Tales – Page 20 – The Kipling Society

A Sahibs’ War

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

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PASS? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the rêl from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a—trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first Punjab Cavalry. Do not herd me with these black Kaffirs. I am a Sikh—a trooper of the State. The Lieutenant-Sahib does not understand my talk? Is there any Sahib on this train who will interpret for a trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help? . . . God be thanked, here is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was—servant to Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs! . . . Yes, I will sit by this truck till the Heaven-born has explained the matter to the young Lieutenant Sahib who does not understand our tongue.

. . . . .

What orders? The young Lieutenant-Sahib will not detain me? Good! I go down to Eshtellenbosch by the next terain? Good! I go with the Heaven-born? Good! Then for this day I am the Heaven-born’s servant. Will the Heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? Here is an empty truck; I will spread my blanket over one corner thus—for the sun is hot, though not so hot as our Punjab in May. I will prop it up thus, and I will arrange this hay thus, so the Presence can sit at ease till God sends us a terain for Eshtellenbosch. . . .

The Presence knows the Punjab? Lahore? Amritzar? Attaree, belike? My village is north over the fields three miles from Attaree, near the big white house which was copied from a certain place of the Great Queen’s by—by—I have forgotten the name. Can the Presence recall it? Sirdar Dyal Singh Attareewalla! Yes, that is the very man; but how does the Presence know? Born and bred in Hind, was he? O-o-oh! This is quite a different matter. The Sahib’s nurse was a Surtee woman from the Bombay side? That was a pity. She should have been an up-country wench; for those make stout nurses. There is no land like the Punjab. There are no people like the Sikhs. Umr Singh is my name, yes. An old man? Yes. A trooper only after all these years? Ye-es. Look at my uniform, if the Sahib doubts. Nay—nay; the Sahib looks too closely. All marks of rank were picked off it long ago, but—but it is true—mine is not a common cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and—the Sahib has sharp eyes—that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long worn on the breast. The Sahib says that troopers do not wear silver chains? No-o. Troopers do not wear the Arder of Beritish India? No. The Sahib should have been in the Police of the Punjab. I am not a trooper, but I have been a Sahib’s servant for nearly a year—bearer, butler, sweeper, any and all three. The Sahib says that Sikhs do not take menial service? True; but it was for Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib—dead these three months!

. . . . .

Young—of a reddish face—with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger joints. So did his father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my father’s time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. My father? Jwala Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs—he fought against the English at Sobraon and carried the mark to his death. So we were knit as it were by a blood-tie, I and my Kurban Sahib. Yes, I was a trooper first—nay, I had risen to a Lance-Duffadar, I remember—and my father gave me a dun stallion of his own breeding on that day; and he was a little baba, sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah—all in white, Sahib—laughing at the end of our drill. And his father and mine talked together, and mine beckoned to me, and I dismounted, and the baba put his hand into mine—eighteen—twenty-five—twenty-seven years gone now—Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib! Oh, we were great friends after that! He cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. He called me Big Umr Singh—Buwwa Umwa Singh, for he could not speak plain. He stood only this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our troopers by name—every one . . . . And he went to England, and he became a young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart, Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers, keen-eyed, jestful, and careless. I could tell tales about him in his first years. There was very little he hid from me. I was his Umr Singh, and when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him Son. Yes, that was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on everything—about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such all.

We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many box-wallahs, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness has created the dak (the post), and that for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. Wherefore, Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we talked together. He said, ‘There is no haste. Presently we shall fight, and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh.’ Here he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True—true-true

So did matters ripen—a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for the men of the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand times. We could have done it all so gently—so gently.

Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, ‘ Ho, Dada, I am sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.’ And he winked, and I said, ‘I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I bring my uniform?’ He said, ‘Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis (niggers).’ Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But he was clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am—I was—of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the Colonel) I said, ‘My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and sick also.’

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And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue, said, ‘Yes, thou art truly Sikh’; and he called me an old devil—jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again—aie me!

So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer, checked, and said that his mother was dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, ‘What is one Mussulman pig more or less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white shirts for dinner.’ Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib, that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war. He said, ‘They have taken men afoot to fight men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log because it is believed that they are white.’ He said, ‘There is but one fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed us, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.’ True talk—true talk! It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.

And we came to this country, even to Cape Town over yonder, and Kurban Sahib said, ‘Bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and I will look for employment fit for a sick man.’ I put on the uniform of my rank and went to the big dak-bungalow, called Maun Nihâl Seyn, and I caused the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place—is it known to the Sahib?—which was already full of the swords and baggage of officers. It is fuller now—dead men’s kit all! I was careful to secure a receipt for all three pieces. I have it in my belt. They must go back to the Punjab.

Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I knew, and he said, ‘We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.’ Remember, Kurban Sahib was squadron-leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and I was Umr Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, ‘Thou art a groom and I am a grass-cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?’ At this he laughed, saying, ‘It is the way to better things. Have patience, Father.’ (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) ‘This war ends not tomorrow nor the next day. I have seen the new Sahibs,’ he said, ‘ and they are fathers of owls—all—all—all!’

So we went to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; Kurban Sahib doing the service of servants in that business. And the whole business was managed without forethought by new Sahibs from God knows where, who had never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. They were full of zeal, but empty of all knowledge. Then came, little by little from Hind, those Pathans—they are just like those vultures up there, Sahib—they always follow slaughter. And there came to Eshtellenbosch some Sikhs—Muzbees, though—and some Madras monkey-men. They came with horses. Puttiala sent horses. Jhind and Nabha sent horses. All the nations of the Khalsa sent horses. All the ends of the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses oil: with both hands. These horses needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones—Hubshis—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but they were all Kafhrs—filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a jemadar of mehtars (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and no vengeance was taken. It was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. Guns that slew at half a day’s march, and men who, being new, walked blind into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the Boer-log! As to the city of Eshtellenbosch, I am not a Sahib—only a Sikh. I would have quartered one troop only of the Gurgaon Rissala in that city—one little troop—and I would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss the shadow of a Government horse upon the ground. There are many mullahs (priests) in Eshtellenbosch. They preached the Jehad against us. This is true—all the camp knew it. And most of the houses were thatched! A war of fools indeed!

At the end of five months my Kurban Sahib, who had grown lean, said, ‘The reward has come. We go up towards the front with horses tomorrow, and, once away, I shall be too sick to return. Make ready the baggage.’ Thus we got away, with some Kaffirs in charge of new horses for a certain new regiment that had come in a ship. The second day by terain, when we were watering at a desolate place without any sort of a bazaar to it, slipped out from the horse-boxes one Sikandar Khan, that had been a jemadar of saises (headgroom) at Eshtellenbosch, and was by service a trooper in a Border regiment. Kurban Sahib gave him big abuse for his desertion; but the Pathan put up his hands as excusing himself, and Kurban Sahib relented and added him to our service. So there were three of us—Kurban Sahib, I, and Sikandar Khan—Sahib, Sikh, and Sag (dog). But the man said truly, ‘We be far from our homes and both servants of the Raj. Make truce till we see the Indus again.’ I have eaten from the same dish as Sikandar Khan—beef, too, for aught I know! He said, on the night he stole some swine’s flesh in a tin from a mess-tent, that in his Book, the Koran, it is written that whoso engages in a holy war is freed from ceremonial obligations. Wah! He had no more religion than the sword-point picks up of sugar and water at baptism. He stole himself a horse at a place where there lay a new and very raw regiment. I also procured myself a grey gelding there. They let their horses stray too much, those new regiments.

Some shameless regiments would indeed have made away with our horses on the road! They exhibited rodents and requisitions for horses, and once or twice would have uncoupled the trucks; but Kurban Sahib was wise, and I am not altogether a fool. There is not much honesty at the front. Notably, there was one congregation of hard-bitten horsethieves; tall, light Sahibs, who spoke through their noses for the most part, and upon all occasions they said, ‘Oah Hell!’ which, in our tongue, signifies Jehannum ko jao. They bore each man a vine-leaf upon their uniforms, and they rode like Rajputs. Nay, they rode like Sikhs. They rode like the Ustrelyahs! The Ustrelyahs, whom we met later, also spoke through their noses not little, and they were tall, dark men, with grey, clear eyes, heavily eyelashed like camel’s eyes—very proper men—anew brand of Sahib to me. They said on all occasions, ‘No fee-ah,’ which in our tongue means Durro mut (‘Do not be afraid’), so we called them the Durro Muts. Dark, tall men, most excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war as war, and drinking tea as a sandhill drinks water. Thieves? A little, Sahib. Sikandar Khan swore to me—and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations—he swore a Pathan was a babe beside a Durro Mut in regard to horse-lifting. The Durro Muts cannot walk on their feet at all. They are like hens on the high road. Therefore they must have horses. Very proper men, with a just lust for the war. Aah—‘No fee-ah,’ say the Durro Muts. They saw the worth of Kurban Sahib. They did not ask him to sweep stables. They would by no means let him go. He did substitute for one of their troop-leaders who had a fever, one long day in a country full of little hills—like the mouth of the Khaibar; and when they returned in the evening, the Durro Muts said, ‘Wallah! This is a man. Steal him!’ So they stole my Kurban Sahib as they would have stolen anything else that they needed, and they sent a sick officer back to Eshtellenbosch in his place. Thus Kurban Sahib came to his own again, and I was his bearer, and Sikandar Khan was his cook. The law was strict that this was a Sahibs’ war, but there was no order that a bearer and a cook should not ride with their Sahib—and we had naught to wear but our uniforms. We rode up and down this accursed country, where there is no bazaar, no pulse, no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, no firewood; nothing but raw corn and a little cattle. There were

