Series Description

The Freebooter’s Network presents a lineup of completely awesome podcasts covering the whole of geek culture. Selections include miniature wargaming, boardgaming, comic books, movies and history.

The Black Saddle TV show was a 30 minute western action series on NBC for its first season and on ABC for the second season. It was about a wanted ex-gunfighter who became a lawyer in search of a less violent way of maintaining peace in the wild west. While trying to change his life by helping those in need of legal help, he was being tracked down by the persistent Marshal Scott for his past crimes.

Black Saddle Cast

Peter Breck ................. Clay Culhane
Russell Johnson ............. Marshal Gib Scott
Anna Lisa ................... Nora Travers

Black Saddle Trivia

The Black Saddle TV show was set in the New Mexico Territory immediately following the civil war.

Clay Culhane took off his guns and picked up his law books after his brothers, who were also gunfighters, were all killed in a shootout.

For its first season, the Black Saddle TV show took over the 9:00 to 9:30PM time slot on Saturday nights from another action series, 'Steve Canyon'. Steve Canyon didn't go off the air though. It simply moved to Thursday nights at 8:00PM to replace the canceled Ed Wynn Show (1958).

In the second season, Black Saddle was moved to the horrible 10:30PM slot on Friday nights. To make matters worse, it had to compete in that slot with 'Person to Person' on CBS and the 'Gillette Cavalcade of Sports' on NBC!

Episodes List With Original Air Dates

Season 1

1. Client: Travers (1/10/1959)
2. Client: Meade (1/17/1959)
3. Client: McQueen (1/24/1959)
4. Client: Dawes (1/31/1959)
5. Client: Starkey (2/7/1959)
6. Client: Tagger (2/14/1959)
7. Client: Robinson (2/21/1959)
8. Client: Martinez (3/7/1959)
9. Client: Northrup (3/14/1959)
10. Client: Steele (3/21/1959)
11. Client: Mowery (3/28/1959)
12. Client: Braun (4/4/1959)
13. Client: Banks (4/11/1959)
14. Client: Jessup (4/18/1959)
15. Client: Frome (4/25/1959)
16. Client: Nelson (5/2/1959)
17. Client: Neal Adams (5/9/1959)
18. Client: Brand (5/16/1959)
19. Client: Reynolds (5/23/1959)
20. Client: Vardon (5/30/1959)

Season 2

21. The Freebooters (10/2/1959)
22. The Saddle (10/9/1959)
23. The Long Rider (10/16/1959)
24. The Hotel (10/23/1959)
25. Client: Peter Warren (10/30/1959)
26. The Freight Line (11/6/1959)
27. Murdock (11/13/1959)
28. Apache Trail (11/20/1959)
29. Four from Stillwater (11/27/1959)
30. The Deal (12/4/1959)
31. Change of Venue (12/11/1959)
32. Blood Money (12/1/1959)
33. The Killer (1/1/1960)
34. Letter of Death (1/8/1960)
35. Mr. Simpson (1/22/1960)
36. Means to an End (1/29/1960)
37. The Indian Tree (2/19/1960)
38. The Apprentice (3/11/1960)
39. Burden of Guilt (3/18/1960)
40. The Cabin (4/1/1960)
41. The Return (4/8/1960)
42. A Case of Slow (4/15/1960)
43. The Penalty (4/22/1960)
44. End of the Line

Thank you for visiting our Black Saddle TV show page!

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Title: Bengal Lancer
Author: Yeats-Brown, Francis Charles Claypon (1886-1944)
Date of first publication: July, 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:London: Victor Gollancz, September 1930[fifth impression]
Date first posted: 26 November 2010
Date last updated: 26 November 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #664
This ebook was produced by Al Haines

by

F. YEATS-BROWN

LONDON
VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD
14 Henrietta Street Covent Garden
1930

NOTE

Some paragraphs of this book have been taken from contributions to TheSpectator and The Field. I am indebted to the Editors of thesepublications for giving me leave to reprint what I wanted.

F. Y.-B.

London, March 15, 1930.

First published July 1930
Second impression July 1930
Third impression August 1930
Fourth impression August 1930
Fifth impression September 1930

Printed in Great Britain by
The Camelot Press Ltd., London and Southampton

CONTENTS

Chapter I.	New Year's Eve, 1905
II.	Durbar and a Dog Fight
III.	Masheen of the Mirrored Thumbs
IV.	The Delhi Road
V.	The King Cobra and the Herald of the Star
VI.	Polo
VII.	Pigsticking
VIII.	Men and Mud Turtles
IX.	Benares
X.	Death of The Devil
XI.	Beauty and Boredom
XII.	In the Air
XIII.	The Long Descent of Wasted Days
XIV.	Christmas, 1918
XV.	The End of Sport and Soldiering
XVI.	The Festival of the Fish-Eyed Goddess
XVII.	Jaganath, Lord of the World
XVIII.	The Temple of the Undistracted Mind

CHAPTER I

NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1905

All the long way from Bareilly to Khushalgar on the Indus (the firststage of my journey to Bannu) I was alone in my railway carriage withtwo couchant lions.

Brownstone and Daisy were their names. Lord Brownstone, as he wasentered in the register of the Indian Kennel Club, was the son ofJeffstone Monarch, and the grandson of Rodney Stone, the most famousbull-dog that ever lived. Brownstone was a light fawn dog, with blackmuzzle: I had bought him in Calcutta. His wife I had ordered from theArmy and Navy Stores in England: she was a brindle bitch by Stormy Hopeout of Nobby, with the stud name of Beckenham Kitty, but I called herDaisy. Both Brownstone and I were enchanted by her, for althoughrather froglike to an uninitiated eye, she fulfilled every canon of herbreed's beauty.

When the train stopped, they stopped snoring. If anyone ventured toopen the door, Daisy growled in a low, acid voice; and Brownstonebecame a rampant instead of a couchant lion. So I remained, withleisure to reflect on this great, flat land we were traversing, and onmy probationary year in it, just passed.

I was nineteen and a half. A year before I had become the trusty andwell-beloved servant of His Majesty King Edward VII. Two months afterreceiving my commission I had sailed for India.

On the morning of my arrival at Bareilly an obsequious individual hadwaited on me with a bag of rupees. If I wanted money, he said, hewould give me as much as I desired.

I wanted fourteen pounds at once, for an Afghan horse-dealer hadbrought to my tent door a five-year-old bay country-bred mare—aracy-looking Kathiawari, with black points, who cocked her curved earsengagingly and had the makings of a good light-weight polo-pony. Ibought her on the spot.

I had only to shout Quai Hai to summon a slave, only to scrawl myinitials on a chit in order to obtain a set of furniture, a feltcarpet from Kashmir, brass ornaments from Moradabad, silver forpocket-money, a horse, champagne, cigars, anything I wanted. It was ajolly life, yet among these servants and salaams I had sometimes asense of isolation, of being a caged white monkey in a Zoo whosepatrons were this incredibly numerous beige race.

Riding through the densely packed bazaars of Bareilly City on Judy, mymare, passing village temples, cantering across the magical plains thatstretched away to the Himalayas, I shivered at the millions andimmensities and secrecies of India. I liked to finish my day at theclub, in a world whose limits were known and where people answered mybeck. An incandescent lamp coughed its light over shrivelled grass anddusty shrubbery; in its circle of illumination exiled heads were bentover English newspapers, their thoughts far away, but close to mine.Outside, people prayed and plotted and mated and died on a scaleunimaginable and uncomfortable. We English were a caste. Whiteoverlords or white monkeys—it was all the same. The Brahmins made acircle within which they cooked their food. So did we. We were acaste: pariahs to them, princes in our own estimation.

