Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I suppose I’m in command now?” he said to the sergeant, who could not answer easily because his lips and front teeth had been shot away.

  The judge was acting in perfectly good faith. So was the sergeant, who aimed a blow at the judge’s stomach with his rifle; he only missed because his bayonet caught another man’s tunic and steered the blow awry.

  “We’ve surrendered. Now no more fighting!” said the judge. “Put up your weapons, men. You’ve done your best. Now the right thing to do is surrender with good grace.”

  He shoved his head through the open window and tried to make his meaning clear to the men underneath.

  “Your officer’s dead. We’ve all surrendered!”

  Oaths answered him, and he was not sure whether he had been understood or not.

  “The best thing we can all do now is to file out one by one,” he said, with a feeling of inspiration. “Leave your rifles on the seats, and they’ll not harm you.”

  The sergeant had collapsed. Disgust and loss of blood completed the Moplah bullet’s work. One corporal was underneath and the other was dead. The remaining boys obeyed, laying their rifles on the seats dejectedly, with wicked barrack-room oaths, and filing down to the track one after the other.

  The Moplahs let them come — took scant notice of them — only closed in and stood waiting; and the same headman with red in his beard who had palavered before came to the door with a hand stretched out to receive the surrender of Wilmshurst and his wife. Mrs. Wilmshurst, pale-faced and tousled, stepped down almost into his arms, and the judge followed. The Moplah chief, smiling but saying nothing, led them by the hand away behind the station building and then cried out an order in a language of which Wilmshurst knew not one solitary word. So his evidence is not trustworthy.

  Months later, after the big surrender, the Moplah chiefs said that the men underneath the railway carriage had reopened fire, thus making unavoidable what followed. They said that four or five of their own men were shot down without warning, and went so far as to give names. However, unsupported by impartial witnesses, that evidence has not much value either.

  The fact is unpleasant. The moment the judge’s back had disappeared behind the station building butchery began, and did not cease so long as a soldier remained alive. The judge and his wife heard it all, of course, but were not allowed to see; the excuse for that being that they might have exposed themselves to bullets fired by the British soldiers.

  Finally, when the carriage had been stripped of doors, windows, upholstery and everything removable, the Wilmshursts’ baggage, of course, included, the British dead were piled into the carriage. Branches of trees, loose lumber from the station yard and some telegraph posts were dragged up. The babu’s looted kerosene was poured over the lot, and a badly made imported Japanese match did the rest.

  Thereafter the judge and his wife were made to walk interminable miles, until Mrs. Wilmshurst fainted.

  CHAPTER 8. “The benefit of the doubt.”

  Ommony made shift for twenty-four hours without servants — rather fecklessly being used, like most Anglo-Indians, to being waited on hand and foot. A man can almost forget how to pull his own boots off after twenty years, just as an Admiral of the Fleet can forget how to tie a bowline. The cooking was the worst part. He opened cans, ate out of them, let it go at that, incidentally making discoveries about a Hindu cook’s kitchen-keeping methods that are not good for the white man’s temper.

  Like most men who deliberately sleep at noon, Ommony burned midnight oil, reading omnivorously. So he was not in bed when the jungli returned at three in the morning. A twig struck the wooden shutter, making a noise not much louder than that of a big insect alighting, only different. A man’s ears draw distinctions instantly after twenty years of life like Ommony’s. He stuck a marker in the book and walked to the door without any more doubt or hesitation than a city apartment dweller who expects a friend.

  Afraid, unseen, indiscernible, the jungli gave his version of what happened, sending forth his guttural monologue from behind a bougainvillaea. It being his experience that man gets punished for all kinds of occurrences that are beyond his own control, he kept out of Ommony’s aim and reach, albeit trusting Ommony more than any other man. Ommony found a small bag of rice for him, which was a prodigious treat, tossed it in the general direction of the bougainvillaea, and returned indoors to meditate. The sound of the falling rice-bag convinced the jungli. He decamped, and the rice lay there until morning, where the squirrels found it.

