The elder thief and the younger thief had one son each. As they had
been so far successful in life by practising the art of thieving, they
resolved to train up their sons to the same profession. There was in
the village a Professor of the Science of Roguery, who took pupils,
and gave them lessons in that difficult science. The two thieves
put their sons under this renowned Professor. The son of the elder
thief distinguished himself very much, and bade fair to surpass his
father in the art of stealing. The lad's cleverness was tested in the
following manner. Not far from the Professor's house there lived a
poor man in a hut, upon the thatch of which climbed a creeper of the
gourd kind. In the middle of the thatch, which was also its topmost
part, there was a splendid gourd, which the man and his wife watched
day and night. They certainly slept at night, but then the thatch was
so old and rickety that if even a mouse went up to it bits of straw
and particles of earth used to fall inside the hut, and the man and
his wife slept right below the spot where the gourd was; so that it
was next to impossible to steal the gourd without the knowledge of
its owners. The Professor said to his pupils--for he had many--that
any one who stole the gourd without being caught would be pronounced
the dux of the school. Our elder thief's son at once accepted the
offer. He said he would steal away the gourd if he were allowed the use
of three things, namely, a string, a cat, and a knife. The Professor
allowed him the use of these three things. Two or three hours after
nightfall, the lad, furnished with the three things mentioned above,
sat behind the thatch under the eaves, listening to the conversation
carried on by the man and his wife lying in bed inside the hut. In
a short time the conversation ceased. The lad then concluded that
they must both have fallen asleep. He waited half an hour longer,
and hearing no sound inside, gently climbed up on the thatch. Chips of
straw and particles of earth fell upon the couple sleeping inside. The
woman woke up, and rousing her husband said, "Look there, some one is
stealing the gourd!" That moment the lad squeezed the throat of the
cat, and puss immediately gave out her usual "Mew! mew! mew!" The
husband said, "Don't you hear the cat mewing? There is no thief;
it is only a cat." The lad in the meantime cut the gourd from the
plant with his knife, and tied the string which he had with him to
its stalk. But how was he to get down without being discovered and
caught, especially as the man and the woman were now awake? The woman
was not convinced that it was only a cat; the shaking of the thatch,
and the constant falling of bits of straw and particles of dust, made
her think that it was a human being that was upon the thatch. She was
telling her husband to go out and see whether a man was not there;
but he maintained that it was only a cat. While the man and woman
were thus disputing with each other, the lad with great force threw
down the cat upon the ground, on which the poor animal purred most
vociferously; and the man said aloud to his wife, "There it is; you
are now convinced that it was only a cat." In the meantime, during
the confusion created by the clamour of the cat and the loud talk
of the man, the lad quietly came down from the thatch with the gourd
tied to the string. Next morning the lad produced the gourd before his
teacher, and described to him and to his admiring comrades the manner
in which he had committed the theft. The Professor was in ecstasy,
and remarked, "The worthy son of a worthy father." But the elder
thief, the father of our hopeful genius, was by no means satisfied
that his son was as yet fit to enter the world. He wanted to prove
him still further. Addressing his son he said, "My son, if you can
do what I tell you, I'll think you fit to enter the world. If you
can steal the gold chain of the queen of this country from her neck,
and bring it to me, I'll think you fit to enter the world." The gifted
son readily agreed to do the daring deed.
