"Respect the aged!"
It was a thick voice--a muddy voice that would have made you
shudder--a voice like something soft breaking in two. There was a
quaver in it, a croak and a whine.
"Respect the aged! O Companions of the River--respect the aged!"
Nothing could be seen on the broad reach of the river except a little
fleet of square-sailed, wooden-pinned barges, loaded with
building-stone, that had just come under the railway bridge, and were
driving down-stream. They put their clumsy helms over to avoid the
sand-bar made by the scour of the bridge-piers, and as they passed,
three abreast, the horrible voice began again:
"O Brahmins of the River--respect the aged and infirm!"
A boatman turned where he sat on the gunwale, lifted up his hand, said
something that was not a blessing, and the boats creaked on through
the twilight. The broad Indian river, that looked more like a chain of
little lakes than a stream, was as smooth as glass, reflecting the
sandy-red sky in mid-channel, but splashed with patches of yellow and
dusky purple near and under the low banks. Little creeks ran into the
river in the wet season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above
water-line. On the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge,
stood a mud-and-brick and thatch-and-stick village, whose main street,
full of cattle going back to their byres, ran straight to the river,
and ended in a sort of rude brick pier-head, where people who wanted
to wash could wade in step by step. That was the Ghaut of the village
of Mugger-Ghaut.
Night was falling fast over the fields of lentils and rice and cotton
in the low-lying ground yearly flooded by the river; over the reeds
that fringed the elbow of the bend, and the tangled low jungle of the
grazing-grounds behind the still reeds. The parrots and crows, who had
been chattering and shouting over their evening drink, had flown
inland to roost, crossing the out-going battalions of the
flying-foxes; and cloud upon cloud of water-birds came whistling and
"honking" to the cover of the reed-beds. There were geese,
barrel-headed and black-backed, teal, widgeon, mallard, and sheldrake,
with curlews, and here and there a flamingo.
A lumbering Adjutant-crane brought up the rear, flying as though each
slow stroke would be his last.
"Respect the aged! Brahmins of the River--respect the aged!"
The Adjutant half turned his head, sheered a little in the direction
of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge.
Then you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was. His back view was
immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet high, and looked
rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. In front it was
different, for his Ally Sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to
them, and there was a horrible raw-skin pouch on his neck under his
chin--a hold-all for the things his pickaxe beak might steal. His legs
were long and thin and skinny, but he moved them delicately, and
looked at them with pride as he preened down his ashy-gray
tail-feathers, glanced over the smooth of his shoulder, and stiffened
into "Stand at attention."
A mangy little Jackal, who had been yapping hungrily on a low bluff,
cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows to join
the Adjutant.
He was the lowest of his caste--not that the best of jackals are good
for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a
criminal--a cleaner up of village rubbish-heaps, desperately timid or
wildly bold, everlastingly hungry, and full of cunning that never did
him any good.
"Ugh!" he said, shaking himself dolefully as he landed. "May the red
mange destroy the dogs of this village! I have three bites for each
flea upon me, and all because I looked--only looked, mark you--at an
old shoe in a cow-byre. Can I eat mud?" He scratched himself under his
left ear.
"I heard," said the Adjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going
through a thick board--"I _heard_ there was a new-born puppy in that
same shoe."
"To hear is one thing; to know is another," said the Jackal, who had a
very fair knowledge of proverbs, picked up by listening to men round
the village fires of an evening.
"Quite true. So, to make sure, I took care of that puppy while the
dogs were busy elsewhere."
"They were _very_ busy," said the Jackal. "Well, I must not go to the
village hunting for scraps yet awhile. And so there truly was a blind
puppy in that shoe?"
"It is here," said the Adjutant, squinting over his beak at his full
pouch. "A small thing, but acceptable now that charity is dead in the
world."
"Ahai! The world is iron in these days," wailed the Jackal. Then his
restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the water, and he
went on quickly: "Life is hard for us all, and I doubt not that even
our excellent master, the Pride of the Ghaut and the Envy of the
River--"
"A liar, a flatterer, and a Jackal were all hatched out of the same
egg," said the Adjutant to nobody in particular; for he was rather a
fine sort of a liar on his own account when he took the trouble.
"Yes, the Envy of the River," the Jackal repeated, raising his voice.
