The very _mise-en-scene_ was indeterminate. A straight horizon meeting
the blue sky evenly, though not an inch of level ground lay far or near
in the pathless waste of yellow sand. Pathless, yet full of tracks.
Looking down at your feet, which, breaking through the rippling crust
of wind-waves on the surface, sank softly into the warm shifting sand
beneath, you could see the tracks crossing and re-crossing each other,
tracing a network over the world, each distinct, self-reliant,
self-contained. Yet such tiny tracks for the most part! That firm
zigzag, regular as a Gothic moulding, is printed by a partridge's foot;
yonder fine graving is the track of a jerboa rat; and there, side by
side for a space, the striated lines of a big beetle and the endless
curvings of a snake. A certain wistful admiration comes to the seeing
eye with the thought that, here in the wilderness, life is free to go
and come as it chooses, untrammelled by the fetters of custom, free
from the necessity for doing as your neighbours do, being as your
neighbours are. Something of this was in my thoughts one day when, as I
rode at a foot's-pace across the sand-sea to my tents, I suddenly came
upon a boy. He must have been ten years old, at least, by his size; any
age, judging by his face; stark naked save for a string and a scrap of
cloth. His head would have been an admirable advertisement to any hair
restorer, for it was thick and curly in patches, bald as a coot's in
others; briefly, like a well-kept poodle's. For the rest he was of
unusually dark complexion. He was sitting listless, yet alert, beside
some small holes in the sand, and when he saw me he smiled broadly,
showing a great gleam of white teeth. I asked him cheerfully who he
was, and he replied in the same tone,
"_Huzoor! main Bowriah hone_." (I am a Bowriah.) It gave me a chill
somehow. So the lad was a Bowriah; in other words, one of that criminal
class which Western discipline keeps in walled villages, registered and
roll-called by day and by night. Not much freedom there to strike out a
line of life for yourself, unless you began before the time when you
were solemnly set down in black and write as an adult bad character.
The boy, however, seemed to have no misgivings, for he smiled still
more broadly when I asked him what he was doing.
"Catching lizards, _Huzoor!_ They are fat at this time."
My chill changed its cause incontinently. "You don't mean to say you
eat lizards?"
He looked at me more gravely. "Wherefore not, _Huzoor_? The Bowriahs
eat everything, except cats. Cats are heating to the blood, especially
in spring time."
His air of well-defined wisdom tickled me; perhaps it touched me also,
for, ere riding off, I asked him his name, thinking I might inquire
more of him; for the sole reason of my tents being a few miles farther
in this sandy wilderness was the due inspection of a Bowriah village
which had been planted there, out of harm's way, by the authorities.
"Mungal, _Huzoor_" he replied. So I left him watching for the fat
lizards, and cantered on over the desert.
Suddenly I drew rein with a jerk. There he was again in front of me
sitting before another group of holes.
"Hullo!" I cried, "how on earth did you manage to get here, Mungal?"
The boy smiled his broad, white smile, "The _Huzoor_ mistakes. I am
Bungal. Mungal is my brother over yonder." He stretched a thin dark arm
into the desert whence I had come. Mungal and Bungal! Twins, of course!
Even so the likeness was almost incredible. My memory could find no
dissimilarity of any sort or kind--no outward dissimilarity, at any
rate. The thought suggested an experiment, and I asked him what he was.
"_Huzoor! main Bowriah hone_," came instantly.
"And what are you doing?" I continued.
"Catching lizards, _Huzoor!_ They are fat at this time."
Positively my chill returned, making me say quite naturally, "What! do
you eat lizards?"
"Wherefore not, _Huzoor_? The Bowriahs eat everything, except cats.
Cats are heating to the blood, especially in, spring time."
Identical so far. The quaintness of the idea prevented me from
disturbing it by further inquiry, so I rode on, dimly expectant of
finding a third habitual criminal--say Jungal this time--watching for
fat lizards at other holes. But I did not. They were twins only; Mungal
and Bungal. Out of sheer curiosity I sent for them that evening, when I
had finished my work of inspecting the adult males and females,
listening to their complaints, and generally setting the odd little
village on the path of virtue for the next three months. By no means a
disagreeable occupation, for the Bowriahs have always a broad smile for
a sportsman. Indeed, several of the most suspicious characters had
promised me the best of _shikar_ on the morrow; and what is more, they
kept their promise faithfully.
As for Mungal and Bungal, even when seen together it was absolutely
impossible for me to detect any difference of any kind between the two
boys. Even their heads were shaven in the same tufts, and as they
invariably repeated each other, there was no differentiating them by
their words.
Only their works remained as a means of knowledge, and with a view to
this I questioned the Deputy Inspector of Police, who was out with me,
as to the lads.
"_Huzoor!_" he said, "they are of the Bowriah race. Their father and
mother are dead, but in life these were Bowriahs also. The boys,
however, not being adult, are not as yet on the Register; but they will
be. For the rest they are as Bowriahs. They eat jackals, wolves, and
such unclean things."