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no great battles as I saw it, but a plenty of gun-firing. When we were many, the Boer-log came out with coffee to greet us, and to show us purwanas (permits) from foolish English Generals who had gone that way before, certifying they were peaceful and well-disposed. When we were few, they hid behind stones and shot us. Now the order was that they were Sahibs, and this was a Sahibs’ war. Good! But, as I understand it, when a Sahib goes to war, he puts on the cloth of war, and only those who wear that cloth may take part in the war. Good! That also I understand. But these people were as they were in Burma, or as the Afridis are. They shot at their pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited purwanas, or lay in a house and said they were farmers. Even such farmers as cut up the Madras troops at Hlinedatalone in Burma! Even such farmers as slew Cavagnari Sahib and the Guides at Kabul! We schooled those men, to be sure—fifteen, aye, twenty of a morning pushed off the verandah in front of the Bala Hissar. I looked that the Jung-i-lat Sahib (the Commander-in-Chief would have remembered the old days; but—no. All the people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth, was all the Boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform to make a loin-cloth. A fools’ war from first to last; for it is manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in one hand and a purwana in the other, as did all these people. Yet we, when they had had their bellyful for the time, received them with honour, and gave them permits, and refreshed them and fed their wives and their babes, and severely punished our soldiers who took their fowls. So the work was to be done not once with a few dead, but thrice and four times over. I talked much with Kurban Sahib on this, and he said, ‘It is a Sahibs’ war. That is the order’; and one night, when Sikandar Khan would have lain out beyond the pickets with his knife and shown them how it is worked on the Border, he hit Sikandar Khan between the eyes and came near to breaking in his head. Then Sikandar Khan, a bandage over his eyes, so that he looked like a sick camel, talked to him half one march, and he was more bewildered than I, and vowed he would return to Eshtellenbosch. But privately to me Kurban Sahib said we should have loosed the Sikhs and the Gurkhas on these people till they came in with their foreheads in the dust. For the war was not of that sort which they comprehended.

They shot us? Assuredly they shot us from houses adorned with a white flag; but when they came to know our custom, their widows sent word by Kaffir runners, and presently there was not quite so much firing. No fee-ah! All the Boer-log with whom we dealt had purwanas signed by mad Generals attesting that they were well disposed to the State. They had also rifles not a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the roof. The women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. The women of the Boer-log are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own honour’s sake the Sahibs must say that the Boerlog are clever; but it is the Sahibs’ wonderful folly that has made the Boer-log. The Sahibs should have sent us into the game.

But the Durro Muts did well. They dealt faithfully with all that country thereabouts—not in any way as we of Hind should have dealt, but they were not altogether fools. One night when we lay on the top of a ridge in the cold, I saw far away a light in a house that appeared for the sixth part of an hour and was obscured. Anon it appeared again thrice for the twelfth part of an hour. I showed this to Kurban Sahib, for it was a house that had been spared—the people having many permits and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. I said to Kurban Sahib, ‘Send half a troop, Child, and finish that house. They signal to their brethren.’ And he laughed where he lay and said, ‘If I listened to my bearer Umr Singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land.’ I said, ‘What need to leave one? This is as it was in Burma. They are farmers to-day and fighters to-morrow. Let us deal justly with them.’ He laughed and curled himself up in his blanket, and I watched the far light in the house till day. I have been on the Border in eight wars, not counting Burma. The first Afghan War; the second Afghan War; two Mahsud Waziri wars (that is four); two Black Mountain wars, if I remember right; the Malakand and Tirah. I do not count Burma, or some small things. I know when house signals to house!

I pushed Sikandar Khan with my foot, and he saw it too. He said, ‘One of the Boer-log who brought pumpkins for the mess, which I fried last night, lives in yonder house.’ I said, ‘How dost thou know?’ He said, ‘Because he rode out of the camp another way, but I marked how his horse fought with him at the turn of the road ; and before the light fell I stole out of the camp for evening prayer with Kurban Sahib’s glasses, and from a little hill I saw the pied horse of that pumpkin-seller hurrying to that house.’ I said naught, but took Kurban Sahib’s glasses from his greasy hands and cleaned them with a silk handkerchief and returned them to their case. Sikandar Khan told me that he had been the first man in the Zenab valley to use glasses—whereby he finished two blood-feuds cleanly in the course of three months’ leave. But he was otherwise a liar.

That day Kurban Sahib, with some ten troopers, was sent on to spy the land for our camp. The Durro Muts moved slowly at that time. They were weighted with grain and forage and carts, and they greatly wished to leave these all in some town and go on light to other business which pressed. So Kurban Sahib sought a short cut for them, a little off the line of march. We were twelve miles before the main body, and we came to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a kraal, before it. Two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door, like babul bushes, covered with a golden-coloured bloom, and the roof was all of thatch. Before the house was a valley of stones that rose to another bush-covered hill. There was an old man in the verandah—an old man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall young man deprived of understanding. His head was hairless, no larger than an orange, and the pits of his nostrils were eaten away by a disease. He laughed and slavered and he sported sportively before Kurban Sahib. The man brought coffee and the woman showed us purwanas from three General-Sahibs, certifying that they were people of peace and goodwill. Here are the purwanas, Sahib. Does the Sahib know the Generals who signed them?

They swore the land was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the verandah with Sikandar Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost scent. At last he took my arm and said, ‘See yonder! There is the sun on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can see that house from here,’ and he looked at the hill behind him all hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. Then the idiot with the shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it were, to cover some noise. After this I passed to the back of the house on pretence to get water for tea, and I saw fresh horse-dung on the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs ; and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. Then Kurban Sahib called to me in our tongue, saying, ‘Is this a good place to make tea?’ and I replied, knowing what he meant, ‘There are over many cooks in the cook-house. Mount and go, Child.’ Then I returned, and he said, smiling to the woman, ‘Prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we will come in and eat’; but to his men he said in a whisper, ‘Ride away!’ No. He did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his rifle. That was not his custom. Some fool of the Durro Muts, being hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we were in our saddles many shots came from the roof-from rifles thrust through the thatch. Upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house—so many shots that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. Then Sikandar Khan, riding low, said, ‘This play is not for us alone, but for the rest of the Durro Muts,’ and I said, ‘Be quiet. Keep place!’ for his place was behind me, and I rode behind Kurban Sahib. But these new bullets will pass through five men a-row! We were not hit—not one of us—and we reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the

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stones, and Kurban Sahib turned in his saddle and said, ‘Look at the old man!’ He stood in the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the idiot also—both with guns. Kurban Sahib laughed, and I caught him by the wrist, but—his fate was written at that hour. The bullet passed under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and I pulled him backward between two great rocks a-tilt—Kurban Sahib, my Kurban Sahib! From the nullah behind the house and from the hills came our Boer-log in number more than a hundred, and Sikandar Khan said, ‘Now we see the meaning of last night’s signal. Give me the rifle.’ He took Kurban Sahib’s rifle—in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords—and lay belly-flat to the work, but Kurban Sahib turned where he lay and said, ‘Be still. It is a Sahibs’ war,’ and Kurban Sahib put up his hand—thus; and then his eyes rolled on me, and I gave him water that he might pass the more quickly. And at the drinking his Spirit received permission . . . .

Thus went our fight, Sahib. We Durro Muts were on a ridge working from the north to the south, where lay our main body, and the Boer-log lay in a valley working from east to west. There were more than a hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the Boer-log in the valley while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. I saw three Boers drop in the open. Then they all hid again and fired heavily at the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show, but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns. So it fell stark dark, and Sikandar Khan found a deep old jackal’s earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of Kurban Sahib upright. Sikandar Khan took his glasses, and I took his handkerchief and some letters and a certain thing which I knew hung round his neck, and Sikandar Khan is witness that I wrapped them all in the handkerchief. Then we took an oath together, and lay still and mourned for Kurban Sahib. Sikandar Khan wept till daybreak—even he, a Pathan, a Mohammedan! All that night we heard firing to the southward, and when the dawn broke the valley was full of Boer-log in carts and on horses. They gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib’s glasses, and the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them, and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought coffee, and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses. Presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright water. Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood, and he laughed, saying, ‘Wounded men lie there. We shall yet get vengeance.’