"Even he, I doubt not, finds that since the bridge has been built good
food is more scarce. But on the other hand, though I would by no means
say this to his noble face, he is so wise and so virtuous--as I,
alas! am not--"
"When the Jackal owns he is gray, how black must the Jackal be!"
muttered the Adjutant. He could not see what was coming.
"That _his_ food never fails, and in consequence--"
There was a soft grating sound, as though a boat had just touched in
shoal water. The Jackal spun round quickly and faced (it is always
best to face) the creature he had been talking about. It was a
twenty-four-foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble-riveted
boiler-plate, studded and keeled and crested; the yellow points of his
upper teeth just overhanging his beautifully fluted lower jaw. It was
the blunt-nosed Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, older than any man in the
village, who had given his name to the village; the demon of the ford
before the railway bridge came--murderer, man-eater, and local fetish
in one. He lay with his chin in the shallows, keeping his place by an
almost invisible rippling of his tail, and well the Jackal knew that
one stroke of that same tail in the water could carry the Mugger up
the bank with the rush of a steam-engine.
"Auspiciously met, Protector of the Poor!" he fawned, backing at
every word. "A delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of
sweet conversation. My tailless presumption, while waiting here, led
me, indeed, to speak of thee. It is my hope that nothing was
overheard."
Now the Jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery
was the best way of getting things to eat, and the Mugger knew that
the Jackal had spoken for this end, and the Jackal knew that the
Mugger knew, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal knew that the Mugger
knew, and so they were all very contented together.
The old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling,
"Respect the aged and infirm!" and all the time his little eyes burned
like coals under the heavy, horny eyelids on the top of his triangular
head, as he shoved his bloated barrel-body along between his crutched
legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as the Jackal was to his
ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw
how exactly the Mugger imitated a log adrift on the bar. He had even
taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would
make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the
time and place. All this was only a matter of habit, of course,
because the Mugger had come ashore for pleasure; but a crocodile is
never quite full, and if the Jackal had been deceived by the likeness
he would not have lived to philosophize over it.
"My child, I heard nothing," said the Mugger, shutting one eye. "The
water was in my ears, and also I was faint with hunger. Since the
railway bridge was built my people at my village have ceased to love
me; and that is breaking my heart."
"Ah, shame!" said the Jackal. "So noble a heart, too! But men are all
alike, to my mind."
"Nay, there are very great differences indeed," the Mugger answered
gently. "Some are as lean as boat-poles. Others again are fat as young
ja--dogs. Never would I causelessly revile men. They are of all
fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another,
they are very good. Men, women, and children--I have no fault to find
with them. And remember, child, he who rebukes the World is rebuked by
the World."
"Flattery is worse than an empty tin can in the belly. But that which
we have just heard is wisdom," said the Adjutant, bringing down one
foot.
"Consider, though, their ingratitude to this excellent one," began the
Jackal tenderly.
"Nay, nay, not ingratitude!" the Mugger said. "They do not think for
others; that is all. But I have noticed, lying at my station below the
ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly hard to climb,
both for old people and young children. The old, indeed, are not so
worthy of consideration, but I am grieved--I am truly grieved--on
account of the fat children. Still, I think, in a little while, when
the newness of the bridge has worn away, we shall see my people's bare
brown legs bravely splashing through the ford as before. Then the old
Mugger will be honored again."
"But surely I saw marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the Ghaut
only this noon," said the Adjutant.
Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all India over.
"An error--an error. It was the wife of the sweetmeat-seller. She
loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me--the
Mugger of the Ghaut. I saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for
I was lying at the very foot of the Ghaut, and had she taken another
step I might have shown her some little difference. Yet she meant
well, and we must consider the spirit of the offering."
"What good are marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish-heap?" said
the Jackal, hunting for fleas, but keeping one wary eye on his
Protector of the Poor.
"True, but they have not yet begun to make the rubbish-heap that shall
carry _me_. Five times have I seen the river draw back from the
village and make new land at the foot of the street. Five times have I
seen the village rebuilt on the banks, and I shall see it built yet
five times more. I am no faithless, fish-hunting Gavial, I, at Kasi
to-day and Prayag to-morrow, as the saying is, but the true and
constant watcher of the ford. It is not for nothing, child, that the
village bears my name, and 'he who watches long,' as the saying is,
'shall at last have his reward.'"
