Part 9

If leopards dealt in art, that would be a scene for a picture; and fain would I have sent the men's photos to an R.A. of my acquaintance; but to ask them for that purpose would have been as hopeless as to ask leave to give their names. So any inspired artist who pictures this scene must paint the officers' faces from his fancy. All that I am permitted to certify is the truth of the adventure.

Bravo, Mr Spots!!!

XXIV

A DUMB APPEAL PUT INTO WORDS

The Griffin at Temple Bar, a lump of metal like a medieval nightmare, is one of multitudinous monstrosities such as Burns described:

"Forms like some Bedlam Statuary's dream, The crazed creation of misguided whim; Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee, And still the second dread command be free; Their likeness is not found on earth, in air or sea!"

The significance of the Griffin, however, goes deeper than the conventionality, which alone the artists deride; for it is only half an explanation to cry "conventional." What made it "conventional?" Why did men convene to admire such an object?

One has to grope among the beginnings of history to be able to guess; and for that purpose, one has to stoop to the mental level of wild backwoodsmen, not men of civilised breeds who have reverted, like the mustangs of South America, but real, wild backwoodsmen, none of whose ancestors have ever been anything else, since time began.

On trying the thing, I found it as easy to think with them as ever it was to keep down to the level of civilised men, carousing after dinner, when

"The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines To seem but mortal, e'en in sound divines."

Of course it is a commonplace to connect the Griffin with the winged lion of Babylon and other misshapen beasts. But Babylon was as much sophisticated as London is to-day, and as far removed from primitive conditions.

It is among the wild backwoodsmen, if anywhere, that one can reach back to the real antiquity; and if you listen to them at home, especially when they have forgotten you or suppose you asleep, you gradually realise what a great place is filled in their minds by beasts of prey, and in particular by the little-seen-but-much-felt feline foes. Many a man and woman among the jungle folk has never beheld them at all, but few have escaped their depredations. They combine the terrors of force and cunning, and abide a bugbear to humanity, from infancy to age.

Perhaps this may be best illustrated by one of the most famous incidents in the life of Confucius, dated by the _Family Sayings_ at B.C. 516, about the time when Darius was sacking Babylon. Here is the paragraph in the old Chinese history (translated by Legge, _Li Ki_, II. II. 3, 10.)

"As he was passing by the side of the Ta'e mountain, there was a woman weeping and wailing by a grave. Confucius bent forward in his carriage, and after listening to her for some time, sent Tsze-Loo to ask the cause of her grief.

"'You weep, as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow,' said Tsze-Loo.

"The woman replied, 'It is so. My husband's father was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also; and now my son has met the same fate.'

"Confucius asked her why she did not remove from the place, and on her answering, 'There is here no oppressive government,' he turned to his disciples, and said, 'My children, remember this, oppressive government is fiercer than a tiger.'"

It takes an effort for a modern man to feel the force of the words of the sage. The tiger means so little to us, and meant so much to the weeping woman and her neighbours. Still harder is it for us to realise the primitive ignorance of the exact shape of the enemy. Even to the few backwoodsmen who have seen one dead, it soon becomes a vague recollection. The infinite terror of the beasts and the ignorance of their forms are not the less indubitable facts, because they are so far beyond our ordinary comprehension; and these are the facts that perhaps explain, so far as we can explain, the grotesque shape of the Griffin. We must remember that our Zoos are a modern invention, almost like firearms; for two or three millenniums do not make antiquity in a world so old as ours. In the days when Griffins first took shape, whatever was the most hideous object would seem to be the best likeness of the horrid reality.

But the Zoos should let us know better now; and our writers and speakers should teach us better than to hate the beasts of prey. It is quite unnecessary. There is something coldly impartial in their war with us. They do not hate us, any more than the rocks do, or the icebergs. Red, "red in tooth and in claw," they remain unconscious instruments of Fate, and serve to stiffen us. If they kill us, it is in self-defence or for food. There is no wanton cruelty; but there is no mercy. There are surprises, but no treachery. Even the French do not feel themselves betrayed, when it is the wolves that win. There is no sentimental humbug about this war; but also, no excuse for ferocity.

