there is none more important than the Department of Woods and Forests.
The reboisement of all India is in its hands: or will be when
Government has the money to spend. Its servants wrestle with wandering
sand-torrents and shifting dunes: wattling them at the sides, damming
them in front, and pegging them down atop with coarse grass and
spindling pine after the rules of Nancy. They are responsible for all
the timber in the State forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the
denuded hillsides that the monsoons wash into dry gullies and aching
ravines; each cut a mouth crying aloud what carelessness can do. They
experiment with battalions of foreign trees, and coax the blue gum
to take root and, perhaps, dry up the Canal fever. In the plains the
chief part of their duty is to see that the belt fire-lines in the
forest reserves are kept clean, so that when drought comes and the
cattle starve, they may throw the reserve open to the villager’s herds
and allow the man himself to gather sticks. They poll and lop for the
stacked railway-fuel along the lines that burn no coal; they calculate
the profit of their plantations to five points of decimals; they are
the doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of Upper Burma, the
rubber of the Eastern Jungles, and the gall-nuts of the South; and they
are always hampered by lack of funds. But since a Forest Officer’s
business takes him far from the beaten roads and the regular stations,
he learns to grow wise in more than wood-lore alone; to know the people
and the polity of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog,
and all the deer, not once or twice after days of beating, but again
and again in the execution of his duty. He spends much time in saddle
or under canvas--the friend of newly planted trees, the associate of
uncouth rangers and hairy trackers--till the woods, that show his care,
in turn set their mark upon him and he ceases to sing the naughty
French songs he learned at Nancy, and grows silent with the silent
things of the underbrush.
Gisborne of the Woods and Forests had spent four years in the service.
At first he loved it without comprehension, because it led him into the
open on horseback and gave him authority. Then he hated it furiously,
and would have given a year’s pay for one month of such society as
India affords. That crisis over, the forests took him back again, and
he was content to serve them, to deepen and widen his fire-lines, to
watch the green mist of his new plantation against the older foliage,
to dredge out the choked stream, and to follow and strengthen the
last struggle of the forest where it broke down and died among the
long pig-grass. On some still day that grass would be burned off, and
a hundred beasts that had their homes there would rush out before
the pale flames at high noon. Later, the forest would creep forward
over the blackened ground in orderly lines of saplings, and Gisborne,
watching, would be well pleased. His bungalow, a thatched white-walled
cottage of two rooms, was set at one end of the great _rukh_ and
overlooking it. He made no pretence at keeping a garden, for the _rukh_
swept up to his door, curled over in a thicket of bamboo, and he rode
from his verandah into its heart without the need of any carriage-drive.
Abdul Gafur, his fat Mohammedan butler, fed him when he was at home,
and spent the rest of the time gossiping with the little band of native
servants whose huts lay behind the bungalow. There were two grooms,
a cook, a water-carrier, and a sweeper, and that was all. Gisborne
cleaned his own guns and kept no dog. Dogs scared the game, and it
pleased the man to be able to say where the subjects of his kingdom
would drink at moonrise, eat before dawn, and lie up in the day’s
heat. The rangers and forest-guards lived in little huts far away in
the _rukh_, only appearing when one of them had been injured by a
falling tree or a wild beast. There Gisborne was alone.
In spring the _rukh_ put out few new leaves, but lay dry and still
untouched by the finger of the year, waiting for rain. Only there was
then more calling and roaring in the dark on a quiet night; the tumult
of a battle-royal among the tigers, the bellowing of arrogant buck, or
the steady wood-chopping of an old boar sharpening his tushes against
a bole. Then Gisborne laid aside his little-used gun altogether, for
it was to him a sin to kill. In summer, through the furious May heats,
the _rukh_ reeled in the haze, and Gisborne watched for the first sign
of curling smoke that should betray a forest fire. Then came the Rains
with a roar, and the _rukh_ was blotted out in fetch after fetch of
warm mist, and the broad leaves drummed the night through under the big
drops; and there was a noise of running water, and of juicy green stuff
crackling where the wind struck it, and the lightning wove patterns
behind the dense matting of the foliage, till the sun broke loose
again and the _rukh_ stood with hot flanks smoking to the newly washed
sky. Then the heat and the dry cold subdued everything to tiger-colour
again. So Gisborne learned to know his _rukh_ and was very happy. His
pay came month by month, but he had very little need for money. The
currency notes accumulated in the drawer where he kept his home-letters
and the recapping-machine. If he drew anything, it was to make a
purchase from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, or to pay a ranger’s
widow a sum that the Government of India would never have sanctioned
for her man’s death.