"_I_ have watched long--very long--nearly all my life, and my reward
has been bites and blows," said the Jackal.
"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the Adjutant.
"In August was the Jackal born;
The Rains fell in September;
'Now such a fearful flood as this,'
Says he, 'I can't remember!'"
There is one very unpleasant peculiarity about the Adjutant. At
uncertain times he suffers from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp
in his legs, and though he is more virtuous to behold than any of the
cranes, who are all immensely respectable, he flies off into wild,
cripple-stilt war-dances, half opening his wings and bobbing his bald
head up and down; while for reasons best known to himself he is very
careful to time his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At the
last word of his song he came to attention again, ten times
adjutaunter than before.
The Jackal winced, though he was full three seasons old, but you
cannot resent an insult from a person with a beak a yard long, and the
power of driving it like a javelin. The Adjutant was a most notorious
coward, but the Jackal was worse.
"We must live before we can learn," said the Mugger, "and there is
this to say: Little jackals are very common, child, but such a mugger
as I am is not common. For all that, I am not proud, since pride is
destruction; but take notice, it is Fate, and against his Fate no one
who swims or walks or runs should say anything at all. I am well
contented with Fate. With good luck, a keen eye, and the custom of
considering whether a creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere
you ascend, much may be done."
"Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a mistake,"
said the Jackal viciously.
"True; but there my Fate helped me. It was before I had come to my
full growth--before the last famine but three (by the Right and Left
of Gunga, how full used the streams to be in those days!). Yes, I was
young and unthinking, and when the flood came, who so pleased as I? A
little made me very happy then. The village was deep in flood, and I
swam above the Ghaut and went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and
they were deep in good mud. I remember also a pair of bracelets (glass
they were, and troubled me not a little) that I found that evening.
Yes, glass bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe. I
should have shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned better
later. Yes. And so I fed and rested me; but when I was ready to go to
the river again the flood had fallen, and I walked through the mud of
the main street. Who but I? Came out all my people, priests and women
and children, and I looked upon them with benevolence. The mud is not
a good place to fight in. Said a boatman, 'Get axes and kill him, for
he is the Mugger of the ford.' 'Not so,' said the Brahmin. 'Look, he
is driving the flood before him! He is the godling of the village.'
Then they threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a
goat across the road."
"How good--how very good is goat!" said the Jackal.
"Hairy--too hairy, and when found in the water more than likely to
hide a cross-shaped hook. But that goat I accepted, and went down to
the Ghaut in great honor. Later, my Fate sent me the boatman who had
desired to cut off my tail with an axe. His boat grounded upon an old
shoal which you would not remember."
"We are not _all_ jackals here," said the Adjutant. "Was it the shoal
made where the stone-boats sank in the year of the great drouth--a
long shoal that lasted three floods?"
"There were two," said the Mugger; "an upper and a lower shoal."
"Ay, I forgot. A channel divided them, and later dried up again," said
the Adjutant, who prided himself on his memory.
"On the lower shoal my well-wisher's craft grounded. He was sleeping
in the bows, and, half awake, leaped over to his waist--no, it was no
more than to his knees--to push off. His empty boat went on and
touched again below the next reach, as the river ran then. I followed,
because I knew men would come out to drag it ashore."
"And did they do so?" said the Jackal, a little awe-stricken. This was
hunting on a scale that impressed him.
"There and lower down they did. I went no further, but that gave me
three in one day--well-fed _manjis_ (boatmen) all, and, except in the
case of the last (then I was careless), never a cry to warn those on
the bank."
"Ah, noble sport! But what cleverness and great judgment it requires!"
said the Jackal.
"Not cleverness, child, but only thought. A little thought in life is
like salt upon rice, as the boatmen say, and I have thought deeply
always. The Gavial, my cousin, the fish-eater, has told me how hard it
is for him to follow his fish, and how one fish differs from the
other, and how he must know them all, both together and apart. I say
that is wisdom; but, on the other hand, my cousin, the Gavial, lives
among his people. _My_ people do not swim in companies, with their
mouths out of the water, as Rewa does; nor do they constantly rise to
the surface of the water, and turn over on their sides, like Mohoo and
little Chapta; nor do they gather in shoals after flood, like Batchua
and Chilwa."
