What found ye, then? Why heated ye the pot?
What useful metal down the channels ran?
Gold? Steel for making weapons? Iron? What?
Nay. Out from the fire we kindled strode a man!
THEY set the legs of Cunningham's string-woven bed into pans of water,
to keep the scorpions and ants and snakes at bay, and then left him in
pitch darkness to his own devices, with a parting admonition to keep his
slippers on for the floor, in the dark, would be the prowling-place of
venomed death.
It was he who set the lamp on the little table by his bedside, for his
servant--for the first time on that journey--was not at hand to execute
his thoughts almost before he had spoken them. Mahommed Gunga had
explained that the man was sick; and that seemed strange, for he had
been well enough, and more than usually efficient, but an hour before.
But there were stranger things and far more irritating ones to interfere
with the peaceful passage of the night. There were sounds that were
unaccountable; there was the memory of the wayside tombstone and the
train of thought that it engendered. Added to the hell-hot, baking
stuffiness that radiated from the walls, there came the squeaking of a
punka rope pulled out of time--the piece of piping in the mud-brick wall
through which the rope passed had become clogged and rusted, and the
villager pressed into service had forgotten how to pull; he jerked at
the cord between nods as the heat of the veranda and the unaccustomed
night duty combined to make him sleepy.
Soon the squeaking became intolerable, and Cunningham swore at him--in
English, because he spoke little of any native language yet, and had not
the least idea in any case what the punka-wallah's tongue might be.
For a while after that the pulling was more even; he lay on one elbow,
letting the swinging mat fan just miss his ear, and examining his rifle
and pistols for lack of anything better to keep him from going mad.
Then, suddenly, the pulling ceased altogether. Silence and hell heat
shut down on him like a coffin lid. Even the lamp flame close beside him
seemed to grow dim; the weight of black night that was suffocating him
seemed to crush light out of the flame as well.
No living mortal could endure that, he imagined. He swore aloud, but
there was no answer, so he got up, after crashing his rifle-butt down
on the floor to scare away anything that crawled. For a moment he stood,
undecided whether to take the lamp or rifle with him--then decided on
the rifle, for the lamp might blow out in some unexpected night gust,
whereas if he left it where it was it would go on burning and show him
the way back to bed again. Besides, he was too unaccustomed to the joy
of owning the last new thing in sporting rifles to hesitate for long
about what to keep within his grasp.
Through the open door he could see nothing but pitch-blackness,
unpunctuated even by a single star. There were no lights where the tents
stood, so he judged that even the accustomed natives had found the added
heat of Mahommed Gunga's watch-fires intolerable and had raked them
out; but from where he imagined that the village must be came the
dum-tu-dum-tu-dum of tom-toms, like fever blood pulsating in the veins
of devils of the night.
The punka-wallah slept. He could just make out the man's blurred
shape--a shadow in the shadows--dog-curled, with the punkah rope looped
round his foot. He kicked him gently, and the man stirred, but
fell asleep again. He kicked him harder. The man sat up and stared,
terrified; the whites of his eyes were distinctly visible. He seemed to
have forgotten why he was there, and to imagine that he saw a ghost.
Cunningham spoke to him--he first words that came into his head.
“Go on pulling,” he said in English, quite kindly.
But if he had loosed his rifle off, the effect could not have been more
instantaneous. Clutching his twisted rag of a turban in one hand,
and kicking his leg free, he ran for it--leaped the veranda rail, and
vanished--a night shadow, swallowed by its mother night.
“Come back!” called Cunningham. “Iderao! I won't hurt you!”
But there was no answer, save the tom-toms' thunder, swelling now into
a devil's chorus-coming nearer. It seemed to be coming from the forest,
but he reasoned that it could not be; it must be some village marriage
feast, or perhaps an orgy; he had paid out what would seem to the
villagers a lot of money, and it might be that they were celebrating the
occasion. It was strange, though, that he could see no lights where the
village ought to be.
For a moment he had a half-formed intention to shout for Mahommed
Gunga; but he checked that, reasoning that the Rajput might think he
was afraid. Then his eye caught sight of something blacker than
the shadows--something long and thin and creepy that moved, and he
remembered that bed, where the pans of water would protect him, was the
only safe place.