Payment was good, but vengeance was also necessary, and he took that
when he could. One night of many nights a runner, breathless and
gasping, came to him with the news that a forest-guard lay dead by the
Kanye stream, the side of his head smashed in as though it had been an
egg-shell. Gisborne went out at dawn to look for the murderer. It is
only travellers and now and then young soldiers who are known to the
world as great hunters. The Forest Officers take their _shikar_ as part
of the day’s work, and no one hears of it. Gisborne went on foot to the
place of the kill: the widow was wailing over the corpse as it lay on
a bedstead, while two or three men were looking at footprints on the
moist ground. ‘That is the Red One,’ said a man. ‘I knew he would turn
to man in time, but surely there is game enough even for him. This must
have been done for devilry.’
‘The Red One lies up in the rocks at the back of the _sal_ trees,’ said
Gisborne. He knew the tiger under suspicion.
‘Not now, Sahib, not now. He will be raging and ranging to and fro.
Remember that the first kill is a triple kill always. Our blood makes
them mad. He may be behind us even as we speak.’
‘He may have gone to the next hut,’ said another. ‘It is only four
_koss_. Wallah, who is this!’
Gisborne turned with the others. A man was walking down the dried bed
of the stream, naked except for the loin-cloth, but crowned with a
wreath of the tasselled blossoms of the white convolvulus creeper. So
noiselessly did he move over the little pebbles, that even Gisborne,
used to the soft-footedness of trackers, started.
‘The tiger that killed,’ he began, without any salute, ‘has gone to
drink, and now he is asleep under a rock beyond that hill.’ His voice
was clear and bell-like, utterly different from the usual whine of the
native, and his face as he lifted it in the sunshine might have been
that of an angel strayed among the woods. The widow ceased wailing
above the corpse and looked round-eyed at the stranger, returning to
her duty with double strength.
‘Shall I show the Sahib?’ he said simply.
‘If thou art sure--’ Gisborne began.
‘Sure indeed. I saw him only an hour ago--the dog. It is before his
time to eat man’s flesh. He has yet a dozen sound teeth in his evil
head.’
The men kneeling above the footprints slunk off quietly, for fear that
Gisborne should ask them to go with him, and the young man laughed a
little to himself.
‘Come, Sahib,’ he cried, and turned on his heel, walking before his
companion.
‘Not so fast. I cannot keep that pace,’ said the white man. ‘Halt
there. Thy face is new to me.’
‘That may be. I am but newly come into this forest.’
‘From what village?’
‘I am without a village. I came from over there.’ He flung out his arm
towards the north.
‘A gipsy then?’
‘No, Sahib. I am a man without caste, and for matter of that without a
father.’
‘What do men call thee?’
‘Mowgli, Sahib. And what is the Sahib’s name?’
‘I am the warden of this _rukh_--Gisborne is my name.’
‘How? Do they number the trees and the blades of grass here?’
‘Even so; lest such gipsy fellows as thou set them afire.’
‘I! I would not hurt the jungle for any gift. That is my home.’
He turned to Gisborne with a smile that was irresistible, and held up a
warning hand.
‘Now, Sahib, we must go a little quietly. There is no need to wake the
dog, though he sleeps heavily enough. Perhaps it were better if I went
forward alone and drove him down wind to the Sahib.’
‘Allah! Since when have tigers been driven to and fro like cattle by
naked men?’ said Gisborne, aghast at the man’s audacity.
He laughed again softly. ‘Nay, then, come along with me and shoot him
in thy own way with the big English rifle.’
Gisborne stepped in his guide’s track, twisted, crawled, and clomb and
stooped and suffered through all the many agonies of a jungle-stalk.
He was purple and dripping with sweat when Mowgli at the last bade him
raise his head and peer over a blue baked rock near a tiny hill pool.
By the water-side lay the tiger extended and at ease, lazily licking
clean again an enormous elbow and fore paw. He was old, yellow-toothed,
and not a little mangy, but in that setting and sunshine, imposing
enough.
Gisborne had no false ideas of sport where the man-eater was concerned.
This thing was vermin, to be killed as speedily as possible. He waited
to recover his breath, rested the rifle on the rock and whistled. The
brute’s head turned slowly not twenty feet from the rifle-mouth, and
Gisborne planted his shots, business-like, one behind the shoulder and
the other a little below the eye. At that range the heavy bones were no
guard against the rending bullets.
‘Well, the skin was not worth keeping at any rate,’ said he as the
smoke cleared away and the beast lay kicking and gasping in the last
agony.
