our preparatory school at Slough.
§3.
The next time I saw the "Blue Water" was during the holidays before our last half at Eton.
The occasion was the visit of General Sir Basil Malcolmson, an authority on gems, who was, at the time, Keeper of the Jewel House at the Tower of London, and had, I think, something to do with the British Museum. He had written a "popular" history of the well-known jewels of the world, under the title of Famous Gems, and was now writing a second volume dealing with less-known stones of smaller value.
He had written to ask if he might include an account of the "Blue Water" sapphire and its history.
I gathered from what Claudia had heard her say, that Aunt Patricia was not extraordinarily delighted about it, and that she had replied that she would be very pleased to show Sir Basil the stone; but that very little was known of its history beyond the fact that it had been "acquired" (kindly word) by the seventh Sir Hector Brandon in India in the service of one of the Nawabs or Rajahs of the Deccan, probably Nunjeraj, Sultan of Mysore.
The General was a very interesting talker, and at dinner that night he told us about such stones as the Timour Ruby, the Hope Diamond, and the Stuart Sapphire (which is in the King's crown), until the conversation at times became a monologue, which I, personally, greatly enjoyed.
I remember his telling us that it was he who discovered that the Nadirshah Uncut Emerald was not, as had been supposed, a lump of glass set in cheap and crude Oriental gold-work. It had been brought to this country after the Mutiny as an ordinary example of mediæval Indian jewel-setting, and was shown as such at the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Sir Basil Malcolmson had examined it and found that the "scratches" on it were actually the names of the Moghul Emperors who had owned it and had worn it in their turbans. This had established, once and for all, the fact that it is one of the world's greatest historic gems, was formerly in the Peacock Throne at Delhi, and literally priceless in value. I think he added that it was now in the Regalia at the Tower of London.
I wondered whether the "Blue Water" and the "Nadirshah Emerald" had ever met in India, and whether the blue stone had seen as much of human misery and villainy as the great green one. Quite possibly, the saphire had faced the emerald, the one in the turban of Shivaji, the Maratha soldier of fortune, and the other in that of Akhbar, the Moghul Emperor.
And I remember wondering whether the stones, the one in the possession of a country gentleman, the other in that of the King of England, had reached the ends of their respective histories of theft, bloodshed, and human suffering.
Certainly it seemed impossible that the "Blue Water" should again "see life" (and death)--until one remembered that such stones are indestructible and immortal, and may be, thousands of years hence, the cause of any crime that greed and covetousness can father. . . .
Anyhow, I should be glad to see the big sapphire again,