VI.

_Showing how Her Majesty’s Mails went to Udaipur and fell out by

the Way._

Arrived at Ajmir, the Englishman fell among tents pitched under the

shadow of a huge banian tree, and in them was a Punjabi. Now there is no

brotherhood like the brotherhood of the Pauper Province; for it is even

greater than the genial and unquestioning hospitality which, in spite of

the loafer and the Globe-Trotter, seems to exist throughout India. Ajmir

being British territory, though the inhabitants are allowed to carry

arms, is the headquarters of many of the banking firms who lend to the

Native States. The complaint of the Setts to-day is that their trade is

bad, because an unsympathetic Government induces the Native States to

make railways and become prosperous. “Look at Jodhpur!” said a gentleman

whose possessions might be roughly estimated at anything between thirty

and forty-five lakhs. “Time was when Jodhpur was always in debt--and not

so long ago, either. Now, they’ve got a railroad and are carrying salt

over it, and, as sure as I stand here, they have a _surplus_! What can

we do?” Poor pauper! However, he makes a little profit on the

fluctuations in the coinage of the States round him, for every small

king seems to have the privilege of striking his own image and

inflicting the Great Exchange Question on his subjects. It is a poor

State that has not two seers and five different rupees.

From a criminal point of view, Ajmir is not a pleasant place. The Native

States lie all round and about it, and portions of the district are ten

miles off, Native State-locked on every side. Thus the criminal, who may

be a burglarious Meena lusting for the money bags of the Setts, or a

Peshawari down south on a cold weather tour, has his plan of campaign

much simplified. The Englishman made only a short stay in the town,

hearing that there was to be a ceremony--_tamasha_ covers a multitude of

things--at the capital of His Highness the Maharana of Udaipur--a town

some hundred and eighty miles south of Ajmir, not known to many people

beyond Viceroys and their Staffs and the officials of the Rajputana

Agency. So he took a Neemuch train in the very early morning and, with

the Punjabi, went due south to Chitor, the point of departure for

Udaipur. In time the Aravalis gave place to a dead, flat, stone-strewn

plain, thick with dhak-jungle. Later the date-palm fraternised with the

dhak, and low hills stood on either side of the line. To this succeeded

a tract rich in pure white stone, the line was ballasted with it. Then

came more low hills, each with comb of splintered rock a-top,

overlooking dhak-jungle and villages fenced with thorns--places that at

once declared themselves tigerish. Last, the huge bulk of Chitor showed

itself on the horizon. The train crossed the Gumber River and halted

almost in the shadow of the hills on which the old pride of Udaipur was

set.

It is difficult to give an idea of the Chitor fortress; but the long

line of brown wall springing out of bush-covered hill suggested at once

those pictures, such as the _Graphic_ publishes, of the _Inflexible_ or

the _Devastation_--gigantic men-of-war with a very low free-board

ploughing through green sea. The hill on which the fort stands is

ship-shaped and some miles long, and, from a distance, every inch

appears to be scarped and guarded. But there was no time to see Chitor.

The business of the day was to get, if possible, to Udaipur from Chitor

Station, which was composed of one platform, one telegraph-room, a bench

and several vicious dogs.

The State of Udaipur is as backward as Jeypore is advanced--if we judge

it by the standard of civilisation. It does not approve of the

incursions of Englishmen, and, to do it justice, it thoroughly succeeds

in conveying its silent sulkiness. Still, where there is one English

Resident, one Doctor, one Engineer, one Settlement Officer and one

Missionary, there must be a mail at least once a day. There was a mail.

The Englishman, men said, might go by it if he liked, or he might not.

Then, with a great sinking of the heart, he began to realise that his

caste was of no value in the stony pastures of Mewar, among the

swaggering gentlemen who were so lavishly adorned with arms. There was a

mail, the ghost of a tonga, with tattered side-cloths and patched roof,

inconceivably filthy within and without, and it was Her Majesty’s. There

was another tonga--an _aram_ tonga--but the Englishman was not to have

it. It was reserved for a Rajput Thakur who was going to Udaipur with

his “tail.” The Thakur, in claret-coloured velvet with a blue turban, a

revolver--Army pattern--a sword, and five or six friends, also with

swords, came by and endorsed the statement. Now, the mail tonga had a

wheel which was destined to become the Wheel of Fate, and to lead to

many curious things. Two diseased yellow ponies were extracted from a

dung-hill and yoked to the tonga; and after due deliberation Her

Majesty’s mail started, the Thakur following.