‘A dog’s death for a dog,’ said Mowgli quietly. ‘Indeed there is
nothing in that carrion worth taking away.’
‘The whiskers. Dost thou not take the whiskers?’ said Gisborne, who
knew how the rangers valued such things.
‘I? Am I a lousy _shikarri_ of the jungle to paddle with a tiger’s
muzzle? Let him lie. Here come his friends already.’
A dropping kite whistled shrilly overhead, as Gisborne snapped out the
empty shells, and wiped his face.
‘And if thou art not a _shikarri_, where didst thou learn thy knowledge
of the tiger-folk?’ said he. ‘No tracker could have done better.’
‘I hate all tigers,’ said Mowgli curtly. ‘Let the Sahib give me his gun
to carry. Arré, it is a very fine one. And where does the Sahib go now?’
‘To my house.’
‘May I come? I have never yet looked within a white man’s house.’
Gisborne returned to his bungalow, Mowgli striding noiselessly before
him, his brown skin glistening in the sunlight.
He stared curiously at the verandah and the two chairs there, fingered
the split bamboo shade curtains with suspicion, and entered, looking
always behind him. Gisborne loosed a curtain to keep out the sun. It
dropped with a clatter, but almost before it touched the flagging of
the verandah Mowgli had leaped clear and was standing with heaving
chest in the open.
‘It is a trap,’ he said quickly.
Gisborne laughed. ‘White men do not trap men. Indeed thou art
altogether of the jungle.’
‘I see,’ said Mowgli, ‘it has neither catch nor fall. I--I never beheld
these things till to-day.’
He came in on tiptoe and stared with large eyes at the furniture of the
two rooms. Abdul Gafur, who was laying lunch, looked at him with deep
disgust.
‘So much trouble to eat, and so much trouble to lie down after you have
eaten!’ said Mowgli with a grin. ‘We do better in the jungle. It is
very wonderful. There are very many rich things here. Is the Sahib not
afraid that he may be robbed? I have never seen such wonderful things.’
He was staring at a dusty Benares brass plate on a ricketty bracket.
‘Only a thief from the jungle would rob here,’ said Abdul Gafur,
setting down a plate with a clatter. Mowgli opened his eyes wide and
stared at the white-bearded Mohammedan.
‘In my country when goats bleat very loud we cut their throats,’ he
returned cheerfully. ‘But have no fear, thou, I am going.’
He turned and disappeared into the _rukh_. Gisborne looked after him
with a laugh that ended in a little sigh. There was not much outside
his regular work to interest the Forest Officer, and this son of the
forest, who seemed to know tigers as other people know dogs, would have
been a diversion.
‘He’s a most wonderful chap,’ thought Gisborne; ‘he’s like the
illustrations in the Classical Dictionary. I wish I could have made him
a gun-boy. There’s no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would
have been a perfect _shikarri_. I wonder what in the world he is.’
That evening he sat on the verandah under the stairs smoking as he
wondered. A puff of smoke curled from the pipe-bowl. As it cleared he
was aware of Mowgli sitting with arms crossed on the verandah edge. A
ghost could not have drifted up more noiselessly. Gisborne started and
let the pipe drop.
‘There is no man to talk to out there in the _rukh_,’ said Mowgli;
‘I came here, therefore.’ He picked up the pipe and returned it to
Gisborne.
‘Oh,’ said Gisborne, and after a long pause, ‘What news is there in the
_rukh_? Hast thou found another tiger?’
‘The nilghai are changing their feeding-ground against the new moon, as
is their custom. The pig are feeding near the Kanye river now, because
they will not feed with the nilghai, and one of their sows has been
killed by a leopard in the long grass at the water-head. I do not know
any more.’
‘And how didst thou know all these things?’ said Gisborne, leaning
forward and looking at the eyes that glittered in the starlight.
‘How should I not know? The nilghai has his custom and his use, and a
child knows that pig will not feed with him.’
‘I do not know this,’ said Gisborne.
‘Tck! Tck! And thou art in charge--so the men of the huts tell me--in
charge of all this _rukh_.’ He laughed to himself.
‘It is well enough to talk and to tell child’s tales,’ Gisborne
retorted, nettled at the chuckle. ‘To say that this and that goes on in
the _rukh_. No man can deny thee.’
‘As for the sow’s carcass, I will show thee her bones to-morrow,’
Mowgli returned, absolutely unmoved. ‘Touching the matter of the
nilghai, if the Sahib will sit here very still I will drive one nilghai
up to this place, and by listening to the sounds carefully, the Sahib
can tell whence that nilghai has been driven.’
