Part 2

“Have you seen them?”

“Yes, plenty.”

This is cheerful news, and I inquire: “Where?”

“In bedrooms.”

“When?”

“Sometimes daytime, sometimes night-time.”

An even pleasanter prospect,--but I am still full of unbelief.

“Have you seen them yourself?”

“Yes, I kill.”

“But when and how was it?”

“One time master not here, lady staying here; daytime I kill one long snake, here, this room--night-time lady call me, I kill one short snake in bedroom.”

“Which bedroom?”

“Master’s bedroom.”

That is not exactly reassuring, especially when you like to leave your doors and windows open, and sleep in the dark. I thank him, and he goes away, having entirely destroyed my peace of mind. The wicked old man! I wish I could have seen his face as he went out. Now I go delicately, both “daytime” and “night-time,” above all at night-time, and I am haunted by the dread of the “plenty long snake, plenty short snake.” In one’s bedroom too, it is a gruesome idea. If I had gone on questioning him, I dare say he would have told me he killed a “plenty long snake” inside the bed, trying to warm itself under the bed-clothes in this absurdly cold place. I always thought this a paradise, but without the snake. Alas! how easily one’s cherished beliefs are destroyed.

It is past midnight; the moon is full, and looking down, resplendent in all her majesty, bathes everything in a silver radiance. I love to go and stand in it; but the verandahs are full of ferns, roses and honeysuckle twine round the pillars, the shadows are as dark as the lights are bright, and everywhere there is excellent cover for the “long snake” and the “short snake.” Perhaps bed is the safest place after all, and to-morrow--well, to-morrow I can send for a mongoose.

IV

A CLEVER MONGOOSE

In my last letter I told you how the ancient who guards this Eden had complained of the prevalence of snakes, and I, with an experience which Adam does not appear to have possessed, determined to send for a mongoose to deal with the matter. Well, I saw nothing of the serpent, did not even dream about him, and forgot all about the mongoose. It is the thought of what I last wrote to you that reminds me of an excellent story, and a curious trick which I once witnessed, both having to do with the mongoose.

First the story. A boy of twenty got into a train one day, and found, already seated in the carriage, a man of middle age, who had beside him, on the floor, a closed basket. The train started, and by-and-by the boy, feeling dull, looked at his companion, and, to break the ice, said--

“Is that your basket, sir?”

To which the stranger, who did not at all relish the idea of being dragged into a conversation with a strange youth, replied, “Yes, it is,” slightly stammering as he said it.

A pause,--then the boy, “I beg your pardon, but is there some beast in it?”

The man, annoyed, “Ye--es, there’s a m--mongoose in it.”

The boy had no idea what a mongoose was, but he had the curiosity of youth and was unabashed, so he said, “May I ask what the mongoose is for?”

The man, decidedly irritated, and wishing to silence his companion, “G--got a f--friend that sees snakes, t--taking the m--mongoose to catch ’em.”

The boy concluded the stranger was mad, and wishing to pacify him, said--

“Yes, but the snakes are not really there, are they?”

The man, “No, n--neither is the m--mongoose.”

Now as to my experience. Some years ago I was in Calcutta, and, walking in the street one day, I was accosted by a man carrying a bag and leading a mongoose by a string. He said, “I Madras man, master want to see plenty trick, I very good conjurer,” and he produced a sheaf of more or less grimy credentials, in which it was stated, by a number of reputable people, that he was a conjurer of unusual skill. When I had looked at some of the papers, he said, “I come master’s house, do trick, this very clever mongoose, I bring him show master.”

I was quite willing, so I gave him my address and told him to come whenever he liked.

Some days later the conjurer was announced, and there happened to be in my rooms at the time a German dealer in Japanese curios, who had seen rather more than usual during a sixteen years’ residence in Japan and the Farthest East. He was an extremely amusing old person, and glad of the opportunity of seeing the conjurer, who was duly admitted to our presence with his bag of properties. The very clever mongoose came in last, at the end of his string.