"All are very good eating," said the Adjutant, clattering his beak.
"So my cousin says, and makes a great to-do over hunting them, but
they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose. _My_ people are
otherwise. Their life is on the land, in the houses, among the cattle.
I must know what they do, and what they are about to do; and, adding
the tail to the trunk, as the saying is, I make up the whole elephant.
Is there a green branch and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? The
old Mugger knows that a boy has been born in that house, and must some
day come down to the Ghaut to play. Is a maiden to be married? The old
Mugger knows, for he sees the men carry gifts back and forth; and she,
too, comes down to the Ghaut to bathe before her wedding, and--he is
there. Has the river changed its channel, and made new land where
there was only sand before? The Mugger knows."
"Now, of what use is that knowledge?" said the Jackal. "The river has
shifted even in my little life." Indian rivers are nearly always
moving about in their beds, and will shift, sometimes, as much as two
or three miles in a season, drowning the fields on one bank, and
spreading good silt on the other.
"There is no knowledge so useful," said the Mugger, "for new land
means new quarrels. The Mugger knows. Oho! the Mugger knows. As soon
as the water has drained off, he creeps up the little creeks that men
think would not hide a dog, and there he waits. Presently comes a
farmer saying he will plant cucumbers here, and melons there, in the
new land that the river has given him. He feels the good mud with his
bare toes. Anon comes another, saying he will put onions, and carrots,
and sugar-cane in such and such places. They meet as boats adrift
meet, and each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue turban.
The old Mugger sees and hears. Each calls the other 'Brother,' and
they go to mark out the boundaries of the new land. The Mugger hurries
with them from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. Now
they begin to quarrel! Now they say hot words! Now they pull turbans!
Now they lift up their _lathis_ (clubs), and, at last, one falls
backward into the mud, and the other runs away. When he comes back the
dispute is settled, as the iron-bound bamboo of the loser witnesses.
Yet they are not grateful to the Mugger. No, they cry 'Murder!' and
their families fight with sticks, twenty a side. My people are good
people--upland Jats--Malwais of the Bet. They do not give blows for
sport, and, when the fight is done, the old Mugger waits far down the
river, out of sight of the village, behind the _kikar_-scrub yonder.
Then come they down, my broad-shouldered Jats--eight or nine together
under the stars, bearing the dead man upon a bed. They are old men
with gray beards, and voices as deep as mine. They light a little
fire--ah! how well I know that fire!--and they drink tobacco, and they
nod their heads together forward in a ring, or sideways toward the
dead man upon the bank. They say the English Law will come with a rope
for this matter, and that such a man's family will be ashamed, because
such a man must be hanged in the great square of the Jail. Then say
the friends of the dead, 'Let him hang!' and the talk is all to do
over again--once, twice, twenty times in the long night. Then says
one, at last, 'The fight was a fair fight. Let us take blood-money, a
little more than is offered by the slayer, and we will say no more
about it.' Then do they haggle over the blood-money, for the dead was
a strong man, leaving many sons. Yet before _amratvela_ (sunrise) they
put the fire to him a little, as the custom is, and the dead man
comes to me, and _he_ says no more about it. Aha! my children, the
Mugger knows--the Mugger knows--and my Malwah Jats are a good people!"
"They are too close--too narrow in the hand for my crop," croaked the
Adjutant. "They waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the saying
is; and, again, who can glean after a Malwai?"
"Ah, I--glean--_them_," said the Mugger.
"Now, in Calcutta of the South, in the old days," the Adjutant went
on, "everything was thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose.
Those were dainty seasons. But to-day they keep their streets as clean
as the outside of an egg, and my people fly away. To be clean is one
thing; to dust, sweep, and sprinkle seven times a day wearies the very
Gods themselves."
"There was a down-country jackal had it from a brother, who told me,
that in Calcutta of the South all the jackals were as fat as otters in
the Rains," said the Jackal, his mouth watering at the bare thought of
it.
"Ah, but the white-faces are there--the English, and they bring dogs
from somewhere down the river, in boats--big fat dogs--to keep those
same jackals lean," said the Adjutant.
"They are, then, as hard-hearted as these people? I might have known.