About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as a burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how to take a bearing across a hill, said, ‘At last we have burned the house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled.’ And I said, ‘What need now that they have slain my child? Let me mourn.’ It was a high smoke, and the old man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold it, and shook his clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight, foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor to drink till we had accomplished the matter. I had a little opium left, of which I gave Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban Sahib. When it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the windows very softly. The old man sat reading in a book, and the woman sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed again. So I knew they were mother and son, and I laughed, too, for I had suspected this when I claimed her life and her body from Sikandar Khan, in our discussion of the spoil. Then we entered with bare swords . . . . Indeed, these Boer-log do not understand the steel, for the old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but Sikandar Khan prevented him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held up his hands, and I put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be silent. But the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly fumbling with a gun. His whole head fell inside the door, and none followed him. It was a very pretty stroke—for a Pathan. Then they were silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and I said to Sikandar Khan, ‘Fetch ropes! Not even for Kurban Sahib’s sake will I defile my sword.’ So he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones, and said, ‘Four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit from a General,’ and he stretched the ropes and laughed. Then I bound the old man’s hands behind his back, and unwillingly—for he laughed in my face, and would have fingered my beard—the idiot’s. At this the woman with the swine’s eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and Sikandar Khan said, ‘Shall I strike or bind? She was thy property on the division.’ And I said, ‘Refrain! I have made a chain to hold her. Open the door.’ I pushed out the two across the verandah into the darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. Then Sikandar Khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the table, and I looked for a branch that would bear fruit. But the woman hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, ‘I am childless to-night because of thy perfidy, and my child was praised among men and loved among women. He would have begotten men—not animals. Thou hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater.’

I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and said, ‘No. It is a Sahibs’ war.’ And I said, ‘Wait a while, Child, and thou shalt sleep.’ But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my eyes, and said, ‘No. It is a Sahibs’ war.’ And Sikandar Khan said, ‘Is it too heavy?’ and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said, ‘No. It is a Sahibs’ war.’ And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.

So we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while, for we could not shape any words. Then I heard Sikandar Khan open his water-bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me and said, ‘We are absolved from our vow.’ So I drank, and together we waited for the dawn in that place where we stood—the ropes in our hand. A little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gunwheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched fell in and blazed before the windows. And I said, ‘What of the wounded Boer-log within?’ And Sikandar Khan said, ‘We have heard the order. It is a Sahibs’ war. Stand still.’ Then came a second shell—good line, but short—and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer—yes, pompom the Sahibs call it—and the face of the house folded down like the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the house lay down. Then Sikandar Khan said, ‘If it be the fate of the wounded to die in the fire, I shall not prevent it.’ And he passed to the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded Boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. And I said, ‘What hast thou done?’ And he said, ‘I have neither spoken to them nor laid hand on them. They follow in hope of mercy.’ And I said, ‘It is a Sahibs’ war. Let them wait the Sahibs’ mercy.’ So they lay still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. Then began the known sound of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at random. But I said, ‘Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs’ war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war.’ They did not understand my words. Yet they abode and they lived.

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Presently rode down five troopers of Kurban Sahib’s command, and one I knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to Calcutta often with horses. So I told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of Sahib would understand; and at the end I said, ‘An order has reached us here from the dead that this is a Sahibs’ war. I take the soul of my Kurban Sahib to witness that I give over to the justice of the Sahibs these Sahibs who have made me childless.’ Then I gave him the ropes and fell down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty, except for the little opium.

They put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while I understood that they had fought against the Boer-log for two days and two nights. It was all one big trap, Sahib, of which we, with Kurban Sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. They were very angry, the Durro Muts—very, angry indeed. I have never seen Sahibs so angry. They buried my Kurban Sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the ridge overlooking the house, and I said the proper prayers of the faith, and Sikandar Khan prayed m his fashion and stole five signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave as if it had been the grave of a saint on a Friday. He wept very bitterly all that night, and I wept with him, and he took hold of my feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from Kurban Sahib. So I divided equally with him one of Kurban Sahib’s handkerchiefs—not the silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and I also gave him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that Kurban Sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into his bosom. The rest I have here in that little bundle, and I must get the baggage from the hotel in Cape Town—some four shirts we sent to be washed, for which we could not wait when we went upcountry—and I must give them all to my Colonel-Sahib at Sialkote in the Punjab. For my child is dead—my baba is dead! . . .

I would have come away before; there was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the rail, and the Durro Muts were as brothers to me, and I had come to look upon Sikandar Khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse and I rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. God knows what they called me—orderly, chaprassi (messenger, cook, sweeper, I did not know nor care. But once I had pleasure. We came back in a month after wide circles to that very valley. I knew it every stone, and I went up to the grave, and a clever Sahib of the Durro Muts (we left a troop there for a week to school those people with purwanas) had cut an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and it was a jest such as Kurban Sahib himself would have loved. Oh! I have the inscription well copied here. Read it aloud, Sahib, and I will explain the jests. There are two very good ones. Begin, Sahib:—

In Memory of
WALTER DECIES CORBYN
Late Captain 141st Punjab Cavalry

The Gurgaon Rissala, that is. Go on, Sahib.

Treacherously shot neat this place by
The connivance of the late
HENDRIK DIRK UYS
A Minister of God
Who thrice took the oath of neutrality
And Piet his son,
This little work

Aha! This is the first jest. The Sahib should see this little work!

Was accomplished in partial
And inadequate recognition of their loss
By some men who loved him
__________
Si monumentum requiris circumspice

That is the second jest. It signifies that those who would desire to behold a proper memorial to Kurban Sahib must look out at the house. And, Sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank which they call dams, nor the little fruittrees, nor the cattle. There is nothing at all, Sahib, except the two trees withered by the fire. The rest is like the desert here—or my hand—or my heart. Empty, Sahib—all empty!

The Rout of the White Hussars

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It was not in the open fight
    We threw away the sword,
But in the lonely watching
    In the darkness by the ford.
The waters lapped, the night-wind blew,
Full-armed the Fear was born and grew,
And we were flying ere we knew
    From panic in the night.
Beoni Bar.

SOME people hold that an English Cavalry regiment cannot run. This is a mistake. I have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabres flying over the face of the country in abject terror—have seen the best Regiment that ever drew bridle wiped off the Army List for the space of two hours. If you repeat this tale to the White Hussars they will, in all probability, treat you severely. They are not proud of the incident.

You may know the White Hussars by their ‘side,’ which is greater than that of all the Cavalry Regiments on the roster. If this is not a sufficient mark, you may know them by their old brandy. It has been sixty years in the Mess and is worth going far to taste. Ask for the ‘McGaire’ old brandy, and see that you get it. If the Mess Sergeant thinks that you are uneducated, and that the genuine article will be lost on you, he will treat you accordingly. He is a good man. But, when you are at Mess, you must never talk to your hosts about forced marches or long-distance rides. The Mess are very sensitive; and, if they think that you are laughing at them, will tell you so.

As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colonel’s fault. He was a new man, and he ought never to have taken the Command. He said that the Regiment was not smart enough. This to the White Hussars, who knew that they could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and over any Foot on the face of the earth! That insult was the first cause of offence.

Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse—the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars! Perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had committed. I will try to make it clear. The soul of the Regiment lives in the Drum-Horse who carries the silver kettle-drums. He is nearly always a big piebald Waler. That is a point of honour; and a Regiment will spend anything you please on a piebald. He is beyond the ordinary laws of casting. His work is very light, and he only manoeuvres at a footpace. Wherefore, so long as he can step out and look handsome, his well-being is assured. He knows more about the Regiment than the Adjutant, and could not make a mistake if he tried.

The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was only eighteen years old, and perfectly equal to his duties. He had at least six years’ more work in him, and carried himself with all the pomp and dignity of a Drum-Major of the Guards. The Regiment had paid Rs.1200 for him.

But the Colonel said that he must go, and he was cast in due form and replaced by a washy, bay beast, as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck, rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the rest of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy that the Colonel’s ideas of smartness extended to the Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officer’s parades, and the Band Master is one degree more important than the Colonel. He is a High Priest and the ‘Keel Row’ is his holy song. The ‘Keel Row’ is the Cavalry Trot; and the man who has never heard that tune rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of the Regiment going past the saluting-base, has something yet to hear and understand.

When the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars there was nearly a mutiny.

The officers were angry, the Regiment were furious, and the Bandsmen swore-like troopers. The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to auction—public auction—to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put into a cart! It was worse than exposing the inner life of the Regiment to the whole world, or selling the Mess Plate to a Jew—a Black Jew.

The Colonel was a mean man and a bully. He knew what the Regiment thought about his action; and, when the troopers offered to buy the Drum-Horse, he said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden by the Regulations.

But one of the Subalterns—Hogan-Yale, an Irishman bought the Drum-Horse for Rs.160 at the sale; and the Colonel was wroth. Yale professed repentance—he was unnaturally submissive—and said that, as he had only made the purchase to save the horse from possible ill treatment and starvation, he would now shoot him and end the business. This appeared to soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the Drum-Horse disposed of. He felt that he had made a mistake, and could not of course acknowledge it. Meantime, the presence of the Drum-Horse was an annoyance to him.

Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three cheroots, and his friend Martyn; and they all left the Mess together. Yale and Martyn conferred for two hours in Yale’s quarters ; but only the bull-terrier who keeps watch over Yale’s boot-trees knows what they said. A horse, hooded and sheeted to his ears, left Yale’s stables and was taken, very unwillingly, into the Civil Lines. Yale’s groom went with him. Two men broke into the Regimental Theatre and took several paint-pots and some large scenery-brushes. Then night fell over the Cantonments, and there was a noise as of a horse kicking his loose-box to pieces in Yale’s stables. Yale had a big, old, white Waler trap-horse.

