IX.

_Of the Pig-drive which was a Panther-killing, and of the Departure

to Chitor._

Above the Durbar Gardens lie low hills, in which the Maharana keeps,

very strictly guarded, his pig and his deer, and anything else that may

find shelter in the low scrub or under the scattered boulders. These

preserves are scientifically parcelled out with high red-stone walls;

and, here and there, are dotted tiny shooting-boxes, in the first sense

of the term--masonry sentry-boxes, in which five or six men may sit at

ease and shoot. It had been arranged--to entertain the Englishmen who

were gathered at the Residency to witness the investiture of the King

with the G. C. S. I.--that there should be a little pig-drive in front

of the Kala Odey or black shooting-box. The Rajput is a man and a

brother, in respect that he will ride, shoot, eat pig and drink strong

waters like an Englishman. Of the pig-hunting he makes almost a

religious duty, and of the wine-drinking no less. Read how desperately

they used to ride in Udaipur at the beginning of the century when Tod,

always in his cocked hat be sure, counted up the tale of accidents at

the end of the day’s sport.

There is something unfair in shooting pig; but each man who went out

consoled himself with the thought that it was utterly impossible to ride

the brutes up the almost perpendicular hill-side, or down the rocky

ravines, and that he individually would only go “just for the fun of the

thing.” Those who stayed behind made rude remarks on the subject of

“pork butchers,” and the dangers that attend shooting from a balcony.

These were treated with the contempt they merited. There are ways and

ways of slaying pig--from the orthodox method which begins with “_The

Boar--The Boar--The mighty Boar!_” overnight, and ends with a shaky

bridle hand next morn, to the sober and solitary pot-shot, at dawn, from

a railway embankment running through river marsh; but the perfect way is

this. Get a large four-horse break, and drive till you meet an unlimited

quantity of pad-elephants waiting at the foot of rich hill-preserves.

Mount slowly and with dignity, and go in swinging procession, by the

marble-faced border of one of the most lovely lakes on earth. Strike off

on a semi-road, semi-hill-torrent path through unthrifty thorny jungle,

and so climb up and up and up, till you see, spread like a map below,

the lake and the Palace and the City, hemmed in by the sea of hills that

lies between Udaipur and Mount Abu a hundred miles away. Then take your

seat in a comfortable chair, in a pukka, two-storeyed Grand Stand, with

an awning spread atop to keep off the sun, while the Rawat of Amet and

the Prime Minister’s heir--no less--invite you to take your choice of

the many rifles spread on a ledge at the front of the building. This,

gentlemen who screw your pet ponies at early dawn after the sounder that

vanishes into cover soon as sighted, or painfully follow the tiger

through the burning heats of Mewar in May, this is shooting after the

fashion of Ouida--in musk and ambergris and patchouli.

It is demoralising. One of the best and hardest riders of the Lahore

Tent Club in the old days, as the boars of Bouli Lena Singh knew well,

said openly:--“This is a first-class _bundobust_,” and fell to testing

his triggers as though he had been a pot-hunter from his birth. Derision

and threats of exposure moved him not. “Give me an arm-chair!” said he.

“This is the proper way to deal with pig!” And he put up his feet on the

ledge and stretched himself.

There were many weapons to have choice among--from the double-barrelled

.500 Express, whose bullet is a tearing, rending shell, to the Rawat of

Amet’s regulation military Martini-Henri. A profane public at the

Residency had suggested clubs and saws as amply sufficient for the work

in hand. Herein they were moved by envy, which passion was ten-fold

increased when--but this comes later on. The beat was along a deep gorge

in the hills, flanked on either crest by stone walls, manned with

beaters. Immediately opposite the shooting-box, the wall on the upper or

higher hill made a sharp turn downhill, contracting the space through

which the pig would have to pass to a gut which was variously said to be

from one hundred and fifty to four hundred yards across. Most of the

shooting was up or downhill.

A philanthropic desire not to murder more Bhils than were absolutely

necessary to maintain a healthy current of human life in the Hilly

Tracts, coupled with a well-founded dread of the hinder, or horse, end

of a double-barrelled .500 Express which would be sure to go off both

barrels together, led the Englishman to take a gunless seat in the

background; while a silence fell upon the party, and very far away up

the gorge the heated afternoon air was cut by the shrill tremolo squeal

of the Bhil beaters. Now a man may be in no sort or fashion a

_shikari_--may hold Buddhistic objections to the slaughter of living

things--but there is something in the extraordinary noise of an agitated

Bhil, which makes even the most peaceful of mortals get up and yearn,

like Tartarin of Tarescon for “lions"--always at a safe distance be it

understood. As the beat drew nearer, under the squealing--the

“_ul-al-lu-lu-lu_"--was heard a long-drawn bittern-like boom of

“_So-oor!_” “_So-oor!_” and the crashing of boulders. The guns rose in

their places, forgetting that each and all had merely come “to see the

fun,” and began to fumble among the little mounds of cartridges under

the chairs. Presently, tripping delicately among the rocks, a pig

stepped out of a cactus-bush, and--the fusillade began. The dust flew

and the branches chipped, but the pig went on--a blue-grey shadow almost

undistinguishable against the rocks, and took no harm. “Sighting shots,”

said the guns sulkily; and the company mourned that the brute had got

away. The beat came nearer, and then the listener discovered what the

bubbling scream was like; for he forgot straightway about the beat and

went back to the dusk of an Easter Monday in the gardens of the Crystal

Palace, before the bombardment of Kars, “set piece ten thousand feet

square,” had been illuminated, and about five hundred ’Arries were

tickling a thousand ’Arriets. Their giggling and nothing else was the

noise of the Bhil. So curiously does Sydenham and Western Rajputana

meet. Then came another pig, who was smitten to the death and rolled

down among the bushes, drawing his last breath in a human and horrible

manner.

