Part 4 (1/2)

After dinner we gathered round the stove in informal fas.h.i.+on and smoked, the Deb Zimpun helping himself steadily to my cigars. With the aid of the head clerk, who was present to interpret, the conversation grew almost animated. Our old gentleman expressed himself deeply gratified by the kindness he had received from the officers of the detachment, particularly the offer of a military bungalow, and said that if he returned to Buxa the following year he hoped to find us all there again.

Me he personally regarded as a brother. We drank his health, a compliment he quite understood, and with difficulty refrained from singing ”For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.” When he departed we escorted him as far as the Mess and bade him a vociferous ”Good night,” to the amazement of the squad of ragged swordsmen and lantern-bearers who were accompanying him back to Chunabatti.

Next day Bell left us to return to Sikkim; and we expected the Deb Zimpun would also take his departure for Bhutan with the subsidy. But day after day pa.s.sed without any sign of his going, and we began to wonder at his remaining after the purpose of his visit was completed. I invited him to lunch with me again. One afternoon he appeared at the head of his wild gathering, all of them carrying bows. He had come to challenge me to an archery contest. We set up targets on the range at a distance of two hundred yards. He defeated me easily, and chaffed me gaily over his victory. To retrieve my honour I sent to the fort for some Sikh throwing quoits, formerly used as weapons in war. They are of thin steel with edges ground sharp, and when thrown by an expert will skim through the air for nearly two hundred yards and would almost cut clean through a man if they struck him fair. They ricochet off the ground for a good distance after the first graze. We set up plantain tree stems as targets, for the soft wood does not injure the edge. I showed the Envoy how to hold and throw the weapon; but his first shot went very wide indeed and nearly ended the mortal career of one of his swordsmen. However, he improved with a little practice, and insisted that all his followers should try the sport.

A day or two after this my detachment did its annual field firing. This is a most practical form of musketry, consisting of an attack on a position with ball cartridge, the enemy being represented by small targets, the size of a man's head, nearly hidden behind entrenchments or suddenly appearing from holes dug in the ground. I invited the Envoy and his suite to witness it. The Deb Zimpun was deeply interested. He followed us everywhere as we scrambled up and down steep hills firing on the small marks dotted about between the trees, in the jungle and at the bottom of precipices. The attack was arranged to finish up on the parade ground where we could make use of the running and vanis.h.i.+ng targets in the rifle b.u.t.ts. The Bhuttias were immensely delighted with the crouching figures of men drawn swiftly across the range and saluted with bursts of rapid fire from the sepoys' rifles. But they broke into an excited roar when our men fixed bayonets and charged the position with loud cheers; and I looked back to find the Bhuttias following us at a run, waving their swords and yelling wildly. When I went round to inspect the targets and count the hits, the Deb Zimpun and his followers accompanied me and were much impressed by the accuracy of the shooting.

They talked eagerly, pointed out the bullet-holes to each other, and shook their heads solemnly over them. The interpreter told me that they were saying that they would be sorry to face our soldiers in battle after seeing the range, accuracy, and rapidity of fire of our rifles.

The Deb Zimpun returned with me to my bungalow and enjoyed a meal of tea, cake, and chocolate creams as heartily as a schoolboy. On departing he shook my hand and bade the interpreter express the interest with which he had watched the field firing.

But alas for the inconstancy of human friends.h.i.+ps! Our pleasant intercourse was destined to an abrupt termination. The very next day I was informed that the genial old gentleman had been levying blackmail on Bhuttias residing in our territory and had seized and imprisoned in the house in which he resided a man, three women, and three children, intending to carry them off to Bhutan. The unexpected appearance of a score of my men with rifles and fixed bayonets changed the programme; and the prisoners were removed to our fort until Government should decide their fate. As we marched them through Chunabatti the villagers flocked round us and called down blessings on our heads for saving their friends. One old lady, the wife of the male prisoner, fell on the ground before Smith, who had accompanied me, embraced his legs and kissed his feet, much to our medical officer's embarra.s.sment.

Much correspondence and a Government inquiry resulted in the freedom of the wretched captives. But before their release the Envoy, in response to impatient letters from the Maharajah who was none too well pleased with the delay in his return with the subsidy, marched off over the hills to Bhutan without a farewell to us.