  The jungli had been sure of two things: that King was dead, and that Mahommed Barbar had ordered the slaying from the summit of a high rock. The rock was described so accurately that Ommony identified it.

  “Benefit of the doubt?” he muttered, putting his feet on a chair and beginning to read again.

  But he could not read — not even Schopenhauer, whom he idolized. His thoughts reverted ever to that rock — the pinnacle wolf-rock. The first time he had ever seen it was by moonlight. A wolf had sat alone, on the very apex of it, howling dismally; and he had shot the wolf because those were the days when he still thought he owned the forest, and was consequently lonely and irritable. Later, when he came to know that the forest owned him and made use of him, just as it made use of light, dew, warmth and all the creatures, he always remembered that rock as the wolf-rock, and regretted the lone wolf, whose cured pelt was on the floor beside his bed.

  Strange that King should have met his death in that place. He wondered whether there was any possible connection. The more a man reads Shakspere, Schopenhauer, Goethe, and the Prophets, the more convinced he is of subtle interwoven causes and effects, impalpable but governed by law — leisurely, unhurried, inescapable. Live twenty years in the jungle, and either you open your mind to the unity of all things and all actions, or else go mad. Ommony sat until dawn and remembered. He had slain that wolf wilfully, unjudged — he whose business in life it was to judge the jungle, always considering the greatest good of the greatest number. Had that slow, certain law impelled him wilfully to let King go to his death?

  For he could have prevented. He could have dissuaded, diverted, forbidden. Had the same unreasoning impulse that blinded him to the lone wolf’s right to sit on a rock and howl, if so minded, blinded him, too, to the obvious treason of Mahommed Babar? If so, why had he sent King to his death instead of destroying himself? He laughed. It was early yet to beg that question; the law was leisurely! He was no such fool as to think that killing the wolf brought consequences. It was willingness to kill the wolf without good cause that would cause him to stumble forever until he should wake up and understand. Strange, though. He thought he had learned that lesson long ago. But if he had learned it, why should the circumstances force themselves so insistently on his mind now?

  So a man thinks who has lived in the jungle for twenty years and loved the jungle most of the time. Ommony sat and puzzled over the impartial law that governs all creatures without hurry or emotion, until he heard the horses in the stable neigh for breakfast and his dogs came and thrust damp, curious noses into his hand. Even then he had not puzzled it out. The horses needed grain, hay, and water. More, they expected and would presently receive. The dogs wanted corn-meal and gravy in three plates set in a row on the veranda; and they too would get what they asked for, even if he had to cook the stuff. He himself wanted eggs, bread-and-butter, and tea, and nobody would bring them.

  Responsibility. That was the word that suggested itself as the answer to the problem. Sense of responsibility was better, perhaps. But to whom, and for what? All he could answer positively was that he would feed the animals before he fed himself, and that he was sorry he had let King go the day before.

  He did not waste time being sorry for King. No man who understands life in its simplest aspects wastes a second being sorry for a fellow who dies in harness “proceeding as per plan.” That is the way to die. Whatever lies beyond that is inevitably based on good faith, hope, and manliness. But he was sorry to lose Ki
ng, which is quite different, and he was extremely critical of himself for having let King go on such a hare-brained mission.

  He broke about a dozen eggs but managed at last to fry two, and ate the mess out of the frying-pan. Then he went to the veranda for his morning smoke, and wondered all over again from the beginning why Mahommed Babar, or a lone wolf on a rock in the moonlight, should have been allowed to make such a mess of things, and what the connection might be. In a universe composed of units, every one of which was equally important — granted — nevertheless, why should Mahommed Babar — of the North — an interloper after all — be allowed to betray the hands that had fed and protected him and to order the death of a man — a real man such as Athelstan King?

  Benefit of the doubt? Of what doubt? Which doubt? Cui bono? Murder was murder since Cain killed Abel, and why should the best man be the victim nine times out of ten?

