Part 13 (1/2)

A Gurkha servant with the ugly, cheery face of his race appeared and was ordered to bring three whiskeys and sodas.

”Ranga's not a bad place if you can stand the loneliness,” continued the Major. ”Are you fond of shooting.”

”Yes, sir, awfully.”

”Hooray! That's good,” cried Burke. ”Now we'll have someone to go down to the jungle and shoot for the Mess. We want a change from tinned Army rations and the tough ould hins that these benighted haythins call chickens.”

”Yes, you'll be a G.o.dsend to us if you're a good shot, Wargrave,” added the Commandant. ”We never get meat here unless someone shoots a stag or a buck in the jungle; and for that we generally have to rely on Dermot.

But he is away such a lot, wandering along the frontier, keeping an eye on the peace of the Border. Now we'll be able to look to you. We have three transport elephants with the detachment, all steady to shoot from.”

Frank was delighted.

”I'd love to go into the jungle if you'd let me, sir.”

”Yes, I'll be glad if you do. There's not much work for you here; and this is a dull place for a youngster unless he's keen on sport. I'm not, myself; and Burke's as blind as a bat. But you can always have an elephant when they aren't wanted to bring up supplies from the railway.”

The subaltern thanked him gratefully and inwardly decided that his new commanding officer was a great improvement on Colonel Trevor.

”Now, Burke, I'm off to my bungalow. Show Wargrave his quarters,” said the Major rising. ”See you at dinner.”

Burke showed the subaltern his room, one of the four into which the Mess was divided. Like the doctor's quarters, it was at one end of the building, the centre apartment being the officers' anteroom and dining-room. Frank found that his ”boy,” with the ready deftness of Indian servants, had unpacked his trunks, hung up his clothes and stowed his various belongings about the scantily-furnished room. He had stood Violet's photo on the one rickety table and laid out his Master's white mess uniform on the small iron cot.

Major Hunt, Wargrave learned, lived in a bungalow a few hundred yards away, but, being unmarried, took his meals in the Mess. The Indian officers and sepoys of the detachment were quartered in barracks in the Fort.

Frank dressed and entered the anteroom or officers' sitting-room, from which a door led into the messroom. Both apartments were poorly furnished, but the walls were adorned with the skulls and skins of many beasts of the jungle, presented by Colonel Dermot, as Frank learned.

Shelves filled with books ran across one end of the anteroom.

As the interior of the Mess was rather hot at that time of year--though to Wargrave it seemed very cool after Rohar--the dinner-table was laid on the verandah; and while the officers sat at their meal the pleasant mountain breeze played about them. Frank thought with grat.i.tude of his escape from the burning heat which at that moment was tormenting the hundreds of millions in the furnace of the Plains of India stretching away from the foot of the cool hills.

The meal was not luxurious, for it consisted almost exclusively of tinned provisions, fresh meat being unprocurable in Ranga Duar--except fowls of exceeding toughness--and vegetables and bread being rare dainties.

During dinner Wargrave learned how completely isolated his new station was. Their only European neighbours were the planters on tea-gardens scattered about in the great forest below, the nearest thirty miles off.

The few visitors that Ranga Duar saw in the year were the General on his annual inspection, an occasional official of the Indian Civil Service, the Public Works or the Forest Department, or some planter friend of the Dermots.

The reason of the existence of this outpost and its garrison was the guarding of the _duars_, or pa.s.ses, through the Himalayas against raiders from Bhutan, that little-known independent State lying between Tibet and the Bengal border. Its frontier was only two miles from, and a few thousand feet above, Ranga Duar.

”You are just in time for our one yearly burst of gaiety, Wargrave,”

said the Commandant, ”the visit of the Deb Zimpun.”

”What on earth is that, sir?” asked the subaltern.

”Sounds like a new disease, doesn't it?” said Burke laughing. ”But it isn't. The Deb Zimpun is a gintleman av high degree, the Heridithary Cup Bearer to the Deb Raja.”

”To the what?” demanded the bewildered Frank.

Major Hunt smiled.

”Bhutan is supposed to be ruled by a temporal monarch called the Deb Raja and also by a spiritual one, known in India as the Durma Raja. In reality it is under the sway of the most powerful of the several great feudal lords of the land, the Tongsa Penlop or Chief of Tongsa, whom we regard as the Maharajah of Bhutan. He has placed himself, as far only as the foreign relations of the country go, under the suzerainty of the Government of India; and in return we grant him a subsidy of a _lakh_ of rupees a year. It used to be fifty thousand, but the sum was doubled years ago. To get the money one of the State Council comes every year.