It was pleasant enough to be a prince. Two dozen valets, andinnumerable servants of other kinds had come, with testimonials wrappedup in blue handkerchiefs, to seek employment from me. The eagerness tobe my valet had struck me as strange, for I did not then know thatIndian servants like a young master, being human in his early years,and worth the trouble of breaking into Indian ways.

So it had come that I engaged Jagwant, a magnificent and faithfulperson, with elegant whiskers and an hereditary instinct for service.During the fifteen years that he was my friend and servant, I only oncesaw his equanimity disturbed; and that was not by any worldlycircumstance, but the powers of darkness. He was a Kahar, the highestcaste of Hindu that will serve Europeans.

Jagwant was with me on board the train, in the servants' compartmentadjoining mine. The remainder of my servants—a waiter, a washerman, awater-carrier, and sweeper, and two strong men for Judy (one to groomher and the other to give her grass)—I had paid off with a sense ofrelief. They had all smelt rather of snuff, and depressed me withtheir poverty and humility. Indeed, except for a munshi, who camedaily to teach me Urdu, and the lordly Jagwant, I could not at thistime feel any sympathy with the people of the country that was to be myhome. I had expected and imagined much, but not this sad,all-pervasive squalor. Where were the colours and contrasts I hadfound in books? Where were the Rajahs who ruled in splendour and thoseother Rajahs who drank potions of powdered pearls and woman's milk?Where the priests and nautch-girls, and idols whose bellies held rubiesas big as pigeons' eggs? All I had seen was a tired people, mostlysquatting on its heels and crouching over fires of cow-dung.

That, and my British regiment, was the India I knew. In the regiment,I had learned how to drill a company of riflemen, and to see that theirboots and bedding and brushes were disposed in the manner approved bythe Army Council, and that their hair was properly cut, and that theywashed their feet. Also I had learned to hit a backhander under Judy'stail.

I had been rich during this last year (on the chit system) and hadenjoyed myself enormously. My last act had been to sell Judy fordouble the price I had given for her, in order to settle my debts.

Now I was on my way north, to join the 17th Cavalry at Bannu, on theNorth-West Frontier.

The further we travelled, the larger and livelier the men looked.Women and children remained enigmatic bundles, small and inert.

Those doll-like babies with flies round their eyes—nineteen thousandof them were born every day in India. A staggering thought, all thisbegetting and birth.... And that girl with the very big brown eyeslooking at me as if she was a deer, and I a hunting leopard, what wasshe thinking about? The bangles that glowed against her sunny skin?Her gods? Food? Why did some girls have a diamond in the left nostril?

Which of these people were Brahmins? Which Muhammedans? WhichAnimists? There were fourteen million Brahmins in India, I had read ina book, but to me the twice-born and the eaters of offal were alike.Did this slow brown tide that passed my carriage windows fight and makelove like the quicker white? Did it possess parts and passions likemyself? Perhaps I should find out, as a Bengal Lancer.

At Khushalgar, Jagwant and Brownstone and Daisy and I crossed the Indusand took another train to Kohat; and at Kohat, which we reached in thelate afternoon, we packed ourselves into a tonga which already held anofficer bound for Bannu, and his luggage.

Every moment of that eighty-mile drive had its thrill for me, but formy veteran companion the journey meant boredom and discomfort. Heslept between the stages, waking up only when we changed ponies, inorder to swear and drink sloe-gin.

Our ponies, galled at girth and neck, either jibbed backwards to withinan inch of a precipice, or reared up like squealing unicorns and dasheddownhill for a yard or two, then sat suddenly on their haunches, hopingperhaps that the harness would break and the tonga roll over them andend their wretched lives. Never once would they pull into their traceswithout some attempt at suicide. When suicide had been averted a ropewas reeved under their fetlocks; a groom pulled on the two ends,another pushed the tonga from behind, and the driver applied his whipscientifically to the ponies' ears. Cajoled and goaded, they wouldjump into their painful collars at last, and gallop on to the next halt.

On the road we passed men like Israelitish patriarchs, and tall, grimwomen in black, and a gang of Afridis who were dining on thick slicesof unleavened bread and pieces of fat mutton. Stout fellows, these.The firelight glinted in their hard eyes.

Once we slackened our pace while a boy ran beside us chattering about atribal quarrel up the road. To help his cause, our driver agreed tocarry twenty rounds of ammunition to the next stage: there we werewaylaid by the opposing faction, who begged us to carry a hundredrounds for their party. My companion woke up at this moment and damnedthem all roundly, but agreed to take twenty rounds, this once, for heexplained that we couldn't take sides.

At Lachi we encountered a band of beautiful young men with roses behindtheir ears. Where in all this waste, I asked myself, did flowersbloom? As far as the forlorn hills of the horizon I could see nothingbut rocks and pebbles.

On and on we rattled and crashed, until we came to the sugar-cane cropsof the Bannu suburbs, with a mist over them, solemn and mysterious.

My companion loaded his revolver; for there was a Garrison Order thatwe were always to be armed near cantonments, he told us. A fanatic hadrecently murdered our Brigade Major.

At the city walls stood a sentry with fixed bayonet. He opened abarbed wire gate for us, and we drove on to the house where my regimentand two battalions of the Frontier Force Infantry messed together. Mycompanion descended here. I reported myself to the Adjutant of the17th Cavalry and was shown to my quarters.

At dinner that night I sat between the Adjutant and an elderly InfantryMajor. The latter breathed fumes of alcohol through his false teeth,like some fabulous dragon.

'Thank God I've finished with the frontier,' he lisped. 'Thirty yearsI've had of it. Now they've failed me for command. I'm retiring andbe damned to them. There'th nothing but thtones and thniperth here.Up in Miramthhah the other day, a young Political Offither was thtabbedin his thleep by a Mathud recruit—thaid he'd noticed the thahib thleptwith hith feet towards Mecca and that he couldn't allow thuch aninthult to hith religion. But they did a thing to the bathtard hedidn't like. After he wath hung, they thewed him up in pigthkin thothat the hourith won't look at him in Paradithe. He'll have toanthwer the trumpet of the Archangel wrapped in the thkin of a thwine!'

The port and madeira described constant ellipses over the long messtable, and the elderly Major helped himself at each round.

I questioned the Adjutant about ghazis. He told me that a certainMullah of the Powindahs was preaching to the tribesmen from the fateful5th verse of the 9th chapter of the Koran: 'And when the sacred monthsare past, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shallfind them; and seize them and slay them and lay in wait for them withevery kind of ambush.' The murder of the Brigade Major had been a badbusiness. The ghazi hid in some crops at the roadside, waiting for theGeneral, presumably, who was leading a new battalion into cantonments.The General had dropped behind for a moment, so the Brigade Major, whowas riding at the head of the troops, received the load of buckshotintended for his chief. It hit him in the kidneys and killed himinstantly. The ghazi tried to bolt, but was brought down wounded inthe crops by a Sikh sergeant.

'Did they sew him up in pigskin?' I enquired.

'Of course not,' said the Adjutant. 'That's a yarn. But we ought todo something about these murders. We're having a practice mobilisationthe day after to-morrow, and may go out after raiders any day. There'sa fair chance of seeing active service here, and decent shooting.Especially the snipe-jheels. The polo isn't up to much, but we mean togo in for the Indian Cavalry next year.'

In the ante-room, the evening began to assume a festive mood. Wedragged out a piano to the centre of the room. Well-trained servantsappeared as if by magic to remove all breakable furniture (especiallysome tall china jars which had been taken by one of the regiments atthe loot of Pekin) replacing it with a special set of chairs and tablesmade to smash. Senior officers bolted away to play bridge; the rest ofus, who were young in years, or heart, began to enjoy ourselvesaccording to ancient custom.

