"but we shall be meetin' a head-sea in half an hour that'll put your
head atween of your legs. Go aft an' tell that to them first-class
passengers."
I went aft, but I said nothing. We went, later, to tiffin, and there
was a fine funereal smell of stale curries and tinned meats in the air.
Conversation was animated, for most of the passengers had been together
for five weeks and had developed two or three promising flirtations.
I was a stranger--a minnow among Tritons--a third man in the cabin.
Only those who have been a third man in the cabin know what this means.
Suddenly and without warning our ship curtsied. It was neither a bob
nor a duck nor a lurch, but a long, sweeping, stately old-fashioned
curtsy. Followed a lull in the conversation. I was distinctly conscious
that I had left my stomach two feet in the air, and waited for the
return roll to join it. "Prettily the old hooper rides, doesn't she?"
said the strong man. "I hope she won't do it often," said the pretty
lady with the changing complexion.
"Wha-hoop! Wha--wha--wha--willy _whoop_!" said the screw, that had
managed to come out of the water and was racing wildly.
"Good heavens! is the ship going down?" said the fat lady, clutching
her own private claret bottle that she might not die athirst. The
ship went down at the word--with a drunken lurch down she went, and a
smothered yell from one of the cabins showed that there was water in
the sea. The portholes closed with a clash, and we rose and fell on
the swell of the bo'sun's head-sea. The conversation died out. Some
complained that the saloon was stuffy, and fled upstairs to the deck.
The strong man brought up the rear.
"Ooshy--ooshy--wooshy--woggle _wop!_" cried a big wave without a head.
"Get up, old girl!" and he smacked the ship most disrespectfully under
the counter, and she squirmed as she took the drift of the next sea.
"She--ah--rides very prettily," repeated the strong man as the
companion stairs spurned him from them and he wound his arms round the
nearest steward.
"Damn prettily," said the necked officer. "I'm going to lie down.
Never could stand the China seas."
"Most refreshing thing in the world," said the strong man faintly.
I took counsel purely with myself, which is to say, my stomach, and
perceived that the worst would not befall me.
"Come to the fo'c'sle, then, and feel the wind," said I to the strong
man. The plover's-egg eyes of three yellowish-green girls were upon him.
"With pleasure," said he, and I bore him away to where the cut-water
was pulling up the scared flying-fishes as a spaniel flushes game. In
front of us was the illimitable blue, lightly ridged by the procession
of the big blind rollers. Up rose the stem till six feet of the red
paint stood clear above the blue--from twenty-three feet to eighteen I
could count as I leaned over. Then the sapphire crashed into splintered
crystal with a musical jar, and the white spray licked the anchor
channels as we drove down and down, sucking at the sea. I kept my eye
upon the strong man, and I noticed that his mouth was slightly open,
the better to inhale the rushing wind. When I looked a second time
he was gone. The driven spray was scarcely quicker in its flight. My
excellent stomach behaved with temperance and chastity. I enjoyed the
fo'c'sle, and my delight was the greater when I reflected on the strong
man. Unless I was much mistaken, he would know all about it in half an
hour.
I went aft, and a lull between two waves heard the petulant pop of a
champagne cork. No one drinks champagne after tiffin except.... _It_.
The strong man had ordered the champagne. There were bottles of it
flying about the quarter-deck. The engaged couple were sipping it out
of one glass, but their faces were averted like our parents of old.
They were ashamed.
"You may go! You may go to Hongkong for me!" shouted half-a-dozen
little waves together, pulling the ship several ways at once. She
rolled stately, and from that moment settled down to the work of the
evening. I cannot blame her, for I am sure she did not know her own
strength. It didn't hurt her to be on her side, and play cat-and-mouse,
and puss-in-the corner, and hide-and-seek, but it destroyed the
passengers. One by one they sank into long chairs and gazed at the sky.
But even there the little white moved, and there was not one stable
thing in heaven above or the waters beneath. My virtuous and very
respectable stomach behaved with integrity and resolution. I treated
it to a gin cocktail, which I sucked by the side of the strong man,
who told me in confidence that he had been overcome by the sun at the
fo'c'sle. Sun fever does not make people cold and clammy and blue. I
sat with him and tried to make him talk about the _Florida_ and his
voyages in the past. He evaded me and went down below. Three minutes
later I followed him with a thick cheroot. Into his bunk I went, for I
knew he would be helpless. He was--he was--he was. He wallowed supine,
and I stood in the doorway smoking.
