← catalogue

The Day's Work - Part 1

by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #2138 · 392,464 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Day's Work - Part 1
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Day's Work - Part 1

Author: Rudyard Kipling


        
Release date: April 1, 2000 [eBook #2138]
                Most recently updated: April 3, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2138

Credits: This Project Gutenberg Etext was prepared by Bill Stoddard


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY'S WORK - PART 1 ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*




This Project Gutenberg Etext was prepared by Bill Stoddard
hscrr@vgernet.net





THE DAY'S WORK - PART I

By RUDYARD KIPLING




CONTENTS

PART I

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

A WALKING DELEGATE

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS.

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR- PART I

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR - PART II

THE SON OF HIS FATHER

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department,
expected was a C.I.E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.  Indeed, his
friends told him that he deserved more.  For three years he had
endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and
disease, with responsibility almost to top-heavy for one pair of
shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great Kashi
Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge. Now, in less
than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the Viceroy
would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it,
and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and
there would be speeches.

Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that
ran along one of the main revetments - the huge stone-faced
banks that flared away north and south for three miles on either
side of the river and permitted himself to think of the end.
With its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters in
length; a lattice~girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson
truss standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. Each one of those
piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra
stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges'
bed.  Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above
that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with
footpaths.  At either end rose towers, of red brick, loopholed
for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road
was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends
were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses
climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of
stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of
hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and
roll-down of the dirt.  The river was very low, and on the
dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat
cribs of railway~sleepers, filled within and daubed without with
mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up.
In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead crane
travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of
iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant
grunts in the timberyard.  Riveters by the hundred swarmed about
the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway line hung
from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders,
clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the
overhang
of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of
flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale
yellow in the sun's glare.  East and west and north and south the
construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the
embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging
behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar
and a grumble a few thousand tons' more material were flung out
to hold the river in place. Findlayson, C. E., turned on his
trolley and looked over the face of the country that he had
changed for seven miles around.  Looked back on the humming
village of five thousand work-men; up stream and down, along the
vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers,
lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers -and only he
knew how strong those were - and with a sigh of contentment saw
that his work was good.  There stood his bridge before him in
the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks' work on the girders of
the three middle piers - his bridge, raw and ugly as original
sin, but pukka - permanent - to endure when all memory of the
builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, has
perished.  Practically, the thing was done.

Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have
trotted securely over trestle,and nodded to his chief.

"All but," said he, with a smile.

"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered. "'Not half a
bad job for two men, is it?"

"One - and a half.  'Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I
came on the works!" Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded
experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power
and responsibility.

"You were rather a colt," said Findlayson. "I wonder how you'll
like going back to office-work when this job's over."

"I shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye
followed Findlayson's, and he muttered, "Isn't it damned good?"

"I think we'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to
himself.  "You're too good a youngster to waste on another man.
Cub thou wast; assistant thou art.  Personal assistant, and at
Simla, thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the
business!"

Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on
Findlayson and his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen
because of his rawness to break to his own needs.  There were
labour contractors by the half-hundred - fitters and riveters,
European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps,
twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under
direction, the bevies of workmen - but none knew better than
these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not
to be trusted.  They had been tried many times in sudden crises
- by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes,
and the wrath of the river - but no stress had brought to light
any man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock would have
honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked them-selves.
Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the months of
office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of India, at
the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under
the impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought
to ruin at least half an acre of calculations- and Hitchcock, new
to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the
heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts in
England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of
commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were
passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite
obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young
Hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month, and
borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings
of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue
asserted and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God
into a man so great that he feared only Parliament and said so
till Hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner table, and
- he feared the Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name.  Then
there was the cholera that came in the night to the village by
the bridge works; and after the cholera smote the small-pox.  The
fever they had always with them.  Hitchcock had been appointed a
magistrate of the third class with whipping powers, for the
better government of the community, and Findlayson watched him
wield his powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what
to look after.  It was a long, long reverie, and it covered
storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent
and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows
it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance;
birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring
castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank
despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is
all in pieces in the gun-case. Behind everything rose the black
frame of the Kashi Bridge - plate by plate, girder by girder,
span by span - and each pier of it recalled Hitchcock, the
all-round man, who had stood by his chief without failing from
the very first to this last.

So the bridge was two men's work - unless one counted Peroo, as
Peroo certainly counted himself. He was a Lascar, a Kharva from
Bulsar, familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London,
who had risen to the rank of serang on the British India boats,
but wearying of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up
the service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure
of employment.  For his knowledge of tackle and the handling of
heavy weights, Peroo was worth almost any price he might have
chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of
the overhead-men, and Peroo was not within many silver pieces of
his proper value. Neither running water nor extreme heights made
him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority.
No piece of iron was so big or so badly placed that Peroo could
not devise a tackle to lift it - a loose-ended, sagging
arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of talking, but
perfectly equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who had saved
the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when the new
wire-rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate
tilted in its slings, threatening to slide out sideways.  Then
the native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and
Hitchcock's right arm was broken by a falling T-plate, and he
buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and directed
for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported
"All's well," and the plate swung home. There was no one like
Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold, to control the
donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the
borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need
be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the
scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure upstream on a monsoon
night and report on the state of the embankment-facings.  He
would interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock
without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still more
wonderful lingua franca, half Portuguese and half Malay, ran out
and he was forced to take string and show the knots that he would
recommend.  He controlled his own gang of tackle men -
mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month
and tried to the uttermost.  No consideration of family or kin
allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the
pay-roll.  "My honour is the honour of this bridge," he would
say to the about-to-be-dismissed.  "What do I care for your
honour? Go and work on a steamer.  That is all you are fit for."

The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred
round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest - one who had never
set foot on black water, but had been chosen as ghostly
counsellor by two generations of sea-rovers all unaffected by
port missions or those creeds which are thrust upon sailors by
agencies along Thames bank.  The priest of the Lascars had
nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at all.
He ate the offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and
slept again, "for," said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand
miles inland, "he is a very holy man.  He never cares what you
eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because on
land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani's
boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum [the
first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib
says."

Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the
scaffolding from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo
with his mates was casting loose and lowering down the bamboo
poles and planks as swiftly as ever they had whipped the cargo
out of a coaster.

From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's
silver pipe and the creek and clatter of the pulleys.  Peroo was
standing on the top-most coping of the tower, clad in the blue
dungaree of his abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to
him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped
the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with
the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout:  "Ham dekhta hai"
("I
am looking out").  Findlayson laughed and then sighed.  It was
years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. As
his trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope,
ape-fashion, and cried: "It looks well now, Sahib.  Our bridge is
all but done.  What think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail
runs over?"

"She has said little so far.  It was never Mother Gunga that
delayed us."

"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been
delay.  Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the
stone-boats were sunk without warning - or only a half-day's
warning?"

"Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now.  The spurs
are holding well on the West Bank."

"Mother Gunga eats great allowances.  There is always room for
more stone on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib "-
he meant Hitchcock - "and he laughs."

"No matter, Peroo.  Another year thou wilt be able to build a
bridge in thine own fashion."

The Lascar grinned.  "Then it will not be in this way - with
stonework sunk under water, as the Qyetta was sunk.  I like
sus-sus-pen-sheen bridges that fly from bank to bank. with one
big step, like a gang-plank.  Then no water can hurt.  When does
the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?"

"In three months, when the weather is cooler."

"Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the
work is being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and
touches with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean!  Dam
jibboonwallah!'"

"But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."

"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all
finished.  Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at
Tuticorin -"

"Bah! Go!  I am busy."

"I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance.  "May I take
the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?"

"To hold them with thy hands?  They are, I think, sufficiently
heavy."

"Nay, Sahib.  It is thus.  At sea, on the Black Water, we have
room to be blown up and down without care.  Here we have no room
at all. Look you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her
between stone sills."

Findlayson smiled at the "we."

"We have bitted and bridled her.  She is not like the sea, that
can beat against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga - in irons."
His voice fell a little.

"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I.
Speak true talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of
Mother Gunga?"

"All that our priest says.  London is London, Sahib.  Sydney is
Sydney, and Port Darwin is Port Darwin.  Also Mother Gunga is
Mother Gunga, and when I come back to her banks I know this and
worship.  In London I did poojah to the big temple by the river
for the sake of the God within. .  . .  Yes, I will not take the
cushions in the dinghy."

Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a
bungalow that he shared with his assistant.  The place had
become home to him in the last three years.  He had grilled in
the heat, sweated in the rains, and shivered with fever under
the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered
with rough drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in
the matting of the verandah showed where he had walked alone.
There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the
evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over
their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the
gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to
twinkle.

"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy.  He's taken a couple
of nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a
commodore," said Hitchcock.

"That's all right.  He's got something on his mind. You'd think
that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked
most of his religion out of him."

"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling.  "I overheard him the
other day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat
old guru of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and
wanted the guru to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and
see if he could stop a monsoon."

"All the same, if you carried off his guru he'd leave us like a
shot.  He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.
Paul's when he was in London."

"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure
cylinder."

"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either.  He's propitiating his
own Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think
of a bridge being run across her.  Who's there?"  A shadow
darkened the doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's
hand.

"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar.

It ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets. . . .  Great
Heavens!"  Hitchcock jumped to his feet.

"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form. "that's what
Mother Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading. "Keep cool, young
'un. We've got all our work cut out for us. Let's see. Muir wired
half an hour ago: 'Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out.'  Well, that
gives us - one, two - nine and a half for the flood to reach
Melipur Ghaut and seven's sixteen and a half to Lataoli - say
fifteen hours before it comes down to us."

"Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two
months before anything could have been expected, and the left
bank is littered up with stuff still.  Two full months before
the time!"

"That's why it comes.  I've only known Indian rivers for
five-and-twenty years, and I don't pretend to understand.  Here
comes another tar." Findlayson opened the telegram.  "Cockran,
this time, from the Ganges Canal: 'Heavy rains here. Bad.'  He
might have saved the last word. Well, we don't want to know any
more.  We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the
riverbed.  You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in
the middle.  Get everything that floats below the bridge: we
shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow,
without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got
on the east bank that needs looking after?

"Pontoon - one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it.
T'other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road
rivets from Twenty to Twenty~three piers - two construction
lines, and a turning-spur.  The pilework must take its chance,"
said Hitchcock.

"All right.  Roll up everything you can lay hands on.  We'll give
the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."

Close to the verandah stood a big night~gong, never used except
for flood, or fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a
fresh horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when
Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing
stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal.

Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the
village had taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse
screaming of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of
drums and tom-toms; and, from the European quarters, where the
riveters lived, McCartney's bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays
and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to "Stables."  Engine
after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day's
work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the
far bank.  Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it
was flood   and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the
call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running
upon soft earth.  The order in all cases was to stand by the
day's work and wait instructions.  The gangs poured by in the
dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal;
gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused
by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives
creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the
brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced
over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the
cranes, and stood still - each man in his place.

Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take
up everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the
flare-lamps broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull
iron as the riveters began a night's work, racing against the
flood that was to come.  The girders of the three centre piers -
those that stood on the cribs -were all but in position.  They
needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them, for the
flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork
would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked
at the ends.  A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the
temporary line that fed the unfinished piers.  It was heaved up
in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond
flood-level by the groaning locomotives.  The tool-sheds on the
sands melted away before the attack of shouting armies, and with
them went the stacked ranks of Government stores, iron-hound
boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of the
riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains.  The big crane would
be the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy
stuff up to the main structure of the bridge.  The concrete
blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were dropped overside, where
there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and the empty
boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream.  It was
here that Peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke of
the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing speed, and
Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for the
honour and credit which are better than life.

"I knew she would speak," he cried. "I knew, but the telegraph
gives us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting -
children of unspeakable shame - are we here for the look of the
thing?"  It was two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it
did wonders as Peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the
language of the sea.

Findlayson was more troubled for the stone boats than anything
else.  McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of
the three doubtful spans. but boats adrift, if the flood chanced
to be a high one, might endanger the girders; and there was a
very fleet in the shrunken channel.

"Get them behind the swell of the guard tower," he shouted down
to
Peroo.  "It will be dead-water there.  Get them below the
bridge."

"Accha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with
wire-rope," was the answer. "Heh! Listen to the Chota Sahib.  He
is working hard."

>From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone.  Hitchcock at the
last minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee
stone in reinforcing his spurs and embankments.

"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh.
"But when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest."

For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the
lights.  It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was
darkened by clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very
grave.

"She moves!" said Peroo, just before the dawn. "Mother Gunga is
awake! Hear!" He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the
current mumbled on it.  A little wave hit the side of a pier with
a crisp slap.

"Six hours before her time," said Findlayson, mopping his
forehead savagely.  "Now we can't depend on anything. We'd
better clear all hands out of the riverbed."

Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing
of naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools
ceased.  In the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water
crawling over thirsty sand.

Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted
himself by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed
had been cleaned out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson
hurried over the bridge till the iron plating of the permanent
way gave place to the temporary plank-walk over the three centre
piers, and there he met Hitchcock.

"'All clear your side?" said Findlayson.  The whisper rang in the

box of lattice work.

"Yes, and the east channel's filling now. We're utterly out of
our reckoning.  When is this thing down on us?"

"There's no saying.  She's filling as fast as she can.  Look!"
Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand,
burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper
and fizz.

"What orders?" said Hitchcock.

"Call the roll - count stores  sit on your hunkers - and pray for
the bridge.  That's all I can think of Good night.  Don't risk
your life trying to fish out anything that may go downstream."

"Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are!  'Night. Heavens, how she's
filling!  Here's the rain in earnest.

Findlayson picked his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of
McCartney's riveters before him. The gangs had spread themselves
along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn,
and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept his men
together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the
stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and
chains.

A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear
and half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to
hank between the stone facings, and the far-away spurs went out
in spouts of foam.  Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste,
and a wall of chocolate-coloured water was her messenger.  There
was a shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the
spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out
from under their bellies.  The stone-boats groaned and ground
each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their
clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line.

"Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would
do.  Now she isthus cramped God only knows what she will do!"
said Peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard~tower.
"Ohe'! Fight, then! Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears
herself out."

But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the
first down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but
the river lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in
midsummer, plucking and fingering along the revetments, and
banking up behind the piers till even Findlayson began to
recalculate the strength of his work.

When day came the village gasped. "Only last night," men said,
turning to each other, "it was as a town in the river-bed! Look
now!"

And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing
water that licked the throat of the piers.  The farther bank was
veiled by rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the
spurs up-stream were marked by no more than eddies and
spoutings, and down-stream the pent river, once freed of her
guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the horizon. Then hurried
by, rolling in the water, dead men and oxen together, with here
and there a patch of thatched roof that melted when it touched a
pier.

"Big flood," said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded.  It was as big a
flood as he had any wish to watch. His bridge would stand what
was upon her now, but not very much more, and if by any of a
thousand chances there happened to be a weakness in the
embankments, Mother Gunga would carry his honour to the sea with
the other raffle. Worst of all, there was nothing to do except
to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till
his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were
over-ankle in mire. He took no count of time, for the river was
marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the
embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining
of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the
hundred noises that make the full note of a flood.  Once a
dripping servant brought him food, but he could not eat; and
once he thought that he heard a faint toot from a locomotive
across the river, and then he smiled. The bridge's failure would
hurt his assistant not a little, hut Hitchcock was a young man
with his big work yet to do. For himself the crash meant
everything - everything that made a hard life worth the living.
They would say, the men of his own profession . . . he
remembered the half-pitying things that he himself had said when
Lockhart's new waterworks burst and broke down in brick-heaps and
sludge, and Lockhart's spirit broke in him and he died.  He
remembered what he himself had said when the Sumao Bridge went
out in the big cyclone by the sea; and most he remembered poor
Hartopp's face three weeks later, when the shame had marked it.
His bridge was twice the size of Hartopp's, and it carried the
Findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe - the Findlayson
bolted shoe. There were no excuses in his service. Government
might listen, perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his
bridge, as that stood or fell. He went over it in his head, plate
by plate, span by span, brick by brick, pier by pier,
remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating, lest there
should be any mistake; and through the long hours and through the
flights of formulae that danced and wheeled before him a cold
fear would come to pinch his heart. His side of the sum was
beyond question; but what man knew Mother Gunga's arithmetic?
Even as he was making all sure by the multiplication table, the
river might be scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one
of those eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation.  Again a
servant came to him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he
could only drink and return to the decimals in his brain. And
the river was still rising. Peroo, in a mat shelter coat,
crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the face of
the river, but saying nothing.

At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards
the village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the
boats.

Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the
priest of his creed - a fat old man, with a grey beard that
whipped the wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder.
Never was seen so lamentable a guru.

