semblance of masks.

"And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?" I asked.

He grinned more charmingly than ever. "There is no shame," said
he. "I did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I
was minded to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to
death; only in the legs."

"And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king?
Why at all?"

"By the god of my father, I cannot tell," said Namgay Doola.

"And who was thy father?"

"The same that had this gun." He showed me his weapon, a Tower
musket, bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honorable East
India Company.

"And thy father's name?" said I.

"Timlay Doola," said he.  "At the first, I being then a little child, it
is in my mind that he wore a red coat."

"Of that I have no doubt; but repeat the name of thy father twice or
thrice."

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his
speech came. "Thimla Dhula!" said he, excitedly. "To this hour I
worship his god."

"May I see that god?"

"In a little while-at twilight time."

"Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?"

"It is long ago.  But there was one word which he said often.  Thus,
''Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to
our sides, thus."

"Even  so.  And what was  thy mother?"

"A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they
call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest."

The  Thibetan  woman,  his  wife, touched him on the arm gently.
The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day.  It was
now close upon twilight-the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly
the red-headed brats rosc from the floor and formed a semicircle.
Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set
it before a recess in the wall.  Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he
revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of
a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment.  "Thus did my
father," he said, crossing himself clumsily.  The wife and children
followed suit.	Then, all together, they struck up the wailing cham that I heard on the hillside:

"Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
To weeree ala gee."

I was puzzled no longer.  Again and again they sung, as if their
hearts would break, their version of the chorus of "The Wearing of
the Green":

"They're hanging men and women, too,
For the wearing of the green,."

A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about
eight years old-could he have been in the fields last night?-was
watching me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin
between finger and thumb, and looked-only look-at the gun
leaning against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his
porringer-like face.  Never for an
instant stopping the song, he held out his hand for the money, and
then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola
dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied.  The inevitable blood- instinct held true. Namgay Doola
drew the curtain across the
recess. Angelus was over.

"Thus my father sung.  There was much more, but I have forgotten,
and I do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be
that the god will understand.  I am not of this people, and I will not
pay revenue."

"And why?"

Again  that  soul-compelling  grin. "What occupation would be to
me between crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But
these people do not understand."

He picked the masks off the floor and looked in my face as simply
as a child.

"By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make those deviltries?" I said, pointing.

"I cannot tell.  I am but a Lepcha of Darjiling, and yet the
stuff"-

"Which thou hast stolen," said I. "Nay, surely. Did I steal? I
desired it so. The stuff-the stuff. What else should I have done with the stuff?" He twisted the
velvet between his fingers.

"But the sin of maiming the cow-consider that."

"Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the heifer's tail waved in the
moonlight, and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The
tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I."

"That is true," said I. "Stay within the door. I go to speak to the
king." The population of the state were ranged on the hillside. I
went forth and spoke.

"O king," said I, "touching this man, there be two courses open to
thy wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree-he and his
brood-till there re mains no hair that is red within thy land."

"Nay," said the king.  "Why should I hurt the little children?"

They had poured out of the hut and were making plump obeisances
to every-body.	Namgay Doola waited at the door with his gun
across his arm.

"Or thou canst, discarding their impiety of the cow-maiming, raise
him to honor in thy army. He comes of a race that will not pay
revenue. A red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of
his bead in that glowing hair. Make him chief of thy army.  Give
him honor as may befall and full allowance of work, but look to it,
oh, king, that neither he nor his hold a foot of earth from thee
henceforward. Feed him with words and favor, and also liquor
from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he will be a bulwark
of defense. But deny him even a tuft-let of grass for his own. This
is the nature that God has given him.  Moreover, he has
brethren"-

The state groaned unanimously.

"But if his brethren come they will surely fight with each other till
they die; or else the one will always give information concerning
the other.  Shall he be of thy army, oh, king?	Choose"

The king bowed his head, and I said:

"Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the king's army. Thy name shall no more be
Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for, as thou hast truly said, I know."

