Part 10 (1/2)

One night when Creagh and I were sitting in the bivouac after dinner in the dim light of a half moon, the idea occurred to me to take one of our elephants and wander along the bed of a river a few hundred yards away, in which, as there was still some water left, we might come upon wild animals drinking. So we got our rifles, and a pad was strapped on Khartoum's back. On her we pa.s.sed out of the zareba surrounding the camp, in which most of the men lay asleep on their _dhurries_ stretched on the ground; for the native requires no softer bed and can repose contentedly on paving stones. A couple of the Indian officers still sat talking by a fire near the shelter of boughs erected for them by their men. We answered the sentry's challenge and turned Khartoum down a path from the bivouac to the water. It lay faintly white in the misty moonlight which barely lit up the ground under the leafless trees. Not a hundred yards from the camp the _mahout_ stopped Khartoum suddenly and pointed to a black object which indistinctly blurred the path.

”A bear, Sahib,” he whispered.

It was too dark to see my rifle-sights; but I rapidly tied my handkerchief round the barrel and tried to aim at the shadowy outline of the animal. Unluckily at that moment it moved off the path and entered a patch of shadow under a tree which still kept its leaves. I fired both barrels in quick succession without result and the bear scuttled away among the trees. We tried to follow it but could not find it again.

When we reached the river-bed, down the middle of which a narrow stream still ran, we wandered up it for a couple of miles in the misty light.

It was a curious sensation to be roaming noiselessly--for Khartoum's feet made no sound on the soft sand--in the dead of night through the silent jungle. Far away a _khakur's_ harsh bark rang out suddenly once or twice, giving warning of the presence of some beast of prey; but otherwise all was still. We disturbed a few deer drinking; and they dashed away up the _nullah_ in alarm. But we saw no wild elephant or tiger, such as I had hoped to come upon; and so we turned and made for camp again.

On our return to Buxa the hills near us were bare and blackened; but farther away the fires still blazed. The heat and the oppression of the smoky atmosphere were still almost unendurable. But one night in the first week of April I was awakened by a terrific peal of thunder right overhead, which shook my bungalow and echoed and re-echoed among the hills. Another followed, as the intense darkness was lit up by a blinding lightning flash. And a dull moaning sound advancing from the plains below and steadily increasing to a roar made me sit up in bed and wonder what was about to happen. It drew near; and then a torrential downpour of tropical rain beat down on the Station. My iron roof rattled as if millions of pebbles were being flung on it. The noise was so great that I lay awake for hours.

The storm raged all night; and when I rose for parade I looked out on a changed world. The rain still descended in sheets. The parade ground was a swamp. Down the _nullah_ beside my garden raced a tumbling torrent of brown water flecked with white foam. Our rainy season had set in nearly three months earlier than throughout the greater part of the Peninsula of India. And now began the dullest time of our life in the outpost. In the five months that followed nearly three hundred inches of rain fell in Buxa. Work was at a standstill, save for physical drill in the men's barrack-rooms and lectures to the non-commissioned officers. To walk from my bungalow to the office in the fort every day was almost an adventure. Wearing long rubber boots to the knee and wrapped in a mackintosh I paddled across the swampy parade ground in drenching rain, and even in the short distance was wet through. And at night I struggled up the hill to dinner in the Mess along the steep road which was converted into a mountain torrent a foot deep, fearing at every step to find some snake, washed out of its hole in the ground, clinging affectionately round my legs to stop its downward career. All night long and most of the day storms swept down on us; and thunder growled and grumbled among the hills. Dwellers in temperate lands can form no conception of the awful grandeur of a tropical tempest, the fury of the wind, the vivid lightning that spatters the sky and runs in chains and linked patterns across its darkness, the awful sound of the cras.h.i.+ng thunder that seems to shake the world. But, terrifying at first, they became actually wearisome from their frequency. When a thunderstorm has raged about one's house for eighteen hours, circling round the hills and returning again and again, one gets simply bored with it--there is no other expression to describe the feeling.

It was wonderful to see the revivifying effect of the rain on the parched ground. One could almost watch the gra.s.s grow. Where a few days before was only bare earth, now the herbage stood feet high. All traces of the devastating fires were washed away. On the hill-sides, fertilised by the ashes, the undergrowth sprang up more luxuriantly than ever. But it brought with it the greatest curse of the rainy season in the jungle.

Every twig, every leaf, every blade of gra.s.s, harboured leeches, thin threads of black and yellow which waved one end in the air and seemed to scent an approaching prey. Walk over the gra.s.s, brush past the bushes, and a dozen of these pests fastened on you. Through the lace-holes of one's boots, between the folds of putties, down one's collar they insinuated themselves unnoticed; and you did not feel them until, bloated with blood and swollen to an enormous size, they were perceptible to the touch under the clothing. After a walk one was obliged, on returning to the bungalow, to undress and was sure to find several leeches fastened to one's body. I saw one sepoy with a leech firmly fixed in his nostril. Another time I noticed a man's s.h.i.+rt sleeve stained with blood from elbow to wrist, and, on examining the arm, discovered that, unknown to the sepoy, two leeches were fastened on it and had punctured veins.