  So Ommony was entertained for the whole of a lonely day, while he and his dogs alternately or together policed the grounds and he fed the horses and chickens at intervals. Not a soul came near him. He did not dare go to the station to discover, if possible, whether trains were moving, and there was nobody to send. He almost forgot that he had ordered the Moplah chiefs to send his servants back; and be quite forgot his threat to Major Pierson to have himself kidnaped rather than desert his forest post.

  Not that his threat made the slightest difference. Major Pierson lay face- upward beside a wrecked and burned train, while the crows picked the holes where his eyes had been. The Moplahs were on the job, and meant business if no one else did.

  Toward evening the servants came back, looking foolish and afraid. Two had been beaten. One looked near death from exhaustion, and collapsed while the dogs went and sniffed him to make sure he was really someone who belonged. They all lined up before the veranda, headed by the butler, who gathered dust in both fists and heaped it on his head in token of abject repentance.

  “Oh, you children of disillusionment!” said Ommony, smoking his cigar with that day’s first touch of contentment. “Shall I dismiss you all or take you back again?”

  “Father of forgiveness! We have nothing and nowhere to go. The Moplahs took all and drove us forth again. We will submit to fines and beatings without number. We are dirt. We abase ourselves. We have wept because the sahib’s meals were not cooked and his bed not made. We are good Hindus. Pious people! We will not become Moslems! And we will serve the sahib faithfully forever — presenting ourselves for a beating forthwith!”

  They all bowed repeatedly like a row of tall plants waving in the wind.

  “Doubtless you have consulted on the way,” said Ommony, stroking his beard between puffs of the cigar. “That is a clever proposal you decided to make. Whose idea was it? Yours? Exceedingly clever, since not one of you has ever known me to beat a servant or impose a fine! Did you ever see me beat even a dog?”

  “Sahib, you have been our father and our mother. We are very much ashamed. All nine of us eat sorrow.”

  “Then why did you run away?”

  “The Moplahs threatened us. We are Hindus, and they vowed all Hindus will be slain or forcibly converted. They sent word again and again. They said unless we went to them, to a village a day’s march distant, and became converts of the Moslem priest, they would come here and murder us all, the sahib included. So we ran to the village, hoping to save the sahib’s life.”

  “And you all became Moslems?”

  “Nay, sahib. Therein our honor was at stake and we refused. Two of us were beaten. We were all robbed of our possessions. One of us was made ill with too much fear. But we refused to be converts, and at last the Moplahs took pity or else admired, we knew not which, and drove us forth again.”

  “A very pretty story!” answered Ommony. “So here you are — all honorable Hindus, eh?”

  He chuckled. There is a certain way of knowing whether or not an individual has been admitted to the fold of Islam.

  “Your clothes smell,” he said to the butler. “They have contagion on them, but that is not your fault. The clothes must be burned. There are no women here. Strip, then, and enter the house. Take new cotton sheeting from my store-chest and clothe yourself decently.”

  The butler hesitated. But what was the use? You could never deceive Ommony for more than five minutes. He stripped shame-facedly, and Ommony laughed out-right.

  “Nine new-made Moslems, eh? Well — you need comfort, not more punishment! Strip, all of you. Go and wash. Go to work. The butler shall give you each new cotton sheeting. Put that sick man to bed and I’ll physic him presently.”

  The sick man was carried off moaning, “Not episin sawts — oh, no, not episin!” and the butler came out on the veranda carrying a bolt of white sheeting, to make sure.

  “There is none to overhear,” said Ommony. “Tell me the truth now. Who ordered you to run away from me?”

  The butler hesitated, showing the jaundiced whites of his eyes. “Sahib, I am afraid. Is Mahommed Babar here?”

  “No. He’s gone.”

  “Run away?” Ommony nodded.

  “Sahib, it was Mahommed Babar who ordered us. He said we should go to that village and be made Moslems, after which he would see that we were not slain. It was truly Mahommed Babar, sahib. He ordered us.”

  CHAPTER 9. “I will lead!”