In twelve hours, or thereabouts, the seventy miles between Chitor and

Udaipur would be accomplished. Behind the tonga cantered an armed sowar.

He was the guard. The Thakur’s tonga came up with a rush, ran

deliberately across the bows of the Englishman, shipped a pony, and

passed on. One lives and learns. The Thakur seems to object to following

the foreigner.

At the halting-stages, once in every six miles, that is to say, the

ponies were carefully undressed and all their accoutrements fitted more

or less accurately on to the backs of the ponies that might happen to be

near: the released animals finding their way back to their stables alone

and unguided. There were no _syces_, and the harness hung on by special

dispensation of Providence. Still the ride over a good road, driven

through a pitilessly stony country, had its charms for a while. At

sunset the low hills turned to opal and wine-red, and the brown dust

flew up pure gold; for the tonga was running straight into the sinking

sun. Now and again would pass a traveller on a camel, or a gang of

_Bunjarras_ with their pack-bullocks and their women; and the sun

touched the brasses of their swords and guns till the poor wretches

seemed rich merchants come back from travelling with Sindbad.

On a rock on the right hand side, thirty-four great vultures were

gathered over the carcase of a steer. And this was an evil omen. They

made unseemly noises as the tonga passed, and a raven came out of a bush

on the right and answered them. To crown all, one of the hide and skin

castes sat on the left hand side of the road, cutting up some of the

flesh that he had stolen from the vultures. Could a man desire three

more inauspicious signs for a night’s travel? Twilight came, and the

hills were alive with strange noises, as the red moon, nearly at her

full, rose over Chitor. To the low hills of the mad geological

formation, the tumbled strata that seem to obey no law, succeeded level

ground, the pasture lands of Mewar, cut by the Beruch and Wyan, streams

running over smooth water-worn rock, and, as the heavy embankments and

ample waterways showed, very lively in the rainy season.

In this region occurred the last and most inauspicious omen of all.

Something had gone wrong with a crupper, a piece of blue and white

punkah-cord. The Englishman pointed it out, and the driver, descending,

danced on that lonely road an unholy dance, singing the while:--“The

_dumchi_! The _dumchi_! The _dumchi_!” in a shrill voice. Then he

returned and drove on, while the Englishman wondered into what land of

lunatics he was heading. At an average speed of six miles an hour, it is

possible to see a great deal of the country; and, under brilliant

moonlight, Mewar was desolately beautiful. There was no night traffic on

the road--no one except the patient sowar, his shadow an inky blot on

white, cantering twenty yards behind. Once the tonga strayed into a

company of date-trees that fringed the path, and once rattled through a

little town, and once the ponies shyed at what the driver said was a

rock; but it jumped up in the moonlight and went away.

Then came a great blasted heath whereon nothing was more than six inches

high--a wilderness covered with grass and low thorn; and here, as nearly

as might be midway between Chitor and Udaipur, the Wheel of Fate, which

had been for some time beating against the side of the tonga, came off,

and Her Majesty’s Mails, two bags including parcels, collapsed on the

way side; while the Englishman repented him that he had neglected the

omens of the vultures and the raven, the low caste man and the mad

driver.

There was a consultation and an examination of the wheel; but the whole

tonga was rotten, and the axle was smashed and the axle-pins were bent

and nearly red-hot. “It is nothing,” said the driver, “the mail often

does this. What is a wheel?” He took a big stone and began hammering the

wheel proudly on the tyre, to show that that at least was sound. A hasty

courtmartial revealed that there was absolutely not one single

“breakdown tonga” on the whole road between Chitor and Udaipur.

