A Blood-red sun rested its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested
a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight
apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the
faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and
a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering in
search of food that was not there.
A coppersmith was about the only living thing that seemed to care
whether the sun went down or not. He seemed in a hurry to get a job
done, and his reiterated “Bong-bong-bong!”--that had never ceased since
sunrise, and had driven nearly mad the few humans who were there to hear
it--quickened and grew louder. At last Brown came out of a square mud
house, to see about the sunset.
He was nobody but plain Bill Brown--or Sergeant William Brown, to give
him his full name and entitlements--and the price of him was two rupees
per day.
He stared straight at the dull red disk of the sun, and spat with
eloquence. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and scratched a
place where the prickly heat was bothering him. Next, he buttoned up
his tunic, and brushed it down neatly and precisely. There was official
business to be done, and a man did that with due formality, heat or no
heat.
“Guard, turn out!” he ordered.
Twelve men filed out, one behind the other, from the hut that he had
left. They seemed to feel the heat more than Brown did, as they fell in
line before Brown's sword. There was no flag, and no flag-pole in that
nameless health-resort, so the sword, without its scabbard, was doing
duty, point downward in the ground, as a totem-pole of Empire. Brown had
stuck it there, like Boanerges' boots, and there it stayed from sunrise
until sunset, to be displaced by whoever dared to do it, at his peril.
They had no clock. They had nothing, except the uniforms and arms of
the Honorable East India Company, as issued in this year of Our
Lord, 1857--a cooking-pot or two, a kettle, a little money and a
butcher-knife. Their supper bleated miserably some twenty yards away,
tied to a tree, and a lean. Punjabi squatted near it in readiness to buy
the skin. It was a big goat, but it was mangy, so he held only two annas
in his hand. The other anna (in case that Brown should prove adamant)
was twisted in the folds of his pugree, but he was prepared to perjure
himself a dozen times, and take the names of all his female ancestors in
vain, before he produced it.
The sun flattened a little more at the bottom, and began to move
quickly, as it does in India--anxious apparently to get away from the
day's ill deeds.
“Shoulder umms!” commanded Brown. “General salute! Present-umms!”
The red sun slid below the sky-line, and the night was on them, as
though somebody had shut the lid. Brown stepped to the sword, jerked it
out of the ground and returned it to his scabbard in three motions.
“Shoulder-umms! Order-umms! Dismiss!” The men filed back into the hut
again, disconsolately, without swearing and without mirth. They had
put the sun to bed with proper military decency. They would have seen
humor--perhaps--or an excuse for blasphemy in the omission of such a
detail, but it was much too hot to swear at the execution of it.
Besides, Brown was a strange individual who detested swearing, and it
was a very useful thing, and wise, to humor him. He had a way of his
own, and usually got it.
Brown posted a sentry at the hut-door, and another at the crossroads
which he was to guard, then went round behind the but to bargain with
the goatskin-merchant. But he stopped before he reached the tree.
“Boy!” he called, and a low-caste native servant came toward him at a
run.
“Is that fakir there still?”
“Ha, sahib!”
“Ha? Can't you learn to say 'yes,' like a human being?”
“Yes, sahib!”
“All right. I'm going to have a talk with him. Kill the goat, and tell
the Punjabi to wait, if he wants to buy the skin.”
“Ha, sahib!”
Brown spun round on his heel, and the servant wilted.
“Yes, sahib!” he corrected.
Brown left him then, with a nod that conveyed remission of cardinal sin,
and a warning not to repeat the offence. As the native ran off to get
the butcher-knife and sharpen it, it was noticeable that he wore a
chastened look.
“Send Sidiki after me!” Brown shouted after him, and a minute later a
nearly naked Beluchi struck a match and emerged from the darkness, with
the light of a lantern gleaming on his skin. He followed like a snake,
and only Brown's sharp, authority-conveying footfalls could be heard as
he trudged sturdily--straight-backed, eyes straight in front of him--to
where an age-old baobab loomed like a phantom in the night. He marched
like a man in armor. Not even the terrific heat of a Central-Indian
night could take the stiffening out of him.