  Athelstan King recovered consciousness, but did not advertise the fact, not believing in advertisement, and having seen too many men betray their plans and their weakness at the instance of that up-to-date disease. He does not believe that it pays, and his dread of advertisement is of such long standing and so ingrained that it controls him even in the twilight between near-death and recovery.

  So he lay still and discovered that he was lying on his stomach between a dozen men and a ridge of rock. He could touch the rock with his right hand. The men sat in a row between him and a bonfire, whose light danced and fell, alternating with shadow on the rock beside him. His head ached and there was a singing in his ears, but he could hear the men talking, and could hear others jesting across other fires not far away. He knew that his wrists and ankles had been tied, for they smarted where the thongs had cut, but someone had loosed them and the blood was circulating freely.

  Moving inch by inch, he managed to turn his head and look under his left arm, but it took him a long time to recognize what he saw as anything but phantasy, because the blood was still surging behind his eyes. He had evidently had a bad blow on the head, and a cautious survey with his fingers discovered a bruise the size of half a mango — whereat he was content. Bruises that break outward hurt but are hardly ever serious.

  The scene, as viewed between the hips of two men who squatted chin on knee, resembled a glimpse of Robin Hood and his merry men carousing in the open. There were even bows and arrows in evidence, but most of the men had rifles and bandoliers. All had peculiar swords of foreign make; and every single man had loot of some kind — when nothing else, then brass railway carriage handles or the buttons from an official’s uniform. Headmen were haranguing groups in front of fires, for a Moslem loves to be told what he wants to think and will listen in raptures to almost anyone who will reel off the right sort of platitudes.

  Obviously, these were men returning, not from one raid, but from a series of them. They had the loot of Hindu villages as well as of railway trains. Over beyond the fires he could make out the shadowy shapes of cattle and sheep; and herded in a corner between two bonfires, with a guard beyond them, were unquestionably prisoners, mostly young Hindu women, like himself unbound, but unlike himself, watched closely.

  Gradually King began to remember the incidents preceding the blow on the head that had stunned him. He judged that he must have been transported a considerable distance since then. He remembered the pinnacle rock and looked for it, but it was not there. Instead, his eye rested on another — a monolith twenty feet high from the ground, shaped like a huge recumbent tombstone, on which men were seated talking in the dark.

&n
bsp; He could not hear words at first; could not recognize a single voice, for they were all pitched low; and he did not expect to be able to understand the language in any event; but he listened, trying by sheer force of will to overcome the singing in his ears.

  Presently the men who squatted near him got up and crossed over to the far side, without even glancing at him. Taking advantage of the shadows, King instantly started to crawl toward the monolith, and gained a point about twenty yards away from it, where a dozen dwarf trees cast impenetrable darkness. He lay there and listened again, beginning to imagine that a rather hard, not exactly nasal, but roof-of-the-mouthy voice might be familiar. There were certain notes in it that struck chords of memory.

  Then, to his surprise, he recognized words — Hindustanee, which meant that one race was talking to another, using the lingua franca. That drew attention to the predominant voice again, and he was more than ever sure that he recognized it. Nevertheless, he could not catch more than a word or two here and there that were meaningless without the context. And he did not dare crawl nearer.

  The men were not quarreling, but they were arguing. Some of them were shooting questions at the fellow with the Northern voice. That was it — Northerner! Mahommed Babar for a fortune! Knowing who the man was made it easier to hear what he said for some unfathomable reason.

  “There are liars here as elsewhere evidently. You have listened to very many lies. You have only yourselves. No help from outside. Yes, it is true there is discontent. Yes, the North is full of violence. Yes, I have come from the North expressly to be with you. Very true, I would not do that unless I felt sure the cause I espouse would succeed. But I know more than you do. Listen! I tell you, you will only make these British obstinate by raiding out of your own territory. I know them. They are like those trees; they can be made to bend before the blast, and if they are uprooted they grow again, and they hardly ever break. By Allah, I say you must act wisely, brothers! Slay no more prisoners lest the British send an army corps!”