Then Namgay Doola, never-christened Patsay Doola, son of
Timlay Doola-which is Tim Doolan-clasped the king's feet, cuffed
the standing army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from
temple to temple making offerings for the sin of the cattle- maiming.

And the king was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered
to sell me a village for 20 pounds  sterling.  But I buy no village in the Himalayas so long as one
red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch forest.

I know that breed.

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY

IMRAY had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no
conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career
he had chosen to disappear from the world-which is to say, the
little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well,
happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables.
Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make
sure where he might be.  He had stepped out of his place; he bad
not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was
not upon the public roads.  For these reasons and because he was
hampering in a microscopical degree the administration of the
Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into
the fate of Imray.  Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down
the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town-1,200 miles away-but Imray was not at the
end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the
work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from
being a man, became a mystery-such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a
month and the, forget utterly.	His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His
superior officer wrote an absurd
letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared and his bungalow stood
empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone
by, my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the
bungalow from the native landlord.  This was before he was
engaged to Miss Youghal-an affair which has been described in
another place-and while he was pursuing his investigations into
native life.  His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men
complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in
his house, hut there were no regular- times for meals. He eat,
standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on the
sideboard, and this is not good for the in-sides of human beings.
His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns,
five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger
and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied
one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to
Strickland and his dog Tietjens-an enormous Rampur slut, who
sung when she was ordered, and devoured daily the rations of two
men.  She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and
whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things calculated to destroy
the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she returned to her
master and gave him information. Strickland would take steps at
once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and
imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens
was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that
is born of hate and fear  One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use.  She owned
a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at
night, her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue
till some one came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her.
When he was on the frontier in search of the local murderer who
came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further than the
Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into
Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his
record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was
hanged.  From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and
employed a monogram on her night blanket, and the blanket was
double-woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland,
and when he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the
doctors because she did not know how to help her master and
would not allow another creature to attempt aid.  Macarnaght, of
the Indian Medical Service, beat her over the head with a gun,
before she could understand that she must give room for those who
could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my
business took me through that station, and naturally, the club
quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland.  It was a
desirable bungalow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against
any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a
ceiling cloth, which looked just as nice as a whitewashed ceiling.
The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how
Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark,
three- cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under side of the thatch harbored all
manner of rats, hats, ants, and other things.

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the
bells of St. Paul's, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she
was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to put together that
sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was
finished went out about his business.  I was left alone with Tietjens
and my own affairs.  The heat of the summer had broken up and
given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in
the heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and
flung up a blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos
and the custard apples, the poinsettias and the mango-trees in the
garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and
the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the
light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back
veranda and beard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched
myself because I was covered with the thing they called prickly
heat.  Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and
was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and
I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I
found there.  The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could
smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not
the least desire to sit among these things.  My own servant came to
me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his
drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and
wished to see some one. Very much against my will, and because
of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room,
telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have
been a caller in the room-it seems to me that I saw a figure by one
of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing save
the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in
my nostrils.  I explained to my man that he was no wiser than he
ought to be, and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens.	She
had gone out into the wet and I could hardly coax her back to me- even with biscuits with sugar
on top.  Strickland rode back,
dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was:

Has any one called?"

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the
drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer bad tried to
call on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his
name.  Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it
was a real dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and
went into the leastexposed veranda as soon as her master moved to
his own room, which was ncxt to  the  stately  chamber	set  apart
for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that
pelting rain, it would not have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal.
I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man
would smile after telling some hideous domestic tragedy.  "She has done this ever since I moved
in here."

The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside
my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered
on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a
thrown egg spattered a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not
yellow; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the
great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift
on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope
of a suspension bridge.  In the very short pauses of the thunder I
tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted me very badly.
He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice
was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and
Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon.
Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through
the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just
when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering
and clamoring above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and
had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed,
with a pipe in his mouth.  "I thought you'd come," he
said. "Have I been walking around the house at all?"