Somebody found an enormous roll of webbing and swaddled up a fat gunnersubaltern in it. A lamp fell with a crash. Wrestling matches began.A boy in the Punjaub Frontier Force brought in a little bazaar-pony andmade it jump sofas. He had his trousers torn off.

I stood on my head in order to prove that it was possible to absorbliquid in that position. When this seemed tame, I dived over sofas anddanced a jig with the elderly Major. Then a dozen of us went off tothe billiard-room, where we played fives.

At midnight the fifty of us gathered in the ante-room again and sang'Auld Lang Syne,' for it was New Year's Eve.

Hours afterwards, I left the dust and din and walked back under thestars to the bungalow in which I had been allotted a room. I wasextraordinarily well pleased with myself and my new surroundings.Everyone in my regiment was the best fellow in the world—and thatfirst impression of mine has not been altered by twenty years ofintimacy.

As I sank to sleep, exhausted, I remembered that my feet were pointingwestward, in the general direction of the Holy Ka'aba at Mecca, likethose of the Political Officer in the Major's story, but I was tootired to move.

The New Year had begun very well indeed.

CHAPTER II

DURBAR AND A DOG FIGHT

Next morning the Adjutant took me to see the Commanding Officer. I wasin uniform, belted and sworded and spurred, as I should have been had Ibeen attending Orderly Room in a British regiment. The Colonel wore abrown sweater. His head was bent over a ledger, so that he did not seeme salute. The Adjutant coughed. The Colonel looked up, then down tomy toes, then up again.

My mind was a blank. He asked me if I was comfortable and I answeredthat I was extremely comfortable. There was a solemn pause duringwhich all sorts of ridiculous things came into my mind, but I keptsilence. Finally the Colonel said: 'Well, don't let me detain you.'

I withdrew in amazement and hesitated on the verandah, wondering whatto do next, for the Adjutant had remained behind. There was afierce-looking little Indian with a bright red beard sitting on theverandah smoking a cigarette. He looked me up and down, as the Colonelhad done; then jumped up and saluted, saying 'Salaam, Sahib' in ahigh-pitched bark, and sat down again. He was in a uniform of sorts,wearing an old khaki jacket with the three stars of a Captain on theshoulder, but his legs were encased in Jodphur breeches and his feet inblack slippers. I couldn't make him out at all. He kicked theslippers off, threw away the cigarette, and went into the Colonel'sroom without knocking.

'Who is the little red-bearded Captain?' I asked the Adjutant, who cameout as this curious figure went in.

'That's Rissaldar Hamzullah Khan,' he answered. 'He's one of yourtroop commanders. You're posted to 'B' Squadron—all Pathans. As theSquadron Commander is away, Hamzullah will show you the ropes. He's afunny old chap; rose from the ranks. Come along with me now, and I'llintroduce you to the other Indian officers.'

We walked over to a tumble-down mud-hut, which was the Adjutant'soffice.

A group of big, bearded men sat there on a bench. They wore voluminouswhite robes and held walking-sticks between their knees. Anothergroup, without walking-sticks, squatted. The squatters were called toattention by the senior N.C.O. The sitters rose, saluted the Adjutantand looked at me sternly. I was introduced and shook hands withRissaldar Major Mahomed Amin Khan, Jamadar Hazrat Gul, Rissaldar SultanKhan, Rissaldar Shams-ud-din and Woordie Major Rukan Din Khan—namesthat made my head reel. They all said 'Salaam, Hazoor' (to which Ianswered 'Salaam, Sahib') except one Indian Officer, who disconcertedme by saying 'Janab 'Ali,' which I afterwards discovered meant 'ExaltedThreshold of Serenity,' or more literally, 'High Doorstep.'

In the course of these introductions, Hamzullah arrived. We shookhands. He eyed me narrowly, cackled with laughter and made a remark tothe Adjutant in Pushtu—the language of the frontier.

The Adjutant translated:

'He wants to know if you can ride. He says you are the right build.And he says you are a pei-makhe halak—a milk-faced boy.'

I felt anything but pleased.

'Hamzullah will take you round the squadron,' said the Adjutant.'After stables, there's Durbar.'

'If you will excuse me, Hazoor,' said this surprising little man, as wewalked towards 'B' Squadron, 'I will inspect the Quarter Guard, since Iam Orderly Officer and it is on our way. Then we'll choose yourchargers.'

'I know exactly what I want as regards my horses, Rissaldar Sahib.'

'Good. I will see that you get what you want.'

Will you? I thought.

As we approached the guard, the sentry cried 'Fall in!' in the queerestsqueak. I lingered in the offing, to see how things were done inIndian Cavalry.

Five men and a sergeant sprang up from rope bedsteads and stood toarms. 'Carrylanceadvance—visitingrounds' in one mouthful.

Hamzullah threw away his cigarette and stumped round, mutteringcomments in guttural Pushtu, which sounded like curses—and were.

When the guard was dismissed one of the men turned left instead ofright. To my surprise, the sergeant took a stride towards him andstruck him in the face. He was a huge yokel with long black hairheavily buttered. His turban fell off and unwound itself in the dust.Not a word was said. The man picked it up and joined his comrades. Istood rooted to the spot, expecting Hamzullah to place the sergeantunder arrest.

He grunted and lit a cigarette. Perhaps, I thought, he had not seen.

Years later, when I became Adjutant, I learned what should be visibleand what invisible in India sillidar cavalry. But until I had cometo understand this, I was continually being surprised and sometimesshocked; therefore a small digression will be necessary if the readeris to see the Bengal Lancers as they were organised in those far-awayyears before the Great War.

Before the Mutiny, the yeomen and freebooters who served John Companybrought their own horse and their own equipment to the regiment inwhich they elected to serve. They came ready to fight. They fought aslong as there was loot to be had, and then returned to tend their crops.

Later, owing to the difficulty of maintaining a standard in equipmentand horseflesh, it was found more convenient for the recruit to bring asum in cash instead of a horse and saddle, but the principle remainedthe same, namely that the apprentice brought the tools of his trade.

In my day the cost of a sillidar cavalryman's complete equipment wasabout £55. If the recruit could not bring the whole amount, he broughtat least £10, and owed the balance to the regiment, repaying the loanmonth by month out of his pay.

Each sillidar regiment (there were thirty, I think) maintained aChanda, or Loan Fund, out of which these advances were made. As theadministrator of this fund, the Commandant of an Indian CavalryRegiment was to all intents and purposes the Managing Director of acompany in which each man held from £10 to £55 of debenture stock, thedebentures being secured on horses and equipment. The Colonel mightalso be considered as a contractor, who had engaged himself to supplythe Indian Government with 625 cavalry-men, fed, mounted, provisioned,equipped (except for rifles and ammunition which were supplied byGovernment) at the cost of £2 per month per man, including all thetransport and followers of the regiment—some 350 servants, 300 mulesand nine camels.

The pay of the men was about 30 rupees a month—say £2—rising by smallincreases to £20 a month for the highest Indian rank, that of RissaldarMajor. At a very small cost, therefore, India was served by a body ofyeomen complete with horses, tents, servants, mules, camels—anadmirable bargain for Government, and a good one for its servants, forthe sillidar cavalrymen was at once freer and more responsible thanany other soldier in the Empire. He was freer, because men serving forthe pittance they received after repayment of their loans had to betreated like the gentlemen adventurers that they were; and moreresponsible because if a horse died or any loss to property occurredthrough negligence, the owner had to pay for it.

The regiment looked on itself as a family business. We bred horses aswell as bought them. We all took an interest in our gear. The Colonelwould no more have ordered a fresh consignment of saddlery withoutdiscussing the matter with his Indian Officers than a manager wouldinstall a new plant in his factory without consulting his directors.All this made for friendliness, and broad views. We had not time tomake our men into machines. They remained yeomen who had enlisted forizzat—the untranslatable prestige of India.

