Part 8

The crowd ebbed and flowed irregularly to border the straight white roads, where at intervals the great tributary chiefs went backwards and forwards to pay their State visits, but Nânuk and his rat--the plaintiff and the defendant--waited persistently for their turn to pass on. It was long in coming; for even when the last flash and dash of barbaric splendour had disappeared, the roar of cannon began louder, nearer, regular to a second in its even beat.

"That is the _Lât_-salute" said one man to another in the crowd. "Let us wait and see the _Lât_, brother, ere we go."

Nânuk overheard the words, and looked along the road anxiously, then stood feeling more puzzled than ever; for there was nothing to see here but a plain closed carriage with a thin red and gold trail of the body-guard behind it and before. The sun was near to its setting, and sent a red angry flare upon a bank of clouds which had risen in the east, and the dust of many feet swept past in whirls before a rising wind.

"It will rain ere nightfall," declared the crowd, contentedly, as it melted away citywards. "And the crops will be good, praise to God."

Once more Nânuk overheard, and this time a glad recognition seemed to rouse him from a dream. Yes! the crops would be good. Down by the well, on the land he and his had ploughed for so many years, the wheat would be green--green as those emeralds above that sodden face.

"The _Lât_ has gone out," joked Constable Seventy-five as he went off duty; "but there are plenty of other things worth seeing to such an ignoramus as thou."

True; only by this time Nânuk was almost past seeing aught save that all things were unfamiliar in those miles and miles of regiments and rajahs, electric lights and newly macadamised roads, tents and make-believe gardens, all pivoted, as it were, round the Royal Standard of England, which was planted out in the centre of the Viceroy's camp. As he wandered aimlessly about the vast canvas city, hustled here, sent back there, the galloping orderlies, the shuffling elephants, the carriages full of English ladies, the subalterns cracking their tandem whips, and the native outriders had but one word for him.

"_Hut! Hut!_" (Stand back--stand back!)

A heavy drop of rain came as a welcome excuse to his dogged perseverance for sheltering awhile under a thorn bush. He was more tired than hungry, though he had not tasted food that day; and it needed a sharp nip from the defendant's teeth, as it sought for something eatable in the folds of his blanket, to remind him that others of God's creatures had a better appetite than he. But what was he to give? There was the five _seers_ of grain still, of course; but who was to apportion the shares; who was to say, "This much for the plaintiff, this much for the defendant, this much for the State?" The familiar idea seemed to give him support in the bewildering inrush of new impressions, and he held to it as a drowning man in a waste of unknown waters clutches at a straw.

Nevertheless, the parties to the suit must not be allowed to starve meanwhile, and if they took equal shares surely that would be just?

The rain now fell in torrents, and the _kikar_-bush scarcely gave him any shelter as, with a faint smile, he sat watching the brown rat at work upon the corn, and counting the number of grains the wanton teeth appropriated as their portion. For so much, and no more, would be his also. It was not a sumptuous repast, but uncooked maize requires mastication, and that took up time. So that it was dark ere he stood up, soaked through to the skin, and looked perplexedly at the long lines of twinkling lights which had sprung up around him. And hark! what was that? It was the dinner bugle at a mess close by, followed, as by an echo, by another and another and another--quite a chorus of cheerful invitations to dinner. But Nânuk knew nothing of such feasts as were spread there in the wilderness. He had lived all his life on wheat and lentils, though, being a Sikh, he would eat wild boar or deer if it could be got, or take a tot of country spirits on occasion to make life seem less dreary. He stood listening, shivering a little with the cold, and then went on his way, since the _Lât-sahib_ must be found, the case decided, before this numbing forgetfulness crept over everything.

Sometimes he inquired of those he met. More often he did not, but wandered on aimlessly through the maze of light, driven and hustled as he had been by day. And as he wandered the bands of the various camps were playing, say, the march in "Tannhäuser," or "Linger longer, Loo." But sooner or later they all paused to break suddenly into a stave or two of another tune, as the colonel gave "The Queen" to his officers.

