Major Finnerty had made arrangements for a full day after Burra Moti.
Coolies had been sent on with provisions in round wicker baskets slung
from a bamboo yoke, and soon the three sahibs started.
Perhaps it was the absence of immediate haste, a lack of pressing
action, that allowed their minds to rest on their surroundings. Really,
though, it was Lord Victor who drew them to a recognition of their
arboreal surroundings with: "I say! Look at that bonfire--but it's
glorious!" his riding whip indicating a gold mohur tree that, clothed in
its gorgeous spring mantle of vivid red bloom, suggested its native name
of "Forest on Fire."
"Yes," Finnerty said, "it seems to add to the heat of the sun, and, as
if that weren't enough, listen to that damn cuckoo, the 'brain-fever
bird,' vocal in his knowledge that we'll soon be frying in Hades."
The bird of fiendish iteration squeaked: "Fee-e-e-ver, fee-e-e-ver,
fee-e-e-ver!" till he came to a startled hush, as, with noisy cackle, a
woodpecker, all golden beak and red crest atop his black-and-white
waistcoat, shot from the delicate green foliage.
"It's a land of gorgeous colouring," Finnerty commented; "trees and
birds alike."
"Minus the scent and song," Swinton added as a hornbill opened his
yellow coffin beak to screech in jarring discord.
But just when they had passed the sweet-scented neem, and then a
kautchnor standing like some giant artificial wooden thing decorated
with creamy white-and pink-petaled lilies, Finnerty drew rein, holding
up his hand, and to their ears floated from a tangle of babool the sweet
song of a shama. It was like the limpid carolling of a nightingale in a
hedge at home; it bred a hunger of England in Lord Victor's boy heart.
When the song hushed, as they passed the babool Finnerty pointed to a
little long-tailed bird with dull red stomach, and the youth, lifting
his helmet, exclaimed, "You topping old bird! I'd back you against a
lark."
Perhaps India, populous with bird and animal life as well as human, was
always as much on parade as it seemed this morning, and that they now
but observed closer. At any rate, as they left the richer-garbed
foothills for the heavier sombreness of the forest, their eyes were
caught by the antics of a black-plumaged bird who had seized the rudder
of a magpie and was being towed along by that squawking, frightened
mischief-maker.
With a chuckle, Finnerty explained: "He's a king crow, known to all as
the 'police wallah,' for he's eternally putting others to rights. That
'pie' has been looting some nest, and the king crow is driving him over
into the next county."
Like a gateway between the land of the living and the land of beyond,
its giant white limbs weird as the arms of a devil-fish, reaching
through glossy leaves to almost touch a wall of sal, stood a pipal, its
wide-spreading roots, daubed with red paint, nursing a clay idol that
sat amid pots of honey, and sweet cakes, and gaudy tinsel, and little
streamers of coloured cloth--all tribute to the god of the sacred wild
fig. Beyond this they were in a cool forest; above, high against a blue
sky, the purple haze of the sal bloom, their advent sending a
grey-backed fat little dweller scuttling away on his short legs.
"A badger!" Lord Victor cried eagerly.
"Kidio, the grave digger, as our natives call him," Finnerty added.
"Even that chubby little cuss is enlarged mythologically." He turned to
Mahadua, and in answer to a question the latter, drawing up to the
Major's stirrup, said: "Yes, sahib, the _ghor kidio_ comes up out of the
Place of Terrors on dark nights and carries away women and children.
Near my village, which is Gaum, one lived in the hills so close that he
was called the 'Dweller at the Hearth.' A sahib who made a hunt of a
month there broke the evil spell by some manner of means, for the great
grave digger was never seen again."
"Shot him?" Finnerty asked seriously.
"No, sahib, else he would have had pride in showing the one." Then
Mahadua dropped back well satisfied with the pleasure of converse with
the sahibs.
Screened from the sun's glare, but warming to his generous heat, the
forest held an indescribable perfume--the nutty, delicious air which,
drawn into expanded lungs, fills one with holy calm, with the delight of
being, of living, and so they rode in silent ecstasy, wrapped in the
mystic charm of the Creator's work.
An hour of travel and they met a party of Finnerty's men carrying one of
their number slung from a bamboo pole. He had been mauled by the black
leopard. The story was soon told. The whole party with Bahadar had moved
forward on Moti's trail, stopping when they felt she was near, the men
spreading out with the object of bringing her in. In one of these
encircling movements they had surrounded, without knowing it, the black
leopard, and, in breaking through, the vicious animal had mauled one so
that he would probably die.