That such a state of affairs should be abhorent to the mind of the WarOffice is readily understandable. The sillidar cavalry was abolishedimmediately after the Great War on the plea that its mobilisation wascomplicated and unsatisfactory under such individualistic arrangements.So now our families are broken and scattered, and only a few ancestralvoices, such as mine, remain to prophesy the woe that must attend theirpassing. But India rarely changes, and rarely forgets. When we giveup trying to teach our grandmother to suck the eggs of Westernmilitarism, she will again raise her levies in the way that suits herbest.

To return to 'B' Squadron. The Colonel came towards us, attended bythe numerous staff that follows in the wake of every oriental autocrat.My Squadron Commander was away. What should I do?

Hamzullah's foxy eyes perceived my embarrassment. He whispered: 'Blowyour whistle, Sahib.'

'I haven't got one.'

'I'll blow mine.'

The great man was upon us: Hamzullah blew a piercing blast.

'Go on with your work,' said the Colonel, carrying a silver-headedmalacca cane towards his helmet in answer to our salute. He worecivilian clothes.

What now? I turned again to Hamzullah, who barked, 'Hathe de lande'which is Pushtu for 'Hands underneath.'

The men, who had been standing at attention with elbows squared infront of their surprised horses, now resumed their brushing of bellies.The squadron kicked and squealed.

Stopping in front of a chestnut mare, the Colonel pointed at herfetlocks, which were hairy. Her owner dropped his brush, and rubbedthem furiously, and the mare let fly with both heels, kicking over abucket of dirty water.

'These devils never do what they're told,' growled the Colonel. 'Legsshould have been done by now. Ask Hamzullah to tell you the Order ofGrooming after I've gone. He won't see that it's carried out, buthe'll tell you.'

The procession continued, the Colonel leading, a dozen of us behind,hanging on his words.

'Tail wants pulling,' he said to Hamzullah.

'Hazoor,' said Hamzullah.

'A dirty horse is never fat.'

'Hazoor,' said Hamzullah.

'Staring coat. You must get rid of that boy if he can't keep his horsebetter. Fat enough before, under Khushal Khan.'

'I shall warn him, Hazoor. He's a zenana-fed brat!'

'File his teeth,' said the Colonel.

I started, but saw he was alluding to a raw-hipped waler.

'If that brute doesn't get fatter, put him down for casting.'

'Yes, sir,' said the Adjutant.

'When did I buy that mare?'

The Woordie Major produced an immense book, carried behind him by anorderly, and opened it at the proper place.

'Lyallpur Fair, 1903,' mused the Colonel. 'She's turning out well. Ithink we'll get a foal out of her. Send her to the Farm.'

'Very good, sir,' said the Adjutant, making a note of her number.

'And, by the way, give this young gentleman a copy of Standing Ordersand Farm Orders.'

'Another tail wants pulling,' said the Colonel. 'Do you know how topull tails, Yeats-Brown?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You had better get Hamzullah to show you how we do it here. Are themen for Persia chosen?'

'The——?'

'Yes, Hazoor. I have chosen them,' says Hamzullah.

'Bring them at Durbar with their horses. A great many tails wantpulling.'

When the Colonel came to the end of 'B' Squadron I drew breath again.A blessed calm descended on us. Over in 'C' Squadron the whistlesounded, and then the cry of 'Malish.' Here we no longer botheredabout grooming. The men stroked and patted their horses' backs, orleant against them for support. The East had returned to its old ways.

'Tell me, Rissaldar Sahib, about the Order of Grooming.'

'Hazoor, it is in a book,' answered Hamzullah in his high-pitchedvoice. 'Five minutes for the horses' backs, ten for their blessedbellies, five for their foolish faces, and five for their dirty docks.A time to brush, and a time to rub, and a time to put everything in itsplace. That is good. But I am an old man, and cannot remember newways. If I see a dirty horse in my troop, I beat its owner. If it isagain dirty, I whip him with my tongue. And if that has no effect, hegoes. Look at the result.'

The result was that a hundred satiny coats shone in the sun.

'But some of the tails want pulling,' I said.

'I have known the Colonel Sahib for thirty years,' said Hamzullah, 'andnever yet have the tails of any troop been right. Not since weenlisted the first men and bought the first horses.'

'Were you here when the regiment was raised?'

'Yes, Hazoor. I was a syce then, for I was too small and ugly to be asoldier. The Colonel Sahib was Adjutant. After five years he enlistedme as a fighting man. Before I die I shall be Rissaldar Major.'

My heart warmed to him.

'I have much to learn, Rissaldar Sahib,' I said. 'I hope you willteach me.'

'Men and horses are simple,' he answered, 'but mules are spawn ofSatan. We can't get the syces for them nowadays. Wages areridiculous. The young men all want to go to school. What do theylearn there? Softness! Huh!'

We continued to stroll round the squadron, taking not the slightestnotice of the men, some of whom were at work, while others kept dodginginto their huts, where cooking was in progress. At last a trumpet callannounced 'Water and Feed,' and after that 'Durbar.'

All India loves Durbars. They are her Parliaments, based on herancient village system of a headman advised by a panchayet—fiveelders—and she may again rule herself by them.

An armchair is set for the Colonel, with a low table before it. By hisside are stools for the Adjutant, Second-in-Command, the RissaldarMajor (senior Indian officer) and Woordie Major (Indian Adjutant). Atright-angles to these high personages are two benches, on which theremaining British and Indian Officers sit in any order, intermingled.At the fourth side of the square, opposite the Commandant's table, aremarshalled the persons to come before him.

All round, but particularly facing the Commandant, the men of theregiment are sitting or standing; spectators to our way of thinking,but something more in their own estimation, for they are there to seethat justice is done. That they do not execute it themselves isimmaterial; Durbar is a testing time for the Commandant. If he has notthe wit and personality to rule, his deficiencies are soon apparent.

The Indian Officers rise, in turn, to present their recruits.

'A' and 'B' Squadrons are bird-faced, white-skinned, keen-eyed boys,wild as hawks. They come from Independent Territory, and have calledno man master. The Colonel looks them up and down, as he did me, andasks their parentage. Whether he accepts or rejects a candidate, hiscold politeness remains unchanged: 'He needn't wait,' he says, or 'Sendhim to the doctor,' or 'I don't think we've room,' or 'As he's arelation of yours, we'll give him a trial.'

'C' and 'D' Squadron recruits are Punjaub Muhammedans, slow and strongas the oxen they drive at the plough. They are darker than thePathans, and have the manners of shrewd peasants, self-confident and alittle suspicious. Then come the men for Persia (medalled veteransgoing to Teheran to serve as the Legation Guard) and the leave men. Nosoldiers in the world have so many holidays as Bengal Lancers. AnAfridi wants to settle a blood feud. His uncle has been shot whilegathering crops among his womenfolk. He must go at once to attend tothe affair, or his face will be blackened in the village.

Then the defaulters. One of my men has allowed his horse to becomerope-galled. A small offence apparently, but Hamzullah does not bringmen before the Colonel unless he wants them severely dealt with.

'Fined fifteen rupees. You'll go, if you give us any more trouble,'says the Colonel.

'Hazoor, I have a wife and three small children to support.'

And indeed twenty shillings fine, to my thinking, comes heavy on a manwhose pay is about five shillings a month after deductions.

'Your children are cared for by your brother,' says the Colonel (whoknows everything). 'Get you gone.'

Finally we come to the animals, who number a thousand and whose affairsare complex. Should the horses be fed on gram and barley, or gramalone? Should we buy ten truckloads of oats, or only one? Do themules require an extra blanket on these winter nights? Engrossingquestions these, and the Rissaldar Major and Hamzullah Khan and theAdjutant have much to say concerning them, for there is a nicedistinction between discipline and administration in Durbar. Justiceis a matter for one mind, economy for many.