The Beluchi ran ahead, just before they reached the tree. He stopped and
held the lantern up to let its light fall on some object that was close
against the tree-trunk. At a good ten-pace distance from the object
Brown stopped and stared. The lamplight fell on two little dots that
gleamed. Brown stepped two paces nearer. Two deadly, malicious human
eyes blinked once, and then stared back at him.
“Does he never sleep?” asked Brown.
The Beluchi said something or other in a language that was full of harsh
hard gutturals, and the owner of the eyes chuckled. His voice seemed
to be coming from the tree itself, and there was nothing of him visible
except the cruel keen eyes that had not blinked once since Brown drew
nearer.
“Well?”
“Sahib, he does not answer.”
“Tell him I'm tired of his not answering. Tell him that if he can't
learn to give a civil answer to a civilly put question I'll exercise my
authority on him!”
The Beluchi translated, or pretended to. Brown was not sure which, for
he was rewarded with nothing but another chuckle, which sounded like
water gurgling down a drain.
“Does he still say nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing, sahib.”
Brown stepped up closer yet, and peered into the blackness, looking
straight into the eyes that glared at him, and from them down at the
body of the owner of them. The Beluchi shrank away.
“Have a care, sahib! It is dangerous! This very holy--most holy--most
religious man!”
“Bring that lantern back.”
“He will curse you, sahib!”
“Do you hear me?”
The Beluchi came nearer again, trembling with fright. Brown snatched the
lamp away from him, and pushed it forward toward the fakir, moving it
up and down to get a view of the whole of him. There was nothing that
he saw that would reassure or comfort or please a devil even. It was
ultradevilish; both by design and accident--conceived and calculated
ghastliness, peculiar to India. Brown shuddered as he looked, and it
took more than the merely horrible to make him betray emotion.
“What god do you say he worships?”
“Sahib, I know not. I am a Mussulman. These Hindus worship many gods.”
The fakir chuckled again, and Brown held the lantern yet nearer to him
to get a better view. The fakir's skin was not oily, and for all the
blanket-heat it did not glisten, so his form was barely outlined against
the blackness that was all but tangible behind him.
Brown spat again, as he drew away a step. He could contrive to express
more disgust and more grim determination in that one rudimentary act
than even a Stamboul Softa can.
“So he's holy, is he?”
“Very, very holy, sahib!”
Again the fakir chuckled, and again Brown held his breath and pushed the
lantern closer to him.
“I believe the brute understands the Queen's English!”
“He understanding all things, sahib! He knowing all things what will
happen! Mind, sahib! He may curse you!”
But Brown appeared indifferent to the danger that he ran. To the fakir's
unconcealed discomfort, he proceeded to examine him minutely, going over
him with the aid of the lantern inch by inch, from the toe-nails upward.
“Well,” he commented aloud, “if the army's got an opposite, here's it!
I'd give a month's pay for the privilege of washing this brute, just as
a beginning!”
The man's toe-nails--for he really was a man!--were at least two inches
long. They were twisted spirally, and some of them were curled back on
themselves into disgusting-looking knots. What walking he had ever done
had been on his heels. His feet were bent upward, and fixed upward, by a
deliberately cultivated cramp.
His legs, twisted one above the other in a squatting attitude, were lean
and hairy, and covered with open sores which were kept open by the swarm
of insects that infested him. His loin-cloth was rotting from him. His
emaciated body--powdered and smeared with ashes and dust and worse--was
perched bolt-up-right on a flat earth dais that had once on a time been
the throne of a crossroads idol. One arm, his right one, hung by
his side in an almost normal attitude, and his right fingers moved
incessantly like a man's who is kneading clay. But his other arm was
rigid--straight up in the air above his head; set, fixed, cramped,
paralyzed in that position, with the fist clenched. And through the back
of the closed fist the fakir's nails were growing.
