Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (565 page)

The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe restored, steadied to a tune.

“Magnificent! Oh, magnificent!” said the Infant loyally. I had never heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond.

“How did you get your cannibals to work for you?” asked Strickland.

“They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn Makarrah — just at the time I wanted ‘em. You see my Chief had promised me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he would not bag it for his roads this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues didn’t run to it.”

“What is your revenue?” Stalky asked in the vernacular.

“With hut-tax, traders’ game and mining licenses, not more than fourteen thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months ahead.” Adam sighed.

“Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib’s camp. Last year it exceeded three rupees,” Imam Din said quietly.

“Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather strict on fines. I worked up my native clerk — Bulaki Ram — to a ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton-scheme to three points of decimals, after office. I tell you I envied your magistrates here hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about meet, and I was crazy to get the odd two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing grows on a chap when he’s alone — and talks aloud!”

“Hul-lo! Have you been there already?” the father said, and Adam nodded.

“Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of ‘Marmion’ to a tree, sir. Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking nigger came in towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to little things like that.) He said he’d found it, and please would I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makarrah’s men there might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab — a smallboned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our climate when it sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted like — like the dog in ‘Tom Sawyer,’ when he sat on the what’s-its-name beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I could see it had been sarkied. (That’s a sort of gum-poison, pater, which attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer is writing a monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out the corpse one time, with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder, and hot water.

“I’d seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off his feet, and he stopped sneezing, I knew he’d live. He was bad, though; lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a Hajji — had been three times to Mecca — come in from French Africa, and that he’d met the nigger by the wayside — just like a case of thuggee, in India — and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable enough by what I knew of Coast niggers.”

“You believed him?” said his father keenly.

“There was no reason I shouldn’t. The nigger never came back, and the old man stayed with me for two months,” Adam returned. “You know what the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater? He was that.”

“None finer, none finer,” was the answer.

“Except a Sikh,” Stalky grunted.

“He’d been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess — you don’t know what that meant to me — like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That’s why he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by cotton-growing, you know.”

“You talked of that too?” said Strickland.

“Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don’t know what it meant to me. A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?”

“Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the money for our cotton-play.” Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland’s chair.

“Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He brought me news when I was down with fever at Dupe that one of Ibn Makarrah’s men was parading through my District with a bunch of slaves — in the Fork!”

“What’s the matter with the Fork, that you can’t abide it?” said Stalky. Adam’s voice had risen at the last word.

“Local etiquette, sir,” he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky’s atrocious pun. “If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he ought to pretend that they’re his servants. Hawkin’ ‘em about in the Fork — the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know — is insolence — same as not backing your topsails in the old days. Besides, it unsettles the District.”

“I thought you said slavers didn’t come your way,” I put in.

“They don’t. But my Chief was smoking ‘em out of the North all that season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but open slave-dealing in the Fork, was too much. I couldn’t go myself, so I told a couple of our Makalali police and Imam Din to make talk with the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been expensive, but it turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with the slaver (he didn’t show fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and we tried him in my bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you how demoralized the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a defeat), he’d snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and was offering ‘em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered ‘em to you, didn’t he, Imam Din?”

“I was witness that he offered man-eaters’ for sale,” said Imam Din.

“Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed, him both ways. You see, he had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant the double fine if I could get it out of him.”

“What was his defence?” said Strickland, late of the Punjab Police.

“As far as I remember — but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the time — he’d mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he was in French territory. Said he’d never do it again, if we’d let him off with a fine. I could have shaken hands with the brute for that. He paid up cash like a motorist and went off one time.”

“Did you see him?”

“Ye-es. Didn’t I, Imam Din?”

“Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the Sahib also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and they swore to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play. The Sahib leaned on his own servant’s shoulder the while.”

“I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me the papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in the safe — two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don’t know what that meant to me! I believe it cured my fever; and as soon as I could, I staggered off with the Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli about labour. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work! It wasn’t gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned out a week or two before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me for a job. I gave it ‘em.”

“And so you were very happy?” His mother had stolen up behind us. “You liked your cotton, dear?” She tidied the lump away.

“By Jove, I was happy!” Adam yawned. “Now if any one,” he looked at the Infant, “cares to put a little money into the scheme, it’ll be the making of my District. I can’t give you figures, sir, but I assure — ”

“You’ll take your arsenic, and Imam Din’ll take you up to bed, and I’ll come and tuck you in.”

Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands joined across his dark hair, and “Isn’t he a darling?” she said to us, with just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year ‘84. We were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imam Din returned to us from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.

“Now,” said Strickland, “tell us what truly befell, son of my servant.”

“All befell as our Sahib has said. Only — only there was an arrangement — a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play.”

“Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant,” said Strickland.

But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din hunker down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at attention.

“When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupe,” he began, “the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected the names of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue was beyond belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this cotton-play. Being at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our Sahib’s forehead, to sink into his brain news concerning a slave-dealer in his district who had made a mock of the law. Sahib,” Imam Din turned to Strickland, “our Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to the spur. He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the slavedealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him.”

“Alone — servant of my son, and son of my servant?” said his father.

“There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come in with the Hajji’s money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our Sahib died, she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given me orders to depart.”

“Being mad with fever — eh?”

“What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart’s desire. He talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his heart’s desire that the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji could have given him money enough out of hand for ten cottonplays; but in this respect also our Sahib’s virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange moneys. Therefore the Hajji said — and I helped with my counsel — that we must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with the English Law. It was great trouble to us, but — the Law is the Law. And the Hajji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if our Sahib died. So I accompanied the Hajji.”

“Knowing who he was?” said Strickland.

“No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji, because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures at five thousand rupees upon any slave-block. The Hajji then said to me: ‘Come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my delight’s delight’ The Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father for his son, of a saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One. But I said: ‘We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred rifles. We have here five.’ The Hajji said: ‘I have untied as knot in my head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a thousand.’ I saw that he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew that he was a Great One with virtue in him.

“We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the second day — about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Hajji walked delicately across the open place where their filth is, and scratched upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: ‘I am here once again. Give me six and yoke up.’ They zealously then pushed to us with poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: ‘Fetch fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.’ The wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town roared into flame, and all went. The Hajji then said: ‘At the end of a time there will come here the white man ye once chased for sport. He will demand labour to plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and your spawn after you.’ They said, lifting their heads a very little from the edge of the ashes: ‘We are that labour, and our spawn after us.’ The Hajji said: ‘What is also my name?’ They said: ‘Thy name is also The Merciful’ The Hajji said: ‘Praise then my mercy’; and while they did this, the Hajji walked away, I following.”