Neither earth, sky, nor water shows charity to a jackal. I saw the
tents of a white-face last season, after the Rains, and I also took a
new yellow bridle to eat. The white-faces do not dress their leather
in the proper way. It made me very sick."
"That was better than my case," said the Adjutant. "When I was in my
third season, a young and a bold bird, I went down to the river where
the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as
this village."
"He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the people there walk on
their heads," muttered the Jackal. The Mugger opened his left eye, and
looked keenly at the Adjutant.
"It is true," the big bird insisted. "A liar only lies when he hopes
to be believed. No one who had not seen those boats _could_ believe
this truth."
"_That_ is more reasonable," said the Mugger. "And then?"
"From the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of
white stuff, which, in a little while, turned to water. Much split
off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a
house with thick walls. But a boatman, who laughed, took a piece no
larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. I--all my people--swallow
without reflection, and that piece I swallowed as is our custom.
Immediately I was afflicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in
my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even
of speech, while the boatmen laughed at me. Never have I felt such
cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could recover my
breath, and then I danced and cried out against the falseness of this
world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief
wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvelous coldness, was that
there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my
lamentings!"
The Adjutant had done his very best to describe his feelings after
swallowing a seven-pound lump of Wenham Lake ice, off an American
ice-ship, in the days before Calcutta made her ice by machinery; but
as he did not know what ice was, and as the Mugger and the Jackal knew
rather less, the tale missed fire.
"Anything," said the Mugger, shutting his left eye again--"_anything_
is possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut.
My village is not a small one."
There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the Delhi Mail slid
across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows
faithfully following along the river. It clanked away into the dark
again; but the Mugger and the Jackal were so well used to it that they
never turned their heads.
"Is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of
Mugger-Ghaut?" said the bird, looking up.
"I saw that built, child. Stone by stone I saw the bridge-piers rise,
and when the men fell off (they were wondrous sure-footed for the most
part--but _when_ they fell) I was ready. After the first pier was made
they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn.
There, again, I saved much trouble. There was nothing strange in the
building of the bridge," said the Mugger.
"But that which goes across, pulling the roofed carts! That is
strange," the Adjutant repeated.
"It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. Some day it will not
be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did.
The old Mugger will then be ready."
The Jackal looked at the Adjutant, and the Adjutant looked at the
Jackal. If there was one thing they were more certain of than
another, it was that the engine was everything in the wide world
except a bullock. The Jackal had watched it time and again from the
aloe-hedges by the side of the line, and the Adjutant had seen engines
since the first locomotive ran in India. But the Mugger had only
looked up at the thing from below, where the brass dome seemed rather
like a bullock's hump.
"M--yes, a new kind of bullock," the Mugger repeated ponderously, to
make himself quite sure in his own mind; and "Certainly it is a
bullock," said the Jackal.
"And again it might be--" began the Mugger pettishly.
"Certainly--most certainly," said the Jackal, without waiting for the
other to finish.
"What?" said the Mugger angrily, for he could feel that the others
knew more than he did. "What might it be? _I_ never finished my words.
You said it was a bullock."
"It is anything the Protector of the Poor pleases. I am _his_
servant--not the servant of the thing that crosses the river."
"Whatever it is, it is white-face work," said the Adjutant; "and for
my own part, I would not lie out upon a place so near to it as this
bar."
"You do not know the English as I do," said the Mugger. "There was a
white-face here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in
the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bottom-boards, and
whisper: 'Is he here? Is he there? Bring me my gun.' I could hear him
before I could see him--each sound that he made--creaking and puffing
and rattling his gun, up and down the river. As surely as I had picked
up one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the
burning, so surely would he come down to the Ghaut, and shout in a
loud voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of me--the Mugger
of Mugger-Ghaut! _Me!_ Children, I have swum under the bottom of his
boat for hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at logs; and when
I was well sure he was wearied, I have risen by his side and snapped
my jaws in his face. When the bridge was finished he went away. All
the English hunt in that fashion, except when they are hunted."
"Who hunts the white-faces?" yapped the Jackal excitedly.
"No one now, but I have hunted them in my time."
"I remember a little of that Hunting. I was young then," said the
Adjutant, clattering his beak significantly.