The conjurer certainly justified his reputation, and performed some extremely clever tricks, while the mongoose sat by with a _blasé_ expression, taking very little interest in the proceedings. When the conjurer had come to the end of his programme, or thought he had done enough, he offered to sell the secret of any trick I liked to buy, and, taking him at his word, I was shown several tricks, the extreme simplicity of the deceit, when once you knew it, being rather aggravating.

In the interest of watching the performance and the subsequent explanations, I had forgotten the mongoose, and the conjurer was already pushing his paraphernalia into the sack, when I said, “But the mongoose, the clever mongoose, where is his trick?”

The conjurer sat down again, pulled the mongoose towards him, and tied the end of his string to a chair leg, giving the little beast plenty of rope on which to play. Then the man pushed round in front of him an earthenware _chatty_ or water-vessel, which had hitherto stood on the floor, a piece of dirty cloth being tied over its mouth. Next the conjurer thrust his hand into the sack, and pulled out one of the trumpet-mouthed pipes on which Indians play weird and discordant airs.

Now I want you to remember that this was my room, that the man’s stock-in-trade was contained in the sack which he had pushed on one side, that the pieces in the game were the mongoose, the _chatty_ (or what it contained), and the pipe, while the lynx-eyed curio-dealer and I sat as close as we pleased to see fair play. I am obliged to tell you that; of what happened I attempt no explanation, I only relate exactly what I saw.

The stage being arranged as I have described, the conjurer drew the _chatty_ towards him, and said, “Got here one very good snake, catch him in field this morning;” at the same time he untied the cloth, and with a jerk threw on the floor an exceedingly lively snake, about three feet long. From the look of it, I should say it was not venomous. The conjurer had thrown the snake close to the mongoose, who jumped out of its way with surprising agility, while the conjurer kept driving it towards the little beast. Neither snake nor mongoose seemed to relish the situation, and to force the game the conjurer seized the snake by the tail, and, swinging it thereby, tried, two or three times, to hit the mongoose with it. This seemed to rouse both beast and reptile, and the mongoose, making a lightning-like movement, seized the snake by the head, shook it for a second or two, dragging it over the matting, and then dropped it on the floor. The instant the snake showed fight the conjurer had let it go, and the mongoose did the rest.

Where the snake had been dragged, the floor was smeared with blood, and now the creature lay, giving a few spasmodic twitches of its body, and then was still. The conjurer pulled it towards him, held it up by the tail, and said laconically, “Snake dead.” The mongoose meanwhile sat quietly licking its paw as though nothing particular had happened.

As the man held it up I looked very carefully at the snake; one eye was bulging out, by reason of a bite just over it; the head and neck were covered with blood, and as far as my judgment went, the thing was dead as Herod. The conjurer dropped the snake on the floor, where it fell limply, as any dead thing would, then he put it on its back and coiled it up, head inwards, saying again, “You see, snake dead.”

He left the thing lying there, and searched in his sack till he found what appeared to be a very small piece of wood, it was, in fact, exactly like a wooden match. The sack, all this time, was at his side, but not close to him, while the snake was straight in front of him, under our noses. Breaking off a very small piece of the wood, he gave it to the mongoose, which began to eat it, apparently as a matter of duty. At the same time the conjurer took an even smaller bit of the same stuff, and opening the snake’s mouth, pushed the stick, or whatever it was, inside, and then shut the mouth again. This transaction would, I think, have convinced any one who saw it that there was no life in the snake.

The conjurer now took up his pipe, and made it squeal some high discordant notes. Then taking it from his lips, he said in Hindustani, as he touched the snake’s tail with the pipe, “Put out your tail,” and the creature’s tail moved slowly outwards, a little way from the rest of the coiled body. The conjurer skirled another stave on his pipe, and as he lowered the instrument with his left hand, he exclaimed, “Snake all right now,” and stretched out his right hand at the same instant, to seize the reptile by the tail. Either as he touched it, or just before, the snake with one movement was up, wriggling and twisting, apparently more alive than when first taken out of the _chatty_. While the conjurer thrust it back into the vessel there was plenty of time to remark that, miraculous as the resurrection appeared to be, the creature’s eye still protruded through the blood which oozed from the hole in its head.