Meanwhile, the junior British officer present at these proceedings sitstwiddling his thumbs with boredom. He does not know that before theBritish came every ruler in India transacted business thus corampublico, and that to-day's meeting under the banyan tree is acontinuance of that tradition. He does not know (or care) if our civiladministration is becoming intolerably dull, and our justice dilatory.He does not know that Indians are becoming puzzled by our methods, andthat the races of the North have buried a hundred thousand lethalweapons under their hearths in a determination never to be ruled bybabus, brown or white.

Quotations from the Koran are being advanced in support of—what? Thefit of a lance bucket? The quality of a picketing rope? Or is itsomething to do with the pay of syces?

Brownstone and Daisy have trotted up to see what their master is doing.They have no business here, but Brownstone, bolder than his mate,wriggles up to me, looking round the corner of his body and arching hisback. He wants to be slapped on the loins. No Brownstone, this is aDurbar.

Daisy, looking very batrachian, is gazing up at me from a safedistance, her wizened muzzle cocked enquiringly. A chow, a terrier,and a friendly mongrel have also arrived, encouraged by some of theyounger officers, who know that a dog fight has its uses.

'Take those brutes away,' says the Colonel.

It is too late.

Chows are quarrelsome; this one growls and lifts his leg. Brownstonepounces without an ultimatum. The chow flicks round with a yelp andbites him on the ear. Brownstone's teeth close on his adversary'shaunch; he had meant to strangle him, but missed. The mongrel dashesin to be at the death. In his eagerness, he collides with the terrierand they roll over and over together, snarling and snapping andwrithing under the Colonel's table.

Daisy is skirmishing on the outskirts of the battle, I think, but it isdifficult to see clearly in the cloud of dust and dog. The chow howlslike a lost soul, and Brownstone, whom I have caught by the hind legs,looks at me with a red, pleased eye as if to say 'I know you'll give mehell, but let me kill him first!'

The terrier is worrying my trousers, and Daisy has attacked apeculiarly tender part of the chow. I lift and pull and curse. For aninstant Brownstone slackens his grip, but only to get a better hold,nearer the throat.

Someone has produced a pepper-pot. It is ground over Brownstone'snose, making him sigh. He won't stop killing for that. The DrillMajor swathes the chow's head in a duster, to prevent him biting, andpulls one way while I pull the other.

'A bucket of water!'

It is sluiced over them; we jerk, and jerk again. At last they comeapart.

Daisy is kicked into a corner, hysterical with excitement. The mongrelruns away, and the chow stays put, licking his wounds gently.Brownstone is semi-conscious, but happy ... I take him by the scruff ofthe neck and shake him; a whip would be useless at such a moment.

So I have shoved my oar into the Durbar after all! Is this the end ofmy career?

Luckily, no irreparable damage has been done. Durbar was almost over.I follow the Colonel, who is walking back to his bungalow, attended bythe Rissaldar Major, Woordie Major, Drill Major, Adjutant.

'Do you want me at the court-martial this afternoon, sir?'

'No, you damned young fool. Why did you let that hell-hound off alead? Better take him to the horse-hospital.'

'Very good, sir.'

'By the way, have you chosen your chargers and orderly? If not, thenask Hamzullah about them. You play polo, don't you? There's a boycalled Khushal in 'B' Squadron. I taught his father to ride, and he'sa light weight who might do you well.'

CHAPTER III

MASHEEN OF THE MIRRORED THUMBS

In the ivory box where my reels of memory are stored I can find onlydisjunct strips of film relating to my time at Bannu, for the heat hasmelted and distorted the sequence.

There is the night when the elderly Major shot himself by mistake;there is the fascinating city of Peshawar, where I spent some monthslearning Pushtu; there is the green polo ground at Bannu, and therocky, desolate uplands where we learned our business of soldiering;there is the daily round and its contrasting inner life. But there areonly short strips of each, and a monotony of flapping punkah.

Khushal Khan, the orderly recommended by the Colonel, was a ringletedyouth, with silky-curled moustache and manners as finished as his seaton a horse. He brought with him from the regimental store my equipmentas a Bengal Lancer—a blue and gold full dress, with chain mailepaulettes; a khaki coat of the same cut; a blue and gold turban, and akhaki one; a pair of large leather gauntlets, and two resplendentcummerbunds.

To tie a cummerbund, one end is held at full stretch by an assistant,while the wearer clasps the other on his hip and rolls himself into it.The cummerbund is six yards long, so it is impossible to practisesuch convolutions in a bungalow room. In my enthusiasm, I went outhatless into the courtyard with Khushal and during the few minutes thatI stood there bareheaded, the sun worked my undoing.

Twenty-four hours later I could not longer have been called amilk-faced boy, for my complexion had become the tint of weak tea. Ihad sunstroke.

My brain buzzed with anxieties and urgencies that I could not allay. Afrontier war was imminent, it seemed to me, and I must be ready for it,yet I could not collect my gear, for everything was in the wrong place,and my head too full to remember where anything might be.

The doctor came and prescribed bed and barley water. In two days I wasup again, completely recovered. But in that short time I had learnedthat the sun is more than the giver of life. In England, Nature seemsa tender mother, but East of Suez she changes her sex and she becomesSiva, Lord of Change and Destroyer of Names and Forms—Destroyer, thatis, of ignorance.

The thermometer began to mount suddenly in March. For a time I enjoyedthe heat, but as the relentless days wore on, life became a strugglewith prickly-heat, brain-fever birds, sunstroke, dust, malaria.

We paraded for musketry at five o'clock in the morning and returned atnine, when a haze danced over the targets, and rifle barrels grew toohot to hold. Jagwant pulled me out of my boots; I untied a necktiewhich had become a wet knot; dressed in civilian clothes which soonhung pulpily; breakfasted on glass after glass of milk and soda andice-mango fool, until my body was swollen but my thirst not slaked.Afterwards I went to stables, attended office or Durbar, returned to mybungalow where various complicated accounts had to be written up andsigned (for the sillidar system was already beginning to be smotheredin red tape) and bicycled back to lunch in an air so hot that it causedmen to muffle their mouths. In the afternoon, I attempted to read oranswer letters or learn Hindustani, in a mist of sleep. At fouro'clock I stirred up my senses with tea, put on long boots again, androde down to polo.

For polo, Brownstone left his almost permanent place under the punkahand trotted out with his master. Daisy was going to have puppies andled a secluded life, but for Brownstone and me this was the best partof the day.

True, I leashed him directly we reached the ground, lest he shouldindulge in his own forms of sport, but he found all kinds of amusingsmells there and I believe he enjoyed the games. His master wasfighting and he would have liked to help. Once he tried to do so, byflying at the white throat of Milkmaid, my best pony but one, but hereceived a straight left from her forefoot which put him out of harm'sway. After that, Khushal watched him.

My ponies were Crediton, a grand old chestnut who taught me tournamentpolo, and a glorious black Arab, who died of snake-bite on the muzzlebefore he was fully trained; Milkmaid, and my two chargers, Antinousand Ur of the Chaldees. These two carried me for three chukkers each,for, being bigger, I thought that they should do more work.

I made these good beasts sweat and suffer unnecessarily for myshortcomings, cutting their mouths and banging their fetlocks, but Ifed them well and saw that they were decently groomed. If there be aheaven for horses, may they find peaceful paddocks there, and springierturf than that of Bannu.

After dinner, eaten still under the swish of fans, I went back toanother punkah, by my bed and books.