"What is it?" said I.
He wrestled with his pride--his wicked pride--but he would not tell a
lie.
"It," said he. And it was so.
* * * * *
The rolling continues. The ship is a shambles, and I have six places on
each side of me all to myself.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: "Turnovers," Vol. I.]
A FALLEN IDOL[11]
Will the public be good enough to look into this business? It has sent
Crewe to bed, and Mottleby is applying for home leave, and I've lost
my faith in man altogether, and the Club gives it up. Trivey is the
only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says "I told you
so." We were all proud of Trivey at the Club, and would have crowned
him with wreaths of Bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. But
Trivey was an austere man. The utmost that he permitted himself to say
was: "I can stretch a little bit when I'm in the humour." We called
him the Monumental Liar. Nothing that the Club offered was too good
for Trivey. He had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the
hot weather, and he made up his own four at whist. When visitors came
in--globe-trotters for choice--Trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell
tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the Club on tiptoe looking for
snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. Whenever a man from a
strange Club came in Trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine
and rout that man on all points--from horses upward. There was a man
whose nickname was "Ananias," who came from the Prince's Plungers to
look at Trivey; and, though Trivey was only a civilian, the Plunger
man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o'clock. He made
it over to Trivey on a card, and Trivey hung up the concession in his
quarters. We loved Trivey--all of us; and now we don't love him any
more.
A man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales--some very
good ones, and some better than good. He was an outsider, but he had
a wonderful imagination--for the frontier. He told six stories before
Trivey brought up his first line, and three more before Trivey hurled
his reserves into the fray.
"When I was at Anungaracharlupillay in Madras," said Trivey quietly,
"there was a rogue elephant cutting about the district. And I came
upon him asleep." All the Club stopped talking here, until Trivey had
finished the story. He told us that he, in the company of another
man, had found the rogue asleep, but just as they got up to the
brute's head it woke up with a scream. Then Trivey, who was careful to
explain that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," caught hold of
its ears as it rose, and hung there, kicking the animal in the eyes,
which so bewildered it that it stayed screaming and frightened until
Trivey's ally shot it behind the shoulder, and the villagers ran in
and hamstrung it. It evidently died from loss of blood. Trivey was
hanging on the ears and kicking hard for nearly fifteen minutes. When
the frontier man heard the story he put his hands in front of his
face and sobbed audibly. We gave him all the drinks he wanted, and he
recovered sufficiently to carry away eighty rupees at whist later on;
but his nerve was irretrievably shattered. He will be no use on the
frontier any more. The rest of the Club were very pleased with Trivey,
because these frontier men, and especially the guides, want a great
deal of keeping in order. Trivey was quite modest. He was a truly great
soul, and popular applause never turned his head. As I have said, we
loved Trivey, till that fatal day when Crewe announced that he had
been transferred for a couple of months to Anungaracharlupillay. "Oh!"
said Trivey, "I dare say they'll remember about my rogue elephant down
there. You ask 'em, Crewe." Then we felt sorry for Trivey, because we
were sure that he was arriving at that stage of mental decay when a man
begins to believe in his own fictions. That spoils a man's hand. Crewe
wrote up once or twice to Mottleby, saying that he would bring back a
story that would make our hair curl. Good stories are scarce in Madras,
and we rather scoffed at the announcement. When Crewe returned it was
easy to see that he was bursting with importance. He gave a big dinner
at the Club and invited nearly everybody but Trivey, who went off
after dinner to teach a young subaltern to play "snooker." At coffee
and cheroots, Crewe could not restrain himself any longer. "I say, you
Johnnies, it's all true--every single word of it--and you can throw the
decanter at my head and I'll apologise. The whole village was full of
it. There was a rogue elephant, and it slept, and Trivey did catch hold
of its ears and kick it in the eyes, and hang on for ten minutes, at
least, and all the rest of it. I neglected my regular work to sift that
story, and on my honour the tale's an absolute fact. The headsman said
so, all the shikaries said so, and all the villagers corroborated it.
Now would a whole village volunteer a lie that would do them no good?"