The next day was a Thursday, and the men, hearing that Yale was going to shoot the Drum-Horse in the evening, determined to give the beast a regular regimental funeral—a, finer one than they would have given the Colonel had he died just then. They got a bullock-cart and some sacking, and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried out to the place where the anthrax cases were cremated; two-thirds of the Regiment following. There was no Band, but they all sang ‘The Place where the old Horse died’ as something respectful and appropriate to the occasion. When the corpse was dumped into the grave and the men began throwing down armfuls of roses to cover it, the Farrier-Sergeant ripped out an oath and said aloud, ‘Why, it ain’t the Drum-Horse any more than it’s me!’ The Troop-Sergeant-Majors asked him whether he had left his head in the Canteen. The Farrier-Sergeant said that he knew the Drum-Horse’s feet as well as he knew his own; but he was silenced when he saw the regimental number burnt in on the poor stiff, upturned near-fore.

Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars buried; the Farrier-Sergeant grumbling. The sacking that covered the corpse was smeared in places with black paint; and the Farrier-Sergeant drew attention to this fact. But the Troop-Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him severely on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk.

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On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought revenge on the White Hussars. Unfortunately, being at that time temporarily in Command of the Station, he ordered a Brigade field-day. He said that he wished to make the Regiment ‘sweat for their damned insolence,’ and he carried out his notion thoroughly. That Monday was one of the hardest days in the memory of the White Hussars. They were thrown against a skeleton-enemy, and pushed forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, and ‘scientifically handled’ in every possible fashion over dusty country, till they sweated profusely. Their only amusement came late in the day when they fell upon the battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two miles. This was a personal question, and most of the troopers had money on the event; the Gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the White Hussars. They were wrong. A march-past concluded the campaign, and when the Regiment got back to their Lines the men were coated with dirt from spur to chin-strap.

The White Hussars have one great and peculiar privilege. They won it at Fontenoy, I think.

Many Regiments possess special rights, such as wearing collars with undress uniform, or a bow of riband between the shoulders, or red and white roses in their helmets on certain days of the year. Some rights are connected with regimental saints, and some with regimental successes. All are valued highly; but none so highly as the right of the White Hussars to have the Band playing when their horses are being watered in the Lines. Only one tune is played, and that tune never varies. I don’t know its real name, but the White Hussars
call it, ‘Take me to London again.’ It sounds very pretty. The Regiment would sooner be struck off the roster than forego their distinction.

After the ‘dismiss’ was sounded, the officers rode off home to prepare for stables; and the men filed into the lines riding easy. That is to say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets, and began to joke or to swear as the humour took them; the more careful slipping off and easing girths and curbs. A good trooper values his mount exactly as much as he values himself, and believes, or should believe, that the two together are irresistible where women or men, girls or guns, are concerned.

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order, ‘Water horses,’ and the Regiment loafed off to the squadron-troughs which were in rear of the stables, and between these and the barracks. There were four huge troughs, one for each squadron, arranged en échelon, so that the whole Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. But it lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while the Band played.

The Band struck up as the squadrons filed off to the troughs, and the men slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other. The sun was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to the Civil Lines seemed to run straight into the sun’s eye. There was a little dot on the road. It grew and grew till it showed as a horse, with a sort of gridiron-thing on his back. The red cloud glared through the bars of the gridiron. Some of the troopers shaded their eyes with their hands and said—‘What the mischief ’as that there ’orse got on ’im ?’

In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul—horse and man—in the Regiment knew, and saw, heading straight towards the Band, the dead Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!

On his withers banged and bumped the kettle-drums draped in crape, and on his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bareheaded skeleton.

The Band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.

Then some one in E Troop—men said it was the Troop-Sergeant-Major—swung his horse round and yelled. No one can account exactly for what happened afterwards; but it seems that, at least, one man in each troop set an example of panic, and the rest followed like sheep. The horses that had barely put their muzzles into the troughs reared and capered; but as soon as the Band broke, which it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong distant, all hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede—quite different from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough horse-play of watering in camp—made them only more terrified. They felt that the men on their backs were afraid of something. When horses once know that, all is over except the butchery.

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran—anywhere and everywhere—like spilt quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the carbine-buckets flopping against their sides
urged the horses on. Men were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to be spurring for a wager.

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. Most of the officers were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go down to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant-Majors. When ‘Take me to London again’ stopped, after twenty bars, every one in the Mess said, ‘What on earth has happened?’ A minute later, they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White Hussars scattered and broken, and flying.

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganised mob, tore past, and at its heels laboured the Drum-Horse—the dead and buried Drum-Horse—with the jolting, clattering skeleton. Hogan-Yale whispered softly to Martyn—‘No wire will stand that treatment,’ and the Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest of the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the dusk had shut in, and each man was howling to his neighbour that the Drum-Horse was on his flank. Troop-horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule. They can, in emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen stone on their backs; as the troopers found out.

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes and halftroops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton’s foot. The Band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly. The Colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and blood. Then he beat the kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that they were but made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, still swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found that it had been wired into the cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the skeleton’s pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse’s stomach, was striking; not to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a minute or two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the Band—‘Here, you curs, that’s what you’re afraid of.’ The skeleton did not look pretty in the twilight. The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognise it, for he began to chuckle and choke. ‘Shall I take it away, sir?’ said the Band-Sergeant. ‘Yes,’ said the Colonel, ‘take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves!’

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The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow, and led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful. He would disband the Regiment—he would court-martial every soul in it—he would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a Colonel of Horse.

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from the Service as a necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was the weaker man of the two. Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked, firstly, that he was the son of a Lord, and, secondly, that he was as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the Drum-Horse.

‘My instructions,’ said Hogan-Yale, with a singularly sweet smile, ‘were that the Drum-Horse should be sent back as impressively as possible. I ask you, am I responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a manner as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her Majesty’s Cavalry?’

Martyn said, ‘You are a great man, and will in time become a General; but I’d give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this affair.’

Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale. The Second-in-Command led the Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the Subalterns of the White Hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there, after many oaths on the Colonel’s part, they talked together in low tones. I fancy that the Second-in-Command must have represented the scare as the work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect; and I know that he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of making a public laughing-stock of the scare.

‘They will call us,’ said the Second-in-Command, who had really a fine imagination‘—they will call us the “Fly-by-Nights”; they will call us the ‘Ghost Hunters”; they will nickname us from one end of the Army List to the other. All the explanation in the world won’t make outsiders understand that the officers were away when the panic began. For the honour of the Regiment and for your own sake keep this thing quiet.’

The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down was not so difficult as might be imagined. He was made to see, gently and by degrees, that it was obviously impossible to courtmartial the whole Regiment, and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who, in his belief, had any concern in the hoax.

‘But the beast’s alive! He’s never been shot at all!’ shouted the Colonel. ‘It’s flat flagrant disobedience! I’ve known a man broke for less—dam sight less. They’re mocking me, I tell you, Mutman! They’re mocking me.’

Once more the Second-in-Command set himself to soothe the Colonel, and wrestled with him for half an hour. At the end of that time the Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances: He saluted and said, ‘Regiment all come back, Sir.’ Then, to propitiate the Colonel—‘An’ none of the ’orses any the worse, Sir.’

The Colonel only snorted and answered—‘You’d better tuck the men into their cots, then, and see that they don’t wake up and cry in the night.’ The Sergeant withdrew.

His little stroke of humour pleased the Colonel, and, further, he felt slightly ashamed of the language he had been using. The Second-in-Command worried him again, and the two sat talking far into the night.

Next day but one there was a Commanding Officer’s parade, and the Colonel harangued the White Hussars vigorously. The pith of his speech was that, since the Drum-Horse in his old age had proved himself capable of cutting up the whole Regiment, he should return to his post of pride at the head of the Band, but the Regiment were a set of ruffians with bad consciences.

The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about them into the air, and when the parade was over they cheered the Colonel till they couldn’t speak. No cheers were put up for Lieutenant Hogan-Yale, who smiled very sweetly in the background.

Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unofficially—

‘These little things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect discipline.’

‘But I went back on my word,’ said the Colonel.

‘Never mind,’ said the Second-in-Command. ‘The White Hussars will follow you anywhere from today. Regiments are just like women. They will do anything for trinketry.’

A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary letter from some one who signed himself ‘Secretary, Charity and Zeal, 3709, E.C.,’ and asked for ‘the return of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in your possession.’

‘Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?’ said Hogan-Yale.

‘Beg your pardon, Sir,’ said the Band-Sergeant, ‘but the skeleton is with me, an’ I’ll return it if you’ll pay the carriage into the Civil Lines. There’s a coffin with it, Sir.’

Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band-Sergeant, saying, ‘Write the date on the skull, will you?’

If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date on the skeleton. But don’t mention the matter to the White Hussars.

I happen to know something about it, because I prepared the Drum-Horse for his resurrection: He did not take kindly to the skeleton at all.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

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At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
‘Nag, come up and dance with death!’
Eye to eye and head to head,
        (Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
        (At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist—
        (Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed
        (Woe betide thee, Nag!)

THIS is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bathrooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’

One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a road-side ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: ‘Here’s a dead mongoose. Let’s have a funeral.’