Of all this, again, Nânuk knew nothing. Even at the best of times, he had been ignorant as a babe unborn of anything beyond his fields, and now he remembered nothing save that he and the brown rat were suitors in a case against _Puramêshwar_ and the State.

So the night passed. It was well on into the chilliest time before the dawn, when the slumber, which comes to all the world for that last dead hour of darkness having rid him of all barriers, he found himself beneath what had been the goal of his hopes ever since he had first seen its strange white rays piercing the night--the great ball of electric light which crowned the flagstaff whereon the Standard of England hung dank and heavy; for the wind had dropped, the rain had ceased, and a thick white mist clung close even to the round bole of the mast, which was set in the centre of a stand of chrysanthemums. The colours of the blossoms were faintly visible in the downward gleam of the light spreading in a small circle through the mist.

So far good. This was the "_Standard of Sovereignty_," no doubt--the "_Lamp of Safety_"--the guide by day and night to faithful subjects seeking justice before the king. This Nânuk understood; this he had heard of in those tales of Nausherwân and his like, told beneath the village _peepul_ tree.

Here, then, he would stay--he and the defendant--till the dawn brought a hearing. He sat down, his back to the flowers, his head buried in his knees. And as he sat, immovable, the mist gathered upon him as it had gathered in the field. But he was not thinking now what he should say to the _Lât-sahib_. He was past that.

He did not hear the jingle and clash of arms which, after a time, came through the fog, or the voice which said cheerfully--

"'Appy Noo Year, to you, mate!"

"Same to you, Tommy, and many of 'em; but it's rather you nor I, for it's chillin' to the vitals."

They were changing guards on this New Year's morning, and Private Smith, as he took his first turn under the long strip of canvas stretched as a sun-shelter between the two sentry-boxes, acknowledged the truth of his comrade's remark by beating his arms upon his breast like any cabman. Yet he was hot enough in his head, for he had been singing "Auld Lang Syne" and drinking rum for the greater part of the night, and, though sufficiently sober to pass muster on New Year's Eve, was drunk enough to be intensely patriotic. So, as he walked up and down, there was a little lilt in his step which attempted to keep time to the stave of "God Save our Gracious Queen," which he was whistling horribly out of tune. On the morrow--or, rather, to-day, since the dawn was at hand--there was to be the biggest review in which he had ever taken part; six and twenty thousand troops marching up to the Royal Standard and saluting! They had been practising it for weeks, and the thrill of it, the pride and power of it, had somehow got into Private Smith's head--with the rum. It made him take a turn beyond that strip of canvas, round the flagstaff he was supposed to guard.

"'Alt! 'oo goes there?"

The challenge rang loudly, rousing Nânuk from a dream which was scarcely less unreal than the past twelve hours of waking had been to his ignorance. He stumbled up stiffly--a head taller than the sentry--and essayed a salaam.

"'Ullo! What the devil are you doin' here? _Hut_, you nigger! Goramighty! wot's that?"

It was the defendant, which Nânuk had brought out to salaam also, and which, alarmed at the sudden introduction, began darting about wildly at the end of its string. Private Smith fell back a step, and then pulled himself together with a violent effort, uncertain if the rat were real; but the cold night air was against him.

"Wash'er-mean?--Wash'er doin'--'ere?--Wash'er-got?" he asked, conglomerately, and Nânuk, understanding nothing, went down on his knees the better to untie the knot in the corner of his blanket. "_Poggle_,"[26] commented Private Smith, recovering himself as he looked down at the heap of maize, the defendant, and the old man talking about _Puramêshvar_. Then, being in a benevolent mood, he wagged his head sympathetically. "Pore old Johnny! wot's 'e want, with 'is rat and 'is popcorn? Fine lookin' old chap, though--but we licked them Sickies, and, by gum! we'll lick 'em again, if need be!"

[Footnote 26: _Pagul_ = mad.]

The thought made him begin to whistle once more as he bent unsteadily to look at something which glittered faintly as the old man laid it on the top of the pile of corn.

It was his son's only medal.