Sometimes hailstorms alternated with the rain. I had heard stories of the size of the hailstones in the Duars. Planters had a.s.sured me that animals were often killed and the corrugated iron roofs of the factories perforated by them. I declined to credit these a.s.sertions; although in other parts of India I have seen hailstones an inch in diameter. But one night in Buxa, while we were at dinner, a hailstorm rattled on the roof of the bungalow; and I really believe that if this had not been made of thick sheets of iron it would have been drilled through. My orderly picked up one hailstone outside and brought it in to us. We pa.s.sed it from hand to hand; and then it occurred to me to measure it. It was a rectangular block of clear ice containing as a core a round, whitish hailstone of the usual size and shape; and, using the tape and compa.s.s, we found it was two and a quarter inches long, one and a half broad, and one inch thick. And this after it had lain for a few minutes on the ground and had been handled by several persons. Next day a native survey party, under the command of a European, arrived in Buxa on its way to inspect the boundary marks along the Bhutan frontier, as these are frequently moved back into our territory by the wily Bhutanese. The Englishman in charge told me that he had been caught by the fringe of this storm on the previous evening. He had only a few yards to run for shelter but put up his umbrella as he did so. It was drilled through by the hailstones as if they had been bullets. I heard afterwards of several animals killed in the hills by this storm.

Shut up in our small Station by the relentless rain the days pa.s.sed wearily during the long wet months. Often in the afternoon the rain ceased for a couple of hours; and we were able to get out for a little exercise. So steep were the slopes, so rocky the soil, that in half an hour after the cessation of the downpour the road and the parade ground were comparatively dry. But we could not wander off them without the risk of being attacked by scores of leeches.

In July came a break of nearly a week. I took advantage of it to descend into the forest. Wonderful was the transformation there! No longer could I complain that there was no shelter for game. The undergrowth was higher and denser than ever. Save for an occasional blackened tree-trunk, half hidden in the greenery, there was no trace of the devastation wrought by the fires. The ashes had only served to fertilise the ground, and the vegetation pushed more vigorously than ever. Orchids again clothed the boughs. And, sporting in the unusual suns.h.i.+ne, myriads of gorgeous tropical b.u.t.terflies, scarlet and black, peac.o.c.k-green, pale blue, yellow, all the colours imaginable, rose up in clouds before my elephant. The creepers again swinging from stem to stem writhed and twisted in fantastic confusion. The rivers were in flood and rolled their ma.s.ses of brown, foam-flecked water to the south.

Despite the awful storms I saw no trace in the forest or the hills of damage wrought by lightning. When we arrived in Buxa I had thought the buildings well protected, as conductors ran down every chimney in bungalow and barrack. But just before the Rains an engineer of the Public Works Department had visited us to inspect them. To my alarm he informed me that none of them were properly insulated, and that so far from being a safeguard, they were a positive danger. Then, having cheered me by saying that possibly in a year or two his Department would put them to rights, he left. So when the thunderstorms broke over us I used to wonder in pained resignation which building would be the first struck. But we weathered them all successfully. Probably the hills around saved us by attracting the electric fluid.

Our brief glimpse of fine weather was soon gone. Then the clouds rolled up from the sea before the breath of the south-west Monsoons, the storms again a.s.sailed us, and the floodgates of the sky were opened once more.

In England one complains of the dullness of a wet summer. Think of five months' incessant rain in a small Station that never boasted more than three European inhabitants, cut off from the world and thrown entirely on their own resources! Smith had long since left us and we had no doctor. In the middle of the Rains Creagh was ordered off to command the Trade Agent's escort in Gyantse in Tibet; and I was left the only white man in Buxa. Life was not gay. Even the relief of work was denied us; and sport was impossible, for malaria and blackwater fever hold possession of the jungles during the Monsoon. And even when the Rains moderated in September, we were not allowed to shoot until the close season ended in October. The wet season is not really over in India until near the beginning of November; and in Buxa we sometimes had rain in that month and in December.

But still we managed to survive the trial by fire and by water; and the winter found us as ready for work and sport as ever.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE PALACE OF THE MAHARAJAH

The Durbar--Outside the palace--The State elephants--The soldiery--The Durbar Hall--Officials and gentry of the State--The throne--Queen Victoria's banner--The hidden ladies--_Purdah nas.h.i.+n_--Arrival of the _Dewan_--The Maharajah's entry--The Sons' Salute--A chivalrous Indian custom--_Nuzzurs_--The Dewan's task--The Maharani--An Indian reformer--_Bramo Samaj_--Pretty princesses--An informal banquet--The _nautch_--A moonlight ride--The Maharajah--A soldier and a sportsman--Cooch Behar--The palace--A dinner-party--The heir's birthday celebrations--Schoolboys'

sports--Indian amateur theatricals--An evening in the palace--A panther-drive--Exciting sport--Death of the panther--Partridge shooting on elephants--A stray rhinoceros--Prince Jit's luck--Friendly intercourse between Indians and Englishmen--An unjust complaint.