My life was as sexless as any monk's at this time; and in a sense I wasonly half alive, lacking the companionship of women. But what is goodfor the Roman priest is good (I suppose) for the Indian Cavalrysubaltern, who has work to do (like the priest) which he could scarcelyperform if hampered by family ties. Certainly I possessed perceptionsthen which are uncapturable now in middle age. I was full ofintuitions and enthusiasms, for when one sense is thwarted others aresometimes freed and quickened, although at what cost to the mind'srhythms I do not know. I do not know how far discipline of the sexlife is a good thing. But I know that a normal sex life is morenecessary in a hot than a cold country. The hysteria which seems tohang in the air of India is aggravated by severe continence of anykind; at the end of Ramzan, for instance, my fasting squadron used tobecome as lively as a basket of rattlesnakes. Many good brains inIndia have been bound like the feet of a mandarin's wife, so that theycan only hobble ever after; and such cramping of the imagination maylose us the Empire.

Many times have I said that I would write these things. But now that Ihave done so, in this grey London weather, I cannot believe that I amnot exaggerating. I cannot believe that it was too hot to bear a sheeton my skin, that I ingested six glasses of milk and soda for breakfast,had a malaria temperature twice a week for months on end, that my braingrew addled, and my liver enlarged, and my temper liable to rise likethe fires of Stromboli. Yet so it was. Men's brains and bodies, likeother machines, work differently at different temperatures; and Indiawould be a happier country if we could always remember that, especiallyin Whitehall.

One night, when the temperature had risen apoplectically (for a ceilingof thunderclouds had closed in on us) and I lay gasping on the roof ofmy quarters, a revolver shot rang out from a neighbouring bungalow. Amoment before I had been drinking tepid soda water, and thinking ofEngland, and cursing this stifling night through which the angel ofsleep would not come. But now Providence had sent somethingbetter—raiders?

Voices cried 'Halaka ghula di!' ('Ware thief!'). Khushal arrivedwith the first weapon to his hand, a lance.

I went out in my pyjamas to explore. Crossing the road in thedirection of the shot, I found myself with a group of officers in theelderly Major's bungalow, where a curious story was related to me.

The elderly Major had been celebrating his approaching departure withmore than enough champagne. On reaching his bed he had lain downquietly; in a stupor, no doubt. Then his shattered nerves began toconjure up visions, and by the glimmer of the night-light which healways kept burning beside him, he saw a skinny outline at the foot ofthe bed. When he moved, it moved. Seizing a revolver in his tremblinghand, he fired; then he roared with pain, for he had shot not a face,but his own foot.

Next morning, he was hurried down to Kohat, with an orderly to put iceon his mangled toes and on his poor, deluded head. So he passed fromour sight—flotsam of the tide of Empire—and although this incidenthas been told before, I repeat it, since it really did happen to myelderly Major.

During this summer, cholera broke out in Bannu, of the sudden kind,that arches the victim backwards and kills people in a few hours. I donot know how many of the heathen it took in the bazaar, but it chose adear old missionary lady from among the godly and the godless incantonments. I was one of the officers deputed to carry her coffin tothe little churchyard where lie the men of the Rifle Brigade who fellat Misar.

A British staff-sergeant was in charge of the proceedings. He was astickler for formalities and he stopped our forlorn procession becausewe were carrying the departed head foremost. At the graveside hebarked out the responses and twirled his waxed moustache soaggravatingly that I wished that the earth would swallow him.

I strolled back to the mess in an over-wrought mood, drank a quart ofbeer, fell asleep on a sofa. When I awoke, I looked differently onthis earth.

The limit of life was darkness. God Himself was in the dark, else Hecould not have been so wicked as to create so much unwelcome death andunsatisfied desire. If God was good, why all this complicatedbegetting and hideous death in order to sustain a world which must inany case shrink and shrivel into nothingness? If God was kind, whythis cholera?

I had been living in a smug mental sanctuary where unpleasantness wasveiled in aphorisms. We all lived like that in England, where theseasons are beautiful. Here in High Asia we were closer to realities.

There was no God. I read Renan, and Anatole France's Le Procurateurde Judée, and a tract called Roger's Reasons, wherein Roger provesto his satisfaction that Noah took all the animals into the Ark. ThenI sent for some missionary pamphlets which described various aspects ofthe religion of the Hindus, contrasting it with our own superior faith.Krishna had stolen the clothes of some milkmaids. Christ never didthat. Kali was a goddess with a necklace of human skulls, drippingwith blood. She danced on the body of her husband. Most improper. Iwas shocked, not by Hinduism, but by our missionaries who forgot thepeccadilloes of Noah and the other patriarchs when comparing our sacredbooks with those of India.

Their unfairness inclined me towards Theosophy, and through Mrs. BesantI came to read about the System of the Vedanta. I find a fadednote-book in which the following comments are entered, under theinfluence of an emotion that I cannot exactly recall:

'In the quiet hour of dawn, when the brain seems to be separate fromthe body and loth to return to the routine of dressing and the dailyround, there comes to me a desire to rearrange my thoughts. I have avery miscellaneous lot of ideas. A good deal of rubbish has beenacquired carelessly, and has stuck in my mind without any particularpurpose. The treasures I have were gained in the moonlight, or seeingsome hill-top struck by dawn. Always alone.

'Long before my teens I looked on clergymen as people endowed with morefaith and hope than charity. I still hold to this. Roger's Reasonsis a terrible book. There is no one so godless as a self-satisfiedclergyman, for no one contradicts him.' (I omit some lengthyimmaturities here.)

'I have never doubted that I had a soul. But it is Mrs. Besant who hasshown me the possibility of making this soul my own, and bringing itinto my daily life and my eventual death. I have not been thinkingabout my soul much, but every time I look at her ideas, they seem tohave grown more clearly in my mind.

'The Second Coming will take place in India. Only here can the descentof spirit into matter be understood. In the West we are rooted inconvention, and gorged by too much print. The Churches are losingtheir hold on the young. Perhaps the Early Christians were happy, butnow the West is sick with pain of its own begetting. It awaits a newinterpretation of Christ in man.

'Life in India has not changed while Europe has been netting its landwith rails, covering the sea with ships, sending messages over wire.Our feet have slipped in blood; and hers also have strayed into atangle of abstractions and absurdities. But she is concerned withdeeper and subtler things than self-government. In the wars which willcome surely and soon we may learn to know each other better.'

'In the wars that shall come surely and soon!' This was prophetic, ifpompous. I was under the glamour of Mrs. Besant, of course, and it wasshe who first led me to explore the Aryan path.

The heat, much as I cursed it, saved me from a good deal of dreamingand the flail of everyday facts scourged out the introspective devilsthat lurk in the corners of the soul. I shut myself up in a darkenedbungalow, alone with my thoughts and dogs, but, when I tried to writedown what I felt, the pen slipped in my fingers, my hand made smudgeson the paper, and the draught of the fan scattered my writings. Themore I bathed the hotter I grew. The more I rubbed myself down, thewetter I became. So I was driven out of myself, into the sane world.

In November, too, squadron training began. 'B' Squadron moved acrossthe Kurram River, out of the hot-house atmosphere of Bannu to the openplain of Mamroz. For a delightful month we camped there. We were onthe route by which Alexander invaded India; our tents between therubble of two of his cities. Near one of them, while I was leading mytroop, Ur of the Chaldees sank into a Bactrian room. But I had no timeto think of Alexander; one eye was on my Squadron Commander and theother on a V in the dark blue hills of the horizon.

Leading the men straight for long hours in the sun and dust—six hoursin the saddle and never a minute between walls by day ornight—wheeling and charging and cursing the rear rank—the rear rankis always cursed—and scouting and sketching and doing outpost schemes;those days were amongst the happiest of my life. The men were brothersto us. After lunch we played Rugby football, or tossed the caber.Stables came at the end of the day. Then the horses were rugged up,watered, fed; the sun sank in a blaze behind the Soleiman Dagh; thetired squadron gathered round its tureens of mutton curry andflat-jacks; and we three British officers went to splash in canvasbaths.