"Hillo!" said Private Smith, bringing himself up with a lurch, "so that is it, eh, mate? Gor-save-a-Queen! Now wot's up, sonny? 'Orse guards been a-doing wot they didn't ought to 'ave done? Well, that ain't no noos, is it, comrade? But we'll drink the old lady's 'elth all the same. Lordy! if you've bin doin' extra dooty on the rag all night you won't mind a lick o' the lap--eh? Lor' bless you!--I don' want it. I've had as mush as me and Lee-Mitford can carry 'ome without takin' a day-tour by orderly room--Woy! you won't, won't yer? Come now, Johnny, don't be a fool--it's rum, I tell yer, and you Sickies ain't afraid o' rum. Wot! you won't drink 'er 'elth, you mutineering nigger? Then I'll make yer. Feel that--now then, ''Ere's a 'elth unto'w her Majesty.'"

Perhaps it was the unmistakable prick of a bayonet in his stomach, perhaps it was the equally unmistakable smell of the liquor arousing a craving for comfort in the old man, but he suddenly seized the flask which Private Smith had dragged from his pocket, and, throwing his head back, poured the contents down his throat; the action--due to his desire not to touch the bottle with his lips--giving him an almost ludicrous air of eagerness.

Private Smith burst into a roar of laughter.

"Gor-save-the-Queen!" And as he spoke the first gun of the hundred and one which are fired at daybreak on the anniversary of her Most Gracious Majesty's assumption of the title _Kaiser-i-Hind_ boomed out sullenly through the fog.

But Nânuk did not hear it. He had stumbled to his feet and fallen sidewise to the ground.

* * * * *

"I gather, then," remarked the surgeon-captain precisely, "that before gun-fire this morning you found the old man in a state of collapse below the flagstaff--is this so?"

Private Smith, sober to smartness and smart to stiffness, saluted; but there was an odd trepidation on his face. "Yes, sir--I done my best for 'im, sir. I put 'im in the box, sir, and give 'im my greatcoat, and I rub 'is 'ands and feet, sir. I done my level best for 'im, not being able, you see, sir, to go off guard. I couldn't do no more."

"You did very well, my man; but if you had happened to have some stimulant--any alcohol, for instance."

Private Smith's very smartness seemed to leave him in a sudden slackness of relief. "Which it were a tot of rum, sir, as I 'appened to 'ave in my greatcoat pocket. It done 'im no 'arm, sir, did it?"

The surgeon-captain smiled furtively. "It saved his life, probably; but you might have mentioned it before. How much did he take?"

"About 'arf a pint, sir--more nor less." Private Smith spoke under his breath with an attempt at regret; then he became loquacious. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but I was a bit on myself, and 'e just poured it down like as it was milk, and then 'e tumbled over and I thought 'e was dead, and it sobered me like. So I done my level best for 'im all through."

Perhaps he had; for old Nânuk Singh found a comfortable spot in which to spend his remaining days when the regimental doolie carried him that New Year's morning from the flagstaff to the hospital. He lay ill of rheumatic fever for weeks, and when he recovered it was to find himself and his rat quite an institution among the gaunt, listless convalescents waiting for strength in their long dressing-gowns. The story of how the old Sikh had drunk the Queen's health has assumed gigantic proportions under Private Smith's care, and something in the humour and the pathos of it tickled the fancy of his hearers, who, when the unfailing phrase, "An' so I done my level best for him, I did," came to close the recital, would turn to the old man and say:

"Pore old Johnny--an' Gord knows what 'e wanted with 'is rat and 'is popcorn!"

That was true, since Nâuuk Singh did not remember even the name of his own village; and, though he still talked about the plaintiff and the defendant, _Puramêshwar_ and the State, he was apparently content to await his chance of a hearing at another and greater durbar.

THE BLUE-THROATED GOD

We sat after lunch in the stern of the steam launch watching the bridge grow from the semblance of a caterpillar hung across the horizon between clusters of temples and _topes_, to that of some monstrous skeleton whose vaulting ribs rose high overhead into the pale sky.