‘Mowgli, the jungle has made thee mad,’ said Gisborne. ‘Who can drive
nilghai?’
‘Still--sit still, then. I go.’
‘Gad, the man’s a ghost!’ said Gisborne; for Mowgli had faded out into
the darkness and there was no sound of feet. The _rukh_ lay out in
great velvety folds in the uncertain shimmer of the star-dust--so still
that the least little wandering wind among the tree-tops came up as the
sigh of a child sleeping equably. Abdul Gafur in the cook-house was
clicking plates together.
‘Be still there!’ shouted Gisborne, and composed himself to listen as
a man can who is used to the stillness of the _rukh_. It had been his
custom, to preserve his self-respect in his isolation, to dress for
dinner each night, and the stiff white shirt-front creaked with his
regular breathing till he shifted a little sideways. Then the tobacco
of a somewhat foul pipe began to purr, and he threw the pipe from him.
Now, except for the night-breath in the _rukh_, everything was dumb.
From an inconceivable distance, and drawled through immeasurable
darkness, came the faint, faint echo of a wolf’s howl. Then silence
again for, it seemed, long hours. At last, when his legs below the
knees had lost all feeling, Gisborne heard something that might have
been a crash far off through the undergrowth. He doubted till it was
repeated again and yet again.
‘That’s from the west,’ he muttered; ‘there’s something on foot there.’
The noise increased--crash on crash, plunge on plunge--with the thick
grunting of a hotly pressed nilghai, flying in panic terror and taking
no heed to his course.
A shadow blundered out from between the tree-trunks, wheeled back,
turned again grunting, and with a clatter on the bare ground dashed up
almost within reach of his hand. It was a bull nilghai, dripping with
dew--his withers hung with a torn trail of creeper, his eyes shining
in the light from the house. The creature checked at sight of the man,
and fled along the edge of the _rukh_ till he melted in the darkness.
The first idea in Gisborne’s bewildered mind was the indecency of
thus dragging out for inspection the big blue bull of the _rukh_--the
putting him through his paces in the night which should have been his
own.
Then said a smooth voice at his ear as he stood staring:
‘He came from the water-head where he was leading the herd. From the
west he came. Does the Sahib believe now, or shall I bring up the herd
to be counted? The Sahib is in charge of this _rukh_.’
Mowgli had reseated himself on the verandah, breathing a little
quickly. Gisborne looked at him with open mouth. ‘How was that
accomplished?’ he said.
‘The Sahib saw. The bull was driven--driven as a buffalo is. Ho! ho! He
will have a fine tale to tell when he returns to the herd.’
‘That is a new trick to me. Canst thou run as swiftly as the nilghai,
then?’
‘The Sahib has seen. If the Sahib needs more knowledge at any time of
the movings of the game, I, Mowgli, am here. This is a good _rukh_, and
I shall stay.’
‘Stay then, and if thou hast need of a meal at any time my servants
shall give thee one.’
‘Yes, indeed, I am fond of cooked food,’ Mowgli answered quickly. ‘No
man may say that I do not eat boiled and roast as much as any other
man. I will come for that meal. Now, on my part, I promise that the
Sahib shall sleep safely in his house by night, and no thief shall
break in to carry away his so rich treasures.’
The conversation ended itself on Mowgli’s abrupt departure. Gisborne
sat long smoking, and the upshot of his thoughts was that in Mowgli he
had found at last that ideal ranger and forest-guard for whom he and
the Department were always looking.
‘I must get him into the Government service somehow. A man who can
drive nilghai would know more about the _rukh_ than fifty men. He’s a
miracle--a _lusus naturæ_--but a forest-guard he must be if he’ll only
settle down in one place,’ said Gisborne.
Abdul Gafur’s opinion was less favourable. He confided to Gisborne at
bedtime that strangers from God-knew-where were more than likely to be
professional thieves, and that he personally did not approve of naked
outcastes who had not the proper manner of addressing white people.
Gisborne laughed and bade him go to his quarters, and Abdul Gafur
retreated growling. Later in the night he found occasion to rise up and
beat his thirteen-year-old daughter. Nobody knew the cause of dispute,
but Gisborne heard the cry.
Through the days that followed Mowgli came and went like a shadow.
He had established himself and his wild house-keeping close to the
bungalow, but on the edge of the _rukh_, where Gisborne, going out
on to the verandah for a breath of cool air, would see him sometimes
sitting in the moonlight, his forehead on his knees, or lying out along
the fling of a branch, closely pressed to it as some beast of the
night. Thence Mowgli would throw him a salutation and bid him sleep at
ease, or descending would weave prodigious stories of the manners of
the beasts in the _rukh_. Once he wandered into the stables and was
found looking at the horses with deep interest.