But, worse than the horror of the arm was the creature's face, with
the evidence of torture on it, and fiendish delight in torture for the
torture's sake. His eyes were his only organs that really lived still,
and they expressed the steely hate and cruelty, the mad fanaticism,
the greedy self-love--self-immolating for the sake of self--that is the
thoroughgoing fakir's stock in trade. And his lips were like the
graven lips of a Hindu temple god, self-satisfied, self-worshiping,
contemptuous and cruel. He chuckled again, as Brown finished his
inspection.
“So that crittur's holy, is he? Well, tell him that I'm set here to
watch these crossroads. Tell him I'm supposed to question every one who
comes, and find out what his business is, and arrest him if he can't
give a proper account of himself. Say he's been here three days now, and
that that's long enough for any one to find his tongue in. Tell him if I
don't get an answer from him here and now I'll put him in the clink!”
“But, sahib--”
“You tell him what I say, d'you hear?”
The Beluchi made haste to translate, trembling as he spoke, and wilting
visibly when the baleful eyes of the fakir rested on him for a second.
The fakir answered something in a guttural undertone.
“What does he say?”
“That he will curse you, sahib!”
“Sentry!” shouted Brown.
“Sir!” came the ready answer, and the sling-swivels of a rifle clicked
as the man on guard at the crossroads shouldered it. There are some men
who are called “sir” without any title to it, just as there are some
sergeants who receive a colonel's share of deference when out on a
non-commissioned officer's command. Bill Brown was one of them.
“Come here, will you!”
There came the sound of heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt
descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell
on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention--like a jinnee
formed suddenly from empty blackness.
“Arrest this fakir. Cram him in the clink.”
“Very good, sir!”
The sentry took one step forward, with his fixed bayonet at the
“charge,” and the fakir sat still and eyed him.
“Oh, have a care, sahib!” wailed the Beluchi. “This is very holy man!”
“Silence!” ordered Brown. “Here. Hold the lamp.”
The bayonet-point pressed against the fakir's ribs, and he drew back an
inch or two to get away from it. He was evidently able to feel pain when
it was inflicted by any other than himself.
“Come on,” growled the sentry. “Forward. Quick march. If you don't want
two inches in you!”
“Don't use the point!” commanded Brown. “You might do him an injury.
Treat him to a sample of the butt!”
The sentry swung his rifle round with an under-handed motion that all
riflemen used to practise in the short-range-rifle days. The fakir
winced, and gabbled something in a hurry to the man who held the lamp.
“He says that he will speak, sahib!”
“Halt, then,” commanded Brown. “Order arms. Tell him to hurry up!”
The Beluchi translated, and the fakir answered him, in a voice that
sounded hard and distant and emotionless.
“He says that he, too, is here to watch the crossroads, sahib! He says
that he will curse you if you touch him!”
“Tell him to curse away!”
“He says not unless you touch him, sahib.”
“Prog him off his perch!” commanded Brown.
The rifle leaped up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the
fakir's ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not
upsetting him completely. He recovered his poise with quite astonishing
activity, and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais. His
eyes blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp
gasps that sounded like escaping steam. He needed no further invitation
to commence his cursing. It burst out with a rush, and paused for better
effect, and burst out again in a torrent. The Beluchi hid his face
between his hands.
“Now translate that!” commanded Brown, when the fakir stopped for lack
of breath.
“Sahib, I dare not! Sahib--”
Brown took a threatening step toward him, and the Beluchi changed his
mind. Brown's disciplining methods were a too recently encountered fact
to be outdone by a fakir's promise of any kind of not-yet-met damnation.
“Sahib, he says that because your man has touched him, both you and
your man shall lie within a week helpless upon an anthill, still living,
while the ants run in and out among your wounds. He says that the ants
shall eat your eyes, sahib, and that you shall cry for water, and there
shall be no water within reach--only the sound of water just beyond you.
He says that first you shall be beaten, both of you, until your backs
and the soles of your feet run blood, in order that the ants may have an
entrance!”
“Is he going to do all this?”
The Beluchi passed the question on, and the fakir tossed him an answer
to it.
“He says, sahib, that the gods will see to it.”
“So the gods obey his orders, do they. Well, they've a queer sense of
duty! What else does he prophesy?”
“About your soul, sahib, and the sentry's soul.”