You might have heard a cigar-ash fall after this statement. Then
Mottleby said, with deep disgust: "What can you do with a man like
that? His best and brightest lie, too!" "'Tisn't!" shrieked Crewe.
"It's a fact--a nickel-plated, teak-wood, Tantalus-action, forty-five
rupee fact." "That only makes it worse," said Mottleby; and we all
felt that was true. We ran into the billiard-room to talk to Trivey,
but he said we had put him off his stroke; and that was all the
satisfaction we got out of him. Later on he repeated that he was a "bit
powerful about the arms," and went to bed. We sat up half the night
devising vengeance on Trivey. We were very angry, and there was no hope
of hushing up the tale. The man had taken us in completely, and now
that we've lost our champion Ananias, all the frontier will laugh at
us, and we shall never be able to trust a word that Trivey says.
I ask with Mottleby: "What can you do with a man like that?"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: "Turnovers," Vol. I.]
NEW BROOMS[12]
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could sweep it clear?"
Ram Buksh, Aryan, went to bed with his buffalo, five goats, three
children and a wife, because the evening mists were chilly. His hut was
builded on the mud scooped from a green and smelly tank, and there were
microbes in the thin blood of Ram Buksh.
Ram Buksh went to bed on a charpoy stretched across the blue tepid
drain, because the nights were hot; and there were more microbes in
his blood. Then the rains came, and Ram Buksh paddled, mid-thigh deep,
in water for a day or two with his buffaloes till he was aware of a
crampsome feeling at the pit of his stomach. "Mother of my children,"
said Ram Buksh, "this is death." They gave him cardamoms and capsicums,
and gingelly-oil and cloves, and they prayed for him. "It is enough,"
said Ram Buksh, and he twisted himself into a knot and died, and they
burned him slightly--for the wood was damp--and the rest of him floated
down the river, and was caught in an undercurrent at the bank, and
there stayed; and when Imam Din, the Jeweller, drank of the stream five
days later, he drank Lethe, and passed away, crying in vain upon his
gods.
His family did not report his death to the Municipality, for they
desired to keep Imam Din with them. Therefore, they buried him under
the flagging in the court-yard, secretly and by night. Twelve days
later, Imam Din had made connection with the well of the house, and
there was typhus among the women in the zenana, but no one knew
anything about it--some died and some did not; and Ari Booj, the
Faquir, added to the interest of the proceedings by joining the
funeral procession and distributing gratis the more malignant forms of
smallpox, from which he was just recovering. He had come all the way
from Delhi, and had slept on no less than fifteen different charpoys;
and that was how they got the smallpox into Bahadurgarh. But Eshmith
Sahib's Dhobi picked it up from Ari Booj when Imam Din's wife was being
buried--for he was a merry man, and sent home a beautiful sample among
the Sunday shirts. So Eshmith Sahib died.
He was only a link in the chain which crawled from the highest to the
lowest. The wonder was not that men died like sheep, but that they
did not die like flies; for their lives and their surroundings, their
deaths, were part of a huge conspiracy against cleanliness. And the
people loved to have it so. They huddled together in frowsy clusters,
while Death mowed his way through them till the scythe blunted against
the unresisting flesh, and he had to get a new one. They died by fever,
tens of thousands in a month; they died by cholera a thousand in a
week; they died of smallpox, scores in the mohulla, and by dysentery by
tens in a house; and when all other deaths failed they laid them down
and died because their hands were too weak to hold on to life.
To and fro stamped the Englishman, who is everlastingly at war with the
scheme of things. "You shall not die," he said, and he decreed that
there should be no more famines. He poured grain down their throats,
and when all failed he went down into the strife and died with them,
swearing, and toiling, and working till the last. He fought the famine
and put it to flight. Then he wiped his forehead, and attacked the
pestilence that walketh in the darkness. Death's scythe swept to and
fro, around and about him; but he only planted his feet more firmly
in the way of it, and fought off Death with a dog-whip. "Live, you
ruffian!" said the Englishman to Ram Buksh as he rode through the
reeking village. "_Jenab!_" said Ram Buksh, "it is as it was in the
days of our fathers!" "Then stand back while I alter it," said the
Englishman; and by force, and cunning, and a brutal disregard of vested
interests, he strove to keep Ram Buksh alive. "Clean your mohullas; pay
for clean water; keep your streets swept; and see that your food is
sound, or I'll make your life a burden to you," said the Englishman.