So he returned into the hot, black silence where the tiny lamp-flame
guttered and threw shadows. He wondered why it guttered. It seemed to
be actually short of air. There were four rooms, he remembered, to the
bungalow, all connected and each opening outward by a door that faced
one of the four sides; he wondered whether the outer doors were opened
to admit a draught, and started to investigate.
Two of them were shut tight, and he could not kick them open; the
dried-out teak and the heavy iron bolts held as though they had been
built to resist a siege; the noise that he made as he rattled at them
frightened a swarm of unseen things--unguessed-at shapes--that scurried
away. He thought he could see beady little eyes that looked and
disappeared and circled round and stopped to look again. He could hear
creepy movements in the stillness. It seemed better to leave those doors
alone.
One other door, which faced that of his own room, was open wide, and he
could feel the forest through it; there was nothing to be seen, but the
stillness moved. The velvet blackness was deeper by a shade, and the
heat, uprising to get even with the sky, bore up a stench with it. There
was no draught, no movement except upward. Earth was panting-in time, it
seemed, to the hellish thunder of the tom-toms.
He went back and lay on the bed again, leaning the rifle against the
cot-frame, and trying by sheer will-power to prevent the blood from
bursting his veins. He realized before long that he was parched with
thirst, and reached out for the water-jar that stood beside the lamp;
but as he started to drink he realized that a crawling evil was swimming
round and round in rings in the water. In a fit of horror he threw the
thing away and smashed it into a dozen fragments in a corner. He saw a
dozen rats, at least, scamper to drink before the water could evaporate
or filter through the floor; and when they were gone there was no
half-drowned crawling thing either. They had eaten it.
He clutched his rifle to him. The barrel was hot, but the feel of it
gave him a sense of companionship. And then, as he lay back on the bed
again, the lamp went out. He groped for it and shook it. There was no
oil.
Now, what had been hot horror turned to fear that passed all
understanding--to the hate that does not reason--to the cold sweat
breaking on the roasted skin. Where the four walls had been there was
blackness of immeasurable space. He could hear the thousand-footed
cannibals of night creep nearer--driven in toward him by the dinning of
the tom-toms. He felt that his bed was up above a scrambling swarm of
black-legged things that fought.
He had no idea how long he lay stock-still, for fear of calling
attention to himself, and hated his servant and Mahommed Gunga and all
India. Once--twice--he thought he heard another sound, almost like the
footfall of a man on the veranda near him. Once he thought that a man
breathed within ten paces of him, and for a moment there was a distinct
sensation of not being alone. He hoped it was true; he could deal with
an assassin. That would be something tangible to hate and hit. Manhood
came to his assistance--the spirit of the soldier that will bow to
nothing that has shape; but it died away again as the creeping silence
once more shut down on him.
And then the thunder of the tom-toms ceased. Then even the venomed
crawlers that he knew were near him faded into nothing that really
mattered, compared to the greater, stealthy horror that he knew was
coming, born of the shuddersome, shut silence that ensued. There
was neither air nor view--no sense of time or space--nothing but
the coal-black pit of terror yawning--cold sweat in the heat, and a
footfall--an undoubted footfall--followed by another one, too heavy for
a man's.
Where heavy feet were there was something tangible. His veins tingled
and the cold sweat dried. Excitement began to reawaken all his soldier
senses, and the wish to challenge seized him--the soldierly intent to
warn the unaware, which is the actual opposite of cowardice.
“Halt! Who comes there?”
He lipped the words, but his dry throat would not voice them. Before he
could clear his throat or wet his lips his eye caught something lighter
than the night--two things--ten--twelve paces off--two things that
glowed or sheened as though there were light inside them--too big and
too far apart to be owl's eyes, but singularly like them. They moved, a
little sideways and toward him; and again he heard the heavy, stealthy
footfall.
They stayed still then for what may have been a minute, and another
sense--smell--warned him and stirred up the man in him. He had never
smelled it in his life; it must have been instinct that assured him of
an enemy behind the strange, unpleasant, rather musky reek that filled
the room. His right hand brought the rifle to his shoulder without
sound, and almost without conscious effort on his part.