As he tied the rag over the top of the _chatty_, the conjurer said, with a smile, “Very clever mongoose,” gathered up his sack, took the string of his clever assistant in his left hand, raised his right to his forehead, and with a low bow, and a respectful “Salâam, Sahib,” had left the room before I had quite grasped the situation.

I looked at the dealer in curios, and, as with Bill Nye, “he gazed upon me,” but in our few minutes’ conversation, before he left, he could throw no light on the mystery, and we agreed that our philosophy was distinctly at fault.

That evening I related what had taken place to half-a-dozen men, all of whom had lived in India for some years, and I asked if any of them had seen and could explain the phenomenon.

No one had seen it, some had heard of it, all plainly doubted my story. One suggested that a new snake had been substituted for that killed by the mongoose, and another thought that there was no real snake at all, only a wooden make-believe. That rather exasperated me, and I said I was well enough acquainted with snakes to be able to distinguish them from chair-legs. As the company was decidedly sceptical, and inclined to be facetious at my expense, I said I would send for the man again, and they could tell me how the thing was done when they had seen it.

I sent, and it so happened that the conjurer came on a Sunday, when I was sitting in the hall, on the ground-floor of the house where I was staying. The conjurer was already squatted on the white marble flags, with his sack and his _chatty_ (the mongoose’s string held under his foot), when my friends, the unbelievers, or some of them, returned from church, and joined me to watch the proceedings. I will not weary you by going through it all again. What took place then was an exact repetition of what occurred in my room, except that this time the man had a larger _chatty_, which contained several snakes, and when he had taken out one, and the mongoose had consented to lay hold of it, he worried the creature as a terrier does a rat, and, pulling his string away from under his master’s foot, he carried the snake into the corner of the room, whither the conjurer pursued him and deprived him of his prey. The result of the encounter was that the marble was smeared with streaks of blood that effectually disposed of the wooden-snake theory. That little incident was certainly not planned by the conjurer; but when the victim had been duly coiled on the floor and the bit of stick placed (like the coin with which to fee Charon) within its mouth, then, to my surprise, the conjurer re-opened the _chatty_, took out _another_ snake, which in its turn was apparently killed by the mongoose, and this one was coiled up and laid on the floor beside the first victim. Then, whilst the first corpse was duly resuscitated, according to the approved methods I have already described, the second lay on the floor, without a sign of life, and it was only when No. 1 had been “resurrectioned,” and put back in the vessel, that the conjurer took up the case of No. 2, and, with him, repeated the miracle.

This time I was so entertained by the manifest and expressed astonishment of the whilom scoffers, that again the conjurer had gone before I had an opportunity of buying this secret, if indeed he would have sold it. I never saw the man again.

There is the story, and, even as it stands, I think you will admit that the explanation is not exactly apparent on the surface. I can assure you, however, that wherever the deception (and I diligently, but unsuccessfully, sought to find it), the performance was the most remarkable I have ever witnessed in any country. To see a creature, full of life,--and a snake, at close quarters, is apt to impress you with its vitality,--to see it killed, just under your eyes, to watch its last convulsive struggles, to feel it in your hands, and gaze at it as it lies, limp and dead, for a space of minutes; then heigh, presto! and the thing is wriggling about as lively as ever. It is a very curious trick--if trick it is.

That, however, is not quite all.