The night air smelt very good when we emerged in our yellow fur-coatsand Gilgit boots for dinner, and the crescent of Islam rode in a clearsky. Sometimes there was a bonfire and a Khuttuck dance; more often weall went to sleep by nine o'clock, sated with exercise and meat.

From my bed I could see the squadron, and beyond it the jagged hills ofAfghanistan, with Orion's Belt above them. I used to struggle hard tokeep awake to enjoy the world a little longer. There was a white mule,a Houdini with his head rope, who was always loose: while I followedhis movements, consciousness could not slip from me. I could see themist from his nostrils as he stood looking at the sentries who passedand repassed the hurricane-lamp by the Quarter-Guard. Now he regardedme thoughtfully with the curious air of abstraction that animals assumeat night. Now he was nosing under a tent-cave, where he had detectedsome sugar-cane. Now his long ears had caught the sound of footsteps,and he moved away to sip delicately at the water-bucket in front of thetroop commander's tent.... And as I lay looking, and listening to thetent's flap, I travelled back into a past within me buried deeper thanthe Bactrian cities, and then forward suddenly: a miracle had occurred,it was already morning.

Réveillé rang out among the stones. My white mule led his kindred, whowere already struggling out of camp with the syces to bring a day'sfodder from cantonments. Horses stood dishevelled, with straw on theirblankets, shivering. Men crept out of their tiny tents, clemmed withcold. Tea was brought to me, tasting of wood-smoke, and I drank itbefore I uncurled myself, slowly, luxuriously. For an officer, thiscamp life was glorious; and even the men, who had not enough blanketsto cover them, and slept two by two to keep warm, would not willinglyhave exchanged tents for houses.

When there are no such camps and no excuse to hunt and wander, whatwill this world be like?

One day I chased a hare, and that hunting brought a train ofconsequences, as a stone in water makes an enlarging circle of wave.It so happened that I was temporarily in command of the squadron, whichhad been left to me to take home quietly, doing a little drill on theway. When I saw this hare, however, I put spurs to my charger, for topursue a flying thing was almost automatic. Besides, I wanted to testthe pace of Ur of the Chaldees over five furlongs. Certainly I did notmean the squadron to follow me.

Afterwards, the trumpeter said I had given the order to gallop, but Iimagine he mistook some unconscious movement of mine for a signal.

Whatever the reason, when I looked over my shoulder I saw the squadronfollowing me in extended line, with outstretched lances. A ditchloomed up. I cleared it with a length to spare. Not so the squadron.Down went the horses' necks at the obstacle; some baulked, spillingtheir riders; half a dozen pecked, and rolled over on landing.Thoroughly disorganised now, the remainder poured after me in wildpursuit, madder than Rupert's cavaliers, and as bloodthirsty as thosewho followed the horned standards of Tamerlane.

Ahead was puss.

She made straight for camp, doubled back, tried to dodge between ourranks. A chance hoof broke her back.

A couple of raw country-breds, just out of training-school, had runaway with their riders. Out of all control, they dashed straight amongthe tents, falling there amidst a whinnying of tethered horses.

The squadron leader came out in his shirt-sleeves, biting at hischeroot. I had reined up in a muck of sweat, and felt foolish, sittingthere on Ur, amongst my delighted men, with a small brown thing at myfeet, kicking convulsively.

A sowar dismounted and opened his jack-knife.

'Kill it quickly,' I said, for the hare was working its hind legs as ifit still hoped to escape.

The youth looked up in surprise.

'I'm not sure if the meat is lawful,' he said, 'but I will kill itlawfully.' And with a muttered 'Al hamd 'ul 'illah,' he cut herthroat.

'What the hell——' said the squadron leader.

My explanation sounded thin. However, we had the hare jugged fordinner that night.

Over our madeira, the squadron leader and I discussed the necessity forspeaking to the Pathan in his own language.

'Urdu won't do,' said my Major, 'you must know Pushtu if you want tocommand these blighters.'

Now to learn Pushtu I should go to Peshawar, the metropolis of thePathans; and I pointed this out. The squadron commander agreed, and itwas thus, thanks indirectly to the hare, that I found myself in thatcity at the end of Squadron Training.

I learned more than the knowledge required to pass the Higher Standardexamination in Pushtu while I lived in Peshawar.

If you visit its bazaars by day, when roses are sold in the streets andproud fathers carry their babies shoulder-high, you will see one thing.By night, when the city gates are shut you will see quite another andmore intimate side of the Pathan.

Countries, like people, are loved for their failings. I began to lovethis frontier land. But my eagerness to look into the Central Asianheart had a purpose other than that which I acknowledged even tomyself. To pass the Higher Standard was a reasonable ambition, butwhat I really required for my happiness was to get out of the rut ofsoldiering. My life had been cramped into a conventional mould. Now Iwas beginning to shake myself free.

Western civilisation had bullied and bored me. The floods of tears Ihad shed over Latin syntax, my hysterical inability to construe, myshort sight (which kept me back at games) and an emotional crisis whichblighted my life at the age of sixteen, had left scars andsullennesses. I had not been a success at school. Nor did I likeSandhurst, except for the cavalry camp at the end of my time there.Drill disgusted me. I was hopeless at cricket and too slow forfootball. Here in India I was finding myself.

The nautch-girls of Peshawar, I had been told, were of a beauty to makethe dog-stars weep. Their bodies were cypresses, their teeth camomilepetals, their eyes falcons of morning, their lips like Solomon's seal.I went to visit their houses, therefore, in expectancy.

My Pathan friend and I were dressed in gold-laced waistcoats and jetblack turbans with gold fringes; we wore roses behind our ears; oureyes were painted with collyrium; we carried daggers, and my friend afavourite fighting quail in a small gilt cage. We visited thecaravanserais of the Dabgari quarter which are hotbeds of Central Asianintrigue and vice. We fought quails and played andhabazi, the greategg game. It was an amusing world.

I learned to smoke hashish, whose local name is charas. I heardstories of Lughman Hakim and Iskunder and Aflatoon that were told longago in Baghdad by other Scheherezades. Sometimes I understood thesetales and blushed under my walnut-oil complexion; more often I lost thethread, but still listened, letting the accents and idioms of thenarrator sink into my mind.

My friend told the company that I was a Kashmiri, but I doubt whetherthey believed that. The women asked no questions, however, for ourrupees were as good as any others; their business was not to discussthe antecedents of their visitors, but to amuse them: like thehetairai of the Athens of Pericles, they were hostesses as well ascourtesans.

I fell in love with a famous dancer—Masheen by name. Her fee wassometimes as much as a thousand rupees for a single night—rich mengave her that, not milk-faced boys. Her thumbs were adorned withmirrors. She had mesmeric arms and wrists. Her whole body, from neckto ankles, was aflash with bracelets and rings, and on her bare stomachone emerald shone. She was leisurely in her movements, a mistress oftime as well as her muscles, beginning always with her finger tips toslow cadences, and continuing with hands and arms and shoulders untilthe wave passed into her flexible body. Then that too seemed to meltentirely into the rhythm of the drums, which had now grown wild andquick. She seemed no longer human, but sound itself: her voluminousskirts became the tapping of the dol[1] and her henna-ed hands thefluting of the serenai.[2] She was more than her dancing, havingtranscended personality by merging with the voices of Creation.

Cross-legged, chewing betel-nut, and occasionally taking a pull at acharas-laden hookah, I watched her first with curiosity, thenfascination. Here was release and rapture. As she danced on and on tothe music of her drunken drummers, some rhythm or religion from thenight of time sounded on my skin and gathered itself into my pulses. Icould feel as well as hear the beating of the drums.

