Beasts Royal

by Patrick O'Brian

  He altered Jehangir’s appearance as much as possible, scrubbing off the Government broad arrow, and paring away the Government number from the nail of his right fore-foot; he also took the silver bands from the elephant’s tusks and put them on his wrists as bracelets to make himself look respectably wealthy.

  They made their way slowly up the river until they came to the road, which Hussein meant to cross so as to avoid observation, but the first thing they met as they crossed an unfrequented stretch was a man on a Goverment elephant.

  This was the same man who had caused Hussein to be beaten some time before. They recognized one another at once, the man bawled, ‘Stop thief,’ and urged his elephant forward, beating with his heavy ankus.

  Hussein leaned forward and spoke to Jehangir, who burst into a tremendous gallop. There was open country the other side of the road thinly interspersed with trees. Jehangir charged across the road and thundered away over the plain. The man set his elephant in pursuit, and the two rushed furiously away towards the west.

  Very soon Hussein saw that Jehangir was losing ground, so he pulled up, and the two elephants faced one another.

  Suddenly they both charged, and met head-on with a thud that shook the ground. Forehead to forehead they pushed furiously, each trying to force the other backwards.

  The two mahouts hurled abuse at one another as their mounts strove with all their great strength.

  His opponent was gaining a little, being somewhat heavier, so Jehangir, getting a foothold in the loose soil made an immense effort, so great that his fore-feet left the ground and he leaned with all his weight on his enemy, who began sliding slowly backwards, his feet slipping in the dust.

  At the same moment Hussein leapt across on to the other elephant’s neck, and seizing the mahout, he cast him down.

  In another second Jehangir had defeated his opponent, thrusting him backwards and sideways; very quickly Jehangir backed, and then charged, ramming the other elephant in the side. He went over with a crash right on top of his mahout, who was struggling on the ground. Hussein had time to leap clear, and immediately he ran to Jehangir to stop him battering the other elephant to death. Jehangir obeyed at once, and Hussein, mounting on to his neck, guided him back into the forest.

  Having concealed him in a clump of bamboos and forbidden him to move, Hussein went back to the dead mahout. There was nothing to be done for him; the falling elephant had killed him instantly, and in a panic had run back to his elephant lines.

  Presently the people who saw him return without his mahout sent out a search party, who found the body, and Hussein, coming up as if he knew nothing about it, learnt that the man had been trampled to death by his own elephant, which he was known to have treated cruelly.

  Nobody recognized Hussein or suspected him even when he appeared riding on Jehangir; it was a district in which he had never been before, and his story was accepted without the slightest question.

  Once he was safely away in the south Hussein carried out the rest of his plan, and in time he bought three fields and a small house in which he lived very happily, although he was hard put to it to find a shelter for Jehangir in the rains.

  JELLALUDIN

  XII

  Jellaludin

  Hussein, before he had acquired his elephant, had been a snake-charmer, and at that time he had possessed a mongoose.

  Jellaludin, as the mongoose was called, on account of his whiskers, was quite good enough for Hussein’s purposes. Hussein became quite attached to Jellaludin, for the mongoose was very intelligent, even if he was somewhat fat and lazy.

  In time Jellaludin grew accustomed to Hussein’s three tame cobras, all of whom had their fangs drawn, and although the sight of a strange snake made the fur rise all along his back, he quite liked the three lazy old snakes who lived in Hussein’s flat-bottomed basket.

  During the heat of the summer it was Hussein’s custom to follow the white people up to the hill stations, for they always paid well if they were amused.

  He did not confine himself to giving performances with his snakes, however; he also used his snake-charming powers to free houses from snakes. He did it in this way: first he would make the acquaintance of some tradesmen who knew all about the white people, and from them Hussein would find out which of the sahibs had wives; then he would go to the houses of these sahibs and bribe the khansamah to let him give a performance in the compound.

  After the performance he would announce that he felt the presence of snakes in the house itself, and if this made a suitable impression upon the white people, he would offer to come back in the evening to catch the snakes – for a modest fee, of course.

  Then he would go round to the servants’ quarters, and get them, with a promise of commission, to secrete his tame snakes in the house. One – the largest – he always had put in the bedroom, another in the bathroom, and a third in any conveniently dramatic place. Towards sundown he would return, looking important, with a sack for the snakes, his flute, and Jellaludin.

  In the house he would go from room to room, sniffing; when he came to the bedroom he would assure the memsahib that there was a cobra in the room, then he would squat down on the floor and, having produced Jellaludin from a fold inside his voluminous robes, he would play on his squeaky, globular flute, while the mongoose went round and round the walls, sniffing.

  When he felt that the tension had reached its climax, Hussein would change his tune, and the well-trained cobra would glide out from beneath the pillow and swell out its hood, hissing furiously. Then Jellaludin, who knew his part quite as well, would dart at the snake and leap at its head; before any harm could be done, however, Hussein would rush at the cobra, and bundle it into his sack.