‘No,’ said his mother; ‘let’s take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t really dead.’

They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.

‘Now,’ said the, big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); ‘don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.’

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is, ‘Run and find out’; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder.

‘Don’t, be frightened, Teddy,’ said his father. ‘That’s his way of making friends.’

‘Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,’ said Teddy

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and neck, snuffed at his ear and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.

‘Good gracious,’ said Teddy’s mother ‘and that’s a wild creature! I suppose he’s so tame because we’ve been kind to him.’

‘All mongooses are like that,’ said her husband. ‘If Teddy doesn’t pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he’ll run in and out of the house all day long. Let’s give him something to eat.’

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.

‘There are more things to find out about in this house,’ he said to himself, ‘than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.’

He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and burnt it on the end of the big man’s cigar, for he climbed up in the big man’s lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy’s nursery to watch how kerosene-lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy’s mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. ‘I don’t like that,’ said Teddy’s mother; ‘he may bite the child.’ ‘He’ll do no such thing,’ said the father. ‘Teddy’s safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now——’

But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so awful.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda riding on Teddy’s shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and Rikki-tikki’s mother (she used to live in the General’s house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. ‘This is a splendid hunting-ground,’ he. said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Rikki-tikki.

‘We are very miserable,’ said Darzee. ‘One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.’

‘H’m!’ said Rikki-tikki, ‘that is very sad—but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?’

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Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss—a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake’s eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.

‘Who is Nag?’ said he. ‘I am Nag. The great god Brahm put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!’

He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose’s business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.

‘Well,’ said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, ‘marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?’

Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in the grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the garden meant death sooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki off his guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on one side.

‘Let us talk,’ he said. ‘You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?’

‘Behind you! Look behind you!’ sang Darzee.

Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag’s wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have known that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry.

‘Wicked, wicked Darzee!’ said Nag, lashing up as high as he could reach toward the nest in the thorn-bush; but Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it only swayed to and fro.

Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose’s eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakes at once. So he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. It was a serious matter for him

If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot,—snake’s blow against mongoose’s jump,—and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake’s head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed to escape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself and when Teddy came running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.

But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: ‘Be careful. I am death!’ It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra’s. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people.

Rikki-tikki’s eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family. It looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from it at any angle you please; and in dealing with snakes this is an advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much more dangerous thing than fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn so quickly, that unless Rikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the return-stroke in his eye or lip. But Rikki did not know: his eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good place to hold. Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty grey head lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his heels close.

Teddy shouted to the house: ‘Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a snake’; and Rikkitikki heard a scream from Teddy’s mother. His father ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake’s back, dropped his head far between his fore-legs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and. quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.

He went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy’s father beat the dead Karait. ‘What is the use of that?’ thought Rikki-tikki. ‘I have settled it all’; and then Teddy’s mother picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy’s father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy’s mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly enjoying himself.

That night, at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the table, he could have stuffed himself three times over with nice things; but he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and petted by Teddy’s mother, and to sit on Teddy’s shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war-cry of ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’

Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well-bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the musk-rat, creeping round by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there.

‘Don’t kill me,’ said Chuchundra, almost weeping. ‘Rikki-tikki, don’t kill me.’

page 3

‘Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?’ said Rikki-tikki scornfully.

‘Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,’ said Chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever. ‘And how am I to be sure that Nag won’t mistake me for you some dark night?’

‘There’s not the least danger,’ said Rikki-tikki; ‘but Nag is in the garden, and I know you don’t go there.’

‘My cousin Chua, the rat, told me——’ said Chuchundra, and then he stopped.

‘Told you what?’

‘H’sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in the garden.’

‘I didn’t—so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I’ll bite you!’

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. ‘I am a very poor man,’ he sobbed. ‘I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room. H’sh! I mustn’t tell you anything. Can’t you hear, Rikki-tikki?’

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world,—a noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane,—the dry scratch of a snake’s scales on brickwork.

‘That’s Nag or Nagaina,’ he said to himself; ‘and he is crawling into the bath-room sluice. You’re right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.’

He stole off to Teddy’s bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy’s mother’s bath-room. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside in the moonlight.

‘When the house is emptied of people,’ said Nagaina to her husband, ‘he will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.’

‘But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?’ said Nag.

‘Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they may tomorrow), our children will need room and quiet.’

‘I had not thought of that,’ said Nag. ‘I will go, but there is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.’

Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then Nag’s head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-room in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes glitter.

‘Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on the open floor, the odds are in his favour. What am I to do?’ said Rikki-tikki-tavi.

Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggest water jar that was used to fill the bath. ‘That is good,’ said the snake. ‘Now, when Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may have that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina—do you hear me?—I shall wait here in the cool till daytime.’

There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away. Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back, wondering which would be the best place for a good hold. ‘If I don’t break his back at the first jump,’ said Rikki, ‘he can still fight; and if he fights—oh, Rikki!’ He looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nag savage.

‘It must be the head,’ he said at last; ‘the head above the hood; and when I am once there, I must not let go.’

Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one second’s purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honour of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him senseless, and red fire singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind the hood.

Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was dead; but the head did not move, and the big man picked him up and said: ‘It’s the mongoose again, Alice; the little chap has saved our lives now.’ Then Teddy’s mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to Teddy’s bedroom and spent half the rest of the night shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied.

When morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings. ‘Now I have Nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse than five Nags, and there’s no knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! I must go and see Darzee,’ he said.

Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thorn-bush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag’s death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rubbish-heap.

‘Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!’ said Rikki-tikki angrily. ‘Is this the time to sing?’

‘Nag is dead—is dead—is dead!’ sang Darzee. ‘The valiant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces! He will never eat my babies’again.’

‘All that’s true enough; but where’s Nagaina?’ said Rikki-tikki, looking carefully round him.

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‘Nagaina came to the bath-room sluice and called for Nag,’ Darzee went on; ‘and Nag came out on the end of a stick the sweeper picked him up on the end of a stick and threw him upon the rubbish-heap. Let us sing about the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki! ’ and Darzee filled his throat and sang.

‘If I could get up to your nest, I’d roll all your babies out!’ said Rikki-tikki. ‘You don’t know when to do the right thing at the right time. You’re safe enough in your nest there, but it’s war for me down here. Stop singing a minute, Darzee.’

‘For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki’s sake I will stop,’ said Darzee. ‘What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?’

‘Where is Nagaina, for the third time?’

‘On the rubbish-heap by the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.’

‘Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?’

‘In the melon-bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago.’

‘And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The end nearest the wall, you said?’

‘Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?,’

‘Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush. I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she’d see me.’

Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and just because he knew that Nagaina’s children were born in eggs like his own, he didn’t think at first that it was fair to kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggs meant young cobras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some ways.

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish-heap, and cried out: ‘Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it.’ Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.

Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed: ‘You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you’ve chosen a bad place to be lame in.’ And she moved toward Darzee’s wife, slipping along over the dust.

‘The boy broke it with a stone!’ shrieked Darzee’s wife.

‘Well, it may be some consolation to you when you’re dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but before night the boy in the house will lie very still. What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at me!’

Darzee’s wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a snake’s eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee’s wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened her pace.

Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam’s eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell.

‘I was not a day too soon,’ he said; for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed any. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee’s wife screaming:

‘Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the veranda, and—oh, come quickly—she means killing!’

Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda as hard as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there at early breakfast; but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by. Teddy’s chair, within easy striking-distance of Teddy’s bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro singing a song of triumph.

‘Son of the big man that killed Nag,’ she hissed, ‘stay still. I am not ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three. If you move I strike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!’

Teddy’s eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was to whisper: ‘Sit still, Teddy. You mustn’t move. Teddy, keep still.’

Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried: ‘Turn round, Nagaina; turn and fight!’

‘All in good time,’ said she, without moving her eyes. ‘I will settle my account with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white; they are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer I strike.’

‘Look at your eggs,’ said Rikki-tikki, ‘in the melon-bed near the wall. Go and look, Nagaina.’

The big snake turned half round, and saw the egg on the veranda. ‘Ah-h! Give it to me,’ she said.

Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. ‘What price for a snake’s egg? For a young cobra? For a young king-cobra? For the last—the very last of the brood? The ants are eating all the others down by the melon-bed.’

Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one egg; and Rikki-tikki saw Teddy’s father shoot out a big hand, catch Teddy by the shoulder, and drag him across the little table with the tea-cups, safe and out of reach of Nagaina.

‘Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!‘ chuckled Rikki-tikki. ‘The boy is safe, and it was I—I—I that caught Nag by the hood last night in the bath-room.’ Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet together, his head close to the floor. ‘He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was dead before the big man blew him in two. I did it. Rikki-tikki-tck-tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and fight with me. You shall not be a widow long.’

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Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg lay between Rikki-tikki’s paws. ‘Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back,’ she said, lowering her hood.

‘Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!’

Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gathered herself together, and flung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of the veranda, and she gathered herself together like a watch-spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.

He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whiplash flicked across a horse’s neck.

Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again. She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running Kikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph. But Darzee’s wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about Nagaina’s head. If Darzee had helped they might have turned her; but Nagaina only lowered her hood and went on. Still, the instant’s delay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her—and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on savagely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said: ‘It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his death-song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground.’

