Ride, follow the fox if you can!
But, for pleasure and profit together,
Allow me the hunting of Man,--
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.
The Old Shikarri.
I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a twist in
his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by whom Nafferton was
nearly slain. There may have been other causes of offence; the horse was
the official stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; but Pinecoffin
laughed and said that he had never guaranteed the beast's manners.
Nafferton laughed, too, though he vowed that he would write off his fall
against Pinecoffin if he waited five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyond
Skipton will forgive an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a
South Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their
names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin. He was a
peculiar man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new
and fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from Mithankot
to Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the Punjab,
a large province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had no
intention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to “sell him pups,” in the
shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making their lives a
burden to them.
Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work after
their first hot weather in the country. The boys with digestions hope to
write their names large on the Frontier and struggle for dreary places
like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. Which
is very bad for the liver. Others are bitten with a mania for District
work, Ghuznivide coins or Persian poetry; while some, who come of
farmers' stock, find that the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets
into their blood, and calls them to “develop the resources of the
Province.” These men are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to their
class. He knew a great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and
temporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too
much rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All the
Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took back
her own again. Unfortunately--most unfortunately for Pinecoffin--he
was a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Nafferton watched him, and thought
about the horse. Nafferton said:--“See me chase that boy till he drops!”
I said:--“You can't get your knife into an Assistant Commissioner.”
Nafferton told me that I did not understand the administration of the
Province.
Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural and
general information side, and will supply a moderately respectable man
with all sorts of “economic statistics,” if he speaks to it prettily.
For instance, you are interested in gold-washing in the sands of the
Sutlej. You pull the string, and find that it wakes up half a dozen
Departments, and finally communicates, say, with a friend of yours
in the Telegraph, who once wrote some notes on the customs of the
gold-washers when he was on construction-work in their part of the
Empire. He may or may not be pleased at being ordered to write out
everything he knows for your benefit. This depends on his temperament.
The bigger man you are, the more information and the greater trouble can
you raise.
Nafferton was not a big man; but he had the reputation of being very
earnest. An “earnest” man can do much with a Government. There was an
earnest man who once nearly wrecked... but all India knows THAT story.
I am not sure what real “earnestness” is. A very fair imitation can
be manufactured by neglecting to dress decently, by mooning about in a
dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking office-work home after staying
in office till seven, and by receiving crowds of native gentlemen on
Sundays. That is one sort of “earnestness.”
Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his earnestness, and for
a string that would communicate with Pinecoffin. He found both. They
were Pig. Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig. He informed
the Government that he had a scheme whereby a very large percentage of
the British Army in India could be fed, at a very large saving, on
Pig. Then he hinted that Pinecoffin might supply him with the “varied
information necessary to the proper inception of the scheme.” So the
Government wrote on the back of the letter:--“Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin to
furnish Mr. Nafferton with any information in his power.” Government is
very prone to writing things on the backs of letters which, later, lead
to trouble and confusion.
Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he knew that
Pinecoffin would flounce into the trap. Pinecoffin was delighted at
being consulted about Pig. The Indian Pig is not exactly an important
factor in agricultural life; but Nafferton explained to Pinecoffin that
there was room for improvement, and corresponded direct with that young
man.
You may think that there is not much to be evolved from Pig. It all
depends how you set to work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and wishing
to do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the Primitive Pig,
the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed that
information--twenty-seven foolscap sheets--and wanted to know about the
distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and how it stood the Plains in
the hot weather. From this point onwards, remember that I am giving you
only the barest outlines of the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, of
the web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin.
Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and collected observations
on the comparative longevity of the Pig (a) in the sub-montane tracts
of the Himalayas, and (b) in the Rechna Doab. Nafferton filed that, and
asked what sort of people looked after Pig. This started an ethnological
excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long tables showing
the proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. Nafferton filed
that bundle, and explained that the figures which he wanted referred to
the Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fine
and large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. By this time,
Government had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. Pinecoffin.
They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned well-oiled
wheels to skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into the
spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do. He had a
fair amount of work of his own to clear away; but he sat up of nights
reducing Pig to five places of decimals for the honor of his Service. He
was not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject as Pig.
Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to “inquire into”
the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District. People had been
killing each other with those peaceful tools; and Government wished
to know “whether a modified form of agricultural implement could
not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced among the
agricultural population without needlessly or unduly exasperating the
existing religious sentiments of the peasantry.”
Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather heavily
burdened.
