The engine was conscientiously climbing to the level plateau which
stretches between Bhopal and Bandakui, when I heard this story.
Ten minutes before, apparently for no other purpose save to supply the
first-class passengers with their early cup of tea, the mail train had
stopped at a desolate little station which consisted of a
concrete-arched, oven-like shed, made still more obtrusively unfitted
for the wilderness in which it stood by a dejected bottle-gourd
striving to climb up it.
Here a wistful-faced old man in spotless white raiment had appeared in
the dawn with a tray of tea and toast. There were four cups of tea and
only two passengers; myself and a man who had already been asleep on
one side of the carriage when I took possession of the other at
Bhopal. So we saw each other for the first time as we sate up in our
sleeping suits among our blankets and pillows. As the train moved on,
in a series of dislocations which sent half my tea into my saucer, we
left the wistful old face looking at the two unsold cups of tea
regretfully, and I wished I had bought the lot. It seemed such a
pathetic group to leave there in the wilderness, backed by a European
oven and a climbing gourd.
And it was a wilderness. Miles and miles of it all the same. Piles of
red rocks, blackened on the upper surface, scattered, as if they had
been shot from a cart, among dry bents and stunted bushes; curious
bushes with a plenitude of twig and a paucity of leaf. Here and there
was a still more stunted tree with a paucity of both: a rudimentary
tree, splay, gouty, with half-a-dozen or so of kidney-shaped lobes in
place of foliage, parched, dusty, unwholesome.
Not a level country, but one dented into causeless dells, raised into
irrelevant hillocks; both, however, trending almost imperceptibly
upwards, so that the eye, deceived by this, imagined greater things on
the horizon.
But there was nothing. Only here and there a bigger patch of charred
and blackened bents, telling where a spark from a passing train had
found a wider field for fire than usual, unchecked by the piles of red
rocks. That, then, was the secret of their blackened surface.
It was too still in that hot windless dawn for flame, but as we sped
on, we added to the dull trails of smoke creeping slowly among the
stones and bushes, each with a faint touch of fire showing like an eye
to the snaky curves behind. A sinister-looking landscape, indeed, to
unaccustomed eyes like mine. I sate watching those stealthy,
fire-tipped fingers in the grass, till at a curve in the line, due to
a steeper rise, I saw something. "What on earth's that?" I cried
involuntarily.
"What's what?" returned my unknown companion, in such a curious tone
of voice that, involuntarily, I turned to him for a moment.
"That--that tree I suppose it is," I began; "but look for yourself."
I turned back to the sight which had startled me, and gave a low gasp.
It was gone. On more level ground we were steaming quickly past a very
ordinary dent of a dell, where, as usual, one of these stunted
rudimentary trees stood on an open patch of dry bents, seamed and
seared by fire trails.
I looked at my companion incredulously. "What an extraordinary thing!"
I exclaimed. "I could have sworn that I saw--" I paused from sheer
astonishment.
"What?" asked the other passenger, curiously.
"What?" I echoed. "That is just the question. It looked like a tree--a
skeleton tree. Absolutely white, with curved ribs of branches--and
there were tongues of flame." I paused again, looking out on what we
were passing. "It must, of course," I continued, "have been some
curious effect of light on that stunted tree yonder. Its branches
_are_ curved like ribs, and, if you notice, the bark _is_ lighter."
"Exactly," assented my companion. Then he told me a long botanical
name, and pointed out that there were many such trees or bushes in the
low jungle, all distinctly to be seen against the darker kinds,
distinctly but not blindingly like that curious effect of dawn-light I
had seen.
I had, however, almost forgotten my vision, as, thus started, we
talked over our tea, when he suddenly said, "Going on to Agra, I
suppose?"
"No," I replied, "I'm globe-trotting for sport. I'm going to spend
all I can of my return-ticket in these jungles after leopard and
tiger. I hear it's first-class if you don't mind letting yourself
go--getting right away from the beaten track and all that. I mean to
get hold of a jungle tribe if I can--money's no object, and--"
I ran on, glad to detail plans for what had been a long-cherished
dream of mine, when my companion arrested me by the single word--
"Don't."