I never visit a Zoo and see the poor prisoners behind the bars without hearing, with the mind's ears, a greeting, an appeal for pity, as if the poor big cats were really saying what they can only symbol in silence.

"Look at and pity us! You will not have such cats to look at long. Lions and tigers, leopards and jaguars, the species now all perishing salute ye, O men!

"We are neither grotesque nor hideous, neither wicked nor cowardly, neither cruel nor treacherous. We are merely cats. We had to live in the only way for which we were adapted.

"The war between you and us is nearly over now. It has lasted long, but the end is at hand. The world is lost to us big cats, and we are passing away, on the wings of the wind....

"Woe, woe to the conquered!!!...

"Ye may lay aside your fears! Do lay aside your fears, for fear is cruel. Ye have no need to fear us any more. We are your prisoners of war, and spared to make a human holiday....

"We killed or left alone, and cannot guess why ye do otherwise; but we cannot understand ye at all....

"We look around into daylight that is dimmer than darkness, and see not why we are here. We submit, because we must; and we are dying, dying, dying! All your devices but prolong our deaths! For life needs liberty. There is no life in prison for cats, or for men....

"The species all about to die salute ye!

"Have pity on us, O men!!!"

XXV

THE FOX IN THE SUEZ CANAL

One afternoon, about the end of the nineteenth century, a steamer was passing southwards through the Suez Canal, and as I sat in the shade on its deck and looked eastwards over the desert, I saw a little animal with a bushy tail running along the ridge at the canal side, keeping level with the steamer. A slight occasional glance in our direction showed that he knew we were there. At first, he appeared to be a jackal; but, when glasses were turned upon him, we agreed that he was more like the fox indigenous in the deserts and the lands adjacent, the "fennec" as it is called, the "little fox" of Scripture that is said to spoil the vines in one passage. It is a true fox; but smaller in the body and bigger in the eyes and in the ears than other foxes, and more easily tamed. By destroying vermin, he perhaps balances his account with humanity, and is no more considered an enemy than the swallow. He is said to eke out his want of strength by diligence, and often escape his enemies by digging himself into safety. Needless to say, unlike many other foxes, this one digs his own hole, and is never without one, so that it must have been of him that Jesus was thinking, when He said: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head" (Matt. viii. 20).

A lady, who was watching him with delight, was afterwards sorry that she pointed him out to various idle men. She intended only to give them pleasure; and did not in time bethink her, in what their pleasure lay. Complacent cries of sham excitement were soon followed by--"ping"--a shot from the bridge; and the bright little fox ceased, suddenly, to run abreast of us, fell suddenly lame, and crawled aside.

"Well shot!" cried several raucous voices....

Some Arabs, working near, looked up to see what was being fired at, and leaned on their tools, and spoke to each other, looking, from time to time, at the steamer and in the direction of the fox. In 1886, living at Suez some days, I had had various talks with such men, seeking to sound their sentiments on things in general; and on this occasion, I felt that I knew, as well as if I had heard it, that they were saying to each other--"What bloody brutes!"

What seemed to confirm this guess, was that I did overhear our Indian deck-scrapers making remarks....

Three or four days later, a fellow-passenger was still gloating over the glorious achievement. We were near the south of the Red Sea by this time. Thinking to make him sorry for the wounded beast, I said--"The fox is likely to be dead of starvation and thirst by now."

"Ha, yes," said he, "it isn't likely to live much longer after a Martini bullet has perforated its thigh, ha, ha, ha!"

"People don't shoot foxes in England."

"They kill them in another way. They're just as cruel.... Of course, one would rather have galloped after him; but what can you do from a ship's deck?"

"Not gallop, certainly." I tried another tack. "It is thought wrong, in the Highlands, I have heard, to shoot at the deer, unless you are likely to kill."