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the
smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and
told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the
morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing some one an
injustice in not attending to his wants.  What those wants were I
could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring,
loitering some one was reproaching me for my slackness, and
through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the
garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office
daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens
for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was
comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I
moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company.
We were alone in the house, but for all that it was fully occupied
by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere.  I never saw
him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering
where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking
as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them;
and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room
that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till
I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more
interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair
erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms,
but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps
and make all light and habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her
haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder.	Dogs are
cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over
to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his
hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much
care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end,
and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a
man who understands things.  "Stay on," he said, "and see what
this thing means.  All you have talked about I have known since I
took the bungalow.  Stay on and wait.  Tietjens has left me.  Are
you going too?"

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that
had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no
desire to help him through further experiences.  He was a man to
whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him
immensely, and would he happy to see him in the daytime, but that
I didn't care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when
Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda.

"'Pon my soul, I don't wonder," said Strickland, with his eyes on the
ceiling-cloth.	"Look at that'."

The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
cornice of the wall.  They threw long shadows in the lamp-light.
"If you are afraid of snakes, of course"-said Strickland. "I hate and
fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will
see that it knows all and more of man's fall, and that it feels all the
contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden.
Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser
legs."

"You ought to get your thatch over-hauled," I said.  "Give me a
masheer rod, and we'll poke 'em down."

"They'll hide among the roof beams," said Strickland.  "I can't
stand snakes overhead.	I'm going up.  If I shake 'em down, stand
by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs."

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, hut I took the
loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland
brought a gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the
side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and
disappeared.  We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies
running over the baggy cloth.  Strickland took a lamp with him,
while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes
between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration
of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

"N o n s en s e "  said  Strickland. "They're sure to hide near the
walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of
the room is just what they like."  He put his hands to the corner of
the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice.  It gave great sound of tearing, and
Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my
teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

"H'm," said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the
roof. "There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove!
some one is occupying em."

"Snakes?" I said down below.

"No. It's a buffalo.  Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer
rod, and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main beam."

I handed up the rod.

"What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live
here," said Strickland, climbing further into the 'roof. I could see
his elbow thrusting with the rod. "Come out of that, whoever you
are! Look out! Heads below there!  It's tottering."

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the
lighted lamps on the table.  I snatched a lamp out of danger and
stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split,
swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not
look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing
by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up
the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the
table.

"It strikes me," said he, pulling down the lamp, "our friend Imray
has come back. Oh! you would, would you?"

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggle'd out, to be back-broken by the
butt of the masheer rod.  I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally. The
thing under the cloth made no more signs of life.

"Is it Imray?" I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked. "It is
Imray,'1 he said, "and his throat is cut from ear to ear."

Then we spoke both together and to ourselves:

"That's why he whispered about the house."

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth
hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly
room to move away from the discovery.

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her
forepaws planted.  She looked at Strickland.

"It's bad business, old lady," said he.  "Men don't go up into the
roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the
ceiling-cloth behind 'em. Let's think it out."

"Let's think it out somewhere else," I said.

"Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We'll get into my room."

I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first and
allowed him to make the darkness.  Then he followed me, and we
lighted tobacco and thought. Strickland did the thinking. I smoked furiously because I was
afraid.

"Imray is back," said Strickland. "The question is, who killed
Imray? Don't talk-I have a notion of my own. When I took this
bungalow I took most of Imray's servants.  Imray was guile-less
and inoffensive, wasn't he?"

I agreed, though the heap under the cloth looked neither one thing
nor the other.

"If I call the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like
Aryans. What do you suggest?"

"Call 'em in one by one," I said.

"They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows," said
Strickland.

"We must segregate 'em.  Do you suppose your servant knows
anything about it?"

"He may, for aught I know, hut I don't think it's likely.  He has only
been here two or three days."

"What's your notion?" I asked.

"I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side
of the ceiling-cloth?"

There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's  bedroom  door.
This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked
from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

"Come in," said Strickland.  "It is a very warm night, isn't it?"