  After he had gone from room to room, and collected his snakes, he could be practically certain of about four rupees from the grateful white people, and more if they were newcomers, but at least half of his reward had to go in commissions to the servants.

  When there was a child in the house, however, he could always be sure of at least ten rupees, for if he had heard that there was a child, he would borrow trained snakes from any of the fakirs of his acquaintance who possessed them, so that he could produce as many as ten of the reptiles from all around the child’s cot before its parents’ horrified eyes. This was particularly well paid, though of course the commissions to the servants and the fakirs were higher.

  The only thing that sometimes put Hussein off his stroke on such occasions was Jellaludin, who, though he did his best, could not always distinguish between the strange tame snakes and snakes that he was really supposed to kill; and then towards the end of the performance, when he had apparently slain nearly a dozen snakes to the accompaniment of furious leaping in the air, he became rather tired, owing to his fatness, and he was not quite so spectacular as Hussein might have wished, but on the whole things went off very satisfactorily.

  Now it came to Hussein’s ears when he was in Simla that the wife of the District Magistrate of Jullundur was known to be extremely fearful of snakes, and that her husband was very wealthy. This he heard from a sunyassi who had borrowed Jellaludin for a day; the mendicant had also remarked that the magistrate had two young children.

  So Hussein, who had got all that could be expected in one season from the white people in Simla, packed up his snakes, his flute, and his few other belongings in an ancient piece of cloth, and, calling Jellaludin from under the thatch of the roof, he set off south.

  After a certain time had passed he came to Jullundur, where he sought out one of his friends, a sadhu who dealt in curses of all kinds.

  From the sadhu Hussein borrowed no less than nine assorted serpents, ranging from a small but venomous krait to an immense hamadryad cobra. They were all well trained, and Hussein spent a whole day in getting Jellaludin used to them.

  All his usual preliminaries went well, and one evening a week after his arrival in Jullundur he began to extract snakes from the magistrate’s house.

  He had va
rious less spectacular snakes scattered in the usual places, but he had at least six concealed about the magistrate’s children’s nursery.

  He came to this room last of all, and when he had played his flute for a little while the snakes began to come out into the open. One flopped down from a tear in the ceiling cloth, two more came from a rat hole in a corner, and the great hamadryad came from under one of the cots.

  At first everything went well, and Hussein had most of the snakes in his sack before he noticed that Jellaludin was not doing his part at all well, indeed he looked quite languid.

  The mongoose was so slow in dealing with the big cobra that before Hussein could very well say that Jellaludin had finished with it, another snake came out, and the white people, who were looking on, became most uneasy.

  Hussein became rather flurried, and before he had dealt with it, the sixth snake came from the hole in the wall where the punkah came through. The white man leapt for his riding crop, and he killed the unfortunate snake by breaking its back. Hurriedly bundling the other two into his sack, Hussein cursed the magistrate bitterly in Urdu.

  Unhappily for the snake-charmer, the magistrate knew the tongue perfectly, and replied in the same language; then he clapped his hands to call the servants, whom he told to throw Hussein out of the house.

  This was done, and in the doing two of the snakes were hurt. The dead snake was the small blue krait belonging to the sadhu; it was said to be valuable on account of the various tricks it could perform. When the sadhu heard of its death, and saw two of his other snakes wounded, he cursed Hussein root and branch; and he also exacted ten rupees by way of compensation.

  Hussein blamed Jellaludin bitterly, for if he had done what he had to do quickly, instead of being lazy, everything would have been well, and the white man would have given him at least fifteen rupees, and saying this, Hussein cuffed the mongoose repeatedly, threatening to drown him in a well.

  Jellaludin felt the disgrace keenly and went off his feed, with the result that he grew quite thin.

  Fortunately Hussein had saved his own three cobras, so he was able to keep going by performing with them, although the sadhu had taken all his resources.

  He left Jullundur as soon as possible, and turned up, after wandering for some time, at Benares, where he hoped to pick up some information from the host of mendicants and wandering priests who thronged the holy city.

  For two days he sat before the great temple of Kali, speaking with the crowds of assorted fakirs who resorted to it.

  On the third day he saw an old friend of his, a sunyassi who cast horoscopes, and from him Hussein learnt that a group of English tourists would be staying at the house of the political officer in one of the small principalities, and that the rajah was going to give them a feast, as they were quite distinguished politicians.

  Hussein knew that all kinds of entertainers would be wanted, so he went towards Kapilavatthu, the rajah’s capital. On the way he encountered a company of dancers who were going to the same place, so he travelled with them, arriving at Kapilavatthu in a week.

  After the feast Hussein gave a performance with his snakes which went off quite well. On the next day he presented himself at the political officer’s house, having had ten trained snakes, which he had borrowed, placed in strategic points, and he announced that he would free the house from the snakes which he felt sure were in it.