"I was well established here. My village was being builded for the
third time, as I remember, when my cousin, the Gavial, brought me word
of rich waters above Benares. At first I would not go, for my cousin,
who is a fish-eater, does not always know the good from the bad; but I
heard my people talking in the evenings, and what they said made me
certain."
"And what did they say?" the Jackal asked.
"They said enough to make me, the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, leave water
and take to my feet. I went by night, using the littlest streams as
they served me; but it was the beginning of the hot weather and all
streams were low. I crossed dusty roads; I went through tall grass; I
climbed hills in the moonlight. Even rocks did I climb,
children--consider this well. I crossed the tail of Sirhind, the
waterless, before I could find the set of the little rivers that flow
Gungaward. I was a month's journey from my own people and the river
that I knew. That was very marvelous!"
"What food on the way?" said the Jackal, who kept his soul in his
little stomach, and was not a bit impressed by the Mugger's land
travels.
"That which I could find--_cousin_," said the Mugger slowly, dragging
each word.
Now you do not call a man a cousin in India unless you think you can
establish some kind of blood-relationship, and as it is only in old
fairy-tales that the Mugger ever marries a jackal, the Jackal knew for
what reason he had been suddenly lifted into the Mugger's family
circle. If they had been alone he would not have cared, but the
Adjutant's eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest.
"Assuredly, Father, I might have known," said the Jackal. A Mugger
does not care to be called a father of jackals, and the Mugger of
Mugger-Ghaut said as much--and a great deal more which there is no use
in repeating here.
"The Protector of the Poor has claimed kinship. How can I remember the
precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said it," was
the Jackal's reply.
That made matters rather worse, for what the Jackal hinted at was that
the Mugger must have eaten his food on that land march fresh and fresh
every day, instead of keeping it by him till it was in a fit and
proper condition, as every self-respecting mugger and most wild beasts
do when they can. Indeed, one of the worst terms of contempt along the
River-bed is "eater of fresh meat." It is nearly as bad as calling a
man a cannibal.
"That food was eaten thirty seasons ago," said the Adjutant quietly.
"If we talk for thirty seasons more it will never come back. Tell us,
now, what happened when the good waters were reached after thy most
wonderful land journey. If we listened to the howling of every jackal
the business of the town would stop, as the saying is."
The Mugger must have been grateful for the interruption, because he
went on, with a rush:
"By the Right and Left of Gunga! when I came there never did I see
such waters!"
"Were they better, then, than the big flood of last season?" said the
Jackal.
"Better! That flood was no more than comes every five years--a handful
of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullock in muddy water
with cross-currents. But the season I think of, the river was low,
smooth, and even, and, as the Gavial had warned me, the dead English
came down, touching each other. I got my girth in that season--my
girth and my depth. From Agra, by Etawah and the broad waters by
Allahabad--"
"Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at Allahabad!" said
the Adjutant. "They came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and round
and round they swung--thus!"
He went off into his horrible dance again, while the Jackal looked on
enviously. He naturally could not remember the terrible year of the
Mutiny they were talking about. The Mugger continued:
"Yes, by Allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let twenty go
by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with
jewelry and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. To
delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for necklace, as the saying
is. All the muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, but it was my
Fate to be fatter than them all. The news was that the English were
being hunted into the rivers, and by the Right and Left of Gunga! we
believed it was true. So far as I went south I believed it to be true;
and I went down-stream beyond Monghyr and the tombs that look over the
river."
"I know that place," said the Adjutant. "Since those days Monghyr is a
lost city. Very few live there now."
"Thereafter I worked up-stream very slowly and lazily, and a little
above Monghyr there came down a boatful of white-faces--alive! They
were, as I remember, women, lying under a cloth spread over sticks,
and crying aloud. There was never a gun fired at us the watchers of
the fords in those days. All the guns were busy elsewhere. We could
hear them day and night inland, coming and going as the wind shifted.