I felt myself on the point of adding, "But not cats--cats, etc.;"
however I stopped myself in time, and asked instead if the boys stole,
or lied, or--
The Deputy Inspector interrupted me respectfully, yet firmly.
"_Huzoor!_ not being adult they are not on the Register. Therefore the
police have no cognizance of them--as yet."
"Then why do they make for the village now they hear the roll
beginning?" I persisted somewhat testily, as I saw Mungal and Bungal
racing along to the gateway in company with a number of boys about
their own age.
"They do it to please themselves. It gives them dignity. Besides, in
youth one learns habits easily. Thus it is better, since the boys will
surely be on the Register if God spares them to adult age."
I looked at the man sharply; there was positively not one atom of
expression of any kind whatever on his face. It is a great art.
On the morrow Mungal and Bungal turned up again as part of the shooting
excursion, for even among their tribe of hunters they had already made
themselves a sporting reputation; perhaps because, being orphans, they
lived chiefly on their wits. It certainly was remarkable to see them on
a trail, turning and twisting and doubling on traces invisible to my
eyes; or sometimes, like a couple of Bassett-hound puppies, on all
fours, nose down, creeping round some higher undulation to see what lay
behind it. We had stalked a ravine deer which another party of Bowriahs
had stealthily driven--all unconsciously--into a suitable spot, and I
was just crawling on my stomach to the shelter of a low bush whence I
intended to fire, when a small dark hand clutched mine from behind, and
another pointed to something within an inch of where I had been about
to place my fingers. By everything unpleasant! a viper coiled in a true
lover's knot! "T--Tss-ss," came a sibilant whisper checking my start;
"the buck is there, _Huzoor_; the buck is there still."
And he remained there, for my bullet went clean through his heart. It
was after the excitement of success was over that I turned to the boys,
and, somewhat thoughtlessly, held out a rupee.
"Which of you two pointed out that _jelaibee?_" I asked.
"_Huzoor!_ I did," came both voices simultaneously. At first they
refused to budge from this simple statement, reserving the remainder of
their vocabulary for indignant abuse of each other. Nor could I from
their expression or tone glean the slightest corroborative evidence for
or against the truth of either. The greed in their beady black eyes,
their scorn at the dastardly attempt at cheating them out of their due
were identical. Finally, to my intense bewilderment they suddenly,
without even a wink that I could see, made a _demi-volte_ towards a new
position, and declared in one breath that they both did it, and
therefore that they both deserved a rupee. Certainly there had been two
hands, the one to clutch, the other to point, but I felt morally
certain that they had belonged to one body. However, to settle the
matter I gave each of the boys eight annas, and went back to my tents
convinced that either Mungal or Bungal was a liar. The question
was--which?
That evening, when I was awaiting the appearance of my dinner with the
comfortable sense of a good appetite, I heard trouble in the cook-room
tent. It was followed by the violent irruption into mine of the whole
posse of servants gathered round my old _khansaman_ who, breathless but
triumphant, held Mungal and Bungal each by one ear.
"It was the _esh-starffit_[25] quails, _Huzoor_, that I had prepared
for the Protector of the Poor; two for his Honour, seeing that he loves
the dish, and one for _Barker sahib_,[26] should God send a guest, so
that the dignity of the table be upheld even in the wilderness. And,
lo! as I sat decorating the dish, my mind occupied in desires to
please, I saw him--the infamous Bowriah boy--make off with one. Aged as
I am I fled after him, then remembering boys' ways, ran back round the
tent in time to see him, from fear, replacing it. Finally, with hue and
cry, we caught both escaping into the darkness of the desert."
"Both of them!" I echoed; "but you said there was only one."
"The _Huzoor_ mistakes," retorted the _khansaman_ quite huffily.
"Perchance there was one who stole, and one who gave back. This slave
had no time for trivial observation, these being undoubtedly the
thieves." He emphasised his words by dragging Mungal and Bungal forward
by the ears, and knocking their heads together; his following meanwhile
testifying its assent by undertoned remarks, that being Bowriahs the
boys were necessarily thieves, and that in addition it was superfluous,
if not impious, to draw invidious distinctions where it had pleased
Providence to make none.
But my curiosity had been aroused. "Mungal and Bungal," I said
solemnly, addressing the culprits who, with hands folded in front of
them like infant Samuels, stood cheerfully stolid, just as the adult
members of their tribe invariably did when brought before me as
habitual criminals, "do you by chance know what telling the truth
means?"
As they assured me fervently that they did, I went on to explain that
my only desire in this case was to have the truth; that no one should
suffer by it; that contrariwise the tellers should receive
_bucksheesh_. Here their beady eyes wandered in confident familiarity
to the rotund person of the Deputy Inspector, who had rushed to the
scene in mufti on hearing of the crime, and I knew instinctively that
they were discounting my words by inherited experience of similar
promises. So it was with a prescience of what would follow that I put
the least formidable question--
"Which of you replaced the quail?"