The long arcaded front of the Palace of Cooch Behar gleamed in the glow of torches held by hundreds of white-clad natives. From the broad steps of the entrance to the lofty dome above it was outlined with lamps flickering in the night breeze. Before the great portals were ranged two lines of elephants with the State silver howdahs and trappings of heavily embroidered cloth of gold. Their broad faces streaked with white paint in quaint designs, their tusks tipped with bra.s.s, the great beasts looked like legendary monsters in the ruddy torchlight as they stood swinging their trunks, flapping their ears, and s.h.i.+fting restlessly from foot to foot. Up the lane between them came carriages and palankeens bearing the officials and n.o.bles of the State to do homage to their Maharajah, who this night held his annual Durbar. The flight of broad steps in front of the great doorway was crowded with swordsmen and spearmen; while on the ground below were the uniformed State Band under a European conductor, and a Guard of Honour of the red-coated Cooch Behar Infantry with muzzle-loading muskets.

The large circular Durbar Hall running up to the high domed roof and surrounded by a bal.u.s.traded gallery seemed set for a stage scene. The floor was covered with the seated forms of officials and gentry clothed in white and wearing their jewels. On a dais under a golden canopy stood an empty gilt throne, one arm fas.h.i.+oned into the shape of an elephant, the other a tiger. Beside it was a large banner, the gift of the late Queen Victoria, heavily embroidered in gold with the same animals, which are the armorial bearings of the State. Behind the throne stood a number of swordsmen and halberdiers. One portion of the gallery was shrouded by latticed screens, from behind which came the rustle of draperies and the murmur of female voices; for they hid Her Highness the Maharani, her daughters, and the ladies of Cooch Behar--_purdah nas.h.i.+n_, that is, ”hidden behind the veil” and never to reveal their faces to any men but their near kin. In another part of the gallery were a few British officers and civilians gazing with interest on the brilliant spectacle below. Through the great entrance could be seen the crowd outside, the soldiery and the lines of restlessly swaying elephants. Through them up the broad roadway came a palankeen borne on the shoulders of coolies and surrounded by torch-bearers and swordsmen. A cheer went up from the crowd; and all inside the hall rose as the palankeen stopped, and from it emerged a frail old man, clothed in white and adorned with splendid jewels which flashed in the ruddy glow of the torches and the clearer light of the electric lamps. It was the _Dewan_, the Prime Minister of the State. As he entered the Durbar Hall the ma.s.s of white-robed officials swayed like a field of ripe grain in the wind, as all present bowed to him. He took his place before the empty throne.

Then the a.s.semblage bent lower and a murmured acclamation went up from all as their Maharajah entered, followed by a procession of Indian aides-de-camp in white uniforms with gold aigulettes, white spiked helmets and trailing swords, similar to the summer dress of British officers in India. His Highness was clothed in a beautiful native garb of pale blue, with a _puggri_, or turban, of the same delicate hue with a diamond-studded aigrette. From the broad gold belt around his waist hung a jewelled scimitar. His breast glittered with orders and war medals, for he had seen active service with the British Army. His jewels flashed in coloured fire in the lamps.

With slow and stately step he pa.s.sed through the great chamber and seated himself on the golden throne; while silver trumpets pealed a welcome and the State Band played the National Anthem of Cooch Behar.

Then came a silence and an expectant pause; and there entered four gallant young figures, the Maharajah's sons. Foremost came the heir, Prince Rajendra Narayen, in the scarlet tunic of the Westminster Dragons, and his brother, Prince Jitendra, in the beautiful white, blue and gold uniform of the Imperial Cadet Corps. Then followed Prince Victor, a G.o.dson of the late Queen Victoria, in the same magnificent dress, and the youngest son, Prince Hitendra, in a fine Indian costume of cloth of gold. The four young men halted and fronted their royal father. Then the heir apparent walked forward to the steps of the throne and held out his sheathed sword horizontally before him in the splendid Indian salute which means ”I place my life and my sword in your hand.”

His Highness bent forward and touched the hilt, the emblematic sign meaning ”I accept the gift and give you back your life.” Prince Rajendra let fall the sword to his side, brought his hand to his helmet in military salute and took his place on the dais beside his father. Each of the other sons came forward in turn, did homage likewise; and then the four stood two and two on each side of the throne.

Never have I looked on a more picturesque ceremonial or magnificent spectacle than this scene of the Durbar. It seemed too splendid, too glowing with colour, to be real life. The brilliantly lit chamber, the flas.h.i.+ng of jewels and gold, the dense throng of white-clad officials, the glittering weapons of the armed attendants; and then the four richly apparelled princes pledging their fealty to their Sovereign and Sire in the historic Oriental custom that has come down to us through the storied ages of Indian chivalry. I could hardly realise that this gorgeous pageant was not some magnificent stage scene.

The staff officers now came forward and offered their swords. Then the _Dewan_, followed by the swarms of officials and n.o.bles, advanced one by one to the steps of the throne and presented their _muzzurs_, the Indian offering of gold or silver coins, which His Highness ”touched and remitted,” as the quaint phrase runs. Each, after salaaming profoundly before the throne, retired backwards and brought his gift to an official, who counted the amount of the offering, for next day the donor would be dowered with a present of equal amount, a profitable transaction as his own was returned to him.