So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the minute, and just as he, got to the most touching part the grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. ‘It is all over,’ he said. ‘The widow will never come out again.’ And the red ants that live between the grass-stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth.

Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was—slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard day’s work.

‘Now,’ he said, when he awoke, ‘I will go back to the house. Tell the Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that Nagaina is dead.’

The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is because he is the town-crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his ‘attention’ notes like a tiny dinner-gong; and then the steady ‘Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead—dong! Nagaina is dead! Ding-dong-tack!’ That set all the birds in the garden singing, and the frogs croaking; for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well as little birds.

When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy’s mother (she still looked very white, for she had been fainting) and Teddy’s father came out and almost cried over him; and that night he ate all that was given him till he could eat no more, and went to bed on Teddy’s shoulder, where Teddy’s mother saw him when she came to look late at night.

‘He saved our lives and Teddy’s life,’ she said to her husband. ‘Just think, he saved all our lives!’

Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all the mongooses are light sleepers.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said he. ‘What are you bothering for? All the cobras are dead; and if they weren’t, I’m here.’

Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.

The Return of Imray

THE BRITISH IN INDIA DURING THE RAJ

by Rudyard Kipling

Background + Notes

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The doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith,
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron’s minniver—
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to seek his kin.
And oh, ’twas a piteous thing to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
The Baron

IMRAY had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen to disappear from the world-which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables. Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he bad not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the administration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town—1,200 miles away—but Imray was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a man, became a mystery—such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a month and the, forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared and his bungalow stood empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal—an affair which has been described in another place—and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He eat, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on the sideboard, and this is not good for the in-sides of human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens—an enormous Rampur slut, who sung when she was ordered, and devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she returned to her master and gave him information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born of hate and fear One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland’s room at night, her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her. When he was on the frontier in search of the local murderer who came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further than the Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into Strickland’s tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and employed a monogram on her night blanket, and the blanket was double-woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland, and when he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the doctors because she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over the head with a gun, before she could understand that she must give room for those who could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray’s bungalow, my business took me through that station, and naturally, the club quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth, which looked just as nice as a whitewashed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark, three- cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under side of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, hats, ants, and other things.

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the bells of St. Paul’s, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to put together that sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken up and given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and flung up a blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias and the mango-trees in the garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the thing they called prickly heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell Strickland’s saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not the least desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some one. Very much against my will, and because of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have been a caller in the room—it seems to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my man that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and I could hardly coax her back to me—even with biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland rode back, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was:

“Has any one called?”

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his name. Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it was a real dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o’clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too. Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and went into the least exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that pelting rain, it would not have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some hideous domestic tragedy. “She has done this ever since I moved in here.”

The dog was Strickland’s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spattered a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring above my head or on the door.

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I ran into Strickland’s room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe in his mouth. “I thought you’d come,” he said. “Have I been walking around the house at all?”

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering some-one was reproaching me for my slackness, and through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but for all that it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. “Stay on,” he said, “and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?”

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would he happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn’t care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda.

“’Pon my soul, I don’t wonder,” said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. “Look at that’.”

The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamp-light. “If you are afraid of snakes, of course”—said Strickland. “I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of man’s fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser legs.”

“You ought to get your thatch over-hauled,” I said. “Give me a masheer rod, and we’ll poke ’em down.”

“They’ll hide among the roof beams,” said Strickland. “I can’t stand snakes overhead. I’m going up. If I shake ’em down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.”

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, hut I took the loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener’s ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

“Nonsense“ said Strickland. “They’re sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for ’em, and the heat of the room is just what they like.” He put his hands to the corner of the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice. It gave great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

“H’m,” said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. “There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove! some one is occupying em.”

“Snakes?” I said down below.

“No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main beam.”

I handed up the rod.

“What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,” said Strickland, climbing further into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. “Come out of that, whoever you are! Look out! Heads below there! It’s tottering.”

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the lighted lamps on the table. I snatched a lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the table.

“It strikes me,” said he, pulling down the lamp, “our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?”

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggle’d out, to be back-broken by the butt of the masheer rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally. The thing under the cloth made no more signs of life.

“Is it Imray?” I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked. “It is Imray,’ he said, “and his throat is cut from ear to ear.”

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Then we spoke both together and to ourselves:

“That’s why he whispered about the house.”

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.

“It’s bad business, old lady,” said he. “Men don’t go up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling-cloth behind ’em. Let’s think it out.”

“Let’s think it out somewhere else,” I said.

“Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.”

I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lighted tobacco and thought. Strickland did the thinking. I smoked furiously because I was afraid.

“Imray is back,” said Strickland. “The question is, who killed Imray? Don’t talk—I have a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guile-less and inoffensive, wasn’t he?”

I agreed, though the heap under the cloth looked neither one thing nor the other.

“If I call the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?”

“Call ’em in one by one,” I said.

“They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,” said Strickland.

“We must segregate ’em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?”

“He may, for aught I know, hut I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days.”

“What’s your notion?” I asked.

“I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?”

There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

“Come in,” said Strickland. “It is a very warm night, isn’t it?”

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain pending, which, by his honor’s favor, would bring relief to the country.

“It will be so, if God pleases,” said Strickland, tugging off his hoots. “It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days—ever since that time when thou first came into my service. What time was that?”

“Has the heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given, and I even I—came into the honored service of the protector of the poor.”

“And Imray Sahib went to Europe?”

“It is so said among the servants.”

“And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?”

“Assuredly, sahib. He was a good master and cherished his dependents.”

“That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me the little rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case yonder.”

The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning dolefully, then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the .360 express.

“And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly? That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?”

“What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born?”

“Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.”

“Sahib!”

The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled themselves against Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.

“Go then and look!” said Strickland.

“Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits. Go!”

The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at the carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and last, a grey glaze setting on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth.

“Hast thou seen?” said Strickland, after a pause.

“I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the presence do?”

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“Hang thee within a month! What else?”

“For killing him? Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child!”

“What said Imray Sahib?”

“He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he came back from office and was sleeping. The heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven- born.”

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular: “Thou art witness to this saying. He has killed.”

Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly.

“I am trapped,” he said, “but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,” he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, “only such could know what I did.”

“It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!”

A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat still.

“Take him to the station,” said Strickland. “There is a case toward.”

“Do I hang, then?” said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and keeping his eyes on the ground.

“If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang,” said Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and stood still The two policemen waited further orders.

“Go!” said Strickland.

“Nay; but I go very swiftly,” said Bahadur Khan. “Look! I am even now a dead man.”

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

“I come of land-holding stock,” said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. “It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold, therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and—and—I die.”

At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the little kariat, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the table-cloth to their appointed places. They were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray

“This,” said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, “is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?”

“I heard,” I answered. “Imray made a mistake.”

“Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with him for four years.”

I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found him waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.

“What has befallen Bahadur Khan?” said I.

“He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows,” was the answer.

“And how much of the matter hast thou known?”

“As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots.”

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house:

“Tietjens has come back to her room!”

And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead, on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.

The Rescue of Pluffles

[a short tale]

Thus, for a season, they fought it fair—
She and his cousin May—
Tactful, talented, debonnaire,
Decorous foes were they;
But never can battle of man compare
With merciless feminine fray.
Two and One

MRS. HAUKSBEE was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to prove this ; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.

Pluffles was a subaltern in the ‘Unmentionables.’ He was callow, even for a subaltern. He was callow all over—like a canary that had not finished fledging itself. The worst of it was that he had three times as much money as was good for him; Pluflies’ Papa being a rich man, and Pluffles being the only son. P1uffles’ Mamma adored him. She was only a little less callow than Pluffles, and she believed everything he said.

Pluffles’ weakness was not believing what people said. He preferred what he called trusting to his own judgment. He had as much judgment as he had seat or hands ; and this preference tumbled him into trouble once or twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever manufactured came about at Simla—some years ago, when he was four-and-twenty.

He began by trusting to his own judgment as usual, and the result was that, after a time, he was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver’s ’rickshaw wheels.

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless it was her dress. She was bad from her hair—which started life on a Brittany girl’s head—to her boot-heels, which were two and three-eighth inches high. She was not honestly mischievous like Mrs. Hauksbee; she was wicked in a businesslike way.

There was never any scandal—she had not generous impulses enough for that. She was the exception which proved the rule that Anglo-Indian ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at Home. She spent her life in proving that rule.

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fervently. They hated far too much to clash; but the things they said of each other were startling—not to say original. Mrs. Hauksbee was honest—honest as her own front teeth—and, but for her love of mischief, would have been a woman’s woman. There was no honesty about Mrs. Reiver; nothing but selfishness. And at the beginning of the season poor little Pluffles fell a prey to her. She laid herself out to that end, and who was Pluffles to resist? He trusted to his judgment, and he got judged.