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mohammedan,
said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain
pending, which, by his honor's favor, would bring relief to the
country.

"It will be so, if God pleases," said Strickland, tugging off his
hoots.	"It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many
days-ever since that time when thou first came into my service. What time was that?"

"Has the heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went
secretly to Europe without warning given, and I even I-came into
the honored service of the protector of the poor."

"And Imray Sahib went to Europe?"

"It is so said among the servants."

"And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?"

"Assuredly, sahib.  He was a good master and cherished his
dependents."

"That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me the little rifle that I
use for black buck; it is in
the case yonder."

The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and
fore-end to Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning
dolefully, then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid
drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the .360 express.

"And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly?  That is very
strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?"

"What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born?"

"Very little, truly.  But thou shalt know more.  It has reached me
that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and
that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant."

"Sahib!"

The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled
themselves against Bahadur Khan's broad breast.

"Go. then. and look!" said Strickland.

"Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits. Go!"

The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room,
Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of
the rifle.  He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the
ceiling-cloth, at the carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and
last, a grey glaze setting on his face, at the thing under the
table-cloth.

"Hast thou seen?" said Strickland, after a pause.

"I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands.  What does the
presence do?"

"Hang thee within a month!  What else?"

"For killing him?  Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his
servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old.
Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child!"

"What said Imray Sahib?"

"He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head;
wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the
twilight, when he came back from office and was sleeping. The
heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven- born."

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular:
"Thou art witness to this saying.  He has killed."

Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp.  The
need for justification came upon him very swiftly.

"I am trapped," he said, "but the offence was that man's.  He cast
an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him.  Only such as are served by devils," he
glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, "only such could know what I did."

"It was clever.  But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam
with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope.  Orderly!"

A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed
by another, and Tietjens sat still.

"Take him to the station," said Strickland. "There is a case
toward."

"Do I hang, then?" said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to
escape and keeping his eyes on the ground.

"If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang," said
Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and
stood still  The two policemen waited further orders.

"Go!" said Strickland.

"Nay; but I go very swiftly," said Bahadur Khan. "Look! I am even
now a dead man."

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

"I come of land-h~ding stock," said Bahadur Khan, rocking where
he stood. "It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold,
therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib's shirts
are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in
his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard.
Why should you seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and-and-I
die."

At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the
little kariat, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the table-cloth to their appointed
places. They were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray

"This," said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, "is
called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?"

"I heard," I answered. "Imray made a mistake."

"Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever.
Bahadur Khan has been with
him for four years."

I shuddered.  My own servant had been with me for exactly that
length of time. When I went over to my own room I found him
waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my
boots.

"What has befallen Bahadur Khan?" said I.

"He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows," was
the answer.

"And how much of the matter hast thou known?"

"As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to
seek satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots."

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
shouting from his side of the house:

"Tietjens has come back to her room!"

And so she had.  The great deer-hound was couched on her own
bedstead, on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty
ceiling-cloth wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.

MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER

ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished
to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut
down all the trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still
remained.  Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy
medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the
elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his
tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes.  The planter,
therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to
work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst
of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's name was
Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj
was a creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being
translated, meant the Pearl Elephant.  Because the British
government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his
property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much
money through the strength of his elephant, he would get
extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over
the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these
occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep
and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor.  Moti Guj
was very fond of liquor-arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing
better offered.  Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa
generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and
would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake
up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk.  Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and
gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps-for he
owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a
rope-for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders-while Deesa
kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants.
At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred
pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa
would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed.	Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to
the river, and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows,
while Deesa went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj
never mistook the pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the
former that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side.
Then Deesa would look at his feet and examine his eyes, and turn
up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia.  After inspection the
two would come up with a song from the sea," Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a torn
tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
desire to drink deep.  He wished for an orgy. The little draughts
that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," said he, weeping.