Sometimes he died; but more often Ram Buksh went down, and the
Englishman regarded each death as a personal insult.
"Softly, there!" said the Government of India. "You're twisting his
tail. You mustn't do that. The spread of education forbids, and Ram
Buksh is an intelligent voter. Let him work out his own salvation."
"H'm!" said the Englishman with his head in a midden; "collectively you
always were a fool. Here, Ram Buksh, the Sirkar says you are to do all
these things for yourself."
"_Jenab!_" says Ram Buksh, and fell to breeding microbes with renewed
vigour.
Curiously enough, it was in the centres of enlightenment that he
prosecuted his experiments most energetically. The education had been
spread, but so thinly that it could not disguise Ram Buksh's natural
instincts. He created an African village, and said it was the hub of
the universe, and all the dirt of all the roads failed to convince
him that he was not the most advanced person in the world. There was
a pause, and Ram Buksh got himself fearfully entangled among Boards
and Committees, but he valued them as a bower-bird values shells and
red rags. "See!" said the Englishman to the Government of India,
"he is blind on that side--blind by birth, training, instinct and
associations. Five-sixths of him is poor stock raised off poor soil,
and he'll die on the least provocation. You've no right to let him kill
himself."
"But he's educated," said the Government of India.
"I'll concede everything," said the Englishman. "He's a statesman,
author, poet, politician, artist, and all else that you wish him to
be, but he isn't a Sanitary Engineer. And while you're training him
he is dying. Goodness knows that my share in the Government is very
limited nowadays, but I'm willing to do all the work while he gets all
the credit if you'll only let me have some authority over him in his
mud-pie making."
"But the liberty of the subject is sacred," said the Government of
India.
"I haven't any," said the Englishman. "He can trail through my
compounds; start shrines in the public roads; poison my family; have
me in court for nothing; ruin my character; spend my money, and call
me an assassin when all is done. I don't object. Let me look after his
sanitation."
"But the days of a paternal Government are over; we must depend on the
people. Think of what they would say at home," said the Government of
India. "We have issued a resolution--indeed we have!"
The Englishman sat down and groaned. "I believe you'll issue a
resolution some day notifying your own abolition," said he. "What are
you going to do?"
"Constitute more Boards," said the Government of India. "Boards of
Control and Supervision--Fund Boards--all sorts of Boards. Nothing
like system. It will be at work in three years or so. We haven't any
money, but that's a detail."
The Englishman looked at the resolution and sniffed. "It doesn't touch
the weak point of the country."
"What _will_ touch the weak point of the country, then?" said the
Government of India.
"I used to," said the Englishman. "I was the District Officer, and I
twisted their tails. You have taken away my power, and now----"
"Well," said the Government of India, "you seem to think a good deal of
yourself."
"Never mind me," said the Englishman. "I'm an effete relic of the past.
But Ram Buksh will die, as he used to do."
And now we all wait to see which is right.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: "Turnovers," Vol. III.]
TIGLATH PILESER[13]
Thank Heaven he is dead! The municipality sent a cart and a man only
this morning, and, all the servants aiding with ropes and tackle, the
carcase of Tiglath was borne away--a wobbling lump. His head was thrust
over the tailboard of the cart. Upon it was stamped an expression of
horror and surprise, unutterable and grotesque. I have put away my
rifle, I have cheered my heart with wine, and I sit down now to write
the story of Tiglath, the Utter Brute. His own kind, alas! will not
read it, and thus it will be shorn of instruction; but owners will
kindly take notice, and when it pleases Heaven to inflict them with
such an animal as Tiglath they will know what to do.
To begin with, I bought him, his vices thick as his barsati, for a
hundred and seventy rupees, a five-chambered, muzzle-loading revolver,
and a Cawnpore saddle.
"Of course, for that price," said Staveley, "you can't expect
everything. He's not what one would call absolutely sound, y' know, but
there's no end of work in him, and if you only give him the butt he'll
go like a steam-engine."