The case of the man who had been seized is a typical example of the justice meted out in uncivilised countries. He was named Tas.h.i.+ and had been born in Buxa before its capture by the British in 1864 and its subsequent incorporation in our territory. After the war his family retired across the newly made boundary. His father possessed land in a village close to the frontier, which was in the jurisdiction of a certain _jongpen_. He acquired more several miles away in a district governed by another _jongpen_. On his death he left everything to Tas.h.i.+, who continued to reside in the first village. The second official objected to this and eventually confiscated the land in his district and applied it to his own use. When Tas.h.i.+ threatened to appeal to the Supreme Council at Punakha he sent a party of his retainers to slay him as the easiest method of avoiding litigation. When the other _jongpen_ remonstrated against this invasion of his district and proceeded to repel it by force, his brother official pointed out to him that he could not do better than follow the good example set him and seize Tas.h.i.+'s remaining property. The advice seemed good; and the first _jongpen_ determined to kill Tas.h.i.+ himself. He sent several soldiers to put him to death; but as they learned on arrival that the unfortunate owner of this Bhutanese Naboth's vineyard had several stalwart sons and possessed a gun, the gallant warriors contented themselves with establis.h.i.+ng a cordon round the village and sending for reinforcements. The luckless Tas.h.i.+ realised that discretion was the better part of valour. He bribed some of the soldiers to let him pa.s.s through the cordon at night and with his family and five cows, all that he could save from the wreck, he escaped into British territory. But the two Ahabs were not satisfied. It was always believed that Tas.h.i.+ had managed to take some h.o.a.rded wealth with him, although he lived in a poor way and worked hard for his living in India. And this belief accounted for his capture on this occasion. On previous visits of the Envoy he and his family had taken the precaution to leave Chunabatti before his arrival.

After his release Tas.h.i.+ resolutely refused to quit Buxa.

”The Commanding Sahib is my father and my mother,” he declared. ”He has saved my worthless life,” for he had been informed that he would be put to death as soon as he was out of British territory; ”and I will not leave his shadow, in which I and my family will dwell the rest of our lives.” However, he thought that this might not prove sufficient shelter from the weather; so he built a bamboo house in the cantonment limits and announced that he felt safe at last under our protection. Like all Asiatics he considered that my interference on his behalf had const.i.tuted a claim on me. However, as he was a useful man, I found employment for him and allowed him to continue to reside in Buxa.

In the following year the Political Officer, accompanied by Captain Kennedy, I.M.S., pa.s.sed through Buxa on their way to Bhutan, where the subsidy, now doubled, was paid in Punakha, the capital, and the treaty by which the country was placed under British protection signed by the Maharajah. So the Deb Zimpun and I never met again.

There is a certain type of individuals with malformed minds who moan over the subjugation of the countries of barbarous nations by civilised Powers. Do they honestly believe that the cause of humanity is better served by allowing the n.o.ble savage to plunder and slay the weak at his own sweet will rather than by subjecting him to the domination of Europeans, be they French, Germans, Russians, Italians or British, who guarantee freedom of life and property in the lands under their rule?

Liberty, with these barbarous races, means the liberty of the strong to oppress the weak. Here, in the borderland of Bhutan to-day, the peasant can till the soil, the trader enjoy his hard-earned wealth, where, before the _pax Britannica_ settled on it, rapine, blood, and l.u.s.t went unchecked, where no man's life nor woman's honour was safe from the fierce raiders of the hills. We hold the gates of India. Inside them all is peace. Beyond them, oppression, injustice, murder!

CHAPTER V

IN THE JUNGLE

An Indian jungle--The trees--Creepers--Orchids--The undergrowth--On an elephant in the jungle--Forcing a pa.s.sage--Wild bees--Red ants--A lost river--A _sambhur_ hind--Spiders--Jungle fowl--A stag--_Hallal_--Wounded beasts--A halt--Skinning the stag--Ticks--Butcher apprentices--Natural rope--Water in the air--_Pani bel_--Trail of wild elephants--Their habits--An impudent monkey--An adventure with a rogue elephant--Fire lines--Wild dogs--A giant squirrel--The barking deer--A good bag--Spotted deer--Protective colouring--Dangerous beasts--Natives' dread of bears--A bison calf--The fascination of the forest--The generous jungle--Wild vegetables--Natural products--A home in the trees--Forest Lodge the First--Destroyed by a wild elephant--Its successor--A luncheon-party in the air--The salt lick--Discovery of a coal mine--A monkey's parliament--The jungle by night.