Bannerman and I had come out from England together, and come up-country together; I to take up work at the bridge, he on a sporting tour, with letters of introduction to the chief engineer. We had been doing the sights of the native city, and now, in company with several officials of sorts, were on our way home to the reaches above. And as we surged through the yellow-brown flood we talked vaguely and airily of old gods and new, of Siva's religion of stern reality, and Krishna's pleasure-loving cult.

"You should read _Prem Sâgar_, sir," said Mr. Chuckerbutty, the native assistant-engineer, aside to Bannerman, who had given his vote for the latter; "it is of much merit, containing the loves of Krishna and other cognate matter."

"It's a mere question of temperament," went on Bannerman, unheeding the interruption. "Some people are born to one thing, some to another. I was born to enjoy myself--Hullo! what's that?"

That was a low note like a bird's, a flash in the sunlight beyond the huge pier along which we were edging our way up the current, and then a cloop like a cork.

"Sambo," said some one.

"His name is Rudra, sir," replied Mr. Chuckerbutty.

"Nilkunta,[27] _Huzoor_," suggested the captain of the launch. I looked from one to the other interrogatively.

[Footnote 27: Blue-throated; the name of the kingfisher.]

"The bridge-diver," said the first speaker, "sees after the foundations and that sort of thing--knows the bottom of the river as well as most of us know the top. A queer sort of animal--there he is to your right."

Out of the yellow-brown flood a grave yellow-brown face crowned by a curious brass pot not unlike a tiara, then two yellow-brown arms, reminding me unpleasantly of snakes, curved up in the overhead stroke as the swimmer slipped down to where a rope hung from one of the huge ribs. He swarmed up it like a monkey, to sit still as a carven image on the outermost buttress of the pier, his legs crossed under him, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on the swirling water below, so that the full eyelids drooping over them gave them an empty, sightless look.

"By George!" said Bannerman carelessly, "he reminds me of the big idol over at the temple. What's its name, Chuckerbutty? You're posted in such things; I'm not."

The assistant-engineer, mindful of the B.A. degree superadded to his ancestral beliefs, became evasive.

"Well, it doesn't matter. I mean the brute like a land crab with a superfluity of arms. The brute we were talking of just now who crowds life and all its joys into one eternal and infernal birth and death--the most uninteresting events of life to my mind."

Bannerman was right. That figure on the buttress could not fail to remind one of Siva, or Mahadeo,--the Creator and the Destroyer,--barring, of course, the arms. And as I looked, the two which the figure possessed rose slowly from its knees and hovered up in the oddest fashion above its head; then sank again as slowly, leaving one with the impression of any number of circumambient members.

"Does it when he dives," said a boy who was watching also; "must have thought he saw something in the stream. He brings up all sorts of things."

The notion was absorbing until Chuckerbutty's idiomatic English, in reply to a query of Bannerman's, roused me.

"Sambo is nickname; but indubitably verbal corruption of the Sanskrit _Sambhu_, lord or master. Rudra, real name, has equivalent synonymous meaning. The most ancient god mentioned in _Rig Veda_. Symbolised in eight attributes, sun, moon, water, earth, air, fire, ether, and soul of man. In other words, the visible and invisible universe--as Siva the Creator, the Preserver, the Destroyer."

Chuckerbutty puffed at his cigar in quite a European fashion.

"What rot!" murmured Bannerman under his breath.

"And as for Nilkunta," put in the boy, "that is simple. It means blue-throated, and Sambo is tattooed all round."

"Yet is that also name of Siva," interposed Chuckerbutty with importance. "As per _Mahabharata_--

'To soften human ills dread Siva drank The poisonous flood which stained his azure neck.'

"Nil-kunt is also sometimes applied to the bird kingfisher by Europeans; but this is erroneous. It belongs properly----"

I heard no more, my thoughts being with that odd figure again. It was certainly a most extraordinary resemblance.

"Well, if you really are going to fish for _mahseer_ at Hurdwar, Mr. Bannerman, you should take advantage of that man's knowledge," said the chief pompously. "He goes on leave next week--his home is somewhere in the hills--and he knows everything that is to be known about fishing."

Bannerman laughed. "Back myself against him any day, even on the Ganges. I expect I've as much general good luck--in everyway--as any one in this world."