"What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry
grain," shouted Peroo, "if squatting in the mud is all that thou
canst do?  Thou hast dealt long with the Gods when they were
contented and well-wishing.  Now they are angry. Speak to them!"

"What is a man against the wrath of Gods?" whined the priest,
cowering as the wind took him. "Let me go to the temple, and I
will pray there."

"Son of a pig, pray here! Is there no return for salt fish and
curry powder and dried onions? Call aloud! Tell Mother Gunga we
have had enough. Bid her be still for the night. I cannot pray,
but I have been serving in the Kumpani's boats, and when men did
not obey my orders I -"  A flourish of the wire-rope colt
rounded the sentence, and the priest, breaking free from his
disciple, fled to the village.

"Fat pig!" said Peroo. "After all that we have done for him! When
the flood is down I will see to it that we get a new guru.
Finlinson Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday
nothing has been eaten. Be wise, Sahib. No man can endure
watching and great thinking on an empty belly.  Lie down, Sahib.
The river will do what the river will do.""The bridge is mine; I
cannot leave it."

"Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said Peroo,
laughing. "I was troubled for my boats and sheers before the
flood came.  Now we are in the hands of the Gods. The Sahib will
not eat and lie down? Take these, then. They are meat and good
toddy together, and they kill all weariness, besides the fever
that follows the rain. I have eaten nothing else to-day at all."

He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and
thrust it into Findlayson's hand, saying: "Nay, do not be
afraid.  It is no more than opium - clean Malwa opium.

Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his
hand, and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff
was at least a good guard against fever -the fever that was
creeping upon him out of the wet mud -and he had seen what Peroo
could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose
from the tin box.

Peroo nodded with bright eyes.  "In a little - in a little the
Sahib will find that he thinks well again. I too will -" He
dived into his treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his
head, and squatted down to watch the boats.  It was too dark now
to see beyond the first pier, and the night seemed to have given
the river new strength. Findlayson stood with his chin on his
chest, thinking.  There was one point about one of the piers -
the seventh - that he had not fully settled in his mind.  The
figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one
and at enormous intervals of time.  There was a sound rich and
mellow in his ears like the deepest note of a double-bass - an
entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it
seemed. Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser
had snapped and the stone-boats were loose.  Findlayson saw the
fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire
straining across gunnels.

"A tree hit them. They will all go," cried Peroo. "The main
hawser has parted. What does the Sahib do?"

An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's
mind.  He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight
lines and angles - each rope a line of white fire. But there was
one rope which was the master rope. He could see that rope.  If
he could pull it once, it was absolutely and mathematically
certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the
backwater behind the guard-tower.  But why, he wondered, was
Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down
the bank? It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and
slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and,
further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that
looked so difficult.  And then - but it was of no conceivable
importance -  a wire-rope raced through his hand, burning it,
the high bank disappeared,  and with it all the slowly
dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in the rainy
darkness - sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was
standing over him.

"I had forgotten," said the Lascar, slowly, "that to those
fasting and unused, the opium is worse than any wine. Those who
die in Gunga go to the Gods. Still, I have no desire to present
myself before such great ones. Can the Sahib swim?"

"What need? He can fly - fly as swiftly as the wind," was the
thick answer.

"He is mad!" muttered Peroo, under his breath. "And he threw me
aside like a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his
death. The boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike
nothing. It is not good to look at death with a clear eye."

He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the
bows of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through
the mist at the nothing that was there.  A warm drowsiness crept
over Findlayson, the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his
bridge. The heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling
little thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made
hung heavy on his eyelids. He thought and perceived that he was
perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that a man could
surely step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart
to keep his balance - this was the most important point - would
be borne with great and easy speed to the shore. But yet a better
plan came to him.  It needed only an exertion of will for the
soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it
kite-fashion to the bank. Thereafter - the boat spun dizzily -
suppose the high wind got under the freed body?  Would it tower
up like a kite and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or would
it duck about, beyond control, through all eternity? Findlayson
gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that he was
on the edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his
plans. Opium has more effect on the white man than the black.
Peroo was only comfortably indifferent to accidents. "She cannot
live," he grunted. "Her seams open already. If she were even a
dinghy with oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with
holes is no good. Finlinson Sahib, she fills."

"Accha! I am going away. Come thou also." In his mind, Findlayson
had already escaped from the boat, and was circling high in air
to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His body - he was
really sorry for its gross helplessness - lay in the stern, the
water rushing about its knees.

"How very ridiculous!" he said to himself from his eyrie -" that
- is Findlayson -  chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is
going to be drowned, too. Drowned when it's close to shore. I'm
- I'm on shore already. Why doesn't it come along?"

To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again,
and that body spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of
the reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight
for the body. He was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand,
and striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep
foothold in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself
clear of the hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet
earth.

"Not this night," said Peroo, in his ear. "The Gods have
protected us."  The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they
rustled among dried stumps. "This is some island of last year's
indigo-crop," he went on. "We shall find no men here; but have
great care, Sahib; all the snakes of a hundred miles have been
flooded out.  Here comes the lightning, on the heels of the
wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk carefully."

Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed
any merely human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water
from his eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed
to himself with world-encompassing strides.  Somewhere in the
night of time he had built a bridge - a bridge that spanned
illimitable levels of shining seas; but the Deluge had swept it
away, leaving this one island under heaven for Findlayson and his
companion, sole survivors of the breed of Man.

An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there
was to be seen on the little patch in the flood - a clump of
thorn, a clump of swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled
peepul overshadowing a Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a
tattered red flag. The holy man whose summer resting-place it was
had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the
red-daubed image of his god.  The two men stumbled, heavy-limbed
and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and
dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain
and river roared together.

The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of
cattle, as a huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way
under the tree. The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on
his flank, the insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like
eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms,
and the silky dewlap that almost swept the ground.  There was a
noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the flood-line
through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing.

"Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head
against the tree pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at
ease.

"Truly," said Peroo, thickly, "and no small ones."

"What are they, then? I do not see clearly."

"The Gods. Who else? Look!"

"Ah, true! The Gods surely - the Gods." Findlayson smiled as his
head fell forward on his chest.  Peroo was eminently right.
After the Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods
that made it - the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly - the
Gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways. He
could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that
held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning.

The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp
earth. A green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and
screamed against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled
with the shifting shadows of beasts. There was a black Buck at
the Bull's heels-such a Buck as Findlayson in his far-away life
upon earth might have seen in dreams - a Buck with a royal head,
ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns.  Beside
him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under
the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead grass,
paced a Tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled.

The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the
darkness a monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in
the place of the fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels
from the hair of his neck and shoulders.Other shadows came and
went behind the circle, among them a drunken Man flourishing
staff and drinking-bottle. Then a hoarse bellow broke out from
near the ground. "The flood lessens even now," it cried.  "Hour
by hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!"

"My bridge," said Findlayson to himself "That must be very old
work now. What have the Gods to do with my bridge?"

His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Mugger -
the blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges -draggled
herself before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left
with her tail.

"They have made it too strong for me. In all this night I have
only torn away a handful of planks. The walls stand. The towers
stand. They have chained my flood, and the river is not free any
more. Heavenly Ones, take this yoke away! Give me clear water
between bank and bank! It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak. The
Justice of the Gods!  Deal me the Justice of the Gods!"

"What said I?" whispered Peroo.  "This is in truth a Punchayet of
the Gods. Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and
I, Sahib."

The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her
ears flat to her head, snarled wickedly.

Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed
to and fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on
the snarl.

"We be here," said a deep voice, "the Great Ones.  One only and
very many.  Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has
spoken already.  Hanuman listens also."

"Kashi is without her Kotwal to-night," shouted the Man with the
drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the
island rang to the baying of hounds.  "Give her the Justice of
the Gods."

"Ye were still when they polluted my waters," the great Crocodile
bellowed. "Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the
walls.  I had no help save my own strength, and that failed - the
strength of Mother Gunga failed - before their guard-towers.
What
could I do?  I have done everything.  Finish now, Heavenly
Ones!"

"I brought the death; I rode the spotted sick-ness from hut to
hut of their workmen, and yet they would not cease." A
nose-slitten, hide-worn Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled,
limped forward. "I cast the death at them out of my nostrils,
but they would not cease."

Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.

." Bah!" he said, spitting. "Here is Sitala herself; Mata - the
small-pox. Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?"

"Little help! They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung
them out on my sand-bars, but their work went forward.  Demons
they are, and sons of demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for
their fire-carriage to make a mock of The Justice of the Gods on
the bridge-builders!"

The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: "If the
Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things
there would be many dark altars in the land, mother."

"But this goes beyond a mock," said the Tigress, darting forward
a griping paw. "Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones;
ye know that they have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to
the Destroyer. Let Indra judge."

The Buck made no movement as he answered:  "How long has this
evil been?

"Three years, as men count years," said the Mugger, close pressed
to the earth.

"Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious
to see vengeance now? The deep sea was where she runs but
yesterday, and to-morrow the sea shall cover her again as the
Gods count that which men call time. Can any say that this their
bridge endures till to-morrow?" said the Buck.

There was a long hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full
moon stood up above the dripping trees.

"Judge ye, then," said the River, sullenly. "I have spoken my
shame.  The flood falls still. I can do no more."

"For my own part " - it was the voice of the great Ape seated
within the shrine -" it pleases me well to watch these men,
remembering that I also builded no small bridge in the world's
youth."

"They say, too," snarled the Tiger, "that these men came of the
wreck of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided -"

"They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that
their toil endures. Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest
how the land is threaded with their fire-carriages."

"Yea, I know," said the Bull. "Their Gods instructed them in the
matter."

A laugh ran round the circle.

"Their Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born
yesterday, and those that made them are scarcely yet cold," said
the Mugger. "To-morrow their Gods will die."

"Ho!" said Peroo. "Mother Gunga talks good talk. I told that to
the padre-sahib who preached on the Mombassa, and he asked the
Burra Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness."

"Surely they make these things to please their Gods," said the
Bull again.

"Not altogether," the Elephant rolled forth. "It is for the
profit of my mahajuns - my fat money-lenders that worship me at
each new year, when they draw my image at the head of the
account-books.  I, looking over their shoulders by lamplight,
see that the names in the books are those of men in far places -
for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage, and
the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books grow as
fat as - myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my
peoples."

"They have changed the face of the land-which is my land. They
have killed and made new towns on my banks," said the Mugger.

"It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the
dirt if it pleases the dirt," answered the Elephant.

"But afterwards?" said the Tiger. "Afterwards they will see that
Mother Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her
first, and later from us all, one by one. In the end, Ganesh, we
are left with naked altars."

The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.

"Kali lies.  My sister lies.  Also this my stick is the Kotwal of
Kashi, and he keeps tally of my pilgrims.  When the time comes
to worship Bhairon-and it is always time - the fire-carriages
move one by one, and each bears a thousand pilgrims.  They do
not come afoot any more, but rolling upon wheels, and my honour
is increased."

"Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,"
said the Ape, leaning forward, "and but for the fire-carriage
they would have come slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember."

"They come to me always," Bhairon went on thickly.  "By day and
night they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and
the roads. Who is like Bhairon to-day? What talk is this of
changing faiths? Is my staff Kotwal of Kashi for nothing? He
keeps the tally, and he says that never were so many altars as
today, and the fire carriage serves them well.  Bhairon am I -
Bhairon of the Common People, and the chiefest of the Heavenly
Ones to-day.  Also my staff says -"

"Peace, thou" lowed the Bull.  "The worship of the schools is
mine, and they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or
many, as is the delight of my people, and ye know what I am.
Kali, my wife, thou knowest also." "Yea, I know," said the
Tigress, with lowered head.

"Greater am I than Gunga also. For ye know who moved the minds of
men that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers.  Who die
in that water - ye know how  men say - come to us without
punishment, and Gunga knows that the fire-carriage  has borne to
her scores upon scores of such anxious ones; and Kali knows that
she has held her chiefest festivals among the pilgrimages that
are fed by the fire-carriage. Who smote at Pooree, under the
Image there, her thousands in a day and a night, and bound the
sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from
one end of the land to the other?  Who but Kali?  Before the
fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil.  The fire-carriages have
served thee well, Mother of Death.  But I speak for mine own
altars, who am not Bhairon of the Common Folk, but Shiv.  Men go
to and fro, making words and telling talk of strange Gods, and I
listen. Faith follows faith among my people in the schools,  and
I have no anger; for when all words are said, and the new talk is
ended, to Shiv men return at the last."

"True. It is true," murmured Hanuman. "To Shiv and to the others,
mother, they return. I creep from temple to temple in the North,
where they worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my
image is alone within their shrines."

"Small thanks," said the Buck, turning his head slowly. "I am
that One and His Prophet also."

"Even so, father," said Hanuman. "And to the South I go who am
the oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I
touch the shrines of the New Faith and the Woman whom we know is
hewn twelve-armed, and still they call her Mary."

"Small thanks, brother," said the Tigress. "I am that Woman."

"Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and
stand before the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of
me they change their faiths and are very wise.. Ho! ho! I am the
builder of bridges, indeed - bridges between this and that, and
each bridge leads surely to Us in the end. Be content, Gunga.
Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all."

"Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood
lest unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my
springs in the  hills and make me crawl humbly between their
wharfs?  Shall I bury me in the sand ere I offend?"

"And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the
fire-carriage atop. Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!" said
Ganesh the Elephant. "A child had not spoken more foolishly. Let
the dirt dig in the dirt ere it return to the dirt.  I know only
that my people grow rich and praise me. Shiv has said that the
men of the schools do not forget; Bhairon is content for his
crowd of the Common People; and Hanuman laughs."

"Surely I laugh," said the Ape. "My altars are few beside those
of Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new
worshippers from beyond the Black Water - the men who believe
that their God is toil.  I run before them beckoning, and they
follow Hanuman."

"Give them the toil that they desire, then," said the River.
"Make a bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the
bridge. Once thou wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman. Stoop and lift
my bed."

"Who gives life can take life." The Ape scratched in the mud with
a long forefinger. "And yet, who would profit by the killing?
Very many would die."

There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the
boys sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late
spring. The parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his branch
with lowered head as the song grew louder, and in a patch of
clear moonlight stood revealed the young herd, the darling of the
Gopis, the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers ere their
children are born  Krishna the Well-beloved.  He stooped to knot
up his long wet hair, and the Parrot fluttered to his shoulder.

"Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting," hiccupped
Bhairon.  "Those make thee late for the council, brother."

"And then?" said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head.
"Ye can do little without me or Karma here." He fondled the
Parrot's plumage and laughed again. "What is this sitting and
talking together? I heard Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and
so came quickly from a hut where I lay warm. And what have ye
done to Karma, that he is so wet and silent? And what does
Mother Gunga here? Are the heavens full that ye must come
paddling in the mud beast-wise? Karma, what do they do?"

"Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridge-builders, and
Kali is with her. Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that
her honour may be made great," cried the Parrot. "I waited here,
knowing that thou wouldst come, O my master!

"And the Heavenly Ones said nothing?  Did Gunga and the Mother of
Sorrows out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?"

"Nay," said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; "I said it
was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?"

"I was content to let them toil -well content," said Hanuman.

"What had I to do with Gunga's anger?" said the Bull.

"I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of
all Kashi. I spoke for the Common People."

"Thou?" The young God's eyes sparkled.

"Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths to-day?" returned
Bhairon, unabashed. "For the sake of the Common People I said -
very many wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my
staff-"

Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and
kneeling, slipped an arm round the cold neck. "Mother," he said
gently, "get thee to thy flood again. The matter is not for thee.
What harm shall thy honour take of this live dirt? Thou hast
given them their fields new year after year, and by thy flood
they are made strong. They come all to thee at the last. What
need to slay them now? Have pity, mother, for a little - and it
is only for a little.""If it be only for a little  " the slow
beast began.

"Are they Gods, then?" Krishna returned with a laugh, his eyes
looking into the dull eyes of the River. "Be certain that it is
only for a little. The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and
presently justice will be done. Go now, mother, to the flood
again. Men and cattle are thick on the waters - the banks fall -
the villages melt because of thee."

"But the bridge - the bridge stands." The Mugger turned grunting
into the undergrowth as Krishna rose.

"It is ended," said the Tigress, viciously. "There is no more
justice from the Heavenly Ones. Ye have made shame and sport of
Gunga, who asked no more than a few score lives."

"Of my people - who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village
yonder - of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them
in the dark -of the child that will be born next morn - of that
which was begotten to-night," said Krishna. "And when all is
done, what profit? To-morrow sees them at work. Ay, if ye swept
the bridge out from end to end they would begin anew. Hear me!
Bhairon is drunk always. Hanuman mocks his people with new
riddles."

"Nay, but they are very old ones," the Ape said, laughing.

"Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy
men; Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I - I live with
these my people, asking for  no gifts, and so receiving them
hourly."