A month or two later I was sitting in the verandah of an hotel in Agra. A number of American globe-trotters occupied most of the other chairs, or stood about the porch, where I noticed there was a little knot of people gathered together. I was idly staring into the street when the words, “Very clever little mongoose,” suddenly attracted my attention, and I realised that two Indian conjurers were amusing the party in the porch. I went at once to the spot, and found the mongoose-snake trick was just beginning. I watched it with great attention, and I noticed that the mongoose only seemed to give the snake one single nip, and there was very little blood drawn. The business proceeded merrily, and in all respects in accordance with what I had already seen, until, at the conclusion of the sort of Salvation-Army resurrection-march, the juggler declared that the snake was quite alive and well--but he was not, he was dead, dead as Bahram the Great Hunter. No piping or tickling or pulling of his tail could awaken the very faintest response from that limp carcass, and the conjurers shuffled their things together with downcast faces, and departed in what the spectators called “a frost.” To them, no doubt, the game was absolutely meaningless; to me it seemed that the mongoose had “exceeded his instructions.”

V

A BLUE DAY

“There is a green hill,” you know it well; it is not very “far away,” perhaps a little over a mile, but then that mile is not quite like other miles. For one thing it takes you up 500 feet, and as that is the last pull to reach the highest point of this range (the summit of a mountain over 5000 feet in height), the climb is steep. Indeed, one begins by going down some rough stone steps, between two immense granite boulders; then you make a half-circuit of the hill by a path cut on the level, and thence descend for at least 250 feet, till you are on the narrow saddle which joins this peak to the rest of the range. Really, therefore, in a distance of little over half a mile there is an ascent of 750 feet.

And what a path it is that brings you here! For I am now on the summit, though several times on the way I was sorely tempted to sit down and put on paper the picture of that road as it lay before my eyes. It is a narrow jungle track, originally made by the rhinoceros, the bison, and the elephant, and now simply kept clear of falling trees. It is exceeding steep, as I have said, and you may remember. It begins by following the stony bed of a mountain stream, dry in fine weather, but full of water after half-an-hour’s tropical rain. Where the path is not covered by roots or stones, it is of a chocolate colour; but, in the main, it is overspread by a network of gnarled and knotted tree-roots, which, in the lapse of ages, have become so interlaced that they hide the soil. These roots, the stones round which they are often twined, and the banks on either side, are covered by mosses in infinite variety, so that when you look upwards the path stands like a moss-grown cleft in the wood.

The forest through which this track leads is a mass of dwarfed trees, of palms, shrubs, and creepers. Every tree, without exception, is clothed with moss, wherever there is room to cling on branch or stem, while often there are great fat tufts of it growing in and round the forks, or at any other place with convenient holding. The trees are moss-grown, but that is only where the innumerable creepers, ferns, and orchids leave any space to cover. The way in which these things climb up, embrace, and hang to every tree or stick that will give them a footing is simply marvellous. Even the great granite boulders are hidden by this wealth of irresistible vegetation. Through the green foliage blaze vivid patches of scarlet, marking the dazzling blossoms of a rhododendron that may be seen in all directions, but usually perched high on some convenient tree. Then there is the wonderful magnolia with its creamy petals; the jungle apple-blossom, whose white flowers are now turning to crimson berries; the forest lilac, graceful in form, and a warm heliotrope in colour. These first catch the eye, but, by-and-by, one realises that there are orchids everywhere, and that, if the blossoms are not great in size or wonderful in colour, they are still charming in form, and painted in delicate soft tones of lilac and brown, orange and lemon, while one, with strings of large, pale, apple-green blossoms, is as lovely as it is _bizarre_.