‘That,’ said Abdul Gafur pointedly, ‘is sure sign that some day he
will steal one. Why, if he lives about this house, does he not take
an honest employment? But no, he must wander up and down like a loose
camel, turning the heads of fools and opening the jaws of the unwise
to folly.’ So Abdul Gafur would give harsh orders to Mowgli when they
met, would bid him fetch water and pluck fowls, and Mowgli, laughing
unconcernedly, would obey.
‘He has no caste,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘He will do anything. Look to
it, Sahib, that he does not do too much. A snake is a snake, and a
jungle-gipsy is a thief till the death.’
‘Be silent, then,’ said Gisborne. ‘I allow thee to correct thy own
household if there is not too much noise, because I know thy customs
and use. My custom thou dost not know. The man is without doubt a
little mad.’
‘Very little mad indeed,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘But we shall see what
comes thereof.’
A few days later on his business took Gisborne into the _rukh_ for
three days. Abdul Gafur being old and fat was left at home. He did
not approve of lying up in rangers’ huts, and was inclined to levy
contributions in his master’s name of grain and oil and milk from those
who could ill afford such benevolences. Gisborne rode off early one
dawn a little vexed that his man of the woods was not at the verandah
to accompany him. He liked him--liked his strength, fleetness, and
silence of foot, and his ever-ready open smile; his ignorance of all
forms of ceremony and salutations, and the child-like tales that he
would tell (and Gisborne would credit now) of what the game was doing
in the _rukh_. After an hour’s riding through the greenery, he heard a
rustle behind him, and Mowgli trotted at his stirrup.
‘We have a three days’ work toward,’ said Gisborne, ‘among the new
trees.’
‘Good,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is always good to cherish young trees. They
make cover if the beasts leave them alone. We must shift the pig again.’
‘Again? How?’ Gisborne smiled.
‘Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young _sal_ last night,
and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to the verandah this
morning. The pig should not be on this side of the _rukh_ at all. We
must keep them below the head of the Kanye river.’
‘If a man could herd clouds he might do that thing; but, Mowgli, if
as thou sayest, thou art herder in the _rukh_ for no gain and for no
pay----’
‘It is the Sahib’s _rukh_,’ said Mowgli, quickly looking up. Gisborne
nodded thanks and went on: ‘Would it not be better to work for pay from
the Government? There is a pension at the end of long service.’
‘Of that I have thought,’ said Mowgli, ‘but the rangers live in huts
with shut doors, and all that is all too much a trap to me. Yet I
think----’
‘Think well then and tell me later. Here we will stay for breakfast.’
Gisborne dismounted, took his morning meal from his home-made
saddle-bags, and saw the day open hot above the _rukh_. Mowgli lay in
the grass at his side staring up to the sky.
Presently he said in a lazy whisper: ‘Sahib, is there any order at the
bungalow to take out the white mare to-day?’
‘No, she is fat and old and a little lame beside. Why?’
‘She is being ridden now and _not_ slowly on the road that runs to the
railway line.’
‘Bah, that is two _koss_ away. It is a wood-pecker.’
Mowgli put up his forearm to keep the sun out of his eyes.
‘The road curves in with a big curve from the bungalow. It is not more
than a _koss_, at the farthest, as the kite goes; and sound flies with
the birds. Shall we see?’
‘What folly! To run a _koss_ in this sun to see a noise in the forest.’
‘Nay, the pony is the Sahib’s pony. I meant only to bring her here. If
she is not the Sahib’s pony, no matter. If she is, the Sahib can do
what he wills. She is certainly being ridden hard.’
‘And how wilt thou bring her here, madman?’
‘Has the Sahib forgotten? By the road of the nilghai and no other.’
‘Up then and run if thou art so full of zeal.’
‘Oh, I do not run!’ He put out his hand to sign for silence, and still
lying on his back called aloud thrice--with a deep gurgling cry that
was new to Gisborne.
‘She will come,’ he said at the end. ‘Let us wait in the shade.’ The
long eyelashes drooped over the wild eyes as Mowgli began to doze in
the morning hush. Gisborne waited patiently: Mowgli was surely mad, but
as entertaining a companion as a lonely Forest Officer could desire.
‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli lazily, with shut eyes. ‘He has dropped off.
Well, first the mare will come and then the man.’ Then he yawned as
Gisborne’s pony stallion neighed. Three minutes later Gisborne’s white
mare, saddled, bridled, but riderless, tore into the glade where they
were sitting, and hurried to her companion.