"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died
once before that when you were working for me last year," said the
planter, who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,"
said Deesa, weeping more than ever.  "She has left eighteen small
children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
stomachs," said Deesa, beat. mg his head on the floor.

"Who brought the news?" said the planter.

"The post," said Deesa.

"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
lines!',

"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives
are dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.

"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter.
"Chihun, has this man got a wife?"

"He?" said Chihun.  "No.  Not a woman of our village would look
at him, They'd sooner marry the elephant,"

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.

"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back to your work!"

"Now I will speak Heaven's truth gulped Deesa, with an
inspiration.  "I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to
depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this
heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble."

A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he,
"you've spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if
anything could be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You
know that he will only obey your orders."

"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
absent but ten little days.  After that, upon my faith and honor and
soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?"

Permission was granted, and in answer of Deesa's shrill yell, the
mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he
had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.

"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might,
give ear!" said Deesa, standing in front of him.

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk.	"I am going away."
said Deesa.

Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master.
One could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.

"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work."

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.

"I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near
fore-foot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
mud-puddle." Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails.	Moti Guj
grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.

"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees
as Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on
your neck!" Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was swung on to
the neck.  Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus -the iron elephant goad.

Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a
curbstone.

Moti Guj trumpeted.

"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chibun's your mahout for ten
days. And now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart.  Oh,
my lord, my king! Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd,
preserve your honored health; be virtuous.  Adieu!"

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air
twice. That was his way of bidding him good-bye.

"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go?"

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods.  Moti Guj
went back to haul stumps.

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for
all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under
the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was
over. and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa
was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back
again-the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa
had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of
his own caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted
with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no
Deesa, Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He
swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to
walk away, as one having business elsewhere.

"Hi! ho!  Come back you!" shouted Chihun.  "Come back and put
me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the
hillsides!  Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe
off your forefoot!"

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey.  Chihun ran after him
with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and
Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with
high words.

"None of your nonsense with me," said he.  "To your pickets,
devil-son!"

"Hrrump!" said Moti Guj, and that was all-that and the forebent
ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a
toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other
elephants who had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it
furiously.  Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a
mile across the clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside the
house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an elephant will.

"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received.
Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty."

Kala Nag-which means Black Snake-and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines,
and one of their duties was to administer the graver punishment, since no man can beat an
elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as
they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them.
Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been
whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he
waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the
precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink
deepest.  Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his
authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last
minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for
amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not
feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing
alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled
back to his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work and is not tied up
is about as manageable as an eightyone-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends
on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense
concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long "nooning"; and, wandering to
and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his picket for
food.

"If you won't work, you sha'n't eat," said Chihun, angrily.  "You're
a wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your
jungle."

Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and
stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway.
Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to
Chihun.  He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the
end, and the brown baby threw itself, shouting, upon it.  Moti Guj
made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air
twelve feet above his father's head.

"Great Lord!" said Chihun.  "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in
number, two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the
instant, and two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young
sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that
insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me!"

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet,
that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and
waited for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away.
Moti Guj dozed and thought of Deesa.  One of many mysteries
connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives.
Four or five hours in the night suffice-two just before midnight, lying down on one side; two just
after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and
fidgeting, and long grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk
somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him.  So all
that night he chased through the undergrowth, blowing and
trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and
blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, hut
there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all
the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death
some gypsies in the woods.

At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation.  He had been very drunk
in deed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his
leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and
the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti
Guj's temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams.
Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercise
had made him hungry.

"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the
mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came
from China at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men
were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop
They move from places of varying rates of speed.  If an elephant
wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could
catch the train.  So Moti Guj was at the planter's door almost
before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets.  He fell into
Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept
and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head
to heel to see that no harm had befallen

"Now we will get to work," saod Dessa. "Lift me up, my son and
my joy!"

Moti Guj swang him up, and the two went to the coffe-clearing to
look for difficult stumps.

The planter was too astonished to be very angry.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Works of Rudyard Kipling