"And very tender art thou of thy people," said the Tigress.

"They are my own. The old women dream of me turning in their
sleep; the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill
their lotahs by the river. I walk by the young men waiting
without the gates at dusk, and I call over my shoulder to the
white-beards. Ye know, Heavenly Ones, that I alone of us all
walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in our
heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or there are two
voices at twilight in the standing crops.  Wise are ye, but ye
live far off; forgetting whence ye came. So  do I not forget.
And the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say? And the
fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrims where but ten came in
the old years? True. That is true, to-day."

"But to-morrow they are dead, brother," said Ganesh.

"Peace!" said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. "And
to-morrow, beloved - what of to-morrow?"

"This only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the
Common Folk - a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of -
an evil word - a little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying
(and none know who set that word afoot) that they weary of ye,
Heavenly Ones."

The Gods laughed together softly. "And then, beloved ~" they
said.

"And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee,
Shiv, and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a
louder noise of worship. But the word has gone abroad, and,
after, they will pay fewer dues to your fat Brahmins. Next they
will forget your altars, but so slowly that no man can say how
his forgetfulness began."

I knew - I knew!  I spoke this also, but they would not hear,"
said the Tigress. "We should have slain-we should have slain!"

"It is too late now. Ye should have slain at the beginning when
the men from across the water had taught our folk nothing. Now
my people see their work, and go away thinking. They do not
think of the Heavenly Ones altogether. They think of the
fire-carriage and the other things that the bridge-builders have
done, and when your priests thrust forward hands asking alms,
they give a little unwillingly. That is the beginning, among one
or two, or five or ten - for I, moving among my people, know what
is in their hearts."

"And the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?" said
Ganesh.

The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of
Shiv! The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon
the tongue till ye become little Gods again - Gods of the jungle
-names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in
the thicket and among the caves -rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the
tree, and the village-mark, as ye were at the beginning. That is
the end, Ganesh, for thee, and for Bhairon - Bhairon of the
Common People."

"It is very far away," grunted Bhairon. "Also, it is a lie."

"Many women have kissed Krishna. They told him this to cheer
their own hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us
the tale," said the Bull, below his breath.

"Their Gods came, and we changed them. I took the Woman and made
her twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods," said
Hanuman.

"Their Gods! This is no question of their Gods - one or three -
man or woman.  The matter is with the people. ~ move, and not
the Gods of the bridge-builders," said Krishna.

"So be it. I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it
stood still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped
me," said Hanuman the Ape. "They will only change a little the
names of their Gods.  I shall lead the builders of the bridges as
of old; Shiv shall be worshipped in the schools by such as doubt
and despise their fellows; Ganesh shall have his mahajuns, and
Bhairon the donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of
toys. Beloved, they will do no more than change the names, and
that we have seen a thousand times."

"Surely they will do no more than change the names," echoed
Ganesh; but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.

"They will change more than the names. Me alone they cannot kill,
so long as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring
follows the winter rains. Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I
walked upon the earth. My people know not now what they know;
but I, who live with them, I read their hearts. Great Kings, the
beginning of the end is born already. The fire-carriages shout
the names of new Gods that are not the old under new names.
Drink now and eat greatly!  Bathe your faces in the smoke of the
altars before they grow cold! Take dues and listen to the
cymbals and the drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet there are
flowers and songs. As men count time the end is far off; but as
we who know reckon it is to-day. I have spoken."

The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long
in silence.

"This I have not heard before," Peroo whispered in his
companion's ear. "And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in
the engine-room of the Goorkha, I have wondered if our priests
were so wise - so wise. The day is coming, Sahib.  They will be
gone by the morning."

A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river
changed  as the darkness withdrew.

Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded
him.

"Let Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things
we have heard?  Has Krishna lied indeed? Or --"

"Ye know," said the Buck, rising to his feet. "Ye know the Riddle
of the Gods.  When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and the
Hells and Earth disappear.  Be content. Brahm dreams still.  The
dreams come and go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but
still Brahm dreams.  Krishna has walked too long upon earth, and
yet I love him the more for the tale he has told. The Gods
change, beloved - all save One!"

"Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men," said
Krishna, knotting his girdle. "It is but a little time to wait,
and ye shall know if I lie."Truly it is but a little time, as
thou sayest, and we shall know. Get thee to thy huts again,
beloved, and make sport for the young things, for still Brahm
dreams.  Go, my children! Brahm dreams and till he wakes the
Gods die not."

"Whither went they -" said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a
little with the cold.

"God knows!" said Findlayson. The river and the island lay in
full daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on
the wet earth under the peepul. Only a parrot screamed in the
branches, bringing down showers of water-drops as he fluttered
his wings.

"Up! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out?  Canst
thou move, Sahib?"

Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. His bead swam
and ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he
sluiced his forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi
Bridge was wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island,
what chances the day offered of return, and, above all, how his
work stood.

"Peroo, I have forgotten much I was under the guard-tower
watching the river; and then --- Did the flood sweep us away?"

"No. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and" (if the Sahib had
forgotten about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him)
"in striving to retie them, so it seemed to me but it was dark -
a rope caught the Sahib and threw him upon a boat.  Considering
that we two, with Hitchcock Sahib, built, as it were, that
bridge, I came also upon the boat, which came riding on
horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so,
splitting, cast us ashore. I made a great cry when the boat left
the wharf and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for us. As
for the bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot
fall."A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden
land, had followed the storm, and in that clear light there was
no room for a man to think of the dreams of the dark. Findlayson
stared upstream, across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes
ached. There was no sign of any bank to the Ganges, much less of
a bridge-line.

"We came down far," he said. "It was wonderful that we were not
drowned a hundred times."

"That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his
time.  I have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great
ports, but "- Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under
the peepul -" never man has seen that we saw here."

What?"

"Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?"

"There was a fever upon me." Findlayson was still looking
uneasily across the water.  "It seemed that the island was full
of beasts and men talking, but I do not remember. A boat could
live in this water now, I think."

"Oho! Then it is true. 'When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods
die.' Now I know, indeed, what he meant. Once, too, the guru
said as much to me; but then I did not understand. Now I am
wise.

"What?" said Findlayson, over his shoulder.

Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself "Six - seven - ten
monsoons since, I was watch on the fo'c'sle of the Rewah - the
Kumpani's big boat - and there was a big tufan; green and black
water beating, and I held fast to the life-lines, choking under
the waters. Then I thought of the Gods - of Those whom we saw
to-night "- he stared curiously at Findlayson's back, but the
white man was looking across the flood. "Yes, I say of Those
whom we saw this night past, and I called upon Them to protect
me. And while I prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big wave
came and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black
bow-anchor, and the Rewah rose high and high, leaning towards
the left-hand side, and the water drew away from beneath her
nose, and I lay upon my belly, holding the ring, and looking
down into those great deeps. Then I thought, even in the face of
death: If I lose hold I die, and for me neither the Rewah nor my
place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor
Calcutta,nor even London, will be any more for me. 'How shall I
be sure,' I said,  'that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at
all?' This I thought, and the Rewah dropped her nose as a hammer
falls, and all the sea came in and slid me backwards along the
fo'c'sle and over the break of the fo'c'sle, and I very badly
bruised my shin against the donkey-engine: but I did not die,
and I have seen the Gods.  They are good for live men, but for
the dead . . . .  They have spoken Themselves. Therefore, when I
come to the village I will beat the guru for talking riddles
which are no riddles.  When Brahm ceases to dream the Gods go."

"Look up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?"

Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. "He is a wise man and
quick.  Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat.  He has
borrowed the Rao Sahib's steam-launch, and comes to look for us.
I have always said that there should have been a steam-launch on
the bridge works for us.

The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the
bridge; and Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of
their scanty leisure in playing billiards and shooting blackbuck
with the young man.  He had been bearled by an English tutor of
sporting tastes for some five or six years, and was now royally
wasting the revenues accumulated during his minority by the
Indian
Government. His steam-launch, with its silver-plated rails,
striped silk awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy which
Findlayson had found horribly in the way when the Rao came to
look at the bridge works.

"It's great luck," murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less
afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.

The gaudy blue-and-white funnel came downstream swiftly.  They
could see Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses,
and his face was unusually white. Then Peroo hailed, and the
launch made for the tail of the island. The Rao Sahib, in tweed
shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and
Hitchcock shouted. But he need have asked no questions, for
Findlayson's first demand was for his bridge.

"All serene! 'Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson.
You're seven koss downstream. Yes; there's not a stone shifted
anywhere; but how are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib's launch,
and he was good enough to come along. Jump in."Ah, Finlinson,
you are very well, eh? That was most unprecedented calamity last
night, eh? My royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil, and
the crops will also be short all about my country. Now you shall
back her out, Hitchcock. I - I do not understand steam-engines.
You are wet? You are cold, Finlinson? I have some things to eat
here, and you will take a good drink."

"I'm immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you've saved my
life.  How did Hitchcock -"

"Oho! His hair was upon end. He rode to me in the middle of the
night and woke me up in the arms of Morpheus. I was most truly
concerned, Finlinson, so I came too. My head-priest he is very
angry just now. We will go quick, Mister Hitchcock. I am due to
attend at twelve forty-five in the state temple, where we
sanctify some new idol. If not so I would have asked you to
spend the day with me. They are dam-bore, these religious
ceremonies, Finlinson, eh?"

Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the
inlaid wheel, and was taking the launch craftily up-stream. But
while he steered he was, in his mind, handling two feet of
partially untwisted wire-rope; and the back upon which he beat
was the back of his guru.

End of THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS



A WALKING DELEGATE

ACCORDING to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is
salting-time on the farm, and, unless something very important
happens, we attend to the salting ourselves.  Dave and Pete, the
red oxen, are treated first; they stay in the home meadow ready
for work on Monday.  Then come the cows, with Pan, the calf, who
should have been turned into veal long ago, but survived on
account of his manners; and lastly the horses, scattered through
the seventy acres of the Back Pasture.

You must go down by the brook that feeds the clicking, bubbling
water-ram; up through the sugar-bush, where the young maple
undergrowth closes round you like a shallow sea; next follow the
faint line of an old county-road running past two green hollows
fringed with wild rose that mark the cellars of two ruined
houses; then by Lost Orchard, where nobody ever comes except in
cider-time; then across another brook, and so into the Back
Pasture.  Half of it is pine and hemlock and Spruce, with sumach
and little juniper bushes, and the other half is grey rock and
boulder and moss, with green streaks of brake and swamp; but the
horses like it well enough - our own, and the others that are
turned down there to feed at fifty cents a week.  Most people
walk to the Back Pasture, and find it very rough work; but one
can get there in a buggy, if the horse knows what is expected of
him.  The safest conveyance is our coupe. This began life as a
buckboard, and we bought it for five dollars from a sorrowful man
who had no other sort of possessions; and the seat came off one
night when we were turning a corner in a hurry.  After that
alteration it made a beautiful salting-machine, if you held
tight, because there was nothing to catch your feet when you fell
out, and the slats rattled tunes.

One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual.  It was
a broiling hot day, and we could not find the horses anywhere
till we let Tedda Gabler, the bobtailed mare who throws up the
dirt with her big hooves exactly as a tedder throws hay, have
her head.  Clever as she is, she tipped the coupe over in a
hidden brook before she came out on a ledge of rock where all
the horses had gathered, and were switching flies. The Deacon
was the first to call to her.  He is a very dark iron-grey
four-year-old, son of Grandee. He has been handled since he was
two, was driven in a light cart before he was three, and now
ranksas an absolutely steady lady's horse - proof against
steam-rollers, grade-crossings, and street processions.

"Salt!" said the Deacon, joyfully.  "You're dreffle late, Tedda."

"Any - any place to cramp the coupe?" Tedda panted.  "It weighs
turr'ble this weather. I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know
what they wanted - ner haow. Fell out twice, both of 'em.  I
don't understand sech foolishness."

"You look consider'ble het up. 'Guess you'd better cramp her
under them pines, an' cool off a piece."

Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupe in the shade
of a tiny little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay
down among the brown, silky needles, and gasped. All the home
horses were gathered round us, enjoying their Sunday leisure.

There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm.  They were the
regular road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged,
sons of a Hambletonian sire and a Morgan dam.  There were Nip
and Tuck, seal-browns, rising six, brother and sister, Black
Hawks by birth, perfectly matched, just finishing their
education, and as handsome a pair as man could wish to find in a
forty-mile drive.  There was Muldoon, our ex-car-horse, bought at
a venture, and any colour you choose that is not white; and
Tweezy, who comes from Kentucky, with an affliction of his left
hip, which makes him a little uncertain how his hind legs are
moving.  He and Muldoon had been hauling gravel all the week for
our new road.  The Deacon you know already.  Last of all, and
eating something, was our faithful Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the
black buggy-horse, who had seen us through every state of weather
and road, the horse who was always standing in harness before
some door or other - a philosopher with the appetite of a shark
and the manners of an archbishop. Tedda Gabler was a new
"trade,"with a reputation for vice which was really the result of
bad driving.  She had one working gait, which she could hold till
further notice; a Roman nose; a large, prominent eye; a
shaving-brush of a tail; and an irritable temper.  She took her
salt through her bridle; but the others trotted up nuzzling and
wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks.
They were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part,
talking the ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture - about the
scarcity of water, and gaps in the fence, and how the early
windfalls tasted that season - when little Rick blew the last few
grains of his allowance into a crevice, and said:

"Hurry, boys!  'Might ha' knowed that livery plug would be
around."

We heard a clatter of hooves, and there climbed up from the
ravine below a fifty-center transient--a wall-eyed, yellow
frame-house of a horse, sent up to board from a livery-stable in
town, where they called him "The Lamb," and never let him out
except at night and to strangers. My companion, who knew and had
broken most of the horses, looked at the ragged hammer-head as it
rose, and said quietly:

"Ni-ice beast. Man-eater, if he gets the chance - see his eye.
Kicker, too - see his hocks.  Western horse."

The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting.  His feet showed
that he had not worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures
drew together significantly.

"As usual," he said, with an underhung sneer-"bowin' your heads
before the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin'
over you."

"Mine's done," said the Deacon; he licked up the remnant of his
salt, dropped his nose in his master's hand, and sang a little
grace all to himself.  The Deacon has the most enchanting
manners of any one I know.

"An' fawnin' on them for what is your inalienable right. It's
humiliatin'," said the yellow horse, sniffing to see if he could
find a few spare grains.

"Go daown hill, then, Boney," the Deacon replied.  "Guess you'll
find somethin' to eat still, if yer hain't hogged it all. You've
ett more'n any three of us to-day - an' day 'fore that - an' the
last two months - sence you've been here."

"I am not addressin' myself to the young an' immature.  I am
speakin' to those whose opinion an' experience commands
respect."

I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a
remark; then he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like
a plough-horse.  Rod can cover his mile in a shade under three
minutes on an ordinary road to an ordinary buggy. He is
tremendously powerful behind, but, like most Hambletonians, he
grows a trifle sullen as he gets older.  No one can love Rod
very much; but no one can help respecting him.

"I wish to wake those," the yellow horse went on, "to an abidin'
sense o' their wrongs an' their injuries an' their outrages."

"Haow's that?" said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He
thought Boney was talking of some kind of feed.

"An' when I say outrages and injuries" - Boney waved his tail
furiously  "I mean 'em, too. Great Oats! That's just what I do
mean, plain an' straight."

"The gentleman talks quite earnest," said Tuck, the mare, to Nip,
her brother.There's no doubt thinkin' broadens the horizons o'
the mind. His language is quite lofty."

"Hesh, sis," Nip answered.  "He hain't widened nothin' 'cep' the
circle he's ett in pasture. They feed words fer beddin' where he
comes from."

"It's elegant talkin', though," Tuck returned, with an
unconvinced toss of her pretty, lean little head.

The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant
to be extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had
been badly stuffed.

"Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an' without
favour,-what has Man the Oppressor ever done for you? - Are you
not inalienably entitled to the free air O' heaven, blowin'
acrost this boundless prairie?"

"Hev ye ever wintered here?" said the Deacon, merrily, while the
others snickered.  "It's kinder cool."

"Not yet," said Boney.  "I come from the boundless confines o'
Kansas, where the noblest of our kind have their abidin'-place
among the sunflowers on the threshold o' the settin' sun in his
glory."

"An' they sent you ahead as a sample ~" said Rick, with an amused
quiver of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as
fine and as wavy as a quadroon's back hair.

"Kansas, sir, needs no advertisement.  Her native sons rely on
themselves an' their native sires.  Yes, sir."

Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head.  His
affliction makes him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most
courteous of horses.

"Excuse me, suh," he said slowly, "but, unless I have been
misinfohmed, most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo'ted
from Kentucky; an' I'm from Paduky."

There was the least little touch of pride in the last words.