The young thief--for so we shall now call the son of the elder
thief--made a reconnaissance of the palace in which the king and queen
lived. He reconnoitred all the four gates, and all the outer and inner
walls as far as he could; and gathered incidentally a good deal of
information, from people living in the neighbourhood, regarding the
habits of the king and queen, in what part of the palace they slept,
what guards there were near the bedchamber, and who, if any, slept
in the antechamber. Armed with all this knowledge the young thief
fixed upon one dark night for doing the daring deed. He took with
him a sword, a hammer and some large nails, and put on very dark
clothes. Thus accoutred he went prowling about the Lion gate of the
palace. Before the zenana [28] could be got at, four doors, including
the Lion gate, had to be passed; and each of these doors had a guard
of sixteen stalwart men. The same men, however, did not remain all
night at their post. As the king had an infinite number of soldiers
at his command, the guards at the doors were relieved every hour; so
that once every hour at each door there were thirty-two men present,
consisting of the relieving party and of the relieved. The young thief
chose that particular moment of time for entering each of the four
doors. At the time of relief when he saw the Lion gate crowded with
thirty-two men, he joined the crowd without being taken notice of; he
then spent the hour preceding the next relief in the large open space
and garden between two doors; and he could not be taken notice of, as
the night as well as his clothes was pitch dark. In a similar manner
he passed the second door, the third door, and the fourth door. And
now the queen's bedchamber stared him in the face. It was in the third
loft; there was a bright light in it; and a low voice was heard as
that of a woman saying something in a humdrum manner. The young thief
thought that the voice must be the voice of a maid-servant reciting
a story, as he had learnt was the custom in the palace every night,
for composing the king and queen to sleep. But how to get up into the
third loft? The inner doors were all closed, and there were guards
everywhere. But the young thief had with him nails and a hammer: why
not drive the nails into the wall and climb up by them? True; but the
driving of nails into the wall would make a great noise which would
rouse the guards, and possibly the king and queen,--at any rate the
maid-servant reciting stories would give the alarm. Our erratic genius
had considered that matter well before engaging in the work. There is
a water-clock in the palace which shows the hours; and at the end of
every hour a very large Chinese gong is struck, the sound of which
is so loud that it is not only heard all over the palace, but over
most part of the city; and the peculiarity of the gong, as of every
Chinese gong, was that nearly one minute must elapse after the first
stroke before the second stroke could be made, to allow the gong to
give out the whole of its sound. The thief fixed upon the minutes
when the gong was struck at the end of every hour for driving nails
into the wall. At ten o'clock when the gong was struck ten times, the
thief found it easy to drive ten nails into the wall. When the gong
stopped, the thief also stopped, and either sat or stood quiet on the
ninth nail catching hold of the tenth which was above the other. At
eleven o'clock he drove into the wall in a similar manner eleven nails,
and got a little higher than the second story; and by twelve o'clock
he was in the loft where the royal bedchamber was. Peeping in he saw
a drowsy maid-servant drowsily reciting a story, and the king and
queen apparently asleep. He went stealthily behind the story-telling
maid-servant and took his seat. The queen was lying down on a richly
furnished bedstead of gold beside the king. The massive chain of gold
round the neck of the queen was gleaming in candle-light. The thief
quietly listened to the story of the drowsy maid-servant. She was
becoming more and more sleepy. She stopped for a second, nodded her
head, and again resumed the story. It was plain she was under the
influence of sleep. In a moment the thief cut off the head of the
maid-servant with his sword, and himself went on reciting for some
minutes the story which the woman was telling. The king and queen were
unconscious of any change as to the person of the story-teller, for
they were both in deep sleep. He stripped the murdered woman of her
clothes, put them on himself, tied up his own clothes in a bundle,
and walking softly, gently took off the chain from the neck of the
queen. He then went through the rooms down stairs, ordered the inner
guard to open the door, as she was obliged to go out of the palace
for purposes of necessity. The guards, seeing that it was the queen's
maid-servant, readily allowed her to go out. In the same manner, and
with the same pretext, he got through the other doors, and at last
out into the street. That very night, or rather morning, the young
thief put into his father's hand the gold chain of the queen. The
elder thief could scarcely believe his own eyes. It was so like a
dream. His joy knew no bounds. Addressing his son he said--"Well done,
my son; you are not only as clever as your father, but you have beaten
me hollow. The gods give you long life, my son."