I have seen Captain Hayes argue with a tough horse—I have seen a tonga-driver coerce a stubborn pony—I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a hard keeper—but the breaking-in of Plufes of the ’Unmentionables’ was beyond all these. He learned to fetch and carry like a dog, and to wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs. Reiver. He learned to keep appointments which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of keeping. He learned to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of giving him. He learned to shiver for an hour and a quarter on the windward side of Elysium while Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come for a ride. He learned to hunt for a ’rickshaw, in a light dresssuit under pelting rain, and to walk by the side of that ’rickshaw when he had found it. He learned what it was to be spoken to like a coolie and ordered about like a cook. He learned all this and many other things besides. And he paid for his schooling.

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it was fine and impressive, that it gave him a status among men, and was altogether the thing to do. It was nobody’s business to warn Pluffles that he was unwise. The pace that season was too good to inquire; and meddling with another man’s folly is always thankless work. Pluffles’ Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when he heard how things were going. But Pluffles had got himself engaged to a girl in England the last time he went Home; and, if there was one thing more than another that the Colonel detested, it was a married subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the education of Pluffles, and said it was good training for the boy. But it was not good training in the least. It led him into spending money beyond his means, which were good; above that, the education spoilt an average boy and made it a tenth-rate man of an objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and his little bill at the jewellers’ was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game alone, knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for the sake of a girl she had never seen. P1uffles’ fiancée was to come out, under chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was time to interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs. Hauksbee’s experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain circumstances—notably when he is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver’s stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off that engagement for nothing at all—simply to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who, in return, would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long as she found it worth her while. She said she knew the signs of these things. If she did not no one else could.

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the guns of the enemy; just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried away Bremmil under Mrs. Hauksbee’s eyes.

This particular engagement lasted seven weeks—we called it the Seven Weeks’ War—and was fought out inch by inch on both sides. A detailed account would fill a book, and would be incomplete then. Any one who knows about these things can fit in the details for himself. It was a superb fight—there will never be another like it as long as Jakko Hill stands—and Plufiles was the prize of victory. People said shameful things about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what she was playing for. Mrs. Reiver fought partly because Pluffles was useful to her, but mainly because she hated Mrs. Hauksbee, and the matter was a trial of strength between them. No one knows what Pluffles thought. He had not many ideas at the best of times, and the few he possessed made him conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee said, ‘The boy must be caught; and the only way of catching him is by treating him well.’

So she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long as the issue was doubtful. Little by little Pluffles fell away from his old allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom he was made much of. He was never sent on out-post duty after ’rickshaws any more, nor was he given dances which never came off, nor were the drains on his purse continued. Mrs. Hauksbee held him on the snaffle; and, after his treatment at Mrs. Reiver’s hands, he appreciated the change.

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about himself, and made him talk about her own merits. Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home, speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a piece of boyish folly. This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon, and discoursing in what he considered a gay and fascinating style. Mrs. Hauksbee had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby Majors.

At a moderate estimate there were about three-and-twenty sides to that lady’s character. Some men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles after the manner of a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years, instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke with a sort of throaty quaver in her voice which had a soothing effect, though what she said was anything but soothing. She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to say meanness, of Pluffles’ conduct, and the smallness of his views. Then he stammered something about ‘trusting to his own judgment as a man of the world;’ and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next. It would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman; but, in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only made him feel limp and repentant—as if he had been in some superior kind of church. Little by little, very softly and pleasantly, she began taking the conceit out of Pluffles, as they take the ribs out of an umbrella before re-covering it. She told him what she thought of him and his judgment and his knowledge of the world; and how his performances had made him ridiculous to other people; and how it was his intention to make love to herself if she gave him the chance. Then she said that marriage would be the making of him; and drew a pretty little picture—all rose and opal—of the Mrs. Pluffles of the future going through life relying on the judgment and knowledge of the world of a husband who had nothing to reproach himself with. How she reconciled these two statements she alone knew. But they did not strike Pluffles as conflicting.

Hers was a perfect little homily—much better than any clergyman could have given—and it ended with touching allusions to Pluffles’ Mamma and Papa, and the wisdom of taking his bride Home.

Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think over what she had said. Pluffles left, blowing his nose very hard and holding himself very straight. Mrs. Hauksbee laughed.

What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter of the engagement only Mrs. Reiver knew, and she kept her own counsel to her death. She would have liked it spoiled as a compliment, I fancy.

Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauksbee during the next few days. They were all to the same end, and they helped Pluffles in the path of Virtue.

Mrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her wing to the last. Therefore she discountenanced his going down to Bombay to get married.
‘Goodness only knows what might happen by the way!’ she said. ‘Pluffles is cursed with the curse of Reuben, and India is no fit place for him!’

In the end the fiancée arrived with her aunt ; and Pluffles, having reduced his affairs to some sort of order—here again Mrs. Hauksbee helped him—was married.

Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when both the ‘I wills’ had been said, and went her way.

Pluffles took her advice about going Home. He left the Service and is now raising speckled cattle inside green-painted fences somewhere in England. I believe he does this very judiciously. He would have come to extreme grief in India.

For these reasons, if any one says anything more than usually nasty about Mrs. Hauksbee, tell him the story of the Rescue of Pluffles.

Reingelder and the German Flag

[a short tale]

HANS BREITMANN paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all night, and played a game called ‘Scairt’ with three compatriots.‘I haf washed,’ said he in a voice of thunder, ‘but, dere is no use washing on these hell-seas. Look at me—I am still all wet und schweatin’. It is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on ice.’

‘You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,’ said one man. ‘Beer is the worst thing in the world for—’

‘Ya, I know—der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least I will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If I should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now—in Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside barts of South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I haf died or in Siam, but I am here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round to find.’

He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a mass of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent Assam orchids of fabulous value.

Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans Breitmann had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not collected that year, from kingcrabs to white kangaroos.

‘Lisden now,’ said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than ten minutes without a pause; ‘Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show how bad und worse it is to go gollectin’ und belief vot anoder fool haf said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique—North or Sout’ you would not know—und I was hoontin’ orchits und aferydings else dot I could back in my kanasters—dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere vas den mit me anoder man—Reingelder, dot vas his name—und he vas hoontin’ also, but only coral-snakes—joost Uraguay coral-snakes—aferykind you could imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty—all red und white like coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl. Dere is one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag, pecause id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles. Reingelder he was naturalist—goot man—goot trinker—better as me! “By Gott,” said Reingelder, “I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I will die.” Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot Sherman Flag.

‘Von day when we was in none knows where—shwingin’ in our hummocks among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a bickle-bottle—my bickle-bottle—und we both fell from our hummocks flat ubon our pot—what you call stomach—mit shoy at dis thing. Now I was gollectin’ orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of life to Reingelder vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und I said, “Reingelder dot is your find.”—“Heart’s true friend, dou art a goot man,” said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle, und der natif woman she shqueals, “Herr Gott! It will bite.” I said—pecause in Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects—“Reingelder shpifligate her in der alcohol und den she will be all right.”—“Nein,” said Reingelder, “I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der coral-snakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided.” Boot I looked at her het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake—der true viper cranium, narrow und contract. “It is not good,” said I, “She may bite und den—we are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle him alife.” Reingelder he had him in his hand—grawlin’ und grawlin’ as slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. “Nonsense,” says Reingelder. “Yates haf said dot not von of der coral-snakes haf der sack of boison.” Yates vas der crate authorité ubon der reptilia of Sout’ Amerique. He haf written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate authorité.

‘I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin’ und grawlin’ in Reingelder’s fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. “Mein Gott,” I said. “It is you dot will get der sack—der sack from dis life here pelow!”

‘“Den you may haf der snake,” says Reingelder, pattin’ it ubon her het. “See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!”

‘Und mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of Yates; der Sherman Flag grawlin’ in his fist. “Yates haf said,” said Reingelder, und he throwed oben der dook in der fork of his fist und read der passage, proofin’ conglusivement dot nefer coral-snake bite vas boison. Den he shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der Sherman Flag, und she nip once und dwice.

‘“Der liddle fool he haf bit me,” says Reingelder.

‘Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection. I was discomfordable.

‘“Die oop der arm, Reingelder,” said I, “und trink whisky ontil you can no more think.”

‘“Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner,” said Reingelder, und he put her afay, und it vas very red mit emotion.

‘We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we vas eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, “It is genumben to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in brint!”

‘I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying “Reingelder dost dou know me?” but he himself, der inward gonciousness part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he wrop himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died—all alone mit me in Uraguay. I was sorry for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried him, und den I took der coral-snake—dot Sherman Flag—so bad und dreacherous, und I bickled him alife.

‘So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.’

A Reinforcement

[a short tale]

THE DHOW THRUST HER SNOUT round the rocky cape and lurched easily into the next bay. She had come, by Allah’s guidance, her skipper’s hereditary instincts, and the strength of her own double skin, from Jask via Muscat, a many days ago. In due season, if Allah saw fit, she would reach her various destinations up the Red Sea. Meantime, she sidled along the south end of the great Arabian desert — that most utterly empty land, precisely as she had done every year of the last seven-and-thirty. That there was no officially recognised port for a few hundred miles before her and behind her did not trouble her. She preferred the near bleak outlines and strange coloured hills to the uncharted blue of the Indian Ocean, and, so far from avoiding that coast, edged in with the contempt born of several generations’ familiarity. Navigation, as her skipper understood it, did not begin till much nearer Aden.

