Return, splendor of the
hillsides!
Kipling - Poems
It was when Imray Sahib went secretly
to Europe without warning given, and I--even I--came into the honored
service of the protector of the poor. "
"And Imray Sahib went to Europe? "
"It is so said among the servants. "
"And thou wilt take service with him when he returns? "
"Assuredly, sahib. He was a good master and cherished his dependents. "
"That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting tomorrow.
Give me the little rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case
yonder. "
The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and fore-end to
Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning dolefully, then he reached
down to the gun-case, took a solid drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
the breech of the . 360 express.
"And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly? That is very strange,
Bahadur Khan, is it not? "
"What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born? "
"Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more. It has reached me that
Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now
he lies in the next room, waiting his servant. "
"Sahib! "
The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled
themselves against Bahadur Khan's broad breast.
"Go, then, and look! " said Strickland. "Take a lamp. Thy master is
tired, and he waits. Go! "
The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland
following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He
looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at the
carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and last, a grey glaze setting
on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth.
"Hast thou seen? " said Strickland, after a pause.
"I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the presence
do? "
"Hang thee within a month! What else? "
"For killing him? Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,
he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he
bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child! "
"What said Imray Sahib? "
"He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore
my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when
he came back from office and was sleeping. The heaven-born knows all
things. I am the servant of the heaven-born. "
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular:
"Thou art witness to this saying. He has killed. "
Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for
justification came upon him very swiftly.
"I am trapped," he said, "but the offence was that man's. He cast an
evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are
served by devils," he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him,
"only such could know what I did. "
"It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a
rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly! "
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by
another, and Tietjens sat still.
"Take him to the station," said Strickland. "There is a case toward. "
"Do I hang, then? " said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and
keeping his eyes on the ground.
"If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang," said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and stood still. The two
policemen waited further orders.
"Go! " said Strickland.
"Nay; but I go very swiftly," said Bahadur Khan. "Look! I am even now a
dead man. "
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
"I come of land-holding stock," said Bahadur Khan, rocking where
he stood. "It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold,
therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib's shirts are
correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his
washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you
seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and--and--I die. "
At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the little
kariat, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the table-cloth
to their appointed places. They were needed to make clear the
disappearance of Imray.
"This," said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, "is called
the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said? "
"I heard," I answered. "Imray made a mistake. "
"Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a
little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with him for four years. "
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
time. When I went over to my own room I found him waiting, impassive as
the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
"What has befallen Bahadur Khan? " said I.
"He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows," was the
answer.
"And how much of the matter hast thou known? "
"As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek
satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots. "
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
shouting from his side of the house:
"Tietjens has come back to her room! "
And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead,
on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth
wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.
MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the
trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's
name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj was a
creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant
the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land,
Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti
Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink
palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not
permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
saw fit to wake up.
There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him
orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
pair of shoulders--while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in
case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would come
up with a song from the sea, Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a
torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up
his own long wet hair.
It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that
led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," said he, weeping.
"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once
before that when you were working for me last year," said the planter,
who knew something of the ways of nativedom.
"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me," said
Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children
entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
"Who brought the news? " said the planter.
"The post," said Deesa.
"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
lines! ",
"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter.
"Chihun, has this man got a wife? "
"He? " said Chihun. "No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
They'd sooner marry the elephant! "
Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.
"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back
to your work! "
"Now I will speak Heaven's truth," gulped Deesa, with an inspiration.
"I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus
I shall cause no trouble. "
A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he, "you've
spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could
be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey
your orders. "
"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and
soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj? "
Permission was granted, and in answer of Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty
tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been
squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give
ear! " said Deesa, standing in front of him.
Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. "I am going away," said
Deesa.
Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One
could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work. "
The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
"I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near
forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
mud-puddle. " Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees as
Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck! "
Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and
was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus--the iron
elephant goad.
Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.
Moti Guj trumpeted.
"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And
now bid me goodbye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored
health; be virtuous. Adieu! "
Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
That was his way of bidding him goodbye.
"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go? "
The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back
to haul stumps.
Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all
that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin,
and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's
wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as
Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the
light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken slumber, the
savage beatings and the savage caresses.
None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own
caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past
all knowledge of the lapse of time.
The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa,
Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,
looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one
having business elsewhere.
"Hi! ho! Come back you! " shouted Chihun. "Come back and put me on your
neck, misborn mountain!
Return, splendor of the hillsides! Adornment of
all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your forefoot! "
Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
"None of your nonsense with me," said he. "To your pickets, devil-son! "
"Hrrump! " said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.
Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who
had just set to work.
Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with
a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside
the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it,
as an elephant will.
"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest
thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of
chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty. "
Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did
not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from
right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side
where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain
was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti
Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the
chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did
not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing
alone with his ears cocked.
That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to
his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work
and is not tied up is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose
in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if
the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning
labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long 'nooning'; and,
wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown,
when he returned to his picket for food.
"If you won't work, you sha'n't eat," said Chihun, angrily. "You're a
wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle. "
Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and
stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj
knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out
his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw
itself, shouting, upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the
brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.
"Great Lord! " said Chihun. "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and
two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign
only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my
life to me! "
Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his
food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and
thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four
or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down
on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The
rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting, and long
grumbling soliloquies.
At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in
the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased
through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He
went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used
to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he
disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to
death some gypsies in the woods.
At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk in
deed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He
drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation
were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and
reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his
pickets for breakfast. The night exercise had made him hungry.
"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the
mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came from China
at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti
Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop They move from places at
varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train
he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at
the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his
pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and
beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from
head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.
"Now we will get to work," said Deesa. "Lift me up, my son and my joy! "
Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look
for difficult stumps.