Now this wilderness was so utterly waste that not even the barking of a

dog or the sound of a nightfowl could be heard. Luckily the Thakur had,

some twenty miles back, stepped out to smoke by the roadside, and his

tonga had been passed meanwhile. The sowar was sent back to find that

tonga and bring it on. He cantered into the haze of the moonlight and

disappeared. Then said the driver:--“Had there been no tonga behind us,

I should have put the mails on a horse, because the Sirkar’s dak cannot

stop.” The Englishman sat down upon the parcels-bag, for he felt that

there was trouble coming. The driver looked East and West and said:--“I

too will go and see if the tonga can be found, for the Sirkar’s dak

cannot stop. Meantime, Oh Sahib, do you take care of the mails--one bag

and one bag of parcels.” So he ran swiftly into the haze of the

moonlight and was lost, and the Englishman was left alone in charge of

Her Majesty’s Mails, two unhappy ponies and a lopsided tonga. He lit

fires, for the night was bitterly cold, and only mourned that he could

not destroy the whole of the territories of His Highness the Maharana of

Udaipur. But he managed to raise a very fine blaze, before he reflected

that all this trouble was his own fault for wandering into Native States

undesirous of Englishmen.

The ponies coughed dolorously from time to time, but they could not lift

the weight of a dead silence that seemed to be crushing the earth. After

an interval measurable by centuries, sowar, driver and Thakur’s tonga

reappeared; the latter full to the brim and bubbling over with humanity

and bedding. “We will now,” said the driver, not deigning to notice the

Englishman who had been on guard over the mails, “put the Sirkar’s dak

into this tonga and go forward.” Amiable heathen! He was going, he said

so, to leave the Englishman to wait in the Sahara, for certainly thirty

hours and perhaps forty-eight. Tongas are scarce on the Udaipur road.

There are a few occasions in life when it is justifiable to delay Her

Majesty’s Mails. This was one of them. Seating himself upon the

parcels-bag, the Englishman cried in what was intended to be a very

terrible voice, but the silence soaked it up and left only a thin

trickle of sound, that any one who touched the bags would be hit with a

stick, several times, over the head. The bags were the only link between

him and the civilisation he had so rashly foregone. And there was a

pause.

The Thakur put his head out of the tonga and spoke shrilly in Mewari.

The Englishman replied in English-Urdu. The Thakur withdrew his head,

and from certain grunts that followed seemed to be wakening his

retainers. Then two men fell sleepily out of the tonga and walked into

the night. “Come in,” said the Thakur, “you and your baggage. My

_banduq_ is in that corner; be careful.” The Englishman, taking a

mail-bag in one hand for safety’s sake--the wilderness inspires an

Anglo-Indian Cockney with unreasoning fear--climbed into the tonga,

which was then loaded far beyond Plimsoll mark, and the procession

resumed its journey. Every one in the vehicle,--it seemed as full as the

railway carriage that held Alice. Through the Looking Glass--was _Sahib_

and _Hazur_. Except the Englishman. He was simple _tum_, and a revolver,

Army pattern, was printing every diamond in the chequer-work of its

handle, into his right hip. When men desired him to move, they prodded

him with the handles of _tulwars_ till they had coiled him into an

uneasy lump. Then they slept upon him, or cannoned against him as the

tonga bumped. It was an _aram_ tonga or tonga for ease. That was the

bitterest thought of all.

In due season the harness began to break once every five minutes, and

the driver vowed that the wheels would give way also.

After eight hours in one position, it is excessively difficult to walk,

still more difficult to climb up an unknown road into a dak-bungalow;

but he who has sought sleep on an arsenal and under the bodies of burly

Rajputs, can do it. The grey dawn brought Udaipur and a Trench bedstead.

As the tonga jingled away, the Englishman heard the familiar crack of

broken harness. So he was not the Jonah he had been taught to consider

himself all through that night of penance!

A jackal sat in the verandah and howled him to sleep, wherein he dreamed

that he had caught a Viceroy under the walls of Chitor and beaten him

with a _tulwar_ till he turned into a dak-pony whose near foreleg, was

perpetually coming off, and who would say nothing but _um_ when he was

asked why he had not built a railway from Chitor to Udaipur.