for I was getting excited. Whatever the Arabs had been after, it must be something precious—and then his shovel rang, just like the best pirate stories, on something metallic.
We had it out in another five minutes, and my mounting hopes of earth-shaking archaeological discovery died as the torches revealed a twentieth-century metal box for mortar bombs—not British, but patently modern. I sent the others out, in case it was full of live ammo., and gingerly prised back the clasps and raised the lid. It was packed to bursting with papers, wedged almost into a solid mass, because the tin had not been proof against its surroundings, and it was with some difficulty that I worked one loose—it was green, and faded, but it was undoubtedly a bank-note. And so were all the rest.
They were, according to the Tripoli police inspector who came to examine them next day, pre-war Italian notes, and totally worthless. Which was a pity, since their total face value was well over a hundred million lire; I know, because I was one of the suffering members of the court of inquiry which had to count them, rank, congealed and stinking as they were. As the officer who had found them, I was an obvious candidate for membership of that unhappy court, when we got back to the battalion; I, a Tripoli police lieutenant, a major from the Pay Corps, and a subaltern from the Green Howards, who said that if he caught some contagious disease from this job he was going to sue the War Office. We counted very conscientiously for above five minutes, and then started computing in lumps; the Pay Corps man objected, and we told him to go to hell. He protested that our default of duty would be detected by higher authority, and the Green Howard said that if higher authority was game enough to catch him out by counting this lot note by note, then higher authority was a better man than he was. We settled on a figure of 100,246,718 lire, of which we estimated that 75,413,311 were too defaced to be accepted as currency, supposing the pre-war Italian government were still around to support them.
For the rest, the court concluded that the money had been buried by unknown persons from Yarhuna village, after having possibly been looted from the Italian garrison who had occupied the fort early in the war. The money had lain untouched until water-drilling operations, conducted by Lieutenant D. MacNeill, had alarmed the villagers, who might have supposed that their treasure was being sought, they being unaware that it was now quite worthless. Hence their attempts to enter the fort nocturnally on at least three occasions to remove their hoard, on the last of which they had been detected and apprehended. It was difficult to see, the court added, that proceedings could justifiably be taken against the three captured Arabs, and their release was recommended. Just for spite we also consigned the notes themselves to the care of the provost marshal, who was the pompous ass who had convened the court in the first place, and signed the report solemnly.
“Serve him right,” grunted the Green Howard. “Let him keep them, and press ’em between the leaves of his confidential reports. Or burn ’em, if he’s got any sense. What, you’re not taking one of them, are you?—don’t be mad, you’ll catch the plague.”
“Souvenir,” I said. “Don’t worry, the man it’s going to is plague-proof.”
And when I handed it over, with a suggestion that it should be disinfected in a strong solution of carbolic, McAuslan was enraptured.
“Och, ta, sir,” he said, “that’s awfy decent of ye.”
“Not a bit; you’re welcome if you want it. You dug it up. But it’s worthless, mind; it won’t buy anything.”
He looked shocked, as though I had suggested an indecency.
“Ah widnae spend it,” he protested. “Ah’ll tak’ it hame, for a souvenir. Nice to have, like—ye know, tae mind us of bein’ inna desert.” He went slightly pink. “The fellas think Ah’m daft, but Ah liked bein’ inna fort—like inna Foreign Legion, like Gairy Cooper.”
“You’ve been in the desert before, though. You were in the 51st, weren’t you—Alamein and so on?”
“Aye, so Ah wis.” He sniffed thoughtfully, and rubbed his grimy nose. “But the fort wis different.”
So it was, but I didn’t quite share his happy memories. As a platoon commander, I was painfully aware that it was the place where Arabs had three times got past my sentries by night. One up to them, one down to us. I was slightly cheered up when—and this is fact, as reported in the local press—a week later, the warehouse where the provost marshal had deposited his noisome cache was broken into by night, and the caseful of useless lire removed. There was much speculation where it had gone.
I can guess. Those persistent desert gentlemen probably have it down in Yarhuna village to this day, and being simple men in some things, if not in breaking and entering, they doubtless still believe that it is a valuable nest-egg for their community. I don’t know who garrisons Fort Yarhuna now—the Libyans, I suppose—but if there’s one thing I’d bet on, it is that when the military move out again, shadowy figures will move in under the old carved gate by night, and put the loot back in a nice safe place. And who is to question their judgement? Fort Yarhuna will still be there a thousand years after the strongest banks of Europe and America have passed into ruins.
When I was a very young soldier, doing my recruit training in a snowbound wartime camp in Durham, there was a villainous orderly sergeant who used to get us up in the mornings. He would sneak silently into our hut at 5.30 a.m., where we were frowsting in our coarse blankets against the bitter cold of the room, suddenly snap on all the lights, and start beating the coal-bucket with the poker. At the same time two of his minions would rush from bunk to bunk screaming:
“Wake-eye! Wake-eye! I can see yer! Gerrup! Gerrup! Gerrup!”
And the orderly sergeant, a creature devoid of pity and any decent feeling, would continue his hellish metallic hammering while he shouted:
“Getcher cold feet on the warm floor! Har-har!” and sundry obscenities of his own invention. Then all three would retire, rejoicing coarsely, leaving behind them thirty-six recruits suffering from nervous prostration, to say nothing of ringing in the ears.
But it certainly woke us up, and as I did my first early morning fatigue, which consisted of dragging a six-foot wooden table-top down to the ablutions and scrubbing it with cold water, I used to contrast my own miserable lot with that of his late majesty Louis XIV of France, whose attendants used a very different technique to dig him out of his scratcher. As I recalled, a valet in velvet-soled shoes used to creep into the royal bedchamber at a fairly civilised hour, softly draw back the curtains a little way, and then whisper: “It is my humble duty and profound honour to inform your majesty that it is eight-thirty of the clock.” That, now, is the way to break the bad news, and afterwards the body of majesty was more or less lifted out of bed by a posse of princes of the blood who washed, fed, watered and dressed him in front of the fire. No wooden tables to scrub for young Louis.
And as I wrestled with my brush in the freezing water, barking my knuckles and turning blue all over, I used to have daydreams in which that fiend of an orderly sergeant was transported back in time to old Versailles, where he would clump into the Sun-King’s bedroom in tackety boots at 5.30, guffawing obscenely, thrashing the fire-irons against the fender, and bawling:
“Levez-vous donc, Jean Crapaud! Wake-eye, wake-eye! Getcher froid pieds on the chaud terre! I can see yer, you frog-eating chancer! Har-har!”
While I concede that this kind of awakening could have done Louis XIV nothing but good, and possibly averted the French Revolution, the whole point of the daydream was that the
