Part 16 (1/2)
”Over-much civility is sometimes no better than over-much discourtesy, for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. I do not not desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father.” desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father.”
”It is forgotten long ago! It was never said! There never was a white woman! There was no boat! Nothing whatever happened at all.”
The Jackal waved his brush to show how completely everything was wiped out of his memory, and sat down with an air.
”Indeed, very many things happened,” said the Mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. (Neither bore malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, and the Jackal came in for his share of plunder when the Mugger had finished a meal.) ”I left that boat and went up-stream, and, when I had reached Arrah and the back-waters behind it, there were no more dead English. The river was empty for a while. Then came one or two dead, in red coats, not English, but of one kind all-Hindus and Purbeeahs-then five and six abreast, and at last, from Arrah to the North beyond Agra, it was as though whole villages had walked into the water. They came out of little creeks one after another, as the logs come down in the Rains. When the river rose they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon; and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. All night, too, going North, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under water: and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said: 'If this thing happen to men how shall the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut escape?' There were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, but never sinking.”
”Ah!” said the Adjutant. ”Boats like those come to Calcutta of the South. They are tall and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tail, and they-”
”Are thrice as big as my village. My My boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle.” boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very afraid, and I left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle.”
”Was there still good food in the river?” said the Jackal.
”More than I had any desire for. Even I-and I do not eat mud-even I was tired, and, as I remember, a little frightened of this constant coming down of the silent ones. I heard my people say in my village that all the English were dead; but those that came, face-down, with the current were not English, as my people saw. Then my people said that it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came down it had been clearly drowned by the floods, as I could well see; and, though it was not so easy then to get food, I was heartily glad of it. A little killing here and there is no bad thing-but even the Mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is.”
”Marvelous! Most truly marvelous!” said the Jackal. ”I am become fat through merely hearing about so much good eating. And afterward what, if it be permitted to ask, did the Protector of the Poor do?”
”I said to myself-and by the Right and Left of Gunga! I locked my jaws on that vow-I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my Fate has been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor and infirm presence; only-”
”No one is all happy from his beak to his tail,” said the Adjutant sympathetically. ”What does the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut need more?”
”That little white child which I did not get,” said the Mugger, with a deep sigh. ”He was very small, but I have not forgotten. I am old now, but before I die it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true they are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foolish people, and the sport would be small, but I remember the old days above Benares, and, if the child lives, he will remember still. It may be he goes up and down the bank of some river, telling how he once pa.s.sed his hands between the teeth of the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, and lived to make a tale of it. My Fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams-the thought of the little white child in the bows of that boat.” He yawned, and closed his jaws. ”And now I will rest and think. Keep silent, my children, and respect the aged.”
He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge.
”That was a pleasant and profitable life,” he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. ”And not once, mark you, did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along the banks. Yet I have told him him a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, 'All the world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told!' Now he is going to sleep! a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. How true is the saying, 'All the world forgets the Jackal and the Barber when the news has been told!' Now he is going to sleep! Arrh!” Arrh!”
”How can a Jackal hunt with a Mugger?” said the Adjutant coolly. ”Big thief and little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pickings.”
The Jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself up under the tree-trunk, when suddenly he cowered, and looked up through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head.
”What now?” said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily.
”Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they are not looking for us-those two men.”
”Men, is it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy.” The Adjutant, being a first-cla.s.s scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched.
”I am not worth a blow from anything greater than an old shoe,” said the Jackal, and listened again. ”Hark to that footfall!” he went on. ”That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face. Listen again! Iron hits iron up there! It is a gun! Friend, those heavy-footed, foolish English are coming to speak with the Mugger.”
”Warn him, then. He was called Protector of the Poor by some one not unlike a starving Jackal but a little time ago.”
”Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has told me again and again there is nothing to fear from the white-faces. They must be white-faces. Not a villager of Mugger-Ghaut would dare to come after him. See, I said it was a gun! Now, with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. He cannot hear well out of water, and-this time it is not a woman!”
A s.h.i.+ny barrel glittered for a minute in the moonlight on the girders. The Mugger was lying on the sand-bar as still as his own shadow, his fore feet spread out a little, his head dropped between them, snoring like a-mugger.
A voice on the bridge whispered: ”It's an odd shot-straight down almost-but as safe as houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly! what a brute! The villagers will be wild if he's shot, though. He's the deota deota (G.o.dling) of these parts.” (G.o.dling) of these parts.”
”Don't care a rap,” another voice answered; ”he took about fifteen of my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it's time he was put a stop to. I've been after him in a boat for weeks. Stand by with the Martinicv as soon as I've given him both barrels of this.” as soon as I've given him both barrels of this.”
”Mind the kick, then. A double four-bore's no joke.”
”That's for him to decide. Here goes!”
There was a roar like the sound of small cannon (the biggest sort of elephant-rifle is not very different from some artillery), and a double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Martini, whose long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile's plates. But the explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the Mugger's neck, a hand's breadth to the left of the backbone, while the other burst a little lower down, at the beginning of the tail. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mortally wounded crocodile can scramble to deep water and get away: but the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut was literally broken into three pieces. He hardly moved his head before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the Jackal.
”Thunder and lightning! Lightning and thunder!” said that miserable little beast. ”Has the thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge tumbled at last?”
”It is no more than a gun,” said the Adjutant, though his very tail-feathers quivered. ”Nothing more than a gun. He is certainly dead. Here come the white-faces.”
The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the sand-bar, where they stood admiring the length of the Mugger. Then a native with an axe cut off the big head, and four men dragged it across the spit.
”The last time that I had my hand in a Mugger's mouth,” said one of the Englishmen, stooping down (he was the man who had built the bridge), ”it was when I was about five years old-coming down the river by boat to Monghyr. I was a Mutiny baby, as they call it. Poor mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me how she fired dad's old pistol at the beast's head.”
”Well, you've certainly had your revenge on the chief of the clan-even if the gun has made your nose bleed. Hi, you boatman! Haul that head up the bank, and we'll boil it for the skull. The skin's too knocked about to keep. Come along to bed now. This was worth sitting up all night for, wasn't it?”
Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant made the very same remark not three minutes after the men had left.
A RIPPLE SONG.
O O.
nce a ripple came to land In the golden sunset burning- Lapped against a maiden's hand, By the ford returning.
Dainty foot and gentle breast- Here, across, be glad and rest.
”Maiden, wait, ” the ripple saith; ”Wait, awhile, for I am Death!”
”Where my lover calls I go- Shame it were to treat him coldly- 'T was a fish that circled so, Turning over boldly.”
Dainty foot and tender heart, Wait the loaded ferry-cart.
”Wait, ah, wait!” the ripple saith; ”Maiden, wait, for I am Death!
”When my lover calls I haste- Dame Disdain was never wedded!”
Ripple-ripple round her waist, Clear the current eddied.
Foolish heart and faithful hand, Little feet that touched no land.
Far away the ripple sped, Ripple-ripple-running red!
The King's Ankus6
These are the Four that are never content, that have never been filled since the Dews began- Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the Ape, and the Eyes of Man.