"No?" He seemed surprised; but after a pause, he could explain the mystery. "It would spoil the venison," said he.

"Do you think the man who shot the fox in the thigh has nothing to be sorry for?"

"He could not be sure of the head. I think that, on the whole, he did very well. He was in a moving ship, and it was running."

"Are you not sorry for the fox?"

"Not at all."

I was tempted to say I was sorry for him; and could have said so, sincerely. But, after all, he was young, and a human being, though mentally and morally less developed than the Indian seamen or the Arab labourers. I was loath to hurt his feelings. He deserved as much consideration as--the fox. So we changed the subject.

XXVI

SOLIDARITY AMONG THE BRUTES

1. ELEPHANTS

Our Indian newspapers recently (1909) reproduced reports of a public meeting in London, which had been made remarkable by the presence of the veteran Mr Selous, who had assured inquirers that the elephants do really assist each other in distress. He doubtless gave details of many modern instances; but the newspapers omitted them. So here is one.

Towards the end of 1897, some herds of wild elephants spread far and wide over the harvest fields in Toungoo district, Burma. They had used to do that, not every year, but at intervals, for generations; but this visitation was unusually severe. The area cultivated was greater than ever before, and the villagers had been disarmed. On former occasions the elephants had gone away as soon as the men began to shoot, or even to make a noise like shots, by putting bamboos into fires which they hastily kindled on the edges of the fields; but, on this occasion, the elephants merely paused a little to trumpet to each other, "I'm not hurt," "Nor I," "Nor I." Then they resumed grazing at random, heeding the noises of humanity, the shouting and the rattling of tins and sticks and the bamboo-crackers, no more than the cawing of the crows.

The news seemed to spread in the elephant world that men had ceased to shoot; for as the herd that came first went farther from the hills, seeking pastures new, the farmers who had begun to breathe freely were horrified to see new herds appear. On the morning that the first news came to me, it was followed in a few hours by reports of fresh havoc, like those that rained upon Job. "We'll need an extra officer to measure up the damage for revenue exemptions on that account," was the prudent reminder of a responsible subordinate, expert in reeling off official rigmaroles; but I took an original plan, of which nothing was said, or ever would have been, if that newspaper report had not recalled to mind an incident too good to leave in oblivion. I took the first train to a station that seemed to be the centre of the elephants' operations; and in less than two hours a general engagement was in progress. A long line of men, including military and other policemen and carrying all the firearms of any kind available, advanced as fast as they could towards the elephants, whose demeanour and behaviour could not have been surpassed.

Whenever they discovered that the shots were now followed by bullets, they all ceased grazing, far and near, as far as the eye could reach over a spacious, level plain. They gathered into herds, and, as soon as possible, every herd, with cows and calves on the safe side and fighting males next the enemy to secure the rear, was moving towards the western hills, far quicker than a man could walk. Many of them were wounded, but none were left behind. I had not myself the luck to see, but heard from many others who saw it at the time, a sight that well might be immortalised. A big, wounded tusker had raised the men's hopes. They knew the value of ivory, and hastened to isolate him; but two other big elephants, of which one at least was seen to be a female, ran to him and supported him, one at each side. They held him up as he limped along and joined the herd in safety, and all went off together. The men were left lamenting, and admiring too.

Upon the hills, among primeval woods, the elephants that roam, intent on provender, oblivious of war, resemble the Yankees among the great powers of the world. Their superabundance of material brings water to the teeth of potentates of prey; but the herds of elephants are too terrible to tackle. They graze in peace in the cool glens, and have been known, in thirsty weather, to drink alongside a tiger. Such a thing, at least, has been reported as seen, and often inferred from tracks. Think of what must have been in the heart of the tiger, as he lapped the cool water, with an empty stomach, and eyed the elephants' calves. But "whatsoe'er he thought, he acted right," and departed without hostilities, undoubtedly protesting, in the language of the woods, his love of peace--which was no doubt sincere, under the circumstances.