I rose up full before the boat, because I had never seen white-faces
alive, though I knew them well--otherwise. A naked white child kneeled
by the side of the boat, and, stooping over, must needs try to trail
his hands in the river. It is a pretty thing to see how a child loves
running water. I had fed that day, but there was yet a little unfilled
space within me. Still, it was for sport and not for food that I rose
at the child's hands. They were so clear a mark that I did not even
look when I closed; but they were so small that though my jaws rang
true--I am sure of that--the child drew them up swiftly, unhurt. They
must have passed between tooth and tooth--those small white hands. I
should have caught him crosswise at the elbows; but, as I said, it was
only for sport and desire to see new things that I rose at all. They
cried out one after another in the boat, and presently I rose again to
watch them. Their boat was too heavy to push over. They were only
women, but he who trusts a woman will walk on duckweed in a pool, as
the saying is: and by the Right and Left of Gunga, that is truth!"
"Once a woman gave me some dried skin from a fish," said the Jackal.
"I had hoped to get her baby, but horse-food is better than the kick
of a horse, as the saying is. What did thy woman do?"
"She fired at me with a short gun of a kind I have never seen before
or since. Five times, one after another" (the Mugger must have met
with an old-fashioned revolver); "and I stayed open-mouthed and
gaping, my head in the smoke. Never did I see such a thing. Five
times, as swiftly as I wave my tail--thus!"
The Jackal, who had been growing more and more interested in the
story, had just time to leap back as the long tail swung by like a
scythe.
"Not before the fifth shot," said the Mugger, as though he had never
dreamed of stunning one of his listeners--"not before the fifth shot
did I sink, and I rose in time to hear a boatman telling all those
white women that I was most certainly dead. One bullet had gone under
a neckplate of mine. I know not if it is there still, for the reason I
cannot turn my head. Look and see, child. It will show that my tale is
true."
"I?" said the Jackal. "Shall an eater of old shoes, a bone-cracker,
presume to doubt the word of the Envy of the River? May my tail be
bitten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such a thought has
crossed my humble mind. The Protector of the Poor has condescended to
inform me, his slave, that once in his life he has been wounded by a
woman. That is sufficient, and I will tell the tale to all my
children, asking for no proof."
"Over-much civility is sometimes no better than over-much discourtesy,
for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. I do _not_
desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of
Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much
else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their
father."
"It is forgotten long ago! It was never said! There never was a white
woman! There was no boat! Nothing whatever happened at all."
The Jackal waved his brush to show how completely everything was wiped
out of his memory, and sat down with an air.
"Indeed, very many things happened," said the Mugger, beaten in his
second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. (Neither
bore malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law along the river,
and the Jackal came in for his share of plunder when the Mugger had
finished a meal.) "I left that boat and went up-stream, and, when I
had reached Arrah and the backwaters behind it, there were no more
dead English. The river was empty for a while. Then came one or two
dead, in red coats, not English, but of one kind all--Hindus and
Purbeeahs--then five and six abreast, and at last, from Arrah to the
North beyond Agra, it was as though whole villages had walked into the
water. They came out of little creeks one after another, as the logs
come down in the Rains. When the river rose they rose also in
companies from the shoals they had rested upon; and the falling flood
dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the
long hair. All night, too, going North, I heard the guns, and by day
the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy
cart-wheel makes on sand under water; and every ripple brought more
dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said: 'If this thing happen to
men how shall the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut escape?' There were boats,
too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the
cotton-boats sometimes burn, but never sinking."
"Ah!" said the Adjutant. "Boats like those come to Calcutta of the
South. They are tall and black, they beat up the water behind them
with a tail, and they--"
"Are thrice as big as my village. _My_ boats were low and white; they
beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the
boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and
I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking
by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to
my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there.
Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in
their fields, as quietly as their own cattle."
"Was there still good food in the river?" said the Jackal.
"More than I had any desire for. Even I--and I do not eat mud--even I
was tired, and, as I remember, a little frightened of this constant
coming down of the silent ones. I heard my people say in my village
that all the English were dead; but those that came, face-down, with
the current were _not_ English, as my people saw. Then my people said
that it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow
the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came
down it had been clearly drowned by the floods, as I could well see;
and, though it was not so easy then to get food, I was heartily glad
of it. A little killing here and there is no bad thing--but even the
Mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is."
"Marvelous! Most truly marvelous!" said the Jackal. "I am become fat
through merely hearing about so much good eating. And afterward what,
if it be permitted to ask, did the Protector of the Poor do?"