From the dense tangled undergrowth the great trees lift their bare stems, each striving to push its leafy crown through the thick canopy of foliage and get its share of the sun. The huge trunks are devoid of branches for many feet above the ground; but around them twist giant creepers which strangle them in close embrace and sink their coils deep into the bark. Here and there a tree, killed by the cruel pressure, stands withered and lifeless but still held up by the murderous parasite. From bole to bole these creepers, thick as a s.h.i.+p's hawser, swing in festoons, coiling and writhing around each other in tangled confusion. Tree-trunk and bough are matted with the glossy green leaves and trails of mauve and white blossoms of innumerable orchids. The trees are not the slender palms that fill the pictures of tropical jungles by untravelled artists, but the giants of the forest--huge _sal_ and teak trees and straight-stemmed _simal_ with its b.u.t.tressed trunk star-shaped in section with its curious projecting f.l.a.n.g.es.

Through the leafy canopy high overhead the sunlight can scarcely filter, and fills the forest with a pleasant green gloom. The undergrowth is dense and rank--tangled and th.o.r.n.y bushes, high gra.s.s, shrubs covered with great bell-shaped white flowers--so thick that a man on foot must hack his way through it. But here and there are open glades where the ground is covered with tall bracken. Near the hills and in the damper jungle to the south the bamboo grows extensively. Beside the river-beds are patches of elephant gra.s.s, eight to ten feet high, with feathered plumes six feet higher still. This is so strong and dense as to be almost impenetrable to men, but everywhere through it wild elephants have made paths. Wherever the big trees have been felled and the sun can reach the ground the vegetation grows more luxuriantly. And, in the southern belt of the forest, where the water from the hills rises to the surface again, the jungle is wilder and more tropical. Here are huge tree-ferns, the under sides of the fronds studded with long and sharp thorns. Cane brakes, through which none but the heaviest and strongest animals can make their way, abound.

Through the tangled confusion of undergrowth and twisted creepers my elephant forces a pa.s.sage with swaying stride, as a steamer ploughs her way through a heavy sea and shoulders the waves aside. I am sitting on Khartoum's pad near the _mahout_ perched astride her neck, guiding her by the pressure of his feet behind her huge flapping ears. A network of leafy branches of low trees bound together by lianas bars her progress.

At a word she lifts her trunk and tears it down, while the _mahout_ hacks at bough and creeper with his _kukri_ or heavy, curved knife. As she moves on she plucks a small branch and strikes her sides and stomach with it to drive off the flies which are annoying her. For thick as her skin is, yet the insects which prey on her can pierce it and drive her frantic. And once, feeling a sudden pain in my instep, I looked at my foot and discovered an elephant fly biting through a lace hole in my boot. Khartoum, having driven off the pests temporarily, lifts the branch to her mouth and chews it, wood and all. Bechan, her _mahout_, espies a small creeper which is highly esteemed by the natives as a febrifuge and is considered a good tonic for elephants. So he directs her attention to it. Out shoots the snake-like trunk and tears it from the tree around which it is growing; and, crunching it with enjoyment, she strides on through the undergrowth. Suddenly Bechan, in evident alarm, kicks her violently behind the left ear and beats her thick skull with the heavy iron goad he carries, the _ankus_, a short crook with a sharp spike at the end. Khartoum stops short, then moves off to the right. Thinking that he has seen some dangerous wild animal I whisper in Hindustani, ”What is it, Bechan?” ”Bees,” he says shortly and points apparently to a lump of mud hanging from a low branch right in our former path. Then I understand that he would be far less alarmed at the sight of a tiger. For a swarm of wild bees is regarded with terrified respect in India. The lump of mud is a nest; and, had we continued on our original course and brushed against it, we would have been promptly attacked by a cloud of these irritable little insects whose stings have killed many a man. So we prudently give the nest a wide berth. The wild beasts of the forest are not its only dangers. As again Khartoum tears her way through some low-hanging branches, I feel a sudden sting and burning pain in the back of my bare neck. I put my hand to the spot and my fingers close on a big red ant which, knocked from a bough, has fallen on me and is avenging its being disturbed by burying its venomous little fangs in my flesh. Though I crush it, the pain of its bite lingers for hours. Sometimes one dislodges a number of these insects when forcing a pa.s.sage through dense jungle; and they at once attack the man or animal they alight on. So it is necessary to keep a sharp look-out for them as well as for bees. Nor are these the only perils that lurk in the trees. Though in the jungle serpents do not hang by their tails from every branch, as we read in the books of wonderful adventures that delighted our boyhood, still there is supposed to be one poisonous snake in the Terai which lies along the branches, and if dislodged strikes the disturber with deadly fang. I fortunately never saw one; though in another place I have shot a viper in a tree.