As for palms, the forest is full of them, in every size, colour, and shape; and wherever the sunlight can break through the foliage will be found the graceful fronds of the giant tree-fern. Lastly, the ground is carpeted with an extravagant luxuriance of ferns and flowers and “creeping things innumerable, both small and great.” The wasteful abundance of it all is what first strikes one, and then you begin to see the beauty of the details. Masses of _lycopodium_, ringing all the changes through wonderful metallic-blue to dark and light green, and then to russet brown; there are Malay primroses, yellow and blue, and a most delightful little pale-violet trumpet, with crinkled lip, gazing towards the light from the highest point of its delicate stem. On either side of this path one sees a dozen jungle flowers in different shades of blue or lilac; it seems to be the prevailing colour for the small flowers, as scarlet and yellow are for the great masses of more striking blossom. And then there are birds--oh yes, there are birds, but they are strange, like their surroundings. At the foot of this hill I came suddenly on a great black-and-white hornbill, which, seeing me, slowly got up and flew away with the noise of a train passing at a distance. High up the path was a collection of small birds, flitting and twittering amongst the leaves. There were hardly two of the same plumage, but most of them carried their tails spread out like fans, and many had pronounced tufts of feathers on their heads. The birds at this height are usually silent, and, when they make any sound at all, they do not seem to sing but to call; and from the jungle all round, far and near, loud and faint, will be heard similar answering calls. I was surprised to hear, suddenly, some bars of song, close by me, and I waited for a long time, peering earnestly into the tree from which the sound came; but I saw nothing and heard nothing beyond the perpetual double note (short and long, with the accent on the latter) of a bird that must be the bore and outcast of the forest.

Coming out into the clearing which crowns the hill, I passed several kinds of graceful grasses, ten or twelve feet high, and the flight of steps which leads to the actual summit is cut through a mass of bracken, over and through which hang the strange, delicately painted cups of the _nepenthes_, the stems of the bracken rising from a bed made rosy by the countless blossoms of a three-pointed pale-pink starwort.

In the jungle one could only see the things within reach, but, once on the peak, one has only eyes for the grandeur and magnificence of an unequalled spectacle.

The view seems limitless, it is complete in every direction, unbarred by any obstruction, natural or artificial. First I look eastwards to those great ranges of unexplored mountains, rising tier after tier, their outlines clear as cut cameos against the grey-blue sky. Betwixt them and my point of sight flows a great river, and though it is ten or twelve miles distant as the crow flies, I can see that it is brown with flood-water, and, in some places, overflowing its banks. Nearer lie the green rice-fields and orchards, and, nearer still, the spurs of the great range on whose highest point I stand.

Then northward, that is the view that is usually shut out from me. It is only hill and dale, river and plain, but it is grand by reason of its extent, beautiful in colour and form, intensely attractive in the vastness of those miles of mysterious jungle, untrodden, save by the feet of wild beasts; endless successions of mountain and valley, peak and spur, immovable and eternal. You know there are grey days and golden days; as there are crimson and heliotrope evenings, white, and, alas! also black nights--well, this is a blue day. There is sunlight, but it is not in your eyes, it only gives light without shedding its own colour on the landscape. The atmosphere seems to be blue; the sky is blue, except on the horizon, where it pales into a clear grey. Blue forest-clad hills rise, in the middle distance, from an azure plain, and the distant mountains are sapphire, deep sapphire. The effect is strange and uncommon, but supremely beautiful.

Westward, a deep valley runs down from this range into the flat, forest-covered plains, till, nearing the coast, great patches of light mark fields of sugar-canes and thousands upon thousands of acres of rice. Then the sea, the sea dotted by distant islands, the nearest thirty miles away, the farthest perhaps fifty. The morning heat is drawing a veil of haze across the distance; on a clear evening a great island, eighty miles away to the northward, is clearly visible.

I turn to the south, and straight before me rises the grand blue peak of a mountain, 6000 feet high, and not more than six miles away. It is the highest point of a gigantic mass of hill that seems to fill the great space between the flooded river and the bright calm sea. Looking across the eastern shoulder of the mountain, the eye wanders over a wide plain, lost far away to the south in cloud-wrapt distance. Beyond the western slopes lies the calm mirror of a summer sea, whereon many islands seem to float. The coast-line is broken, picturesque and beautiful, by reason of its many indentations and the line of bold hills which, rising sheer out of the water, seem to guard the shore.

Due west I see across the deep valley into my friend’s house, where it crowns the ridge, and then beyond to that vast plain which, in its miles and miles of forest-covered flatness, broken by great river-mouths, long vistas of deep lagoons, and a group of shining pools scattered over its surface, forms one of the strangest features in this matchless panorama of mountain, river and plain, sea, sky, and ever-changing cloud-effects.