"I said to myself--and by the Right and Left of Gunga! I locked my
jaws on that vow--I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived
by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them
year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold
wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my Fate has
been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor
and infirm presence; only--"
"No one is all happy from his beak to his tail," said the Adjutant
sympathetically. "What does the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut need more?"
"That little white child which I did not get," said the Mugger, with a
deep sigh. "He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now,
but before I die it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true
they are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foolish people, and the sport
would be small, but I remember the old days above Benares, and, if the
child lives, he will remember still. It may be he goes up and down the
bank of some river, telling how he once passed his hands between the
teeth of the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut and lived to make a tale of it. My
Fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my
dreams--the thought of the little white child in the bows of that
boat." He yawned, and closed his jaws. "And now I will rest and think.
Keep silent, my children, and respect the aged."
He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the
Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded
on the end nearest the railway bridge.
"That was a pleasant and profitable life," he grinned, looking up
inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. "And not once, mark
you, did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left
along the banks. Yet I have told _him_ a hundred times of good things
wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, 'All the world forgets
the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told!' Now he is
going to sleep! _Arrh!_"
"How can a Jackal hunt with a Mugger?" said the Adjutant coolly. "Big
thief and little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pickings."
The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself
up under the tree trunk, when suddenly he cowered, and looked up
through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head.
"What now?" said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily.
"Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not
looking for us--those two men."
"Men, is it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy." The
Adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he
pleases, and so this one never flinched.
"I am not worth a blow from anything greater than an old shoe," said
the Jackal, and listened again. "Hark to that footfall!" he went on.
"That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face.
Listen again! Iron hits iron up there! It is a gun! Friend, those
heavy-footed, foolish English are coming to speak with the Mugger."
"Warn him, then. He was called Protector of the Poor by some one not
unlike a starving Jackal but a little time ago."
"Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has told me again and again
there is nothing to fear from the white-faces. They must be
white-faces. Not a villager of Mugger-Ghaut would dare to come after
him. See, I said it was a gun! Now, with good luck, we shall feed
before daylight. He cannot hear well out of water, and--this time it
is not a woman!"
A shiny barrel glittered for a minute in the moonlight on the girders.
The Mugger was lying on the sand-bar as still as his own shadow, his
fore feet spread out a little, his head dropped between them, snoring
like a--mugger.
A voice on the bridge whispered: "It's an odd shot--straight down
almost--but as safe as houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly! what
a brute! The villagers will be wild if he's shot, though. He's the
_deota_ (godling) of these parts."
"Don't care a rap," another voice answered; "he took about fifteen of
my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it's time he was
put a stop to. I've been after him in a boat for weeks. Stand by with
the Martini as soon as I've given him both barrels of this."
"Mind the kick, then. A double four-bore's no joke."
"That's for him to decide. Here goes!"
There was a roar like the sound of a small cannon (the biggest sort of
elephant-rifle is not very different from some artillery), and a
double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Martini,
whose long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile's plates. But the
explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the
Mugger's neck, a hand's breadth to the left of the backbone, while the
other burst a little lower down, at the beginning of the tail. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mortally wounded crocodile can
scramble to deep water and get away; but the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut
was literally broken into three pieces. He hardly moved his head
before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the Jackal.
"Thunder and lightning! Lightning and thunder!" said that miserable
little beast. "Has the thing that pulls the covered carts over the
bridge tumbled at last?"
"It is no more than a gun," said the Adjutant, though his very
tail-feathers quivered. "Nothing more than a gun. He is certainly
dead. Here come the white-faces."
The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the
sand-bar, where they stood admiring the length of the Mugger. Then a
native with an axe cut off the big head, and four men dragged it
across the spit.
"The last time that I had my hand in a Mugger's mouth," said one of
the Englishmen, stooping down (he was the man who had built the
bridge), "it was when I was about five years old--coming down the
river by boat to Monghyr. I was a Mutiny baby, as they call it. Poor
mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me how she fired dad's
old pistol at the beast's head."
"Well, you've certainly had your revenge on the chief of the
clan--even if the gun has made your nose bleed. Hi, you boatman! Haul
that head up the bank, and we'll boil it for the skull. The skin's too
knocked about to keep. Come along to bed now. This was worth sitting
up all night for, wasn't it?"
* * * * *
Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant made the very same
remark not three minutes after the men had left.
[Illustration]