Her crew sprawled on the high poop, making up rope from piles of raw bast, or searching their blue-and-white garments; for an old dhow is a nest of life. The rudely battered hold between the poop and foc’sle deck was empty, except for a layer of bales of dates, these last punched and trodden hard as concrete by the unshod hoofs of horses that had made one of her recent cargoes. A score of very lean and very bright-eyed men lay among the bales, their heads pillowed on little gay-coloured bundles. Some of them had thrust faded sprigs of mignonette or a bunch of roses behind their ears. Others bent earnestly over ancient weapons
which they whetted with small pieces of pumice, first on one side then on the other, with many squintings and balancings, and as they worked they chewed dry leaves, camel-fashion. All bore themselves with the dignity of a thousand Mohammedan years. A few planks laid on cross-beams served the crew as a fore-and-aft gangway above them. The great lateen sail, full of holes and ridged with taut ropes at every cloth, made the wind trill and drum down the long hollow of it. The spliced and dancing yard, the forward-raking mast, the halyard running through its tremendous three-and four-sheave wooden blocks, the salted and sun-roughened decks and gunnels, the scrape of pumice stone on metal, each added its own note to the ship-music, which, heard through shut eyes, resembled a barbaric native band coming and going round distant street-corners. The under note of all was the rend and tear of the waves before the long grab-bow that lunged through them like a well-employed knife.

The wind dropped a little with the sun, and the dhow changed tack to avoid some long spine of a reef. The skipper, calling on many saints, put the helm hard up and wore round, letting the sail all fly out forward in such confusion as a man might try to imitate by clawing a wet shirt off his head. With a surge and a jar the yard came over the masthead, while the sheet, thoughtfully spliced into the clew of the sail to prevent it getting adrift, whipped air and ocean, till some one caught it and hauled it in. Round flew the dhow’s high stern, and before a stray shark could well make up his mind what was happening, the wind had her on the other quarter, and she stood away for the night.

Dawn, white and breathless, saw her loafing in a long slant shoreward once more, her crew and passengers busy at morning prayers, while she, for all airs of loose-ended sloth, slung them along at something close upon eight knots. She seemed to be interested in a tiny patch of cultivation beneath the flank of a huge slope, where men with camels waited. And so she went on her unhurried ways.

A week later, a double-awninged steam-launch raced out from under the lee of a promontory, and bade her lie to. In other days, with other cares, she would, on such a wind, have taken her foot in hand and removed herself; for all launches are an abomination to all dhows. This time she awaited her pursuer with a clean conscience, and her hold full (her skipper said so) of pilgrims for Jeddah.
‘No guns, no slave, sar, this time. Mine all firsh-class passenger, sar,’ he cried proudly.

The launch’s officer was a little disappointed. The most tender imagination could not conceive those shining-eyed loungers on the date-bags, unarmed though they were, as being taken anywhere against their large and silent wills.

‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘Where did you pick them up, Ishmail?’

The skipper pointed largely over the quarter towards desolate Hadramaut.

‘There, sar,’ said he. ‘Kishin, Sihut, Mukalla — all those places, sar. They very good pilgrims, sar. You want any frankincense, sar? Any real attar of roses? You got any newspapers, sar? Very long time out, sar. No news at all. Any Aden papers? Angleesch papers?’

A bundle of old journals was hove aboard. The skipper acknowledged it with a handful of dried khat leaves, which, being chewed, miraculously relieve weariness; and, when the launch retired, spread the latest paper on the tiller and translated extracts in a loud voice to his passengers among the date-bales.

‘But,’ a voice called up, ‘is it written there what is the price of the guns in the place to which we go; or is that all a fable of Tasm?’

‘The price is nothing,’ the skipper returned. ‘It is no more than a half-hour’s risk of a life — such risk as we who use the sea accept daily. And the reward is that with two guns or three a man becomes a chief in his own country. Now we will pump again. She does not leak. She has never leaked, but, lying on this tack, she admits as it were a few drops of wetness.’

‘She leaks. She leaks continually. She is older than Add. It is no concern of an unmixed Arab of the Arabs to do women’s work.’ This was a passenger whom they had picked up not five days before from a white-walled town in the crack of a dry foot-hill.

‘There is no impediment,’ said the skipper. ‘But if through lack of pumping she admits too much water, she will descend into the sea among hungry fish, and thus those who cannot swim will not only lose the cheap rifles which await them, and the maids and the camels which await the possessors of weapons, but also their certainty of Paradise. Myself I am old and have seen Mecca, and do not desire women. My salvation is assured. But you are young.’

Two, or it may have been three, weeks later, the dhow lay in soft moonlight off the jetty of a most insignificant village far up the Red Sea. Her sides were scraped and gashed with coral; she leaked noticeably from collisions with the reefs and shoals of that infamous and at present unlighted stretch of water. It would cost at least twenty-two rupees for overhaul and refit, but the skipper, counting his passage-monies, did not grudge it. She had dropped many of her passengers at various places on the way. There remained only the last and most luxurious batch of millionaires.

‘Up and out, brothers,’ said the skipper. ‘Here begins the little land journey.’
‘Is it far?’ a man enquired, and bandaged a boil on his knee which had been a little chafed by the voyage. ‘God is good. Perhaps a month. Perhaps two. But the rifles are certain, and so are the plentiful strings of ammunition.’

Man after man yawned, shook himself, gathered up his bundle and stepped out on the warm beach. When all were assembled, some one asked: ‘By which road do we go?’

Voices round them in the shadow of huts laughed encouragingly. ‘There is but one road,’ they cried. ‘It cannot be missed. Hold that star in the north-west. Afterwards, any babe will show.’

‘We wait, then. We have come from far off. It is a strange country to cross at night.’ They sat down where they were and rubbed their stiff limbs, till an old, old man among them began to recite the Suratu ‘n Nas — the Chapter of Help from the Koran.

Then the dawn broke, and it was time for morning prayer, in which, after pointing them towards Mecca across the pale sea, the dhow’s skipper joined.

A man with some most desirable planks of teak, a piece of sheet lead, copper nails, and two pots of real paint, squatted by his side, ready to open trade on the last word of the supplication.

‘By no means can aught befall us except what God has destined for us,’ the skipper concluded, and in the same breath, ‘Seeing that that stuff has, of course, been robbed from a steamboat.’

‘It went ashore, Hajji. At great risk was it recovered from out of the jaws of sharks. Do not cheapen the life of a man,’ the dealer snapped.

They rolled up their prayer-mats and settled to business.

‘We go,’ said the oldest of the passengers presently. ‘In peace and health and with the blessing of God,’ the skipper answered over his shoulder.

The little company moved off as the low sun stung them on the neck and ear.

‘Good!’ said one of them, breathing deeply and staring around. ‘Here is land-hills, sand, rock, camels, and goats. All one with our place! God is great.’

They melted into the dancing haze with a swift motion almost like that of trout turned down into waters which exactly suit their needs.

In time, in due time, they hoped to reach a place called Tripoli, where, they understood, breech-loading rifles were to be had for the taking by men who were not afraid of war.

RUDYARD KIPLING
May 1912

A Reinforement

THE DHOW THRUST HER SNOUT round the rocky cape and lurched easily into the next bay. She had come, by Allah’s guidance, her skipper’s hereditary instincts, and the strength of her own double skin, from Jask via Muscat, a many days ago. In due season, if Allah saw fit, she would reach her various destinations up the Red Sea. Meantime, she sidled along the south end of the great Arabian desert — that most utterly empty land, precisely as she had done every year of the last seven-and-thirty. That there was no officially recognised port for a few hundred miles before her and behind her did not trouble her. She preferred the near bleak outlines and strange coloured hills to the uncharted blue of the Indian Ocean, and, so far from avoiding that coast, edged in with the contempt born of several generations’ familiarity. Navigation, as her skipper understood it, did not begin till much nearer Aden.

Her crew sprawled on the high poop, making up rope from piles of raw bast, or searching their blue-and-white garments; for an old dhow is a nest of life. The rudely battered hold between the poop and foc’sle deck was empty, except for a layer of bales of dates, these last punched and trodden hard as concrete by the unshod hoofs of horses that had made one of her recent cargoes. A score of very lean and very bright-eyed men lay among the bales, their heads pillowed on little gay-coloured bundles. Some of them had thrust faded sprigs of mignonette or a bunch of roses behind their ears. Others bent earnestly over ancient weapons which they whetted with small pieces of pumice, first on one side then on the other, with many squintings and balancings, and as they worked they chewed dry leaves, camel-fashion. All bore themselves with the dignity of a thousand Mohammedan years. A few planks laid on cross-beams served the crew as a fore-and-aft gangway above them. The great lateen sail, full of holes and ridged with taut ropes at every cloth, made the wind trill and drum down the long hollow of it. The spliced and dancing yard, the forward-raking mast, the halyard running through its tremendous three-and four-sheave wooden blocks, the salted and sun-roughened decks and gunnels, the scrape of pumice stone on metal, each added its own note to the ship-music, which, heard through shut eyes, resembled a barbaric native band coming and going round distant street-corners. The under note of all was the rend and tear of the waves before the long grab-bow that lunged through them like a well-employed knife.

‘No guns, no slave, sar, this time. Mine all firsh-class passenger, sar,’ he cried proudly.