Next morning when the king and queen got up from bed, they were
shocked to see the maid-servant lying in a pool of blood. The queen
also found that her gold chain was not round her neck. They could not
make out how all this could have taken place. How could any thief
manage to elude the vigilance of so many guards? How could he get
into the queen's bedchamber? And how could he again escape? The king
found from the reports of the guards that a person calling herself
the royal maid-servant had gone out of the palace some hours before
dawn. All sorts of inquiries were made, but in vain. Proclamation
was made in the city; a large reward was offered to any one who
would give information tending to the apprehension of the thief and
murderer. But no one responded to the call. At last the king ordered
a camel to be brought to him. On the back of the animal was placed
two large bags filled with gold mohurs. The man taking charge of the
bags upon the camel was ordered to go through every part of the city
making the following challenge:--"As the thief was daring enough to
steal away a gold chain from the neck of the queen, let him further
show his daring by stealing the gold mohurs from the back of this
camel." Two days and nights the camel paraded through the city, but
nothing happened. On the third night as the camel-driver was going
his rounds he was accosted by a sannyasi, [29] who sat on a tiger's
skin before a fire, and near whom was a monstrous pair of tongs. This
sannyasi was no other than the young thief in disguise. The sannyasi
said to the camel-driver--"Brother, why are you going through the city
in this manner? Who is there so daring as to steal from the back of the
king's camel? Come down, friend, and smoke with me." The camel-driver
alighted, tied the camel to a tree on the spot, and began smoking. The
mendicant supplied him not only with tobacco, but with ganja and other
intoxicating drugs, so that in a short time the camel-driver became
quite intoxicated and fell asleep. The young thief led away the camel
with the treasure on its back in the dead of night, through narrow
lanes and bye-paths to his own house. That very night the camel was
killed, and its carcase buried in deep pits in the earth, and the
thing was so managed that no one could discover any trace of it.
The next morning when the king heard that the camel-driver was
lying drunk in the street, and that the camel had been made away
with together with the treasure, he was almost beside himself with
anger. Proclamation was made in the city to the effect that whoever
caught the thief would get the reward of a lakh of rupees. The son of
the younger thief--who, by the way, was in the same school of roguery
with the son of the elder thief, though he did not distinguish himself
so much--now came to the front and said that he would apprehend the
thief. He of course suspected that the son of the elder thief must
have done it--for who so daring and clever as he? In the evening of
the following day the son of the younger thief disguised himself as a
woman, and coming to that part of the town where the young thief lived,
began to weep very much, and went from door to door saying--"O sirs,
can any of you give me a bit of camel's flesh, for my son is dying,
and the doctors say nothing but eating camel's meat can save his
life. O for pity's sake, do give me a bit of camel's flesh." At last
he went to the house of the young thief, and begged of the wife--for
the young thief himself was out--to tell him where he could get hold
of camel's flesh, as his son would assuredly perish if it could not
be got. Saying this he rent the air with his cries, and fell down at
the feet of the young thief's wife. Woman as she was, though the wife
of a thief, she felt pity for the supposed woman, and said--"Wait,
and I will try and get some camel's flesh for your son." So saying,
she secretly went to the spot where the dead camel had been buried,
brought a small quantity of flesh, and gave it to the party. The son
of the younger thief was now entranced with joy. He went and told the
king that he had succeeded in tracing the thief, and would be ready to
deliver him up at night if the king would send some constables with
him. At night the elder thief and his son were captured, the body
of the camel dug out, and all the treasures in the house seized. The
following morning the king sat in judgment. The son of the elder thief
confessed that he had stolen the queen's gold chain, and killed the
maid-servant, and had taken away the camel; but he added that the
person who had detected him and his father--the younger thief--were
also thieves and murderers, of which fact he gave undoubted proofs. As
the king had promised to give a lakh of rupees to the detective, that
sum was placed before the son of the younger thief. But soon after he
ordered four pits to be dug in the earth in which were buried alive,
with all sorts of thorns and thistles, the elder thief and the younger
thief, and their two sons.
Here my story endeth,
The Natiya-thorn withereth, etc.