"Any horse dat knows beans," said Muldoon, suddenly (he had been
standing with his hairy chin on Tweezy's broad quarters), "gits
outer Kansas 'fore dey crip his shoes.  I blew in dere from
Ioway in de days o' me youth an' innocence, an' I wuz grateful
when dey boxed me fer N' York.  You can't tell me anything about
Kansas I don't wanter fergit.  De Belt Line stables ain't no
Hoffman House, but dey're Vanderbilts 'longside ' Kansas."

"What the horses o' Kansas think to-day, the horses of America
will think to-morrow; an' I tell you that when the horses of
America rise in their might, the day o' the Oppressor is ended."

There was a pause, till Rick said, with a little grunt:

"Ef you put it that way, every one of us has riz in his might,
'cep' Marcus, mebbe.  Marky, 'j ever rise in yer might?"

"Nope," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thoughtfully quidding
over a mouthful of grass. "I seen a heap o' fools try, though."

"You admit that you riz ~" said the Kansas horse, excitedly.
"Then why - why in Kansas did you ever go under again?"

"'Horse can't walk on his hind legs all the time," said the
Deacon.

"Not when he's jerked over on his back 'fore he knows what
fetched him. We've all done it, Boney," said Rick. "Nip an' Tuck
they tried it, spite o' what the Deacon told 'em; an' the Deacon
he tried it, spite o' what me an' Rod told him; an' me an' Rod
tried it, spite o' what Grandee told us; an' I guess Grandee he
tried it, spite Oo' what his dam told him. It's the same old
circus from generation to generation. 'Colt can't see why he's
called on to back. Same old rearm' on end - straight up. Same old
feelin' that you've bested 'em this time. Same old little yank at
your mouth when you're up good an' tall. Same old Pegasus-act,
wonderin' where you'll 'light. Same old wop when you hit the dirt
with your head where your tail should be, and your in'ards shook
up like a bran-mash. Same old voice in your ear: 'Waal, ye little
fool, an' what did you reckon to make by that?' We're through
with risin in our might on this farm. We go to pole er single,
accordin' ez we're hitched."

"An' Man the Oppressor sets an' gloats over you, same as he's
settin' now. Hain't that been your experience, madam?"

This last remark was addressed to Tedda; and any one could see
with half an eye that poor, old anxious, fidgety Tedda, stamping
at the flies, must have left a wild and tumultuous youth behind
her.

"'Pends on the man," she answered, shifting from one foot to the
other, and addressing herself to the home horses. "They abused
me dreffle when I was young. I guess I was sperrity an' nervous
some, but they didn't allow for that.'Twas in Monroe County, Noo
York, an' sence then till I come here, I've run away with more
men than 'u'd fill a boardin'-house. Why, the man that sold me
here he says to the boss, s' he:  'Mind, now, I've warned you.
'Twon't be none of my fault if she sheds you daown the road.
Don't you drive her in a top-buggy, ner 'thout winkers,' s' he,
'ner 'thought this bit ef you look to come home behind her.' 'N'
the fust thing the boss did was to git the top-buggy.

"Can't say as I like top-buggies," said Rick; "they don't balance
good."

"Suit me to a ha'ar," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.  "Top-buggy
means the baby's in behind, an' I kin stop while she gathers the
pretty flowers - yes, an' pick a maouthful, too. The women-folk
all say I hev to be humoured, an' -I don't kerry things to the
sweatin'-point."

"'Course I've no prejudice against a top-buggy s' long 's I can
see it," Tedda went on quickly. "It's ha'f-seein' the pesky
thing bobbin' an' balancn' behind the winkers gits on my nerves.
Then the boss looked at the bit they'd sold with me, an' s' he:
'Jiminy Christmas!  This 'u'd make a clothes-horse Stan' 'n end!'
Then he gave me a plain bar bit, an' fitted it 's if there was
some feelin' to my maouth."

"Hain't ye got any, Miss Tedda?" said Tuck, who has a mouth like
velvet, and knows it.

"Might 'a' had, Miss Tuck, but I've forgot. Then he give me an
open bridle,- my style's an open bridle - an' - I dunno as I
ought to tell this by rights -he -give - me - a kiss."

"My!" said Tuck, "I can't tell fer the shoes o' me what makes
some men so fresh."

"Pshaw, sis," said Nip, "what's the sense in actin' so? You git a
kiss reg'lar 's hitchin'-up time."

"Well, you needn't tell, smarty," said Tuck, with a squeal and a
kick.

"I'd heard o' kisses, o' course," Tedda went on, "but they hadn't
come my way specially.  I don't mind tellin' I was that took
aback at that man's doin's he might ha' lit fire-crackers on my
saddle. Then we went out jest 's if a kiss was nothin', an' I
wasn't three strides into my gait 'fore I felt the boss knoo his
business, an' was trustin' me. So I studied to please him, an'
whenever took the whip from the dash - a whip drives me plumb
distracted - an' the upshot was that - waal, I've come up the
Back Pasture to-day, an' the coupe's tipped clear over twice, an'
I've waited till 'twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for
yourselves. I don't set up to be no better than my neighbours,-
specially with my tail snipped off the way 'tis,- but I want you
all to know Tedda's quit fightin' in harness or out of it, 'cep'
when there's a born fool in the pasture, stuffin' his stummick
with board that ain't rightly hisn, 'cause he hain't earned it."

"Meanin' me, madam?" said the yellow horse.

 "Ef the shoe fits, clinch it," said Tedda, snorting. "I named no
names, though, to be sure, some folks are mean enough an' greedy
enough to do 'thout 'em."

"There's a deal to be forgiven to ignorance," said the yellow
horse, with an ugly look in his blue eye.

"Seemin'ly, yes; or some folks 'u'd ha' been kicked raound the
pasture 'bout onct a minute sence they came - board er no
board."

"But what you do not understand, if you will excuse me, madam, is
that the whole principle o' servitood, which includes keep an'
feed, starts from a radically false basis; an' I am proud to say
that me an' the majority o' the horses o' Kansas think the
entire concern should be relegated to the limbo of exploded
superstitions. I say we're too progressive for that. I say we're
too enlightened for that. 'Twas good enough 's long 's we didn't
think, but naow - but naow - a new loominary has arisen on the
horizon!"

"Meanin' you?" said the Deacon.

"The horses o' Kansas are behind me with their multitoodinous
thunderin' hooves, an' we say, simply but grandly, that we take
our stand with all four feet on the inalienable rights of the
horse, pure and simple,- the high-toned child o' nature, fed by
the same wavin' grass, cooled by the same ripplin' brook-- yes,
an' warmed by the same gen'rous sun as falls impartially on the
outside an' the inside of the pampered machine o' the
trottin'-track, or the bloated coupe-horses o' these yere
Eastern cities. Are we not the same flesh an' blood?"

"Not by a bushel an' a half," said the Deacon, under his breath.
"Grandee never was in Kansas."

"My! Ain't that elegant, though, abaout the wavin' grass an' the
ripplin' brooks?" Tuck whispered in Nip's ear. "The gentleman's
real convincin' I think."

"I say we are the same flesh an' blood! Are we to be separated,
horse from horse, by the artificial barriers of a
trottin'-record, or are we to look down upon each other on the
strength o' the gifts o' nature - an extry inch below the knee,
or slightly more powerful quarters? What's the use o' them
advantages to you? Man the Oppressor comes along, an' sees
you're likely an' good-lookin', an' grinds you to the face o'
the earth. What for? For his own pleasure: for his own
convenience!  Young an' old, black an' bay, white an' grey,
there's no distinctions made between us.  We're ground up
together under the remorseless teeth o' the engines of
oppression !"

"Guess his breechin' must ha' broke goin' daown-hill," said the
Deacon. "Slippery road, maybe, an' the buggy come onter him, an'
he didn't know 'nough to hold back. That don't feel like teeth,
though. Maybe he busted a shaft, an' it pricked him."

"An' I come to you from Kansas, wavin' the tail o' friendship to
all an' sundry, an' in the name of the uncounted millions o'
pure-minded, high-toned horses now strugglin' towards the light
o' freedom, I say to you, Rub noses with us in our sacred an'
holy cause. The power is yourn. Without you, I say, Man the
Oppressor cannot move himself from place to place. Without you
he cannot reap, he cannot sow, he cannot plough."

Mighty odd place, Kansas!" said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
"Seemin'ly they reap in the spring an' plough in the fall.
'Guess it's right fer them, but 'twould make me kinder giddy."

"The produc's of your untirin' industry would rot on the ground
if you did not weakly consent to help him. Let 'em rot, I say!
Let him call you to the stables in vain an' nevermore! Let him
shake his ensnarin' oats under your nose in vain! Let the
Brahmas roost in the buggy, an' the rats run riot round the
reaper! Let him walk on his two hind feet till they blame well
drop off! Win no more soul-destroyn' races for his pleasure!
Then, an' not till then, will Man the Oppressor know where he's
at. Quit workin', fellow-sufferers an' slaves! Kick! Rear!
Plunge! Lie down on the shafts, an' woller! Smash an' destroy!
The conflict will be but short, an' the victory is certain.
After that we can press our inalienable rights to eight quarts
o' oats a day, two good blankets, an' a fly-net an' the best o'
stablin'."

The yellow horse shut his yellow teeth with a triumphant snap;
and Tuck said, With a sigh:  'Seems's if somethin' ought to be
done. Don't seem right, somehow,- oppressin' us an all,- to my
way o' thinkin'."

Said Muldoon, in a far-away and sleepy voice:

"Who in Vermont's goin' to haul de inalienable oats? Dey weigh
like Sam Hill, an' sixty bushel at dat allowance ain't goin' to
last t'ree weeks here. An' dere's de winter hay for five
mont's!"

"We can settle those minor details when the great cause is won,"
said the yellow horse. "Let us return simply but grandly to our
inalienable rights - the right o' freedom on these yere verdant
hills, an' no invijjus distinctions o' track an' pedigree:"

"What in stables 'jer call an invijjus distinction?" said the
Deacon, stiffly.

"Fer one thing, bein' a bloated, pampered trotter jest because
you happen to be raised that way, an' couldn't no more help
trottin' than eatin'."

"Do ye know anythin' about trotters?" said the Deacon.

"I've seen 'em trot. That was enough for me. I don't want to know
any more. Trottin' 's immoral."

"Waal, I'll tell you this much. They don't bloat, an' they don't
pamp - much. I don't hold out to be no trotter myself, though I
am free to say I had hopes that way - onct. But I do say, fer
I've seen 'em trained, that a trotter don't trot with his feet:
he trots with his head; an' he does more work - ef you know what
that is - in a week than you er your sire ever done in all your
lives. He's everlastingly at it, a trotter is; an' when he
isn't, he's studyin' haow. You seen 'em trot? Much you hev! You
was hitched to a rail, back o' the stand, in a buckboard with a
soap-box nailed on the slats, an' a frowzy buff'lo atop, while
your man peddled rum fer lemonade to little boys as thought they
was actin' manly, till you was both run off the track an' jailed
-you intoed, shufflin', sway-backed, wind-suckin' skate, you!"

"Don't get het up, Deacon," said Tweezy, quietly. "Now, suh,
would you consider a fox-trot, an' single-foot, an' rack, an'
pace, an' amble, distinctions not worth distinguishin'? I assuah
you, gentlemen, there was a time befo' I was afflicted in my hip,
if you'll pardon me, Miss Tuck, when I was quite celebrated in
Paduky for all those gaits; an in my opinion the Deacon's co'rect
when he says that a ho'se of any position in society gets his
gaits by his haid, an' not by - his, ah, limbs, Miss Tuck. I
reckon I'm very little good now, but I'm rememberin' the things I
used to do befo' I took to transpo'tin' real estate with the help
an' assistance of this gentleman here." He looked at Muldoon.

"Invijjus arterficial hind legs !" said the ex-carhorse, with a
grunt of contempt. "On de Belt Line we don't reckon no horse
wuth his keep 'less he kin switch de car off de track, run her
round on de cobbles, an' dump her in ag'in ahead o' de truck
what's blockin' him. Dere is a way o' swingin' yer quarters when
de driver says, 'Yank her out, boys!' dat takes a year to learn.
Onct yer git onter it, youse kin yank a cable-car outer a
manhole.  I don't advertise myself for no circus-horse, but I
knew dat trick better than most, an' dey was good to me in de
stables, fer I saved time on de Belt - an' time's what dey hunt
in N' York."

"But the simple child o' nature-" the yellow horse began.

"Oh, go an' unscrew yer splints!  You're talkin' through yer
bandages," said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh. "Dere ain't no
loose-box for de simple child o' nature on de Belt Line, wid de
Paris comin' in an' de Teutonic goin' out, an' de trucks an' de
coupe's sayin' things, an' de heavy freight movin' down fer de
Boston boat 'bout t'ree o'clock of an August afternoon, in de
middle of a hot wave when de fat Kanucks an' Western horses
drops dead on de block. De simple child o' nature had better
chase himself inter de water. Every man at de end of his lines
is mad or loaded or silly, an' de cop's madder an' loadeder an'
sillier than de rest. Dey all take it outer de horses. Dere's no
wavin' brooks ner ripplin' grass on de Belt Line. Run her out on
de cobbles wid de sparks flyin', an' stop when de cop slugs you
on de bone o' yer nose.  Dat's N'York; see?

"I was always told s'ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined an'
high-toned," said Tuck. "We're lookin' to go there one o' these
days, Nip an' me."

"Oh, you won't see no Belt business where you'll go, miss. De man
dat wants you'll want bad, an' he'll summer you on Long Island
er at Newport, wid a winky-pinky silver harness an' an English
coachman. You'll make a star-hitch, you an' yer brother, miss.
But I guess you won't have no nice smooth bar bit. Dey checks
'em, an' dey bangs deir tails, an' dey bits 'em, de city folk,
an' dey says it's English, ye know, an' dey darsen't cut a horse
loose 'ca'se o' de cops. N' York's no place fer a horse, 'less
he's on de Belt, an' can go round wid de boys. Wisht I was in de
Fire Department!"

"But did you never stop to consider the degradin' servitood of it
all?" said the yellow horse.

"You don't stop on de Belt, cully.  You're stopped. An' we was
all in de servitood business, man an' horse, an' Jimmy dat sold
de papers. Guess de passengers weren't out to grass neither, by
de way dey acted. I done my turn, an' I'm none o' Barnum's
crowd; but any horse dat's worked on de Belt four years don't
train wid no simple child o' nature - not by de whole length o'
N' York."

"But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your
time of life, you do not believe that all horses are free and
equal?" said the yellow horse."Not till they're dead," Muldoon
answered quietly. "An' den it depends on de gross total o'
buttons an' mucilage dey gits outer youse at Barren Island."

"They tell me you're a prominent philosopher." The yellow horse
turned to Marcus. "Can you deny a basic and pivotal statement
such as this?"

"I don't deny anythin'," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
cautiously; "but ef you ast me, I should say 'twuz more
different sorts o' clipped oats of a lie than anythin' I've had
my teeth into sence I wuz foaled."

"Are you a horse?" said the yellow horse.

"Them that knows me best 'low I am."

"Ain't I a horse?"

"Yep; one kind of""Then ain't you an' me equal?"

"How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin' five
hundred pounds?" Marcus asked carelessly.

"That has nothing to do with the case," the yellow horse answered
excitedly.

"There's nothing I know hez more to do with the case," Marcus
replied.

"Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de mornin'?"
said Muldoon.

"Kin ye go to Keene - forty-two mile in an afternoon - with a
mate," said Rick; "an' turn out bright an' early next mornin'?"

"Was there evah any time in your careah, suh - I am not referrin'
to the present circumstances, but our mutual glorious past -
when you could carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an' let
her knit all the way on account o' the smoothness o' the
motion?" said Tweezy.

"Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
narrer-gage comin' in on one side, an' the Montreal flyer the
other, an' the old bridge teeterin' between?" said the Deacon.
"Kin you put your nose down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive
when you're waitin' at the depot an' let 'em play 'Curfew shall
not ring to-night' with the big brass bell?"

"Kin you hold back when the brichin' breaks? Kin you stop fer
orders when your nigh hind leg's over your trace an' ye feel
good of a frosty mornin'?" said Nip, who had only learned that
trick last winter, and thought it was the crown of horsely
knowledge.

"What's the use o' talk in'?" said Tedda Gabler, scornfully.
"What kin ye do?"

"I rely on my simple rights - the inalienable rights o' my
unfettered horsehood. An' I am proud to say I have never, since
my first shoes, lowered myself to obeyin' the will o' man."

"'Must ha' had a heap o' whips broke over yer yaller back," said
Tedda.  "Hev ye found it paid any?"

"Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled.  Blows
an' boots an' whips an' insults - injury, outrage, an'
oppression. I would not endoor the degradin' badges o' servitood
that connect us with the buggy an' the farm-wagon."