But full on the crest of the hill, blown along--there is no other word

to describe it--like a ball of thistle-down, passed a brown shadow, and

men cried:--“_Bagheera!_” or “Panther!” according to their

nationalities, and blazed. The shadow leaped the wall that had turned

the pig downhill, and vanished among the cactus. “Never mind,” said the

Prime Minister’s son consolingly, “we’ll beat the other side of the hill

afterwards and get him yet.” “Oh! he’s a mile off by this time,” said

the guns; but the Rawat of Amet, a magnificently handsome young man,

smiled a sweet smile and said nothing. More pig passed and were slain,

and many more broke back through the beaters who presently came through

the cover in scores. They were in russet green and red uniform, each man

bearing a long spear, and the hillside was turned on the instant to a

camp of Robin Hood’s foresters. Then they brought up the dead from

behind bushes and under rocks--among others a twenty-seven-inch brute

who bore on his flank (all pigs shot in a beat are _ex-officio_ boars) a

hideous, half-healed scar, big as a man’s hand, of a bullet wound.

Express bullets are ghastly things in their effects, for, as the

_shikari_ is never tired of demonstrating, they knock the inside of

animals into pulp.

The second beat, of the reverse side of the hill, had barely begun when

the panther returned--uneasily, as if something were keeping her

back--much lower down the hill. Then the face of the Rawat of Amet

changed, as he brought his gun up to his shoulder. Looking at him as he

fired, one forgot all about the Mayo College at which he had been

educated, and remembered only some trivial and out-of-date affairs, in

which his forefathers had been concerned, when a bridegroom, with his

bride at his side, charged down the slope of the Chitor road and died

among Akbar’s men. There are stories connected with the house of Amet,

which are told in Mewar to-day. The young man’s face, for as short a

time as it takes to pull trigger and see where the bullet falls, was a

light upon all these tales.

Then the mask shut down, as he clicked out the cartridge and, very

sweetly, gave it as his opinion that some other gun, and not his own,

had bagged the panther, who lay shot through the spine, feebly trying to

drag herself downhill into cover. It is an awful thing to see a big

beast die, when the soul is wrenched out of the struggling body in ten

seconds. Wild horses shall not make the Englishman disclose the exact

number of shots that were fired. It is enough to say that four

Englishmen, now scattered to the four winds of heaven, are each morally

certain that he and he alone shot that panther. In time, when distance

and the mirage of the sands of Jodhpur shall have softened the harsh

outlines of truth, the Englishman who did _not_ fire a shot will come to

believe that he was the real slayer, and will carefully elaborate that

lie.

A few minutes after the murder, a two-year old cub came trotting along

the hill-side, and was bowled over by a very pretty shot behind the left

ear and though the palate. Then the beaters’ lances showed through the

bushes, and the guns began to realise that they had allowed to escape,

or had driven back by their fire, a multitude of pig.

This ended the beat, and the procession returned to the Residency to

heap dead panthers upon those who had called them “pork butchers,” and

to stir up the lake of envy with the torpedo of brilliant description.

The Englishman’s attempt to compare the fusillade which greeted the

panther to the continuous drumming of a ten-barrelled Nordenfeldt was,

however, coldly received. So harshly is truth treated all the world

over.

And then, after a little time, came the end, and a return to the road in

search of new countries. But shortly before the departure, the

Padre-Sahib, who knows every one in Udaipur, read a sermon in a

sentence. The Maharana’s investiture, which has already been described

in the Indian papers, had taken place, and the carriages, duly escorted

by the Erinpura Horse, were returning to the Residency. In a niche of

waste land, under the shadow of the main gate, a place strewn with

rubbish and shards of pottery, a dilapidated old man was trying to

control his horse and a _hookah_ on the saddle-bow. The blundering

garron had been made restive by the rush past, and the _hookah_ all but

fell from the hampered hands. “See that man!” said the Padre tersely.

“That’s ---- Singh. He intrigued for the throne not so very long ago.” It

was a pitiful little picture, and needed no further comment.

For the benefit of the loafer it should be noted that Udaipur will never

be pleasant or accessible until the present Mail Contractors have been

hanged. They are extortionate and untruthful, and their one set of

harness and one tonga are as rotten as pears. However, the weariness of

the flesh must be great indeed to make the wanderer blind to the

beauties of a journey by clear starlight and in biting cold to Chitor.

About six miles from Udaipur, the granite hills close in upon the road,

and the air grows warmer until, with a rush and a rattle, the tonga

swings through the great Dobarra, the gate in the double circle of hills

round Udaipur on to the pastures of Mewar. More than once the Girwa has

been a death-trap to those who rashly entered it; and an army has been

cut up on the borders of the Pichola lake. Even now the genius of the

place is strong upon the hills, and as he felt the cold air from the

open ground without the barrier, the Englishman found himself repeating

the words of one of the Hat-marked Tribe whose destiny kept him within

the Dobarra. “You must have a _shouk_ of some kind in these parts or

you’ll die.” Very lovely is Udaipur, and thrice pleasant are a few days

spent within her gates, but ... read what Tod said who stayed two years

behind the Dobarra, and accepted the deserts of Marwar as a delightful

change.

It is good to be free, a wanderer upon the highways, knowing

not what to-morrow will bring forth--whether the walled-in

niceties of an English household, rich in all that makes

life fair and desirable, or a sleepless night in the society of a

goods-_cum_-booking-office-_cum_-parcels-clerk, on fifteen rupees a

month, who tells in stilted English the story of his official life,

while the telegraph gibbers like a maniac once in an hour and then is

dumb, and the pariah dogs fight and howl over the cotton-bales on the

platform.

Verily, there is no life like life on the road--when the skies are cool

and all men are kind.