The shikari, after he had asked the locality of this encounter, said:
"It is toward Kohima."
"This shows that he is not a spirit, Mahadua; that he hasn't dissolved
into air."
"Still, sahib, a spirit, leopard or tiger, can always change back."
"It proves to me," Swinton declared, "that there's an exit to that cave
which we did not discover."
They had forgotten Lord Victor's presence, but the young man said
blithely: "I say, I heard you two Johnnies had gone out after a leopard
this morning. What luck?"
"He got away; he's just mauled this man. And it means"--Finnerty turned
and faced Swinton--"that we've got to follow him up."
Finnerty's voice had scarcely ceased when the trumpeting of an elephant,
loud and shrill, sounded ahead. "That's Raj Bahadar," Finnerty declared.
"I expect Moti has come back with another walloping."
They urged their horses, and came to where the party had camped through
the night, a fresh trail showing that the men had moved on. Following
this, they came within hearing of human voices, high-pitched in a babel
of commands and exhortations and calls, drowned at times by the trumpet
of Bahadar. Emerging from a thick clump of trees, they could see the
natives darting and hopping about something that looked like the top of
a submarine emerging from the waters.
"Bahadar has fallen into a pit," Finnerty declared.
Before the three sahibs reached Bahadar there was an encouraging "phrut,
phrut" from beyond, and Moti's gleaming tusks showed through the jungle;
and then the old lady herself halted just beyond the pit for a brief
survey, as if to make sure that it wasn't a game to trap her. Then she
advanced gingerly, feeling the ground, and thrust out her trunk for
Bahadar to grasp with his. The natives saw that Moti had come to help
Bahadar and not to belabour him. With sticks and jungle axes some of
them started to tear down to a slope the end wall of the pit, while the
others gathered sticks and branches and threw them beneath the trapped
elephant as a gradually rising stage.
Finnerty dismounted, and, calling a man, said: "While Moti is busy noose
both her hind legs, leaving the ropes in the hands of men so that she
will not find the strain, and when Bahadar is out fasten them quickly
around trees."
Moti was for all the world like the "anchor man" on a tug-of-war team.
Clasping the bull elephant's trunk in a close hitch, she leaned her
great bulk back and pulled with little grunts of encouragement. Bahadar
soon was able to catch his big toes in the partly broken bank, and
helped the natives in its levelling.
At last he was out, and seeming to recognise what Moti had done, was
rubbing his trunk over her forehead and blowing little whiffs of
endearment into her ears, while she stood warily watching the puny
creatures who kept beyond reach of a sudden throw of her trunk.
A native with a noose, watching his chance, darted in and slipped it
over a forefoot, and Moti, in a second, was moored, fore and aft, to
strong trees. Either in a cunning wait or from a feeling of resignation
to fate, she put up no fight beyond a querulous "phrump, phrump!" as if
she would say: "My reward, you traitors!"
Bahadar was cut about the legs, for the pit, being an elephant trap dug
by Nagas who captured elephants for their meat and ivory, was studded
with upright bamboo spears, and, unlike the local pits with their sloped
sides, its walls were perpendicular to its full depth of ten feet.
"Tell me why you left the main trail, and how Bahadar stepped into this
pit?" Finnerty demanded of Gothya, the mahout.
"We heard the bell, sahib----"
"Fool!" and Finnerty pointed to Moti's neck, on which was nothing.
"We all heard it, sahib, and some talk between a voice and Moti, who
would answer back '_E-e-eu-eu--phrut! E-e-eu-eu--phrut!_' as though she
were saying, 'Wait, brother!' No doubt, sahib, it was a jungle spirit
that was drawing Moti along for our destruction, for, as we followed
this old Naga trail, Bahadar suddenly went through the covering of
leaves and dead limbs that was over the pit."
It was now past noon, and Finnerty said: "We'll have tiffin, a rest-up,
and, with Mahadua, make a wide cast toward the hills to see if we can
pick up tracks of the leopard; he's both ugly and hungry, so will do
something to betray himself. We'll leave Moti here with the party--the
tie-up will quiet her--until we return."
A leg chain was fastened from one of Moti's front feet to a hind foot,
which would shorten her stride should it so happen that by any chance
she broke away again.
PART FOUR