2. THE BABOONS AND THE LEOPARD

It is not ill deeds alone that are done because the means to do them are in sight. The same is true of good deeds also. The elephants can help each other better than most quadrupeds, because they have trunks; and so can the monkeys, because they have hands. Herein lay the primitive germ of society. Indeed there is profit in remembering this, for it follows that selfish greed, which is the root of gambling and theft of every kind, is a reversion in the scale of being, not merely to the monkey level, but far below it, to the level of the cats and fishes.

Be the explanation what it may, the mutual helpfulness of monkeys is well ascertained. They could hardly survive in the woods on other terms. A male baboon in Egypt has been seen to turn and face some dogs, and protect and deliver a young baboon in danger of succumbing to them. Here the remarkable thing is that it was the male that did it. Many females would fight for their young. Maternal love is the taproot of life; but the root of society is family solidarity. That the poor "dog-faced" baboon of old Egypt, unaltered for 6000 years, is able to rise so high in the social scale as this, is perhaps what is best worth knowing about him.

The leopard is the great enemy of monkeys of all kinds. This may be said to be true "all the world over," if the American jaguar is called a kind of leopard, as it sometimes is. So it is with special pleasure that one reads of an incident seen in Africa not long ago by Sir J. Percy Fitzpatrick. It occurs in the standard biography of his dog, _Jock of the Bushveld_, pp. 270, 271, 272, and it happened to a leopard that narrowly missed dining upon the hero, "Jock," and so cutting short his distinguished career. Jock's master, apparently, was a-hunting, and saw the leopard pinning a baboon with its left paw in the bottom of a stony glen; but before it could do more, a host of angry baboons descended the rocks towards it, with an uproar that even to a Fitzpatrick seemed deafening; and upon the leopard, which had one paw occupied, they "showered loose earth, stones, and debris of all sorts down with awkward underhand scrapes of their forepaws" (meaning their hands). Nearer and nearer they came, while the leopard vainly threatened them with its free forepaw. Louder and louder grew the uproar. The baboons, like old Cato and the Chinese, believed in shouting and grimacing to frighten the foe; and here they practised that. Neither Cato nor any Chinese warrior could surpass a monkey in twisting the features. The artist who tried to represent their contortions in Sir Percy's book has done his best, but could not succeed. It is "like painting fire," as Carlyle once said.

The leopard became alarmed. It is an Indian proverb that the tigers do not count the sheep; but the baboon is not so negligible. The corpses of a chimpanzee and a lion, it has been reported (but not by Sir Percy), have been found interlocked, the chimpanzee having been disembowelled, and the lion throttled. The leopard could not know that. I confess I have doubts of the truth of the history myself. But the leopard had misgivings as the noisy crowd came nearer and nearer, and let his victim go. Sir Percy watched the triumphant baboons depart. "The crowd scrambled up the slope again," he reports, and he tells us he believed, and so may we, what "all the Kafirs maintained, that they could see the mauled one dragged along by its arms by two others, much as a child might be helped uphill...."

It is a likely guess that the fighting baboons were the adult males of the tribe. This is a guess suggested by another interesting bit of history.

3. THE INDIAN BABOONS AND THE BEAR

Dr Murphy, now civil surgeon at Maubin, in the delta of Burma, where this is written, is a unique phenomenon. That is a clumsy phrase to apply to any fellow-creature, but accurate. He is a perfectly popular European official--popular in spite of being an official, because he is a good doctor, spontaneously sympathetic, kind and helpful, and does not bully or grab.

Two little facts may be told on the authority of the present Deputy Commissioner of Maubin district and his predecessor, to give Dr Murphy the pleasure of seeing himself as others see him, and to give strangers a glimpse of him. In 1908, when he was about to go away on sorely-needed sick leave, the good people of Maubin town, who did not realise how ill he was, got up a petition to the effect that Dr Murphy's leave should be refused, as Maubin town could not possibly dispense with him. When he was expected to return in 1909, the Deputy Commissioner hastened to Rangoon to solicit that Dr Murphy might be posted again to Maubin. That was how he came to be in Maubin this year (1909), when he told me three pretty anecdotes, which, knowing him well, I retell now with as much confidence as if I had seen and heard with my own eyes and ears everything he told me he saw and heard.