"It's amazin' difficult to draw a buggy 'thout traces er collar
er breast-strap er somefin'," said Marcus. "A Power-machine for
sawin' wood is most the only thing there's no straps to. I've
helped saw 's much as three cord in an afternoon in a
Power-machine. Slep', too, most o' the time, I did; but 'tain't
half as interestin' ez goin' daown-taown in the Concord."

"Concord don't hender you goin' to sleep any," said Nip.  "My
throat-lash! D'you remember when you lay down in the sharves
last week, waitin' at the piazza?

"Pshaw! That didn't hurt the sharves. They wuz good an' wide, an'
I lay down keerful.  The folks kep' me hitched up nigh an hour
'fore they started; an' larfed - why, they all but lay down
themselves with larfin'. Say, Boney, if you've got to be hitched
to anything that goes on wheels, you've got to be hitched with
somefin'."

"Go an' jine a circus," said Muldoon, "an' walk on your hind
legs.  All de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it
"woik," New York fashion] jine de circus."

"I am not sayin' anythin' again' work," said the yellow horse;
"work is the finest thing in the world."

"'Seems too fine fer some of us," Tedda snorted.

"I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an' enjoy
the profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an' not
as a machine."

"There ain't no horse that works like a machine," Marcus began.

"There's no way o' workin' that doesn't mean goin' to pole er
single - they never put me in the Power-machine - er under
saddle," said Rick.

"Oh, shucks!  We're talkin' same ez we graze," said Nip, "raound
an' raound in circles Rod, we hain't heard from you yet, an'
you've more know-how than any span here."

Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip
lifted, like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick
flutter of the haw across his eye, from time to time, that he
was paying any attention to the argument. He thrust his jaw out
sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls, and changed his leg.
His voice was hard and heavy, and his ears were close to his
big, plain Hambletonian head.

"How old are you?" he said to the yellow horse.

"Nigh thirteen, I guess."

"Mean age; ugly age; I'm gettin' that way myself. How long hev ye
been pawin' this firefanged stable-litter?"

"If you mean my principles, I've held 'em sence I was three."

"Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o' trouble then. 'Set a
colt to actin' crazy fer a while. You've kep' it up, seemin'ly.
D'ye talk much to your neighbours fer a steady thing?"

"I uphold the principles o' the Cause wherever I am pastured."

"'Done a heap o' good, I guess?"

"I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the
principles o' freedom an' liberty."

"Meanin' they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?"

"I was talkin' in the abstrac', an' not in the concrete.  My
teachin's educated them."

"What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac',
he's liable to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I
presoom."

Four, risin' five."

"That's where the trouble began. Driv' by a woman, like ez not -
eh?"

"Not fer long," said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.

"Spilled her?"

"I heerd she never drove again."

"Any childern?"

"Buckboards full of 'em."

"Men too?"

"I have shed conside'ble men in my time."

"By kickin'?"

"Any way that come along. Fallin' back over the dash is as handy
as most."

"They must be turr'ble afraid o' you daowntaown?"

"They've sent me here to get rid o' me. I guess they spend their
time talkin' over my campaigns.""I wanter know!"

"Yes, sir. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do.
I'll just show you. See them two fellers lyin' down by the
buggy?"

"Yep; one of 'em owns me. T'other broke me," said Rod.

"Get 'em out here in the open, an' I'll show you something. Lemme
hide back o' you peoples, so 's they won't see what I'm at."

"Meanin' ter kill 'em?" Rod drawled. There was a shudder of
horror through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.

"I'll catch 'em by the back o' the neck, an' pile-drive 'em a
piece. They can suit 'emselves about livin' when I'm through
with 'em."

"'Shouldn't wonder ef they did," said Rod. The yellow horse had
hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as they stood in
a group, and was swaying his head close to the ground with a
curious scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked
eyes.  You can never mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock
a man down. We had had one to pasture the year before.

"See that?" said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles.
"Nice for a woman walking 'cross lots, wouldn't it be?"

"Bring 'em out!" said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back.
"There's no chance among them tall trees. Bring out the - oh!
Ouch!"

It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon.  I had no idea that
the old car-horse could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the
yellow horse full and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath
out of him.

"What's that for?" he said angrily, when he recovered himself;
but I noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was
necessary.

Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining
grunt that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a
heavy load. We call it singing; but I think it's something much
worse, really. The yellow horse blustered and squealed a little,
and at last said that, if it was a horse-fly that had stung
Muldoon, he would accept an apology.

"You'll get it," said Muldoon, "in de sweet by-and-bye - all de
apology you've any use for. Excuse me interruptin' you, Mr. Rod,
but I'm like Tweezy - I've a Southern drawback in me hind legs."

"Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an' you'll learn
something," Rod went on. "This yaller-backed skate comes to our
pastur'-"

"Not havin' paid his board," put in Tedda.

"Not havin' earned his board, an' talks smooth to us abaout
ripplin' brooks an' wavin' grass, an' his high-toned,
pure-souled horsehood, which don't hender him sheddin' women an'
childern, an' fallin' over the dash onter men. You heard his
talk, an' you thought it mighty fine, some o' you."

Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.

"Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard."

"I was talkin' in the abstrac'," said the yellow horse, in an
altered voice.

"Abstrac' be switched! Ez I've said, it's this yer blamed
abstrac' business that makes the young uns cut up in the
Concord; an' abstrac' or no abstrac', he crep' on an' on till he
come to killin' plain an' straight - killin' them as never done
him no harm, jest beca'se they owned horses."

"An' knowed how to manage 'em," said Tedda. That makes it worse."

Waal, he didn't kill 'em, anyway," said Marcus. "He'd ha' been
half killed ef he had tried."

"'Makes no differ," Rod answered. "He meant to; an' ef he hadn't
- s'pose we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin'-ground
on our only day er rest? 'S'pose we want our men walkin' round
with bits er lead pipe an' a twitch, an' their hands full o'
stones to throw at us, same 's if we wuz hogs er hooky keows?
More'n that, leavin' out Tedda here - an' I guess it's more her
maouth than her manners stands in her light -there ain't a horse
on this farm that ain't a woman's horse, an' proud of it. An'
this yer bogspavined Kansas sunflower goes up an' daown the
length o' the country, traded off an' traded on, boastin' as
he's shed women --an' childern. I don't say as a woman in a buggy
ain't a fool. I don't say as she ain't the lastin'est kind er
fool, ner I don't say a child ain't worse - spattin' the lines
an' standin' up an' hollerin' - but I do say, 'tain't none of
our business to shed 'em daown the road.""We don't," said the
Deacon. "The baby tried to git some o' my tail for a sooveneer
last fall when I was up to the haouse, an' I didn't kick. Boney's
talk ain't goin' to hurt us any. We ain't colts."

"Thet's what you think Bimeby you git into a tight corner,
'Lection day er Valley Fair, like 's not, daown-taown, when
you're all het an' lathery, an' pestered with flies, an'
thirsty, an' sick o' bein' worked in an aout 'tween buggies.
Then somethin' whispers inside o' your winkers, bringin' up all
that talk abaout servitood an' inalienable truck an' sech like,
an' jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your wheels hit, an' -
waal, you're only another horse ez can't be trusted. I've been
there time an' again. Boys - fer I've seen you all bought er
broke - on my solemn repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain't
givin' you no bran-mash o' my own fixin'. I'm tellin' you my
experiences, an' I've had ez heavy a load an' ez high a check 's
any horse here. I wuz born with a splint on my near fore ez big
's a walnut, an' the cussed, three-cornered Hambletonian temper
that sours up an' curdles daown ez you git older. I've favoured
my splint; even little Rick he don't know what it's cost me to
keep my end up sometimes; an' I've fit my temper in stall an'
harness, hitched up an' at pasture, till the sweat trickled off
my hooves, an' they thought I wuz off condition, an' drenched
me."

"When my affliction came," said Tweezy, gently, "I was very near
to losin' my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy,
suh."

Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a
sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don't think
he quite understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a
horse should.

"I've been there too, Rod," said Tedda. "Open confession's good
for the soul, an' all Monroe County knows I've had my
experriences."

"But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson"-Tweezy looked
unspeakable things aat the yellow horse - "that pusson who has
insulted our intelligences comes from Kansas. An' what a ho'se
of his position, an' Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch
of the halter, concern gentlemen of our position. There's no
shadow of equal'ty, suh, not even for one kick. He's beneath our
contempt."

"Let him talk," said Marcus. "It's always interestin' to know
what another horse thinks. It don't tech us."

"An' he talks so, too," said Tuck. "I've never heard anythin' so
smart for a long time."

Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as
though he were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a
thirty-mile drive:

"I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain't no Kansas,
ner no Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in our business. There's
jest two kind o' horse in the United States-them ez can an' will
do their work after bein' properly broke an' handled, an' them as
won't. I'm sick an' tired o' this everlastin' tail-switchin' an'
wickerin' abaout one State er another. A horse kin be proud o'
his State, an' swap lies abaout it in stall or when he's hitched
to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time that way; but he
hain't no right to let that pride o' hisn interfere with his
work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin' he's different.
That's colts' talk, an' don't you fergit it, Tweezy. An',
Marcus,you remember that hem' a philosopher, an' anxious to save
trouble,- fer you ate,- don't excuse you from jumpin' with all
your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like Boney here. It's
leavin' 'em alone that gives 'em their chance to ruin colts an'
kill folks. An', Tuck, waal, you're a mare anyways - but when a
horse comes along an' covers up all his talk o' killin' with
ripplin' brooks, an wavin grass, an' eight quarts of oats a day
free, after killn' his man, don't you be run away with by his
yap. You're too young an' too nervous."

"I'll - I'll have nervous prostration sure ef there's a fight
here," said Tuck, who saw what was in Rod's eye; "I'm - I'm that
sympathetic I'd run away clear to next caounty."

"Yep; I know that kind o' sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to
start a fuss, an' then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain't
been ten years in harness fer nuthin'. Naow, we're goin' to keep
school with Boney fer a spell."

"Say, look a-here, you ain't goin' to hurt me, are you?
Remember, I belong to a man in town," cried the yellow horse,
uneasily. Muldoon kept behind him so that he could not run away.

"I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State
hez a right to the loose end o' your hitchin'-strap.  I'm blame
sorry fer him, but he shall hev his rights when we're through
with you," said Rod.

If it's all the same, gentlemen, I'd ruther change pasture.
'Guess I'll do it now."

"'Can't always have your 'druthers. 'Guess you won't," said Rod.

"But look a-here. All of you ain't so blame unfriendly to a
stranger.  S'pose we count noses."

"What in Vermont fer?" said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The
idea of settling a question by counting noses is the very last
thing that ever enters the head of a well-broken horse.

"To see how many's on my side.  Here's Miss Tuck, anyway; an'
Colonel Tweezy yonder's neutral; an' Judge Marcus, an' I guess
the Reverend [the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that
I had my rights.  He's the likeliest-lookin' Trotter I've ever
set eyes on.  Pshaw. Boys. You ain't goin' to pound me, be
youyou?  Why, we've gone round in pasture, all colts together,
this month ' Sundays, hain't we, as friendly as could be. There
ain't a horse alive I don't care who he is - has a higher
opinion o' you, Mr. Rod, than I have.  Let's do it fair an' true
an' above the exe.  Let's count noses same 's they do in
Kansas."  Here he dropped his voice a little and turned to
Marcus: "Say, Judge, there's some green food I know, back o' the
brook, no one hain't touched yet. After this little fracas is
fixed up, you an' me'll make up a party an' 'tend to it."Marcus
did not answer for a long time, then he said:  "There's a pup up
to the haouse 'bout eight weeks old. He'll yap till he gits a
lickin', an' when he sees it comin' he lies on his back, an'
yowls. But he don't go through no cirkituous nose-countin' first.
I've seen a noo light sence Rod spoke. You'll better stand up to
what's served. I'm goin' to philosophise all over your carcass."

I'm goin' to do yer up in brown paper," said Muldoon.  "I can fit

you on apologies."

"Hold on.  Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you've been
so dead anxious to kill 'u'd call us off. 'Guess we'll wait till
they go back to the haouse, an' you'll have time to think cool
an' quiet," said Rod.

"Have you no respec' whatever fer the dignity o' our common
horsehood?" the yellow horse squealed.

"Nary respec' onless the horse kin do something. America's paved
with the kind er horse you are -jist plain yaller-dog horse -
waitin' ter be whipped inter shape. We call 'em yearlings an'
colts when they're young.  When they're aged we pound 'em - in
this pastur'.  Horse, sonny, is what you start from.  We know all
about horse here, an' he ain't any high-toned, pure souled child
o' nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is chock-full o'
tricks, an' meannesses, an' cussednesses, an' shirkin's, an'
monkey-shines, which he's took over from his sire an' his dam,
an' thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o' goin'
crooked. Thet's horse, an' thet's about his dignity an' the size
of his soul 'fore he's been broke an' rawhided a piece. Now we
ain't goin' to give ornery unswitched horse, that hain't done
nawthin' wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet names
that would be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum,
who hev. Don't you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait where
you are! Ef I let my Hambletonian temper git the better o' me I'd
frazzle you out finer than rye-straw inside o' three minutes, you
woman-scarin', kid-killin', dash-breakin', unbroke, unshod,
ungaited, pastur'-hoggin', saw-backed, shark-mouthed,
hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an' a
sewin'-machine!"

" I think we'd better get home," I said to my companion, when Rod
had finished; and we climbed into the coupe, Tedda whinnying, as
we bumped over the ledges: "Well, I'm dreffle sorry I can't stay
fer the sociable; but I hope an' trust my friends'll take a
ticket fer me."

"Bet your natchul!" said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses
scattered before us, trotting into the ravine.

Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of
the yellow horse.  It seemed tired, but anxious to go.

End of "A WALKING DELEGATE"



THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer
of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind,
the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in
framework and machinery; and her designers and owner thought as
much of her as though she had been the Lucania. Any one can make
a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money
into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms,
and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights
every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness,
great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was,
perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet
wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her
main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great
glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her
holds. Her owners -they were a very well known Scotch firm came
round with her from the north, where she had been launched and
christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo
for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and
fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass
work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong,
straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of champagne
when she named the steamer the Dimbula.  It was a beautiful
September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness  she was
painted lead-colour with a red funnel - looked very fine indeed.
Her house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time
acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was
new to the High and Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.

"And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, "she's
a real ship, isn't she?  It seems only the other day father gave
the order for her, and now - and now - isn't she a beauty!" The
girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were the
controlling partner.

"Oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously.  "But I'm
sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship. In
the nature o' things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she's just
irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship. She has
to find herself yet."

"I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.""So she
is, said the skipper, with a laugh. "But it's this way wi'
ships, Miss Frazier.  She's all here, but the parrts of her have
not learned to work together yet. They've had no chance."

"The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them."

"Yes, indeed. But there's more than engines to a ship.  Every
inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to
work wi' its neighbour - sweetenin' her, we call it,
technically."

"And how will you do it?" the girl asked.

"We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we
have rough weather this trip - it's likely - she'll learn the
rest by heart!  For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in
no sense a reegid body closed at both ends. She's a highly
complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi'
tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal
modulus of elasteecity."  Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, was
coming towards them. "I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier, here, that our
little Dimbula has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale
will do it.  How's all wi'  your engines, Buck?"

"Well enough - true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no
spontaneeity yet."  He turned to the girl. "Take my word, Miss
Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty
girl's christened a ship it does not follow that there's such a
thing as a ship under the men  that work her."

"I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan," the skipper
interrupted.

"That's more metaphysical than I can follow," said Miss Frazier,
laughing.

"Why so?  Ye're good Scotch, an'- I knew your mother's father, he
was fra' Dumfries - ye've a vested right in metapheesics, Miss
Frazier, just as ye have in the Dimbula," the engineer said.

"Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss
Frazier her deevidends.  Will you not come to my cabin for tea?"
said the skipper.  "We'll be in dock the night, and when you're
goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an'
drivin' her forth - all for your sake."

In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons
dead-weight into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool.
As soon as she met the lift of the open water, she naturally
began to talk.  If you lay your ear to the side of the cabin,
the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of
little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and
whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking
exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm.  Wooden ships
shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver
through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The
Dimbula was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a
letter or a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had
been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had
lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months.
Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in exact
proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it.  Cast-iron, as
a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and
wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and
welded and riveted, talk continuously.  Their conversation, of
course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they are
all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in
a black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near
them, nor what will overtake them next.

As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed
old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight
bows, and sat down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the
anchor.  Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been
newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes being
ducked.

"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the
teeth of his cogs.  "Hi! Where's the fellow gone?"

The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but
"Plenty more where he came from," said a brother-wave, and went
through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron
plate on the iron deck-beams below.

"Can't you keep still up there?" said the deckbeams.  "What's the
matter with you?  One minute you weigh twice as much as you
ought to, and the next you don't!"