He forgot the heat now and the silence and discomfort. He lay still on
his side, squinting down the rifle barrel at a spot he judged was midway
between a pair of eyes that glowed, and wondering where his foresight
might be. It struck him all at once that it was quite impossible to see
the foresight--that he must actually touch what he would hit if he would
be at all sure of hitting it. He remembered, too, in that instant--as a
born soldier does remember things--that in the dark an attacking enemy
is probably more frightened than his foe. His father had told it him
when he was a little lad afraid of bogies; he in turn had told it to the
other boys at school, and they had passed it on until in that school it
had become rule number one of school-boy lore--just as rule number two
in all schools where the sons of soldiers go is “Take the fight to him.”
He leaped from the bed, with his rifle out in front of
him--white-nightshirted and unexpected--sudden enough to scare the
wits out of anything that had them. He was met by a snarl. The two eyes
narrowed, and then blazed. They lowered, as though their owner gathered
up his weight to spring. He fired between them. The flash and the
smoke blinded him; the burst of the discharge within four echoing walls
deadened his cars, and he was aware of nothing but a voice beside him
that said quietly: “Well done, bahadur! Thou art thy father's son!”
He dropped his rifle butt to the floor, and some one struck a light.
Even then it was thirty seconds before his strained eyes grew accustomed
to the flare and he could see the tiger at his feet, less than a yard
away--dead, bleeding, wide-eyed, obviously taken by surprise and shot as
he prepared to spring. Beside him, within a yard, Mahommed Gunga stood,
with a drawn sabre in his right hand and a pistol in his left, and there
were three other men standing like statues by the walls.
“How long have you been here?” demanded Cunningham.
“A half-hour, sahib.”
“Why?”
“In case of need, sahib. That tiger killed a woman yesterday at dawn
and was driven off his kill; he was not likely to be an easy mark for an
untried hunter.”
“Why did you enter without knocking?”
The ex-risaldar said nothing.
“I see that you have shoes on.”
“The scorpions, sahib--”
“Would you be pleased, Mahommed Gunga, if I entered your house with my
hat on and without knocking or without permission?”
“Sahib, I--”
“Be good enough to have that brute's carcass dragged out and skinned,
and--ah--leave me to sleep, will you?”
Mahommed Gunga bowed, and growled an order; another man passed the order
on, and the tom-tom thundering began again as a dozen villagers pattered
in to take away the tiger.
“Tell them, please,” commanded Cunningham, “that that racket is to
cease. I want to sleep.”
Again Mahommed Gunga bowed, without a smile or a tremor on his face;
again a growled order was echoed and re-echoed through the dark. The
drumming stopped.
“Is there oil in the bahadur's lamp?” asked Mahommed Gunga.
“Probably not,” said Cunningham.
“I will command that--”
“You needn't trouble, thank you, risaldar-sahib. I sleep better in the
dark. I'll be glad to see you after breakfast as usual--ah--without your
shoes, unless you come in uniform. Good night.”
The Rajput signed to the others and withdrew with dignity. Cunningham
reloaded his rifle in the dark and lay down. Within five minutes
the swinging of the punka and the squeaking of the rope resumed, but
regularly this time; Mahommed Gunga had apparently unearthed a man who
understood the business. Reaction, the intermittent coolth, as the
mat fan swung above his face, the steady, evenly timed squeak and
movement--not least, the calm of well-asserted dignity--all joined to
have one way, and Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur slept, to dream of fire-eyed
tigers dancing on tombstones laid on the roof of hell, and of a
grandfather in full general's uniform, who said: “Well done, bahadur!”
But outside, by a remade camp-fire, Mahommed Gunga sat and chuckled to
himself, and every now and then grew eloquent to the bearded men who sat
beside him.
“Aie! Did you hear him reprimand me? By the beard of God's prophet, that
is a man of men! So was his father! Now I will tell Alwa and the others
that I bring a man to them! By the teeth of God and my own honor I will
swear to it! His first tiger--he had never seen a tiger!--in the dark,
and unexpected--caught by it, to all seeming, like a trapped man in a
cage--no lamp--no help at hand, or so he thought until it was all
over. And he ran at the tiger! And then, 'you come with your shoes on,
Mahommed Gunga--why, forsooth?' Did you hear him? By the blood of Allah,
we have a man to lead us!”