It was in consequence of my surprise that he told me the following
story:--
"I surveyed this railway ten years ago. The country was very much the
same as it is now, except that it was all, naturally, off the beaten
track. There were two of us in camp together, Graham and myself. He
was a splendid chap; keen as mustard on everything. It did not matter
what it was. So that one day, when he and I were working out levels
after late breakfast, he jumped up like a shot--just as if he had not
been tramping over these cursed rubbish shoots of red rocks for six
hours--at the sound of a feeble whimpering near the cook-room tent.
"'That devil of yours is at it again,' he said, 'and I won't have it,
that's all!'
"As he went off I followed, for I did not relish Graham's justice when
it disabled the cook.
"But this time I owned that the brute deserved punishment, for a more
forlorn little tragedy than that which was being enacted among the
pots and pans I never saw.
"Mohubbut Khan, chief villain, was seated--naked to the waist, bald as
to head, after the manner of native cooks at work, on a low reed
stool, brandishing a knife in one hand, while the other held a
skrawking leggy white cock.
"Exactly in front of him was a group more suggestive of monkeys
than men. It consisted of a very old man, wizened, bandy-legged,
bandy-armed, whose white teeth showed in animal perfection as he
howled, and a child of the same build, clinging to him convulsively,
all legs, and arms, and shrieks.
"Between them and the cook stood Graham. He was a big fellow; fair as
you are. In fact you are rather like him. There was a moment's pause,
during which the old anatomy's voice rose in plaintive howls of
resignation.
"'Lo! sonling, be comforted. Death comes to all, even to white cocks.
It is but a few years. And grand-dad will hatch another. It is a
sacrifice. Sacrifice to the _sahib logue_ who bring death as they
choose!'
"Well, it turned out, of course, to be a case of wanton cruelty. It
always is. For hopeless inability to be considerate commend me to a
native jack-in-office. There were fifty other fowls in the
neighbouring village, but nothing would serve the underling whose duty
it was to collect supplies, but that this wretched child's pet should
serve for the _Huzoor's_ dinner. The old man's joy when it was
released was purely pitiable. He would have reared another for his
grandson, he asserted garrulously; ay! even to the hatching of an egg
from the very beginning, with toil by day and night. But only the
Great God knew if the child's heart would have gone out to the chick
as it had to the cock, for the heart was capricious. It was not to be
counted upon, since the Great God made some men, yea! even some
_Huzoors_, different from others. He looked from Graham to me as he
spoke, and somehow I felt small. So as Graham was evidently master of
the situation, I slunk back to my work.
"There were sounds of woe thereinafter from the cook-room tent, and
Graham himself supervised the dinner that night, in order, he
explained somewhat apologetically, that I might not suffer from his
conceptions of duty.
"It was two days after this, and we had shifted camp fifteen miles,
when, having occasion to go into Graham's tent after dark, I stumbled
over some one sitting among the corner tent-pegs. It was the grandpapa
of the white cock, and he explained to me in his lingo--for he was one
of the jungle people--that he had come in exchange for that precious
bird. One life or another mattered little. Grim-_sahib_ had spared the
child's heart's joy, which was now living with him in the maternal
mansion. There being, therefore, no necessity for the occupation of
hatching eggs, he, Bunder--yea! of a surety, it was the same name as
that of the monkey people--had come to do service to the _Huzoors_
instead of the white cock.
"That was absolutely all I could get out of him. So for days and weeks
he followed us. He was useful in his way, especially to Graham, who
had a passion not only for sport, but for all sorts of odd knowledge."
I remember interrupting here that that was half the pleasure of new
surroundings, to which my fellow-traveller replied drily that he had
expected I would say so, as I really reminded him very much of Graham.
"This passion of his, however, led him into being a bit reckless, and
as the hot weather came on he began to get touched up by fever. Still,
he continued working during the off days, and seemed little the worse
until one evening when he went to bed with the shivers after a leopard
hunt. Then old Bunder crept over to my tent.
"'Grim-_sahib_ must go home across the Black Water at once, _Huzoor_,'
he said quietly, 'or his bones will whiten the jungle. He has seen the
Skeleton Tree.'