In 1883 he and his brother were schoolboys at Mussoorie in the Himalayas; and were in the habit of frequenting a glen where lived a tribe of Indian baboons, "langurs" the people name them. These are "black-faced, white-whiskered, long-tailed, big, grey monkeys, not by any means as tall as a man, but as thick in the arm." They are a different species from the African baboons, but quite as clannish. They live on terms of neutrality with mankind, as the various tribes of men may be said to live with each other; that is to say, open hostilities are strictly avoided on both sides, and stealing is restricted to what can be done in secret. In this instance, as the stealing is all on one side, it might be said they levied tribute upon men, but they do not attack people. School children at Simla have told this writer that the "wild" baboons often sit and watch them, they and the children eyeing each other with equal curiosity.

Of course, they are not Quakers, nor even Hindus. If people flung stones at them, they would fling stones in return. The little brown fisher monkey of Burma, too, will do that. But "in deference to Hindu prejudices," the English leave them alone, so that they have probably never noticed the English. They pay no taxes, these white-whiskered gentlemen; and reciprocate human forbearance. "Live and let live," is their rule with men, and so, in general, schoolboys hardly notice them.

Great therefore was the surprise of the two little Irishmen one day to notice the baboons in a state of excitement, jabbering loudly, and plainly preparing for battle. Their women and children were all huddled in one place, and the big males gathered in another, moving in a body. The boys, as if by instinct, followed the crowd of males "to see the fun," whatever it might be, just as in the Highlands of Scotland, when they were inhabited, the boys used to follow the men at funerals and weddings "to see the fights."

Their curiosity was richly rewarded. The baboons began to bait a solitary, angry bear. The boys were dangerously close to the bear before they saw him; but he did not heed them, which was lucky. A bear, encountered at random, is often "worse than a tiger," it is said; because the tiger can always get out of the way when he wants, but the bear is so slow that he despairs of escaping, and turns and rends the man who has met him. In this case, luckily for the two little Murphys, the bear was preoccupied. The baboons swarmed noisily in the trees around and above him. The elder of the two boys, who alone saw much, said that he saw them incessantly, one hard upon another, come close enough to slap the bear violently with the open palm of the hand on back or belly, on head or side, on whatever point seemed safest of access--Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Their objurgations were like the sound of a cataract. The bear was distracted, snapping and striking here and there, but always missing. The baboons relied on their agility to escape his teeth and paws, with complete success, so far as the boys saw; but the boys did not linger. They had not the feeling of security that the baboons had; and, thankful to have escaped notice, "Run, run," cried the elder, and they ran to a safe distance. There they stood and listened; and when the thunder of the battle and the shouting indicated the bear's retreat, the boys consulted the hillmen, and were told that these battles, which were familiar to the hillmen, always ended in that way.

The glen of the baboons was open to the south and east, sheltered and sunny, and convenient for the fields and gardens, in which the baboons could seek for change of diet. The adjoining glen of the bears had a wetter aspect. True, with all its wetness, it had many oaks whose acorns were dear to the hearts of the bears, and they meant to keep it; but why not have the other glen also? They esteemed the baboons no more than the Belgians esteem the negroes. So, from time to time, an Imperialist bear invaded the land of the baboons; but the hillmen said that they did not think the same bear ever came twice. The reason was that the bear, invading, always came alone. He was too inveterate an individualist to form a Chartered Company. He did not even hunt in couples. So the invader, irresistible as he seemed, was always repulsed by the solid regiment of baboons.

Thus it is that men and baboons are taught the need of solidarity. As Benjamin Franklin quietly and sublimely remarked on 4th July 1776--"We must all hang together, else we shall all hang separately."

4. SIMLA MONKEYS