Nafferton now began to take up “(a) The food-supply of the indigenous
Pig, with a view to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh-former.
(b) The acclimatization of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctive
peculiarities.” Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic Pig
would become merged in the indigenous type; and quoted horse-breeding
statistics to prove this. The side-issue was debated, at great length on
Pinecoffin's side, till Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong,
and moved the previous question. When Pinecoffin had quite written
himself out about flesh-formers, and fibrins, and glucose and the
nitrogenous constituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised the
question of expense. By this time Pinecoffin, who had been transferred
from Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he stated in
thirty-three folio pages--all carefully filed by Nafferton. Who asked
for more.
These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the potential
Piggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own views. But
Nafferton bombarded him with letters on “the Imperial aspect of
the scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork, and thereby
calculated to give offence to the Mahomedan population of Upper India.”
He guessed that Pinecoffin would want some broad, free-hand work after
his niggling, stippling, decimal details. Pinecoffin handled the latest
development of the case in masterly style, and proved that no “popular
ebullition of excitement was to be apprehended.” Nafferton said that
there was nothing like Civilian insight in matters of this kind,
and lured him up a bye-path--“the possible profits to accrue to the
Government from the sale of hog-bristles.” There is an extensive
literature of hog-bristles, and the shoe, brush, and colorman's trades
recognize more varieties of bristles than you would think possible.
After Pinecoffin had wondered a little at Nafferton's rage for
information, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on “Products of
the Pig.” This led him, under Nafferton's tender handling, straight to
the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin for saddles--and thence
to the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote that pomegranate-seed was the best cure
for hog-skin, and suggested--for the past fourteen months had wearied
him--that Nafferton should “raise his pigs before he tanned them.”
Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question. How
could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did in the
West and yet “assume the essentially hirsute characteristics of its
oriental congener?” Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what
he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied that he was about
to reopen the entire question. He was too far involved in the hideous
tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote:--“Consult my first
letter.” Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact,
Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage; having gone off
on a side-issue on the merging of types.
THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries! He complained to the
Government, in stately language, of “the paucity of help accorded to me
in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and
the flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by a
gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should at lest have taught
him the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire
variety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the letter to which
he refers me contains his serious views on the acclimatization of a
valuable, though possibly uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled
to believe,” etc., etc.
There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation. The
wretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for the Country,
and not the Country for the Service, and that he had better begin to
supply information about Pigs.
Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that could
be written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.
Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on the
Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in full. The
essay was rather highflown; but if the Editor had seen the stacks of
paper, in Pinecoffin's handwriting, on Nafferton's table, he would not
have been so sarcastic about the “nebulous discursiveness and blatant
self-sufficiency of the modern Competition-wallah, and his utter
inability to grasp the practical issues of a practical question.” Many
friends cut out these remarks and sent them to Pinecoffin.
I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft stock. This last
stroke frightened and shook him. He could not understand it; but he felt
he had been, somehow, shamelessly betrayed by Nafferton. He realized
that he had wrapped himself up in the Pigskin without need, and that
he could not well set himself right with his Government. All his
acquaintances asked after his “nebulous discursiveness” or his “blatant
self-sufficiency,” and this made him miserable.
He took a train and went to Nafferton, whom he had not seen since
the Pig business began. He also took the cutting from the paper, and
blustered feebly and called Nafferton names, and then died down to a
watery, weak protest of the “I-say-it's-too-bad-you-know” order.
Nafferton was very sympathetic.
“I'm afraid I've given you a good deal of trouble, haven't I?” said he.
“Trouble!” whimpered Pinecoffin; “I don't mind the trouble so much,
though that was bad enough; but what I resent is this showing up in
print. It will stick to me like a burr all through my service. And I DID
do my best for your interminable swine. It's too bad of you, on my soul
it is!”
“I don't know,” said Nafferton; “have you ever been stuck with a horse?
It isn't the money I mind, though that is bad enough; but what I resent
is the chaff that follows, especially from the boy who stuck me. But I
think we'll cry quits now.”
Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad words; and Nafferton smiled
ever so sweetly, and asked him to dinner.
THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS.
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 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 honor; 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
foot-pace. 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. 1,200 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 best
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 Officers' 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 Bandsman
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 followed. 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.
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
mile's. 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 ribbon 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 sound's 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 humor 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, girl's or gun's, 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 echelon, 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 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 bare-headed skeleton.
The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.