"Staveley," I answered, "when you admit that he is not perfection
I perceive that I am in for a really Good Thing. Don't hurt your
conscience, Staveley. Tell me what is his chief vice--weakness,
partiality--anything you choose to call it. I shall get to know the
minor defects in the course of nature; but what is Tiglath's real
shouk?"
Staveley reflected a moment. "Well, really, I can't quite say, old
man, straight off the reel, y' know. He's a oner to go when his head's
turned to home. He's a regular feeder, and vaseline will cure that
little eruption"--with its malignant barsati--"in no time. Oh, I forgot
his shouk: I don't know exactly how to describe it, but he yaws a good
deal," said Staveley.
"He how muches?" I asked.
"Yaws," said Staveley; "goes a bit wide upon occasions, but a good
coachwan will cure that in one drive. My man let him do what he liked.
One fifty and a hundred, ten and ten is twenty--one-seventy. Many
thanks, indeed. I'll send over his bedding and ropes. He's a powerful
upstanding horse, though rather picked up just at present."
Staveley departed, and I was left alone with Tiglath. I called him
Tiglath because he resembled a lathy pig. Later on I called him Pileser
on account of his shouk; but my coachwan, a strong, masterless man,
called him "_haramzada chor, shaitan ké bap_" and "_oont ki beta_."
He certainly was a powerful horse, being full fifteen-two at the
withers, with the girth of a waler, and at first the docility of an
Arab. There was something wrong with his feet--permanently--but he
was a considerate beast, and never had more than one leg in hospital
at a time. The other three were still movable, and Tiglath never
grudged them in my service. I write this in justice to his memory; the
creaking of the wheels of the municipal cart being still in my ears.
For a season--some twelve days--Tiglath was beyond reproach. He had
not a cheerful disposition, nor did his pendulous underlip add to
his personal beauty; but he made no complaints, and moved swiftly to
and from office. The hot weather gave place to the cool breezes of
October, and with the turn of the year the slumbering devil in the soul
of Tiglath spread its wings and crowed aloud. I fed him well, I had
aided his barsati, I had lapped his lame legs in thanda putties, and
adorned his sinful body with new harness. He rewarded me upon a day
with an exhibition so new and strange that I feared for the moment his
reason had been unhinged. Slowly, with a malevolent grin, Tiglath, the
pampered, turned at right angles to the carriage--a newly-varnished
one--and backed the front wheels up the verandah steps, letting them
down with a bump. He then wheeled round and round in the portico, and
all but brought the carriage over. The show lasted for ten minutes, at
the end of which time he trotted peacefully away.
I was pained and grieved--nothing more, upon my honour. I forbade
the sais to kick Tiglath in the stomach, for I was persuaded that
the harness galled him, and, in this belief, at the end of the day,
undressed him tenderly and fitted sheepskin all over the said harness.
Tiglath ate the sheepskin next day, and I did not renew it.
A week later I met the Judge. It was a purely accidental interview.
I would have avoided it, as the Judge and I did not love each other,
but the shafts of my carriage were through the circular front of his
brougham, and Tiglath was rubbing the boss of his headstall tenderly
against the newly-varnished panels of the same. The Judge complained
that he might have been impaled as he sat. My coachwan declared on oath
that the horse deliberately ran into the brougham. Tiglath tendered no
evidence, and I began to mistrust him.
At the end of a month I perceived that my friends and acquaintances
avoided me markedly. The appearance of Tiglath at the band-stand was
enough to clear a space of ten yards in my immediate neighbourhood. I
had to shout to my friends from afar, and they shouted back the details
of the little bills which I had to pay their coach-builders. Tiglath
was suffering from carriagecidal mania, and the coachwan had asked for
leave. "Stay with me, Ibrahim," I said. "Thou seest how the sahib log
do now avoid us. Get a new and a stout chabuq, and instruct Tiglath in
the paths of straight walking."
"He will smash the Heaven-born's carriage. He is an old and stale
devil, but in this matter extreme wise," answered Ibrahim. "Kitto
sahib's filton hath he smashed, and Burkitt sahib's brougham gharri,
and another tum-tum, and Staveley sahib's carriage is still being
mended. What profit is this horse? He feigns blindness and much fear,
and in the guise of innocency works evil. I will stay, sahib, but the
blood of this thy new carriage be upon the brute's head and not upon
mine own."