"It isn't my fault," said the capstan. "There's a green brute
outside that comes and hits me on the head."

"Tell that to the shipwrights. You've been in position for months
and you've never wriggled like this before.  If you aren't
careful you'll strain us."

"Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, are
any of you fellows - you deck-beams, we mean - aware that those
exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our
structure - ours?"

"Who might you be?" the deck-beams inquired.

"Oh, nobody in particular," was the answer. "We're only the port
and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in
heaving and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled
to take steps."

Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak,
that run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames
(what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help
to hold the ends of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of
the ship.  Stringers always consider themselves most important,
because they are so long.

"You will take steps - will you?"  This was a long echoing
rumble.  It came from the frames - scores and scores of them,
each one about eighteen inches  distant from the next, and each
riveted to the stringers in four places. "We think you will have
a certain amount of trouble in that"; and thousands and
thousands of the little rivets that held everything together
whispered: "You  Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet.
Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What's that?"

Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but
they did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship
from stern to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's
mouth.

An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the
big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning
round in a kind of soda-water - half sea and half air - going
much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for
it to work in.  As it sank again, the engines - and they were
triple expansion, three cylinders in a row - snorted through all
their three pistons. "Was that a joke, you fellow outside?It's an
uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work if you fly off the

handle that way?"

"I didn't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling huskily
at the end of the screw-shaft. "If I had, you'd have been
scrap-iron by this time. The sea dropped away from under me, and
I had nothing to catch on to.  That's all."

That's all, d'you call it?" said the thrust-block, whose
business it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had
nothing to hold it back it would crawl right into the
engine-room.  (It is the holding back of the screwing action
that gives the drive to a ship.)  "I know I do my work deep down
and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I ask for
is bare justice. Why can't you push steadily and evenly, instead
of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my
collars?"  The thrust-block had six collars, each faced with
brass, and he did not wish to get them heated.

All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as
it ran to the stern whispered: "Justice - give us justice."

"I can only give you what I can get," the screw answered.  "Look
out! It's coming again!"

He rose with a roar as the Dimbula plunged, and "whack - flack -
whack - whack" went the engines, furiously, for they had little
to check them.

"I'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity - Mr. Buchanan says
so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder.  "This is simply
ridiculous!" The piston went up savagely, and choked, for half
the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler!
Fitter! Stoker! Help I'm choking," it gasped."Never in the
history of maritime invention has such a calamity over-taken one
so young and strong. And if I go, who's to drive the ship?"

"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been
to sea many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in
a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or
anywhere else where water was needed. "That's only a little
priming, a little carrying-over, as they call it.  It'll happen
all night, on and off.  I don't say it's nice, but it's the best
we can do under the circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make ~. I'm here to do my work
- on clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.

"The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've worked on the
North Atlantic run a good many times - it's going to be rough
before morning."

"It isn't distressingly calm now," said the extra strong frames -
they were called web-frames - in the engine-room.  "There's an
upward thrust that we don't understand, and there's a twist that
is very bad for our brackets and diamond- plates, and there's a
sort of west-northwesterly pull, that follows the twist,  which
seriously annoys us. We mention this because we happened to cost
a good  deal of money, and we feel sure that the owner would not
approve of our being treated in this frivolous way."

I'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hands for the present,"
said the Steam, slipping into the condenser.  "You're left to
your own devices till the weather betters."

"I wouldn't mind the weather," said a flat bass voice below;
"it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart.  I'm the
garboard-strake, and I'm twice as thick as most of the others,
and I ought to know something."

The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship,
and the Dimbula's garboardstrake was nearly three-quarters of an
inch mild steel.

"The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected," the
strake grunted, "and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the
two, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the Steam, making head in the
boilers.

"Yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and
how do I know whether the other plates are doing their duty?
Those bulwark-plates up above, I've heard, ain't more than
five-sixteenths of an inch thick -scandalous, I call it."

"I agree with you," said a huge web-frame, by the main
cargo-hatch.  He was deeper and thicker than all the others, and
curved half-way across the ship in the shape of half an arch, to
support the deck where deck-beams would have been in the way of
cargo coming up and down. "I work entirely unsupported, and I
observe that I am the sole strength of this vessel, so far as my
vision extends.  The responsibility, I assure you, is enormous.
I believe the money-value of the cargo is over one hundred and
fifty thousand pounds. Think of that!"

"And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions."
Here spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water
outside, and was seated not very far from the garboard-strake.
"I rejoice to think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para
rubber facings. Five patents cover me - I mention this without
pride - five separate and several patents, each one finer than
the other.  At present I am screwed fast. Should I open, you
would immediately be swamped. This is incontrovertible!"

Patent things always use the longest words they can.  It is a
trick that they pick up from their inventors.

"That's news," said a big centrifugal bilge-pump.  "I had an idea
that you were employed to clean decks and things with.  At
least, I've used you for that more than once.  I forget the
precise number, in thousands, of gallons which I am guaranteed
to throw per hour; but I assure you, my complaining friends,
that there is not the least danger.  I alone am capable of
clearing any water that may find its way here.  By my Biggest
Deliveries, we pitched then!"

The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead
westerly gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky,
narrowed on all sides by fat, grey clouds; and the wind bit like
pincers as it fretted the spray into lacework on the flanks of
the waves.

"I tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down its
wire-stays.  "I'm up here, and I can take a dispassionate view
of things.  There's an organised conspiracy against us.  I'm
sure of it, because every single one of these waves is heading
directly for our bows. The whole sea is concerned in it - and
so's the wind.  It's awful!"

"What's awful?" said a wave, drowning the capstan for the
hundredth time.

"This organised conspiracy on your part," the capstan gurgled,
taking his cue from the mast."Organised bubbles and spindrift!
There has been a depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!" He
leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one after
another.

"Which has advanced - "That wave hove green water over the
funnel.

"As far as Cape Hatteras -" He drenched the bridge.

"And is now going out to sea - to sea - to sea!" The third went
out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which
turned bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside,
while the broken falls whipped the davits.

"That's all there is to it," seethed the white water roaring
through the scuppers. " There's no animus in our proceedings.
We're only meteorological corollaries."

"Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor chained down
to the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.

"'Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight.
Thanks awfully. Good-bye."

The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft,
and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a
well-deck sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates,
which was hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and
passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with a clean
smack.

"Evidently that's what I'm made for," said the plate, closing
again with a sputter of pride. "Oh, no, you don't, my friend!"

The top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as
the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated water
spurted back.

"Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark-plate.
"My work, I see, is laid down for the night"; and it began
opening and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion
of the ship.

"We are not what you might call idle," groaned all the frames
together, as the Dimbula climbed a big wave, lay on her side at
the top, and shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent.
A huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle, and her bow and
stern hung free with nothing to support them. Then one joking
wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the stern, while
the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see how
she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and
the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning
iron keels and bilge-stringers.

"Ease off! Ease off; there!" roared the garboard-strake. "I want
one-eighth of an inch fair play. D' you hear me, you rivets!"

"Ease off! Ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers. "Don't hold us
so  tight to the frames!"

"Ease off!" grunted the deck-beams, as the Dimbula rolled
fearfully. "You've cramped our knees into the stringers, and we
can't move. Ease off; you flat-headed little nuisances."

Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell
away in torrents of streaming thunder.

"Ease off!" shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. "I want to
crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off; you
dirty little forge-filings. Let me breathe!"

All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and
make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for
each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate,
according to its position, complained against the rivets.

"We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured in reply.
"We're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it; you never
pull us twice in the same direction. If you'd say what you were
going to do next, we'd try to meet your views.

"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that
was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or
pulling in opposite directions. Now, what's the sense of that? My
friends, let us all pull together."

"Pull any way you please," roared the funnel, "so long as you
don't try your experiments on me. I need fourteen wire-ropes,
all pulling in different directions, to hold me steady.  Isn't
that so?"

We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel-stays through their
clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the
funnel to the deck.

"Nonsense!  We must all pull together," the decks repeated.
"Pull lengthways."

"Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when
you get wet.  Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and
curve in at the ends as we do."

"No - no curves at the end.  A very slight workmanlike curve from

side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces
welded on," said the deck-beams.

"Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold.  "Who
ever heard of curves?  Stand up straight; be a perfectly round
column, and carry tons of good solid weight - like that! There!"
A big sea smashed on the deck above, and the pillars stiffened
themselves to the load.

"Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames, who ran that
way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand
yourselves sideways. Expansion is the law of life, children.
Open out! open out!"

"Come back!" said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave
of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your
bearings, you slack-jawed irons!"

"Rigidity!  Rigidity!  Rigidity!" thumped the engines. "Absolute,
unvarying rigidity -rigidity!"

"You see!" whined the rivets, in chorus. "No two of you will ever
pull alike, and - and you blame it all on us. We only know how
to go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it
can't, and mustn't, and sha'n't move."

"I've got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate," said the
garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of
the ship felt the easier for it.

"Then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets. "We were ordered
- we were ordered -never to give; and we've given, and the sea
will come in, and we'll all go to the bottom together! First
we're blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we haven't the
consolation of having done our work."

"Don't say I told you," whispered the Steam, consolingly; "but,
between  you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound
to happen sooner or later. You had to give a fraction, and
you've given without knowing it. Now, hold on, as before."

"What's the use?" a few hundred rivets chattered. "We've given -
we've given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the
ship together, and go off our little heads, the easier it will
be. No rivet forged can stand this strain."

"No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you," the Steam
answered."The others can have my share. I'm going to pull out,"
said a rivet in one of the forward plates.

"If you go, others will follow," hissed the Steam.  "There's
nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a
little chap like you - he was an eighth of an inch fatter,
though - on a steamer - to be sure, she was only twelve hundred
tons, now I come to think of it in exactly the same place as you
are.  He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as
bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same
butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and I had
to climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down."

"Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fatter than
me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little
peg! I blush for the family, sir." He settled himself more
firmly than ever in his place, and the Steam chuckled.

"You see," he went on, quite gravely, " a rivet, and especially a
rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of
the ship."

The Steam did not say that be had whispered the very same thing
to every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in
telling too much.

And all that while the little Dimbula pitched and chopped, and
swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die,
and got up as  though she had been stung, and threw her nose
round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for
the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite of the
tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the
rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand
before your face. This did not make much difference to the
ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.

"Now it's all finished," he said dismally. "The conspiracy is too
strong for us. There is nothing left but to -"

"Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!" roared the Steam through the
fog-horn, till the decks quivered. "Don't be frightened, below.
It's only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one
happens to be rolling round to-night."

"You don't mean to say there's any one except us on the sea in
such weather?" said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.

"Scores of 'em," said the Steam, clearing its throat. "Rrrrrraaa!
Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It's a trifle windy up here; and, Great
Boilers! how it rains!"

"We're drowning," said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing
else all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed
to be the end of the world.

"That's all right. We'll be easier in an hour or two. First the
wind and then the rain: Soon you may make sail again!
Grrraaaaaah! Drrrraaaa! Drrrp! I have a notion that the sea is
going down already.  If it does you'll learn something about
rolling.  We've only pitched till now. By the way, aren't you
chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?"

There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was
not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she
did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave
with a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced
golf-club.

"We have made a most amazing discovery," said the stringers, one
after another. "A discovery that entirely changes the situation.
We have found, for the first time in the history of
ship-building, that the inward pull of the deck-beams and the
outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely
in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is
entirely without parallel in the records of marine
architecture."

The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn.
"What  massive intellects you great stringers have," he said
softly, when he had finished.

"We also," began the deck-beams, "are discoverers and geniuses.
We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars
materially helps us.  We find that we lock up on them when we
are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above."

Here the Dimbula shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side;
righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.

"In these cases - are you aware of this, Steam? - the plating at
the bows, and particularly at the stern - we would also mention
the floors beneath us - help us to resist any tendency to
spring." The frames spoke, in the solemn awed voice which people
use when they have just come across something entirely new for
the very first time.

"I'm only a poor puffy little flutterer," said the Steam, "but I
have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It's all
tremendously interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so
strong."

"Watch us and you'll see," said the bow-plates, proudly.  "Ready,
behind there!  Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit
tight, rivets all!" A great sluicing comber thundered by, but
through the scuffle and confusion the Steam could hear the low,
quick cries of the ironwork as the various strains took them -
cries like these: "Easy, now - easy! Now push for all your
strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove
crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip, now! Bite tight!
Let the water get away from under - and there she goes!"

The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, "Not bad, that,
if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship
throbbed to the beat of the engines inside her. All three
cylinders were white with the salt spray that had come down
through the engine-room hatch; there was white fur on the
canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep below
was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make
the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along
cheerfully.

"How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?" said
the Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room.

"Nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the cylinders
answered, as though they had been working for centuries, "and
precious little for seventy-five pounds head. We've made two
knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather humiliating for eight
hundred horse-power, isn't it?"

"Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem
rather less - how shall I put it - stiff in the back than you
were."

"If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you wouldn't be
stiff- iff- iff; either. Theoreti - retti - retti - cally, of
course, rigidity is the thing. Purrr - purr - practically, there
has to be a little give and take. We found that out by working on
our sides for five minutes at a stretch - chch - chh. How's the
weather?"

"'Sea's going down fast," said the Steam.

"Good business," said the high-pressure cylinder. "Whack her up,
boys. They've given us five pounds more steam"; and he began
humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old
Obadiah," which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among
engines not built for high speed. Racing-liners with twin-screws
sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze
Horse," and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then
they render Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," with
variations.

"You'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the Steam,
as he flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.

Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the
Dimbula began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron
in her was sick and giddy.But luckily they did not all feel ill
at the same time: otherwise she would have opened out like a wet
paper box.

The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is
in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea
that most of the accidents happen, for then everything thinks
that the worst is over and goes off guard.  So he orated and
chattered till the beams and frames and floors and stringers and
things had learned how to lock down and lock up on one another,
and endure this new kind of strain.

They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at
sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New
York.  The Dimbula picked up her pilot, and came in covered with
salt and red rust.  Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to
bottom; two boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators
looked like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a
dimple in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam
steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for
small repairs in the engine-room almost as long as the
screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when
they raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been
badly wrenched on its bed.  Altogether, as the skipper said, it
was "a pretty general average."

"But she's soupled," he said to Mr. Buchanan. "For all her
dead-weight she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off
the Banks - I am proud of her, Buck."

"It's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking along the
dishevelled decks. "Now, a man judgin' superfeecially would say
we were a wreck, but we know otherwise - by experience."

Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened with pride,
and the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are
pushing creatures, begged the Steam to warn the Port of New York
of their arrival. "Tell those big boats all about us," they said.
"They seem to take us quite as a matter of course."

It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file,
with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing and
their tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the
Majestic, the Paris, the Touraine, the Servia, the Kaiser
Wilhelm II, and the Werkendam, all statelily going out to sea. As
the Dimbula shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way,
the Steam (who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition
of himself now and then) shouted:Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes,
Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye by these presents,
we are the Dimbula, fifteen days nine hours from Liverpool,
having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for
the first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are
here. 'Eer! 'Eer! We are not disabled. But we have had a time
wholly unparalieled in the annals of ship-building! Our decks
were swept! We pitched; we rolled! We thought we were going to
die! Hi! Hi? But we didn't. We wish to give notice that we have
come to New York all the way across the Atlantic, through the
worst weather in the world; and we are the Dimbula! We are - arr
- ha - ha - ha-r-r-r!"

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the
procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic say,
"Hmph!" and the Paris grunted, "How!" and the Touraine said,
"Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the Servia
said, "Haw!" and the Kaiser and the Werkendam said, "Hoch!" Dutch
fashion - and that was absolutely all.

"I did my best," said the Steam, gravely, "but I don't think they
were much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?"

"It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "They might have
seen what we've been through. There isn't a ship on the sea that
has suffered as we have - is there, now?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the Steam, "because
I've worked on some of those boats, and sent them through
weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we've had, in six
days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, I
believe. Now I've seen the Majestic, for instance, ducked from
her bows to her funnel; and I've helped the Arizona, I think she
was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and I
had to run out of the Paris's engine-room, one day, because
there was thirty foot of water in it.  Of course, I don't deny -"
The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a
political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York
Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken.
There was a long silence that reached, without a break, from the
cut-water to the propeller-blades of the Dimbula.

Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the
owner had just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have made a
fool of myself"

The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds
herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts
into one voice, which is the soul of the ship.

"Who are you?" he said, with a laugh.

"I am the Dimbula, of course.  I've never been anything else
except that - and a fool!"

The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got
away just in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a
popular but impolite air:

 In the days of old Rameses - are you on?In the days of old
Rameses - are you on?In the days of old Rameses,That story had
paresis,Are you on - are you on - are you on?

"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the Steam. "To tell
the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and
stringers. Here's Quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf
and clean up a little, and - next month we'll do it all over
again."