  The Resident had seen it done before, and he had a shrewd idea of how it was worked, but he thought that it would impress his guests, and might even stop the distinguished politicians talking for a little while, so Hussein was admitted.

  First he produced snakes from the ceiling cloth – it was very striking to see a fat, writhing cobra wriggling out of the ceiling – and then he piped them out from underneath the white peoples’ beds. After that he went to the large, white tiled bathroom, which was the joy of the Resident’s heart, where he had his last two snakes concealed.

  Hussein, having put them back into his sack, was beginning to make his preparations for departure, when he saw, to his horror, another snake creeping out of the drain-pipe.

  It was a great hamadryad cobra, one of the most venomous of snakes. In the hope that it would go back when it saw the people, Hussein kept on piping with his flute; but the cobra came on, and by the time it was half-way out, Jellaludin, who had been sniffing about on the other side of the room, saw it, and darted forward.

  Hussein was very much afraid lest Jellaludin should take it for one of the trained snakes, and only nip it gently in the neck, for if it did, the mongoose would undoubtedly be bitten, and if he could not find a certain herb to eat in time, he would certainly die.

  This herb is only known to the mongooses, who run to find it if ever they get bitten in a fight with a snake, and when they eat it, it counteracts the poison, and they take no harm.

  As soon as Jellaludin got near the snake, he realized that something was wrong, and he danced round on his toes, keeping at a safe distance.

  The big cobra came fully out of the drain-pipe, and coiled itself so as to be ready to strike.

  The mongoose darted round and round it, drawing slightly nearer. Suddenly the hamadryad struck, missing Jellaludin by an inch. It smacked against the white tiles with a sound of a cracked whip, and the mongoose sprang back out of reach.

  Hussein could not go to his help, as the cobra would have bitten him, and he would have died within an hour.

  The snake recoiled itself, and Jellaludin began going round it again. It turned steadily, watching for a chance to strike. It thought it saw an opportunity, but the mongoose was out of reach, and as the snake faltered for a split second, Jellaludin leapt at its head. He got a grip on its neck just below the hood – too low down – and the cobra, twisting its head managed to bite Jellaludin twice before its spine was broken.

  Without pausing for a moment Jellaludin dropped the inert body, and leapt out of the open window into the garden; he had no time to waste if he was to save his life.

  He saw a patch of neglected grass, and darted into it, sniffing eagerly. Soon he found that which he sought, and having eaten the bitter herb, he looked for water.

  In the house the white man crushed the cobra’s head under the heel of his boot, and Hussein put the body into a bag, for if Jellaludin was still alive he would love the cobra as a meal.

  Barely waiting for his money, Hussein hurried out of the house.

  He found the mongoose sitting on the gravel drive, licking the bites. Seeing Hussein he trotted up and jumped on to his shoulder, from whence he crept into the inside pocket in which he always travelled.

  Then Hussein knew that all was well, for if the mongoose had been going to die, he would have known it, and crept away to some quiet, dark place to die in peace.

  When they reached the house in which he was staying, Hussein produced the dead cobra from the bag, and laid it in a quiet corner.

  Jellaludin began at the tail.

  Further reading

  For more tales of classic adventure, join Sullivan and Ross – two characters every bit as entertaining as Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin – in the novel, The Road to Samarcand, and these three companion short stories.

  Click here to buy THE ROAD TO SAMARCAND, NO PIRATES NOWADAYS, TWO’S COMPANY and NOUGHTS & CROSSES.

  The Works of Patrick O’Brian

  The Aubrey/Maturin Novels

  In order of publication

  MASTER AND COMMANDER

  POST CAPTAIN

  HMS SURPRISE

  THE MAURITIUS COMMAND

  DESOLATION ISLAND

  THE FORTUNE OF WAR

  THE SURGEON’S MATE

  THE IONIAN MISSION

  TREASON’S HARBOUR

  THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

  THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL

  THE LETTER OF MARQUE

  THE THIRTEEN-GUN SALUTE

  THE NUTMEG OF CONSOLATION

  CLARISSA OAKES

  THE WINE-DARK SEA

  THE C
OMMODORE

  THE YELLOW ADMIRAL

  THE HUNDRED DAYS

  BLUE AT THE MIZZEN

  THE FINAL UNFINISHED VOYAGE OF JACK AUBREY

  Novels

  TESTIMONIES

  THE CATALANS

  THE GOLDEN OCEAN

  THE UNKNOWN SHORE

  RICHARD TEMPLE

  CAESAR

  HUSSEIN

  THE ROAD TO SAMARCAND

  Tales

  THE LAST POOL

  THE WALKER

  LYING IN THE SUN

  THE CHIAN WINE

  COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  BEASTS ROYAL

  Biography

  PICASSO

  JOSEPH BANKS

  Anthology

  A BOOK OF VOYAGES

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