“That's interesting! Translate!”
“He says, sahib, that for countless centuries you and your man shall
inhabit the carcasses of snakes, to eat dirt and be trodden on and
crushed, until you learn to have respect for very holy persons!”
“Is he going to have the ordering of that?”
“He says that the gods have already ordered it.”
“It won't make much difference, then, what I do now. If that's in store
for me in any case, I may as well get my money's worth before the fun
begins! Tell him that unless he can give me a satisfactory reason for
being here I shall treat him to a little more rifle-butt, and something
else afterward that he will like even less!”
“He says,” explained the Beluchi, after a moment's conversation with the
fakir, “that he is here to see what the gods have prophesied. He says
that India will presently be whelmed in blood!”
“Whose blood?”
“Yours and that of others. He says, did you not see the sunset?”
“What of the sunset?”
Brown looked about him and, save where the lantern cast a fitful light
on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint
relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes
failed to pierce the gloom. The sunset was a memory. In that heavy,
death-darkness silence it seemed almost as though there had never been a
sun.
“'A blot of blood,' he says. He says the order has been given. He says
that half of India shall run blood within a day, and the whole of it
within a week!”
“Who gave the order?”
“He answers 'Hookum hai!'--which means 'It is an order!' Nothing more
does the holy fakir say.”
“To the clink with him!” commanded Brown. “I'm tired of these Old Mother
Shipton babblings. That's the third useless Hindu fanatic within a week
who has talked about India being drenched in blood. Let him go in to the
depot under guard, and do his prophesying there! Bring him along.”
The sentry's rifle-butt rose again and threatened business. The Beluchi
gave a warning cry, and the fakir tumbled off his dais. Then, with the
trembling Beluchi walking on ahead with the lantern, and Brown and the
sentry urging from behind, the fakir jumped and squirmed and wabbled
on his all but useless feet toward the guardroom. When they reached the
tree where the goat had bleated, the Punjabi skin-buyer rose up, took
one long look at the fakir and ran.
“Well, I'll be!” exclaimed the sentry.
“You'll be worse than that,” said Brown, “if you use that language
anywhere where I'm about! I'll not have it, d'you hear? Get on ahead,
and open the door of the clink!”
The sentry obeyed him, and a moment later the fakir was thrust into a
four-square mud-walled room, and the door was locked on him.
“Back to your post,” commanded Brown. “And next time I hear you
swearing, I'll treat you to a double-trick, my man! About turn. Quick
march.”
The sentry trudged off without daring to answer him, and Brown took a
good look at the fakir through the iron bars that protected the top
half of the door. Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly
slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee. His soul revolted
at the thought of it, but it was his duty to eat it and set an example
to the men; and duty was the only thing that mattered in Bill Brown's
scheme of things.
“Maybe it's true,” he muttered, “and maybe it's all lies; there's no
knowing. Maybe India's going to run blood, as these fakirs seem to
think, and maybe it isn't. There'll be more blood shed than mine in that
case! 'Hookum hai'--'It is orders,' heh? Well--there's more than one
sort of 'Hookum hai!' I've got my orders too!”
He doubled the guard, when supper bad been eaten and the guardroom had
been swept and the pots and kettle had been burnished until they shone.
Then he tossed a chupatty to the imprisoned fakir, spat again from sheer
disgust, lit his pipe and went and sat where he could hear the footbeats
of the sentries.
“They can't help their religion,” he muttered. “The poor infidels don't
know no better. And they've got a right to think what they please 'about
me or the Company. But I've no patience with uncleanliness! That's wrong
any way you look at it. That critter can't see straight for the dirt on
him, nor think straight for that matter. He's a disgrace to humanity.
Priest or fakir or whatever he is, if I live to see tomorrow's sun I'll
hand him over to the guard and have him washed!”
Having formed that resolution, Brown dismissed all thoughts of the
fakir. His memory went back to home--the clean white cottage on the
Sussex Downs, and the clean white girl who once on a time had waited for
him there. For the next few hours, until the guard was changed, the only
signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the steady
footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the hell-hot
guard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly discomfort.