END OF THE "THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF"



THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS

Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of
bread in all India it would be divided equally between the
Plowdens, the Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That
is only one way of saying that certain families serve India
generation after generation, as dolphins follow in line across
the open sea.

Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one
representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India
since the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the
Bombay European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of
Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's younger
brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to
1813, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834 John Chinn of
the same family - we will call him John Chinn the First - came to
light as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a
place called Mundesur. He died young, but left his mark on the
new country, and the Honourable the Board of Directors of the
Honourable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a
stately resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among
the Satpura hills.

He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little
old Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the
Mutiny. He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty
miles of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a
regiment of small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his
father. His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed,
mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from
the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish
country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years and retired.
In the Canal his steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship,
carrying his son eastward to the family duty.

The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly
what they must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil
Service, and gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad
to see him. A dull Chinn enters the Police Department or the
Woods and Forest, and sooner or later he, too, appears in
Central India, and that is what gave rise to the saying,
"Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all
very much alike." The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent,
and the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second
was rather clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army,
according to Chinn tradition. His duty was to abide in his
father's regiment for the term of his natural life, though the
corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid.
They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish, clothed in
rifle-green with black-leather trimmings; and friends called them
the "Wuddars," which means a race of low-caste people who dig up
rats to eat. But the Wuddars did not resent it. They were the
only Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:

Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native
regiment. Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade,
as is the general rule, but walked at the head of their men. A
man who can hold his own with the Wuddars at their quickstep must
be sound in wind and limb. Thirdly, they were the most pukka
shikarries (out-and-out hunters) in all India. Fourthly-up to
one-hundredthly - they were the Wuddars -Chinn's Irregular Bhil
Levies of the old days, but now, henceforward and for ever, the
Wuddars.

No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through
family usage. The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue
not two hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were
their children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the
strangest of the many strange races in India. They were, and at
heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions.
The races whom we call natives of the country found the Bhil in
possession of the land when they first broke into that part of
the world thousands of years ago. The books call them Pre-Aryan,
Aboriginal, Dravidian, and so forth; and, in other words, that is
what the Bhils call themselves. When a Rajput chief whose bards
can sing his pedigree backwards for twelve hundred years is set
on the throne, his investiture is not complete till he has been
marked on the forehead with blood from the veins of a Bhil. The
Rajputs say the ceremony has no meaning, but the Bhil knows that
it is the last, last shadow of his old rights as the long-ago
owner of the soil.

Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and
half-crazy thief and cattle-stealer, and when the English came
he seemed to be almost as open to civilisation as the tigers of
his own jungles.  But John Chinn the First, father of Lionel,
grandfather of our John, went into his country, lived with him,
learned his language, shot the deer that stole his poor crops,
and won his confidence, so that some Bhils learned to plough and
sow, while others were coaxed into the Company's service to
police their friends.

When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant
execution, they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing
kind of sport, and were zealous to keep the wild Bhils under
control. That was the thin edge of the wedge. John Chinn the
First gave them written promises that, if they were good from a
certain date, the Government would overlook previous offences;
and since John Chinn was never known to break his word - he
promised once to hang a Bhil locally esteemed invulnerable, and
hanged him in front of his tribe for seven proved murders - the
Bhils settled down as steadily as they knew how. It was slow,
unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India
to-day; and though John Chinn's only reward came, as I have
said, in the shape of a grave at Government expense, the little
people of the hills never forgot him.

Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very
fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of
them could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo
farmers; but in the south, where John Chinn the First was
buried, the wildest still clung to the Satpura ranges, cherishing
a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him, would
return to his own.  In the mean time they mistrusted the white
man and his ways. The least excitement would stampede them,
plundering, at random, and now and then killing; but if they
were handled discreetly they grieved like children, and promised
never to do it again.

The Bhils of the regiment - the uniformed men - were virtuous in
many ways, but they needed humouring.  They felt bored and
homesick unless taken after tiger as beaters; and their
cold-blooded daring - all Wuddars shoot tigers on foot: it is
their caste-mark - made even the officers wonder. They would
follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were a
sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of
caves and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen
men at his mercy. Now and then some little man was brought to
barracks with his head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his
companions never learned caution; they contented themselves with
settling the tiger.

Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars'
lonely mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his
gun-cases cascading all round him. The slender little,
hookey-nosed boy looked forlorn as a strayed goat when he
slapped the white dust off his knees, and the cart jolted down
the glaring road.  But in his heart he was contented.  After
all, this was the place where he had been born, and things were
not much changed since he had been sent to England, a child,
fifteen years ago.

There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the
sunshine were the same; and the little green men who crossed the
parade-ground looked very familiar.  Three weeks ago John Chinn
would have said he did not remember a word of the Bhil tongue,
but at the mess door he found his lips moving in sentences that
he did not understand - bits of old nursery rhymes, and tail-ends
of such orders as his father used to give the men.

The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.

"Look!" he said to the Major.  "No need to ask the young un's
breed.  He's a pukka Chinn. 'Might be his father in the Fifties
over again."

"'Hope he'll shoot as straight," said the Major. "He's brought
enough ironmongery with him."

"'Wouldn't be a Chinn if he didn't.  Watch him blowin' his nose.
'Regular Chinn beak. 'Flourishes his handkerchief like his
father.  It's the second edition - line for line."

"'Fairy tale, by Jove!" said the Major, peering through the slats
of the jalousies.  "If he's the lawful heir, he'll . . . .  Now
old Chinn could no more pass that chick without fiddling with it
than . . . .

"His son!" said the Colonel, jumping up.

"Well, I be blowed!" said the Major.  The boy's eye had been
caught by a split-,reed screen that hung on a slew between the
veranda pillars, and, mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to
set it level.  Old Chinn had sworn three times a day at that
screen for many years; he could never get it to his satisfaction.

His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold
silence.  They made him welcome for his father's sake and, as
they took stock of him, for his own.  He was ridiculously like
the portrait of the Colonel on the wall, and when he had washed
a little of the dust from his throat he went to his quarters with
the old man's short, noiseless jungle-step.

"So much for heredity," said the Major. "That comes of four
generations among the Bhils."

"And the men know it," said a Wing officer. "They've been waiting
for this youth with their tongues hanging out.  I am persuaded
that, unless he absolutely beats 'em over the head, they'll lie
down by companies and worship him."

"Nothin' like havin' a father before you," said the Major.  "I'm
a parvenu with my chaps.  I've only been twenty years in the
regiment, and my revered parent he was a simple squire.  There's
no getting at the bottom of a Bhil's mind.  Now, why is the
superior bearer that young Chinn brought with him fleeing across
country with his bundle?"  He stepped into the verandah, and
shouted after the man - a typical new-joined subaltern's servant
who speaks English and cheats in proportion.

What is it?" he called.

Plenty bad man here.  I going, sar," was the reply.  "'Have taken
Sahib's keys, and say will shoot."

Doocid lucid - doocid convincin'. How those up-country thieves
can leg it!  He has been badly frightened by some one." The
Major strolled to his quarters to dress for mess.

Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass
round the entire cantonment before going to his own tiny
cottage. The captain's quarters, in which he had been born,
delayed him for a little; then he looked at the well on the
parade-ground, where he had sat of evenings with his nurse, and
at the ten-by-fourteen church, where the officers went to
service if a chaplain of any official creed happened to come
along. It seemed very small as compared with the gigantic
buildings he used to stare up at, but it was the same place.

>From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who
saluted. They might have been the very men who had carried him
on their backs when he was in his first knickerbockers. A faint
light burned in his room, and, as he entered, hands clasped his
feet, and a voice murmured from the floor.

"Who is it?" said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil
tongue.

"I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you
were a small one - crying, crying, crying!  I am your servant,
as I was your father's before you.  We are all your servants."

Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went
on:

"I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him
away; and the studs are in the shirt for mess.  Who should know,
if I do not know? And so the baby has become a man, and forgets
his nurse; but my nephew shall make a good servant, or I will
beat him twice a day."

Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a
little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders
on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling.  Behind him a
young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of
Chinn's mess-boots.

Chinn's eyes were full of tears.  The old man held out his keys.

"Foreigners are bad people.  He will never come back again.  We
are all servants of your father's son.  Has the Sahib forgotten
who took him to see the trapped tiger in the village across the
river, when his mother was so frightened and he was so brave?"

The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes.
"Bukta!" he cried; and all in a breath: "You promised nothing
should hurt me. Is it Bukta?"

The man was at his feet a second time. "He has not forgotten.  He
remembers his own people as his father remembered.  Now can I
die.  But first I will live and show the Sahib how to kill
tigers.  That that yonder is my nephew.  If he is not a good
servant, beat him and send him to me, and I will surely kill him,
for now the Sahib is with his own people.  Ai, Jan haba - Jan
haba! My Jan haba!  I will stay here and see that this does his
work well.  Take off his boots, fool. Sit down upon the bed,
Sahib, and let me look.  It is Jan haba."

He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service,
which is an honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals,
or to little children whom one loves dearly.  Chinn touched the
hilt mechanically with three fingers, muttering he knew not
what.  It happened to be the old answer of his childhood, when
Bukta in jest called him the little General Sahib.

The Major's quarters were opposite Chinn's, and when he heard his
servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room.  Then the
Major sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the
senior native commissioned officer of the regiment, an "unmixed"
Bhil, a Companion of the Order of British India, with
thirty-five years' spotless service in the army, and a rank
among his own people superior to that of many Bengal
princelings, valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little
too much for his nerves.

The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend
behind it.  First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of
beaters in a far-away cover, and next, large, full, and smooth,
the refrain of the wild song: "And oh, and oh, the green pulse
of Mundore - Mundore!"

"All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call
last," said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call
brought back memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his
mother's kiss, and the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he
dropped asleep among his men.  So he hooked the dark collar of
his new mess-jacket, and went to dinner like a prince who has
newly inherited his father's crown.

Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own
value, and no money and no rank within the gift of the
Government would have induced him to put studs in young
officers' shirts, or to hand them clean ties.  Yet, when he took
off his uniform that night, and squatted among his fellows for a
quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and they said that he
was entirely right.  Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a
white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the whispering,
level-headed little men of war considered it from every point of
view, and thought that there might be a great deal in it.

At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the
unfailing subject of shikar - big game-shooting of every kind
and under all sorts of conditions.  Young Chinn opened his eyes
when he understood that each one of his companions had shot
several tigers in the Wuddar style - on foot, that is - making no
more of the business than if the brute had been a dog.

"In nine cases out of ten," said the Major, "a tiger is almost as
dangerous as a porcupine.  But the tenth time you come home feet
first."

That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn's brain was
in a whirl with stories of tigers - man-eaters and
cattle-killers each pursuing his own business as methodically as
clerks in an office; new tigers that had lately come into
such-and-such a district; and old, friendly beasts of great
cunning, known by nicknames in the mess-such as "Puggy," who was
lazy, with huge paws, and "Mrs. Malaprop," who turned up when you
never expected her, and made female noises. Then they spoke of
Bhil superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till young
Chinn hinted that they must be pulling his leg.

"'Deed, we aren't," said a man on his left. "We know all about
you.  You're a Chinn and all that, and you've a sort of vested
right here; but if you don't believe what we're telling you,
what will you do when old Bukta begins his stories?  He knows
about ghost-tigers, and tigers that go to a hell of their own;
and tigers that walk on their hind feet; and your grandpapa's
riding-tiger, as well.  'Odd he hasn't spoken of that yet."

"You know you've an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don't you?"
said the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.

"Of course I do," said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book
of Chinn by heart.  It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese
lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the
children are allowed to look  at it on Sundays.

"Well, I wasn't sure.  Your revered ancestor, my boy, according
to the Bhils, has a tiger of his own - a saddle-tiger that he
rides round the country whenever he feels inclined. I don't call
it decent in an ex-Collector's ghost; but that is what the
Southern Bhils believe.  Even our men, who might be called
moderately cool, don't care to beat that country if they hear
that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger.  It is supposed to
be a clouded animal - not stripy, but blotchy, like a
tortoise-shell tom-cat.  No end of a brute, it is, and a sure
sign of war or pestilence or - or something.  There's a nice
family legend for you."

"What's the origin of it, d' you suppose?" said Chinn.

"Ask the Satpura Bhils.  Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before
the Lord. Perhaps it was the tiger's revenge, or perhaps he's
huntin' 'em still. You must go to his tomb one of these days and
inquire.  Bukta will probably attend to that. He was asking me
before you came whether by any ill-luck you  had already bagged
your tiger. If not, he is going to enter you under his own wing.
Of course, for you of all men it's imperative.  You'll have a
first-class time with Bukta."

The Major was not wrong.  Bukta kept an anxious eye on young
Chinn at drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the
new officer lifted up his voice in an order the whole line
quivered. Even the Colonel was taken aback, for it might have
been Lionel Chinn returned from Devonshire with a new lease of
life.  Bukta had continued to develop his peculiar theory among
his intimates, and it was accepted as a matter of faith in the
lines, since every word and gesture on young Chinn's part so
confirmed it.

The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the
reproach of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to
take the first or any beast that happened to arrive.  In his own
villages he dispensed the high, low, and middle justice, and when
his people-naked and fluttered - came to him with word  of a
beast marked down, he bade them send spies to the kills and the
watering-places, that he might be sure the quarry was such an one
as suited the dignity of such a man.

Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most
truthfully saying that the beast was mangy, undersized - a
tigress worn with nursing, or a broken-toothed old male - and
Bukta would curb young Chinn's impatience.

At last, a noble animal was marked down - a ten-foot
cattle-killer with a huge roll of loose skin along the belly,
glossy-hided, full-frilled about the neck, whiskered, frisky,
and young. He had slain a man in pure sport, they said.

"Let him be fed," quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove
out a cow to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.

Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great
moneys for the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this
of Bukta's.

"It is not good," said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
shooting-leave, "that my Colonel's son who may be - that my
Colonel's son should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle
beast. That may come after.  I have waited long for this which
is a tiger.  He has come in from the Mair country. In seven days
we will return with the skin."

The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen,
might have invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn,
two days in a shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to
a rocky, glary valley with a pool of good water in it. It was a
parching day, and the boy very naturally stripped and went in for
a bathe, leaving Bukta by the clothes.  A white skin shows far
against brown jungle, and what Bukta beheld on Chinn's back and
right shoulder dragged him forward step by step with staring
eyeballs.

"I'd forgotten it isn't decent to strip before a man of his
position," said Chinn, flouncing in the water. "How the little
devil stares! What is it, Bukta?" "The Mark!" was the whispered
answer.

"It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!" Chinn was
annoyed. The dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like
a conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he
would not have bathed. It occurred, so they said at home, in
alternate generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine
years after birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn
inheritance, would not be considered pretty. He hurried ashore,
dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who
promptly fell on their faces. "My people," grunted Bukta, not
condescending to notice them. "And so your people, Sahib. When I
was a young man we were fewer, but not so weak. Now we are many,
but poor stock. As may be remembered. How will you shoot him,
Sahib? From a tree; from a shelter which my people shall build;
by day or by night?"

"On foot and in the daytime," said young Chinn.

"That was your custom, as I have heard," said Bukta to himself "I
will get news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will
carry one gun. You have yours. There is no need of more. What
tiger shall stand against thee?"

He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a
ravine, full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was
walked up like a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his
life. Bukta made no motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes
on Chinn, who met the shattering roar of the charge with a single
shot - it seemed to him hours as he sighted - which tore through
the throat, smashing the backbone below the neck and between the
shoulders. The brute couched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn
knew well what had happened Bukta bade him stay still while he
paced the distance between his feet and the ringing jaws.

"Fifteen," said Bukta. "Short paces. No need for a second shot,
Sahib. He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil
the skin. I said there would be no need of these, but they came
- in case."

Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of
Bukta's people - a force that could have blown the ribs out of
the beast had Chinn's shot failed; but their guns were hidden,
and they appeared as interested beaters, some five or six waiting
the word to skin. Bukta watched the life fade from the wild eyes,
lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.

"No need to show that we care," said he. "Now, after this, we can
kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib."

Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. "That
also was  your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the
skin to cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for
the night and, perhaps, forget  that I am his officer?"

"But those men - the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps
-"

"Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my
people.  In the lines I am one thing. Here I am another."

This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the
fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of
drill in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his
subjects, he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not
to be safely written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in
the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden.
Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings. He
gave his flask to the elders of the village. They grew eloquent,
and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts and loans, not all
seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and
maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient
times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are
very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but,
unless the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep
suddenly, and to waken late the next day - half a march from the
village?

"The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to
sleep,"  Bukta explained. "My people carried him here, and now
it is time we should go back to cantonments."

The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent,
made it hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was
yelling and capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.

"My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never
forget. When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to
my people, and they will give him as many men as we need."

Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the
tiger, and Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue.
The skin was certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the
mess, and the first of many.  When Bukta could not accompany his
boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands,
and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil
in his marches and campings, by talks at twilight or at wayside
pools, than an uninstructed man could have come at in a
lifetime.

Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their
relatives-mostly in trouble-and to lay cases of tribal custom
before him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at
twilight, after the easy, confidential style of the Wuddars,
that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with such-and-such a
wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would Chinn Sahib
consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the
Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the
plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to
disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would
the rash voyager return alive?

"But what have I to do with these things?" Chinn demanded of
Bukta, impatiently. "I am a soldier. I do not know the law."

"Hoo!  Law is for fools and white men.  Give them a large and
loud order, and they will abide by it.  Thou art their law."

"But wherefore?"

Every trace of expression left Bukta's countenance.  The idea
might have smitten him for the first time.  "How can I say?" he
replied. "Perhaps it is on account of the name.  A Bhil does not
love strange things.  Give them orders, Sahib-  two, three, four
words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads.
That is enough."

Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word
spoken in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of
villages beyond the smoky hills  was, in truth, no less than the
Law of Jan Chinn the First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had
come back to earth, to oversee the third generation, in the body
and bones of his grandson.

There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils
knew that Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta's village
with his presence after slaying his first-in this life-tiger;
that he had eaten and drunk with the people, as he was used; and
- Bukta must have drugged Chinn's liquor very deeply-upon his
back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red
Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh of Jan
Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the
foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young
officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn,
who had made the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to
carry his words, careful never to alter them on the way.

Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one
horror of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept
their convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he
knew his regiment, never guessed that each one of the six
hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, to attention
beside their rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the
subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demi-god twice
born -tutelary deity of their land and people.  The Earth-gods
themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to
doubt the handiwork of the Earth-gods?

Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name
served him well in the lines and in camp.  His men gave no
trouble-one does not commit regimental offences with a god in
the chair of justice-and he was sure of the best beaters in the
district when he needed them. They believed that the protection
of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief
beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.

His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history
museum, in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he
sent home to Devonshire.  The people, very humanly, learned the
weak side of their god. It is true he was unbribable, but
bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big
game pleased him.  In other respects, too, he lived up to the
Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof. A night's sitting out over
a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would have filled the
Major with a month's malaria, had no effect on him.  He was, as
they said, "salted before he was born."

Now in the autumn of his second year's service an uneasy rumour
crept out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils.  Chinn
heard nothing of it till a brother- Officer said across the
mess-table:  "Your revered ancestor's on the rampage in the
Satpura country.  You'd better look him up."

"I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm a little sick of my
revered ancestor.  Bukta talks of nothing else.  What's the old
boy supposed to be doing now?"

"Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger.
That's the story.  He's been seen by about two thousand Bhils,
skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to
death.  They believe it devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are
worshipping away at his shrine- tomb, I mean-like good uns. You
really ought to go down there. Must be a queer thing to see your
grandfather treated as a god."

"What makes you think there's any truth in the tale?" said
Chinn.

"Because all our men deny it. They say they've never heard of
Chinn's tiger. Now that's a manifest lie, because every Bhil
has."

"There's only one thing you've overlooked," said the Colonel,
thoughtfully. "When a local god reappears on earth, it's always
an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are
about as wild as your grandfather left them, young un. It means
something."

"Meanin' they may go on the war-path?" said Chinn.

"'Can't say - as yet. 'Shouldn't be surprised a little bit."

"I haven't been told a syllable."

"'Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back."

"Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn't he
tell me that?"

Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and
the answer surprised him.

"Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is
out in the Satpura country."

"What do the wild Bhils think that it means?"

They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what is coming? Say only one
little word, and we will be content."

"We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live,
to do with drilled men?" "When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for
any Bhil to be quiet."

"But he has not waked, Bukta."

"Sahib "-the old man's eyes were full of tender reproof-" if he
does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the
moonlight? We know he is awake, but we do not know what he
desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns
the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may
carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan
Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it
murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib,
we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee
in my arms-not knowing."

"Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening," Chinn
thought;  "but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I
must. It's like the Mutiny rumours on a small scale."

He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his
first tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the
clawed paws over his shoulders. He laid hold of them
mechanically as he spoke, drawing the painted hide,
cloak-fashion, about him.

"Now will I tell the truth, Bukta," he said, leaning forward, the
dried muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.

"I see that it is the truth," was the answer, in a shaking voice.

"Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded
Tiger, ye say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for
the Satpura Bhils only,  and does not touch the Bhils who plough
in the north and east, the Bhils  of the Khandesh, or any
others, except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we know,  are wild and
foolish."

"It is, then, a sign for them. Good or bad?"

"Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those
whom he has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill
to lie in one bed over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would
look again upon his people. So he rises, whistles his Clouded
Tiger, and goes abroad a little to breathe  the cool air. If the
Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after
dark, they would not see him.  Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than
that he would see the light again in his own country. Send this
news south, and say that it is my word."

Bukta bowed to the floor.  "Good Heavens!" thought Chinn, "and
this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as
a die!  I may as well round it off neatly."  He went on:

"If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that
Jan Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good
living. Perhaps they have plundered; perhaps they mean to
disobey the orders of the Government; perhaps there is a dead
man in the jungle; and so Jan Chinn has come to see."

"Is he, then, angry?"

"Bah!  Am I ever angry with my Bhils?  I say angry words, and
threaten many things.  Thou knowest, Bukta.  I have seen thee
smile behind the hand.  I know, and thou knowest.  The Bhils are
my children.  I have said it many times."

"Ay.  We be thy children," said Bukta.

"And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father's father.  He
would see the land he loved and the people once again.  It is a
good ghost, Bukta.  I say it. Go and tell them.  And I do hope
devoutly," he added, "that it will calm 'em down." Flinging back
the tiger-skin, he rose with a long, unguarded yawn that showed
his well-kept teeth.

Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting
inquirers.

"It is true," said Bukta.  "He wrapped him-self in the skin, and
spoke from it.  He would see his own country again. The sign is
not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie
idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad.
He goes to and fro for the love of night-running.  He has said
it."

The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.

"He says the Bhils are his children.  Ye know he does not lie.
He has said it to me."

"But what of the Satpura Bhils?  What means the sign for them?"

"Nothing.  It is only night-running, as I have said.  He rides to
see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his
first life."

"And what if they do not?"

"He did not say."

The light went out in Chinn's quarters.

"Look," said Bukta.  "Now he goes away. None the less it is a
good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who
made the Bhil a man? His protection is on us; and ye know Jan
Chinn never broke a protection  spoken or written on paper.
When he is older and has found him a wife he will lie in his bed
till morning."

A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state
of mind a little before the men; and this is why the Colonel
said, a few days later, that some one had been putting the Fear
of God into the Wuddars.  As he was the only person officially
entitled to do this, it distressed him to see such unanimous
virtue.  "It's too good to last," he said.  "I only wish I could
find out what the little chaps mean."

The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the
moon, when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to
"allay any possible excitement" among the Satpura Bhils, who
were, to put it mildly, uneasy because a paternal Government had
sent up against them a Mahratta State-educated vaccinator, with
lancets, lymph, and an officially registered calf.  In the
language of State, they had "manifested a strong objection to
all prophylactic measures," had "forcibly detained the
vaccinator," and "were on the point of neglecting or evading
their tribal obligations."

"That means they are in a blue funk - same as they were at
census-time," said the Colonel; "and if we stampede them into
the hills we'll never catch 'em, in the first place, and, in the
second, they'll whoop off plundering till further orders.
'Wonder who the God-forsaken idiot is who is trying to vaccinate
a Bhil.  I knew trouble was coming.  One good thing is that
they'll only use local corps, and we can knock up something
we'll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy us potting
our best beaters because they don't want to be vaccinated!
They're only crazy with fear."

"Don't you think, sir," said Chinn, the next day, "that perhaps
you could give me a fortnight's shooting-leave?"

"Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!" The Colonel
laughed. "I might, but I'd have to antedate it a little, because
we're warned for service, as you might say. However, we'll assume
that you applied for leave three days ago, and are now well on
your way south."

"I'd like to take Bukta with me."

"Of course, yes.  I think that will be the best plan. You've some
kind of hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may
listen to you when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them
wild.  You've never been in that part of the world before, have
you? Take care they don't send you to your family vault in your
youth and innocence. I believe you'll be all right if you can get
'em to listen to you."

"I think so, sir; but if -- if they should accidentally put an
-- make asses of 'emselves -- they might, you know -- I hope
you'll represent that they were only frightened. There isn't an
ounce of real vice in 'em, and I should never forgive myself if
any one of -- of my name got them into trouble."

The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.

Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever
since the official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by
indignant Bhils, runner after runner had skulked up to the
lines, entreating, with forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn
should come and explain this unknown horror that hung over his
people.

The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear.  Let Jan
Chinn comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man.
Bukta toned down these beseechings to a simple request for
Chinn's presence.  Nothing would have pleased the old man better
than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the Satpuras, whom he,
as an "unmixed" Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to all his
nation as Jan Chinn's interpreter; and he devoutly believed that
forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered with that
obligation.  Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he rode the
Clouded Tiger.

They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the
blue wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be.
Bukta was very silent.

They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near
sunset ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side
of a rifted, jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was
laid, as he had desired, that he might overlook his people.  All
India is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of
the eighteenth century - tombs of forgotten colonels of corps
long since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on
shooting expeditions and never came back; factors, agents,
writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East India Company by
hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands.  English folk
forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has
done good in his life it is remembered after his death.  The
weathered marble four-square tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about
with wild flowers and nuts, packets of wax and honey, bottles of
native spirits, and infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and
plumes of dried grass.  At one end was a rude clay image of a
white man, in the old-fashioned top-hat, riding on a bloated
tiger.

Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head
and began to pick out the blurred inscription.  So far as he
could read it ran thus - word for word, and letter for letter:

To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq. Late Collector
of................ithout Bloodshed or...error of Authority
Employ.only..cans of Conciliat...and Confiden. Accomplished
the...tire Subjection... a Lawless and Predatory
Peop......taching them to...ish Government by a Conquest
over....Minds The most perma...and rational Mode of
Domini....Governor General and Counc...engal have ordered
lhi.....erected...arted this Life Aug. 19, 184..Ag...

On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very
worn.  As much as Chinn could decipher said:

..the savage band.  Forsook their Haunts and b.....is
Comman..mended..rals check a.st for spoil.  And.. a..ing Hamlets
prove his gene....toil.  Humanit...survey......ights restor.. A
Nation..ield..subdued without a Sword.Forsook their Haunts and b
. . . . is Command mended . . rals check a . . . st for spoil And
. s . ing Hamlets prove his gene . . . . toil Humanit . . .
survey
ights restore A Nation . . ield. . subdued without a Sword.

For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead
man of his own blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then,
nodding to the plains: "Yes; it's a big work all of it  even my
little share.  He must have been worth knowing. . . . Bukta,
where are my people?"

"Not here, Sahib.  No man comes here except in full sun.  They
wait above.  Let us climb and see."

But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an
even voice answered: "I have come this far only because the
Satpura folk are foolish, and dared not visit our lines.  Now
bid them wait on me here.  I am not a servant, but the master of
Bhils."

"I go -- I go," clucked the old man.  Night was falling, and at
any moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the
darkening scrub.

Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful
command and deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but
pressed to the flat table-top of the hill, and called softly.
Men stirred all about him - little trembling men with bows and
arrows who had watched the two since noon.

"Where is he?" whispered one.

"At his own place. He bids you come," said Bukta.

"Now?"

"Now."

"Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us. We do not go."

"Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this
his life. Wait here till the day."

"But surely he will be angry."

"He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat. But he has
said to me many times that the Bhils are his children. By
sunlight I believe this, but - by moonlight I am not so sure.
What folly have ye Satpura pigs compassed that ye should need
him at all?"

"One came to us in the name of the Government with little
ghost-knives and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by
the cutting off of our arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did
not kill the man. He is here, bound - a black man; and we think
he comes from the west. He said it was an order to cut us all
with knives - especially the women and the children. We did not
hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and kept to our
hills. Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from the
plains, and others pots and cloths and ear-rings."

"Are any slain?"

"By our men? Not yet. But the young men are blown to and fro by
many rumours like flames upon a hill.  I sent runners asking for
Jan Chinn lest worse should come to us.  It was this fear that he
foretold by the sign of the Clouded Tiger.

He says it is otherwise," said Bukta; and he repeated, with
amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the
conference of the wicker chair.

"Think you," said the questioner, at last, "that the Government
will  lay hands on us?"

"Not I," Bukta rejoined. "Jan Chinn will give an order, and ye
will obey. The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn.  I
myself know something of the ghost-knives and the scratching. It
is a charm against the Small-pox. But how it is done I cannot
tell. Nor need that concern you."

"If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we
will most strictly obey Jan Chinn, except - except we do not go
down to that place to-night."

They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but
they cowered and sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger. The
tomb had been holy ground for nearly half a century. If Jan
Chinn chose to sleep there, who had better right? But they would
not come within eyeshot of the place till broad day.

At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him
that Bukta most probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had),
and his own dignity might suffer if he yelled without answer.
He propped himself against the foot of the grave, and,
alternately dozing and smoking, came through the warm night proud
that he was a lawful, legitimate, fever-proof Chinn.

He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have
done; and when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal
supply of food, said nothing of the overnight desertion. Bukta
would have been relieved by an outburst of human anger; but Chinn
finished his victual leisurely, and a cheroot, ere he made any
sign.

They are very much afraid," said Bukta, who was not too bold
himself "It remains only to give orders. They said they will
obey if thou wilt only stand between them and the Government."

"That I know," said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A
few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open
glade; but the ruck of people - women and children  were hidden
in the thicket. They had no desire to face the first anger of Jan
Chinn the First.

Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his
cheroot  to the butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him.
Then he cried, so suddenly that they jumped:

"Bring the man that was bound!"

A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo
vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils
of old were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was
pushed cautiously before the presence; but young Chinn did not
look at him.

"I said - the man that was bound. Is it a jest to bring me one
tied like a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his
pleasure? Cut!"

Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man
crawled to Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of
lymph. Then, sweeping the semicircle with one comprehensive
forefinger, and in the voice of compliment, he said, clearly and
distinctly: " Pigs!

"Ai!" whispered Bukta. "Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!"

"I have come on foot from my house" (the assembly shuddered) "to
make clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen
with both eyes from  a distance. Ye know the Small-pox who pits
and scars your children so that like wasp-combs. It is an order
of the Government that whoso is  scratched on the arm with these
little knives which I hold up is charmed against her. All Sahibs
are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos. This is the mark of the
charm.  Look!"

He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white
scars of the vaccination-mark on his white skin. "Come, all, and
look."

A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely.
There was certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread
marks were hidden by the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that
then and there proclaimed his godhead!

"Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you."

I did - a hundred times; but they answered with blows," groaned
the operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.

"But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save
you, first from Small-pox, next from a great folly of fear, and
lastly, it may be,from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to
me; it is no pleasure to me: but for the sake of that one who is
yonder, who made the Bhil a man" - he pointed down the hill --"
I, who am of his blood, the son of his son, come to turn your
people. And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn."

The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket
by twos and threes to join it. There was no anger in their god's
face.

"These are my orders.  (Heaven send they'll take 'em, but I seem
to have impressed 'em so far!) I myself will stay among you
while this man scratches your arms with the knives, after the
order of the Government. In three, or it may be five or seven,
days, your arms will swell and itch and burn. That is the power
of Small-pox fighting in your base blood against the orders of
the Government I will therefore stay among you till I see that
Small-pox is conquered, and I will not go away till the men and
the women and the little children show me upon their arms such
marks as I have even now showed you. I bring with me two very
good guns, and a man whose name is known among beasts and men.
We will hunt together, I and he and your young men, and the
others shall eat and lie still. This is my order."

There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A
white-haired old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:

"There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for
which we need a kowl [protection]. They were not taken in the
way of trade."

The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The
young Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be
put straight.

"I will write a kowl so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the
other things are counted before me and sent back whence they
came. But first we will put the Government mark on such as have
not been visited by Small-pox." In an undertone, to the
vaccinator: "If you show you are afraid you'll never see Poona
again, my friend."

"There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this
population," said the man. "They destroyed the offeecial calf."

They won't know the difference. Scrape 'em and give me a couple
of lancets; I'll attend to the elders."

The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first
victim. He fell to Chinn's hand and dared not cry out. As soon
as he was freed he dragged up a companion, and held him fast,
and the crisis became, as it were, a child's sport; for the
vaccinated chased the unvaccinated to treatment, vowing that all
the tribe must suffer equally.  The women shrieked, and the
children ran howling; but Chinn laughed, and waved the
pink-tipped lancet.

"It is an honour," he cried.  "Tell them, Bukta, how great

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2138