The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
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to Europe without warning given, and I--even I--came into the honored
service of the protector of the poor. "
"And Imray Sahib went to Europe? "
"It is so said among the servants. "
"And thou wilt take service with him when he returns? "
"Assuredly, sahib. He was a good master and cherished his dependents. "
"That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting tomorrow.
Give me the little rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case
yonder. "
The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and fore-end to
Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning dolefully, then he reached
down to the gun-case, took a solid drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
the breech of the . 360 express.
"And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly? That is very strange,
Bahadur Khan, is it not? "
"What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born? "
"Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more. It has reached me that
Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now
he lies in the next room, waiting his servant. "
"Sahib! "
The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled
themselves against Bahadur Khan's broad breast.
"Go, then, and look! " said Strickland. "Take a lamp. Thy master is
tired, and he waits. Go! "
The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland
following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He
looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at the
carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and last, a grey glaze setting
on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth.
"Hast thou seen? " said Strickland, after a pause.
"I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the presence
do? "
"Hang thee within a month! What else? "
"For killing him? Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,
he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he
bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child! "
"What said Imray Sahib? "
"He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore
my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when
he came back from office and was sleeping. The heaven-born knows all
things. I am the servant of the heaven-born. "
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular:
"Thou art witness to this saying. He has killed. "
Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for
justification came upon him very swiftly.
"I am trapped," he said, "but the offence was that man's. He cast an
evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are
served by devils," he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him,
"only such could know what I did. "
"It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a
rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly! "
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by
another, and Tietjens sat still.
"Take him to the station," said Strickland. "There is a case toward. "
"Do I hang, then? " said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and
keeping his eyes on the ground.
"If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang," said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and stood still. The two
policemen waited further orders.
"Go! " said Strickland.
"Nay; but I go very swiftly," said Bahadur Khan. "Look! I am even now a
dead man. "
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
"I come of land-holding stock," said Bahadur Khan, rocking where
he stood. "It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold,
therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib's shirts are
correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his
washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you
seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and--and--I die. "
At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the little
kariat, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the table-cloth
to their appointed places. They were needed to make clear the
disappearance of Imray.
"This," said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, "is called
the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said? "
"I heard," I answered. "Imray made a mistake. "
"Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a
little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with him for four years. "
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
time. When I went over to my own room I found him waiting, impassive as
the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
"What has befallen Bahadur Khan? " said I.
"He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows," was the
answer.
"And how much of the matter hast thou known? "
"As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek
satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots. "
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
shouting from his side of the house:
"Tietjens has come back to her room! "
And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead,
on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth
wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.
MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the
trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's
name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj was a
creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant
the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land,
Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti
Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink
palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not
permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
saw fit to wake up.
There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him
orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
pair of shoulders--while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in
case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would come
up with a song from the sea, Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a
torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up
his own long wet hair.
It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that
led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," said he, weeping.
"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once
before that when you were working for me last year," said the planter,
who knew something of the ways of nativedom.
"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me," said
Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children
entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
"Who brought the news? " said the planter.
"The post," said Deesa.
"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
lines! ",
"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter.
"Chihun, has this man got a wife? "
"He? " said Chihun. "No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
They'd sooner marry the elephant! "
Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.
"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back
to your work! "
"Now I will speak Heaven's truth," gulped Deesa, with an inspiration.
"I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus
I shall cause no trouble. "
A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he, "you've
spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could
be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey
your orders. "
"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and
soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj? "
Permission was granted, and in answer of Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty
tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been
squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give
ear! " said Deesa, standing in front of him.
Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. "I am going away," said
Deesa.
Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One
could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work. "
The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
"I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near
forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
mud-puddle. " Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees as
Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck! "
Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and
was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus--the iron
elephant goad.
Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.
Moti Guj trumpeted.
"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And
now bid me goodbye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored
health; be virtuous. Adieu! "
Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
That was his way of bidding him goodbye.
"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go? "
The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back
to haul stumps.
Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all
that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin,
and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's
wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as
Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the
light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken slumber, the
savage beatings and the savage caresses.
None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own
caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past
all knowledge of the lapse of time.
The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa,
Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,
looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one
having business elsewhere.
"Hi! ho! Come back you! " shouted Chihun. "Come back and put me on your
neck, misborn mountain!
Return, splendor of the hillsides! Adornment of
all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your forefoot! "
Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
"None of your nonsense with me," said he. "To your pickets, devil-son! "
"Hrrump! " said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.
Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who
had just set to work.
Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with
a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside
the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it,
as an elephant will.
"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest
thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of
chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty. "
Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did
not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from
right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side
where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain
was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti
Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the
chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did
not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing
alone with his ears cocked.
That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to
his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work
and is not tied up is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose
in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if
the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning
labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long 'nooning'; and,
wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown,
when he returned to his picket for food.
"If you won't work, you sha'n't eat," said Chihun, angrily. "You're a
wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle. "
Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and
stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj
knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out
his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw
itself, shouting, upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the
brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.
"Great Lord! " said Chihun. "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and
two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign
only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my
life to me! "
Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his
food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and
thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four
or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down
on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The
rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting, and long
grumbling soliloquies.
At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in
the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased
through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He
went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used
to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he
disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to
death some gypsies in the woods.
At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk in
deed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He
drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation
were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and
reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his
pickets for breakfast. The night exercise had made him hungry.
"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the
mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came from China
at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti
Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop They move from places at
varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train
he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at
the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his
pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and
beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from
head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.
"Now we will get to work," said Deesa. "Lift me up, my son and my joy! "
Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look
for difficult stumps.
The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
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