He gave you that impression. In addition he was eminently handsome--if a trifle dark for a country where people fight shy of any admixture of blood. Extraordinarily graceful and supple too, doing everything with extraordinary grace and skill. Beyond that, rich. For the rest, cosmopolitan in mind and manners. As for morals, that does not enter into the equation of a pleasant chance acquaintance, and the only blemish I could lay finger on was an excess of jewellery. But that was a hobby of his. He was for ever waylaying the passers-by and wanting to make a deal for their ornaments, regardless of injured feelings. It was a mere question of money, like everything else, he asserted, and he generally succeeded in getting what he fancied. Apparently he fancied Sambo, or Rudra, or Nilkunta--whichever you choose to call him--for, a day or two afterwards, the man came to me clothed in the loose garments and aggressive turban usually worn by Mohammedans. He looked less startling, but the type of face was utterly new to me.

"I am a hunter, _Huzoor_," he said gravely; indeed I think his face was the gravest I ever saw. "I kill to live; I live to kill. That is all. I come from the mountains, and I know the river. Wherefore not, since it is my birthplace? None know it as I; others may claim it, but it is mine, and the fish also. It is all one to Nil-kunt the diver, _Huzoor_. _Eshspoon_ bait, feather fly, or poach-net. I kill to live; I live to kill. That is the old way, the best way; and if the _Huzoor_ comes with 'Buniah-man' sahib, he will catch big fish."

"And the sahib also, I hope?"

"The sahib thinks he knows, but he is a stranger to the river and the old ways. He must learn them."

A week after this, Bannerman and I were encamped on the south side of the gorge through which the sacred river debouches on the plains, with Sambo, who was on leave, as our boatman. And curiously out of place he looked in the English-built wherry which my host had insisted on bringing up by rail. He had never, he said, been able to stand the discomforts of a Noah's Ark, and he did not intend to begin self-denial, even though he was in the birthplace of the most ascetic cult the world had ever known; if indeed the worshippers of Siva had right on their side in claiming Hurdwar as _Hara-dwara_--the gate of Siva. For his part he inclined to the Vaishnâva view. _Hari-dwara_, gate of Vishnu, was just as likely a derivation. It was only the change of a letter; and yet that made all the difference between believing in pleasure or penance. He talked away in his reckless fashion about this as we fished fruitlessly, the first evening; fruitlessly, for I was crippled with a slight sprain of the wrist, and Bannerman caught nothing. And Sambo sat gravely sculling, with a perfectly immovable face, until Bannerman, who was changing his fly for the fiftieth time at least, leant forward suddenly and laid his hand on the other's wrist.

"That's a fine cat's-eye," he said, looking at a ring on the supple brown finger. "How much will you take for it?"

"I do not sell," replied Sambo, still without a quiver of expression. The water dropped from the upheld oar like molten gold. I could hear it fall in the silence, as those two sat looking at each other. But my eyes were on those hands clasped upon each other; they were extraordinarily alike in contour and not far apart in colour.

"Ten rupees! twenty! forty!" he went on. "What! you won't? Here! let me see it closer. I don't believe it is worth more--even to me--unless I'm mistaken. Hand it over, man!"

Bannerman turned the ring over curiously, and a sudden interest came to his face.

"It isn't worth five, but I've taken a fancy to it. Fifty! a hundred! a thousand!"

"I do not sell," repeated Sambo indifferently.

"Not sell! then you're a fool! Here, catch!"

He spun the ring like a coin high into the air. Perhaps he had meant it to fall into the boat, but it did not, and as I leant over in dismay I could see it sinking in shimmering circles through the sunlit water.

Sambo did not even seem surprised, but crossing the oars leisurely proceeded to strip.

"It does not matter," he said briefly. "_Mai_ Gunga[28] is kind to me, and I know my way to her bosom."

[Footnote 28: The Ganges.]

A minute or so afterwards he came up from the depths with the ring fast held in his teeth.

"The fish are lying between the shallow and the deep," he remarked, as if nothing had happened. "If the _Huzoor_ will believe me, he will catch them."