"That was, in essence, all he had to say, though his explanations were
lengthy. It was simply a Skeleton Tree, and it was always seen where
fire fingers met; but those who saw it became skeletons in the jungle
before long unless they possessed a certain talisman. There were such
talismans among the hill tribes, and those who fell sick of fever
always wore one if they could compass it. That was not often, since
they were rare. He himself had one, but what use was it when life,
from old age, had become no more worth than a white cock's? So his
grandson wore it; wore it as he fed the joy of his heart peacefully in
the ancestral home; thanks to Grim-_sahib!_
"'But how do you know he saw the Tree?' I asked.
"'It was when we had crawled up nigh the end of a dip, _Huzoor_,'
replied Bunder. 'He looked up and said, "What's that?" And when I
asked him what he had seen, he said: "It is gone. It must have been
that stunted tree. But it looked like a skeleton, and there were fire
fingers round it." So I knew. Send him home, _Huzoor_, away from its
power, or his bones will whiten the jungle.'
"During the following days I really began--though I'm not an
imaginative chap--to feel a bit queer about things. Graham couldn't
shake off his fever, and more than once when he was delirious in the
evenings he would startle me by saying, 'What's that?' But he would
laugh the next moment, and add, 'Only a tree, of course; it was the
light.'
"There was no doctor within miles; and, besides, it was not really
such a bad case as all that. At least it didn't seem so to me or to
Graham himself. Only to old Bunder, who became quite a nuisance with
his warnings, so that I was glad when, after a confused rigmarole
about white cocks and sacrifices, he disappeared one day and was seen
no more. Partly, perhaps, because we moved back to a higher camp in
the hopes of escaping the malaria.
"But we didn't. Graham grew appreciably worse. He was fairly well by
day; it was at night that the fever seemed to grip him. I used to sit
up with him till twelve or one o'clock, and then turn in till about
dawn, when the servants had orders to call me, and I would go over and
see after him again.
"But one day, or rather night, it was still quite dark when my bearer
roused me with his persistent drone of '_Saheeb, saheeb!_' and I knew
in an instant something was wrong. Graham, shortly after I left him,
had got out of bed, dressed himself in his shikar clothes, taken his
gun, and gone away from the camp. His bearer, a lad whom he had
promoted to the place in one of his impulsive generous fits of revolt
against things unjustifiable, had failed to take alarm until his
master's prolonged absence had made him seek and rouse my man. The
latter was full of apologies; but what else, he protested, could be
expected of babes and sucklings promoted out of due season? The babe
and suckling meanwhile was blubbering incoherently, and asserting that
he was not to blame. The _sahib_ had called for Bunder and Bunder had
come; and they had gone off together.
"'Bunder?' I exclaimed. 'Impossible! He hasn't been near the camp for
days. Did any one else see him?' But no one had. And as there was no
time to be lost in inquiries I dismissed the idea as an attempt on the
boy's part to relieve himself from responsibility, and organised the
whole camp into a search party.
"It was a last-quarter moon, and I shall never forget the eeriness of
that long, fruitless search. At first I kept calling 'Graham, Graham!'
but after a time I felt this to be useless, and that he must be either
unconscious, or delirious, or determined to keep out of our way. So I
pushed on and on in silence, through the bushes and bents, expecting
the worst. But after all it was the best. We found him at dawn lying
under one of those stunted trees fast asleep. So sound asleep that he
did not wake when we carried him back to camp on a litter of boughs.
So sound that it was not until the afternoon, when he stirred and
asked for beef-tea, that I discovered he wore round his neck a plaited
cord of dirty red silk with a small bag attached to it.
"'How the deuce did that come there?' he asked drowsily, putting his
hand up to feel it. How, indeed? He could never explain; and the bag
held nothing but a bit of blank paper folded into four. He took the
thing to England with him when he went home on sick leave the next
month, and so far as I know is no wiser than he was then as to how it
came round his neck."
Here my fellow-traveller paused, as a whistle from the engine told we
were pulling up again. "Well," I said, a trifle plaintively, "but why
should not I?"
He was already standing on the platform among a miscellaneous pile of
belongings, such as Indian travellers delight to carry about with
them, ere he replied:--
"Good-by. Glad to have met you--for you remind me awfully of Graham!"
I sometimes wonder if I should have taken his warning seriously or
treated it as a traveller's tale. As it was, I had not the chance of
testing its truth. For, at my destination, I found a telegram
recalling me to England on urgent business. So, beyond that passing
glimpse of the Skeleton Tree, I have no experience.