We plod steadily on through the jungle. A gleam of daylight between the stems of the trees shows that we are approaching a _nullah_. Khartoum comes to a stop on the edge of the steep bank of a broad and empty river-bed. After the gloom of the forest the bright transition into the glaring sunlight is dazzling. To the right I can now see the mountains towering above us; and, two thousand feet up, on the dark face of the hills, the three Picquet Towers of Buxa s.h.i.+ne out in the sun. At our feet on the white sand lie huge rounded rocks which have been rolled down from the mountains by the furious torrents of the last rainy season. The river-bed is dry now; but were we to follow it a few miles to the south, we would find at first an occasional pool and then further on the water appearing above the surface and flowing on in a gradually increasing stream. For these smaller rivers are lost underground in the boulder formation near the foot of the hills and rise again ten miles further south.

Our elephant slips and stumbles over the polished, rounded rocks until she reaches the opposite bank. Up it she climbs at so steep an angle that to avoid sliding off I have to lie at full length along the pad and hold on to the front edge of it until she regains level ground. We pa.s.s from the glare of the sunlight into the cool shade of the forest, and the trees close around us and shut off the mountains from our view. As we push our way through the undergrowth the _mahout_ stops the elephant suddenly. ”_Sambhur!_” he whispers. Following the direction of his outstretched arm my eyes see nothing at first but the tangled vegetation, the straight tree-trunks and the curving festoons of creepers. But gradually they rest on a warm patch of colour and I make out the form of a deer scarcely visible in the deep shadows. ”_Maddi_”

(a female) grunts Bechan disgustedly and urges on his elephant. For he knows the Sahibs', to him, ridiculous forest law, which ordains that females are not to be slain, although their flesh is more toothsome than that of a tough old stag.

It is a _sambhur_ hind. Apparently aware of her immunity she stands watching us unconcernedly. Accustomed to the wild species, other animals allow tame elephants to approach close to them until they discover the presence of human beings on their backs. So this hind looks calmly at Khartoum. Her long ears twitch restlessly, but otherwise she is motionless; and I can admire her graceful form and the rich brown colour of her hide at my ease. But at last it dawns on her that there is something wrong about our elephant. She swings round and crashes off through the undergrowth and is lost to sight in a moment. And we resume our course.

Across our path from bush to bush great spiders have spun their webs; and Khartoum, pus.h.i.+ng through them, has acc.u.mulated so many layers of them across her face as to blind her. So the _mahout_ leans down and tears them off. These spiders are huge black insects measuring several inches from tip to tip; and their webs are stout and strong almost as linen.

Something scuttling over the fallen leaves in the undergrowth draws my attention and I raise my rifle, only to lower it when, with a frightened squawk, a jungle hen flutters up out of the bushes and flies away among the trees. These birds are the progenitors of our ordinary barnyard fowl, and so like them that once close to Santrabari, when out with a shot-gun, I let several hens pa.s.s me unscathed, under the impression that they were fowls belonging to our _mahouts_. And when in the heart of the forest I first heard the c.o.c.ks crowing I thought that we were near a village. In Northern India these jungle c.o.c.ks are beautifully plumaged with red, yellow, and dark green feathers and long tails. In Southern India they are speckled black and white with a little yellow.

When in the forest villages the tame roosters crow, their challenge is taken up and repeated by the wild ones in the jungle around. And the natives often peg out a c.o.c.k and surround him with snares to catch the wild birds which come to attack him.

But now Bechan suddenly stops Khartoum and whispers excitedly, ”_Sambhur nur!_” ”A stag.” For a moment I can see nothing in the tangled bit of jungle he points to. Then suddenly the deepened blackness of a patch of shadow reveals itself as the dark hide of a _sambhur_ stag. We have almost pa.s.sed him. He is to my right rear; and I cannot swing round far enough to fire from the right shoulder. But I bring up the rifle rapidly to my left and press the trigger. As the recoil of the heavy .470 high-velocity weapon almost knocks me back flat on the pad I hear a crash in the brushwood. ”_Shabas.h.!.+ Luga!_ (Well done! Hit!”) cries Bechan and slips from the neck of the elephant to the ground. Drawing his knife he dashes into the jungle. For, being a Mussulman, he is anxious to reach the stricken stag and _hallal_ it; that is, let blood by cutting its throat while there is life in it. For the Mohammedan religion enjoins that an animal is only lawful food if the blood has run before its death. This is borrowed from the Mosaic Law and is really a hygienic precaution against long-dead carrion being eaten.