The smell of crushed geraniums brings back the memory of these Peshawarnights. The charas I smoked made me sometimes imagine that I couldcrawl through keyholes, and sometimes that I could step over theHimalayas, but if it harmed my body at all, it shed a countervailingblessing on my spirit, for by its aid I could always return to theecstasies and entrancements of the nautch.

Those infinitely subtle movements slid into my soul and spoke to me oftimes long past, when the rhythms of the body were worshipped in thepantomime of Creation, and David danced before the altar of Jehovah.Somewhere in space these spells survive, for their delight isdeathless. 'He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober by dawn, buthe who has lost his senses to the Cup-bearer will not recover until theDay of Judgment.'

[1] Drum.

[2] Flute.

CHAPTER IV

THE DELHI ROAD

The day that I heard that I had passed the Higher Standard Examinationin Pushtu with credit, orders also came that the regiment was to marchsouth, and not only south, but to my old cantonment of Bareilly.Moreover, eight beautiful babies were born to Daisy.

We were to march for three months, down half India, through the Punjauband on to the United Provinces, where we would find pig and deer andpanther, and lakes over which wild duck wheel, and old thatchedbungalows under the shade of mango trees. In Bareilly, new doors wouldopen to my knocking.

On the last night at Bannu our men gave a display of tent-pegging bytorchlight. They rode down singly first, galloping at a line of pegssoaked in kerosene oil; and each peg came up in a whirl of fire.

Their cry was 'Ali, Ali, Ali—Yi-hai!' ('Ali—I have it!') One ofthese paladins invoked the Name of the Lord of the Worlds, King on theDay of Judgment:

Bismillah hir-rahman nir-rahim—
Al-hamdul-illah rabi lalamin—
Ar-rahman nir-rahim
Malik-i-yumi din. Yi-hai—YI-HAI!

It was a fierce prayer, gabbled as he galloped at the peg. He flamedpast us with eyeballs and teeth glinting, and could not stop his horse,so that he rode the whole circuit of the field, twirling his lance androaring with open throat upon the name of Allah. Then came sections offour—Afridis and Khuttucks and Tiwanas and Khalils—thundering out ofthe dark in their flowing white robes. I was proud of the regiment!

Next morning, we trotted away in a long column of dust, with thesunlight glinting on our lances through the kikr trees of the Kohatroad:

And I said, I will 'list for a Lancer
O who would not sleep with the brave!

For three months we marched, past Rawalpindi, Ferozepore, Ludhiana,Rurki, and Lahore, moving faster, so the Colonel said, than thehorsemen of Alexander pursuing Darius. The quick spring of India endedall the quicker for our southward march. The weather grew hot, and ourhearts light, for each day brought us nearer the Ganges with its rivergrass and bamboo thickets, where the heavy boar wallow.

At Lahore, a strange thing happened in the gardens of Shahdara. I wentto visit Jehangir's tomb there, with a friend and his bull terrier.This dog came with us to the garden, but we tied her up before enteringthe tomb, out of respect for a Moslem burial-place.

She whined and yelped, so when we were going up to the roof we askedthe resident Imam whether there would be any objection to her followingus? The Imam shrugged his shoulders, and said that he had no objectionat all, but that he advised us to be careful. My friend loosed her,and she came rejoicing. Another visitor with a dog took his also up tothe roof.

Now the wide flat top of Jehangir's tomb is bounded by a parapet. Myfriend's bitch hunted about for a moment or two, with her nose down, asif she were following a scent. Then she jumped over the parapet, andwas dashed to pieces on the path below. It happened so quickly therewas no time to call her. We ran down and picked her up while she wasstill breathing, but every bone of her poor body was broken, and shedied before we could take her to a vet.

We did not go back to the place of tragedy, but next day we heard thatthe other man's dog had done exactly the same thing a few minutesafterwards. Both animals committed suicide. I can vouch for thefacts, but have no explanation to offer, except that conceivably thedogs saw something that we did not.

Dilli dur ast.

It is a far cry from Lahore to Delhi, but thither we must go at astride, lest this story grow too long in the telling.

While we were entertaining some friends in our mess tent at Delhi, asacred bull strolled through the camp with such a cocksure air that Iwas tempted to make a bet that I would ride it. It tossed metent-high, however, then tripped itself over a rope and fell sprawling,outraged, amazed. This was too much for Brownstone, who had beenwatching the proceedings from his bathtub kennel: he squirmed out ofhis collar and pounced on the throat of his hereditary enemy. How Ipulled him off I cannot now remember, but by the time I had succeededin doing so a considerable crowd had collected, for we were in the verymiddle of Delhi, opposite the Juma Masjid mosque.

Here was an insult to the Hindu religion offered by a brutal soldiery.I had an awkward interview with the Colonel next day, and a pleasanterone with the plaintiff Hindus, for I was so anxious to stand well intheir estimation that I would willingly have given them a sacred bulla-piece, instead of the small contribution for the Sick Animals'Dispensary which they demanded by way of compensation; and it wastherefore in a very favourable atmosphere that I was able to put aquestion that I had long wanted to ask.

'A guru, Sahib?' answered the Brahmin whom I had addressed, 'you canfind one in Benares if you go there.'

'Benares is a long way,' I said. 'Surely there are gurus in thecapital of India? You yourself, for instance, could tell me of Yoga.'

'Sahib, you are a soldier, and the karma of blood is blood. You mustchoose between two paths. As it is written, 'If you are in the world,be rightly of it.' When you are old as I, it will be time enough toturn to contemplation of things of the mind.'

'I don't see why I shouldn't be a Yogi as well as a soldier!'

'Perhaps you could be both in your own country,' the Brahmin answered,'but not here. In India we live in invisible cages.'

'Invisible cages——?'

'Caste. But we have no industrial system, nor do we condemn our girlsto the sterility which you consider natural if they do not succeed inthe competition for husbands. We recognise the right of every humanbeing to a mate. Yet the fetters we have forged through caste aredragging us down—to the level of Western civilisation.'

'We have nothing like your child marriage, pandit-ji.'

'You make your children work when they should be playing,' he answeredquickly. 'Besides, many of us disapprove of child marriage, butcustoms that have grown up through centuries cannot be abolished in aday. Even in England the age of consent is still fourteen.'

'I agree with you, pandit-ji, that we are far from perfect. I lovemy country in spite of her faults. But I admit them. I have long feltthat Western civilisation is sick. That is why I want to learn aboutYoga. If I did, would I be suspected of being a spy?'

'No. Your own people might think you mad; but we would not think you aspy. There are no secrets to be discovered in Yoga, but there are manythings to be learned. Yoga is not a medicine to take at a gulp. Noris it a dogma. It is a set of exercises. You begin at the beginningand go on steadily, for until the first exercise is mastered the secondcannot be understood. The same is true of the integral calculus. Butthere is this difference—Yoga is a physical as well as mental process.It is written that just as the sweetness of molasses can only berealised by the tongue and can never be explained by thousands ofwords, so Yoga can be realised only by the senses and never explainedby words. You come from a culture that has made a fetish of the brain.You come from a different climate. You are young, confident that youhave only to say a thing and it is. In India things are never whatthey seem. We are an old race, and our religions—for they aremany—are full of beauty and decay.'

The spate of words stopped suddenly.

'I want to learn of their beauty,' I said.

'Beware of it, I warn you. But if you are serious, Sahib, I will tellyou of the first step in Yoga. It consists in the cultivation of thequalities of forbearance towards all life created, courage, secrecy,concentration, faith, honesty, self-control, cleanliness, cheerfulness,perseverance and purity.

'And humility,' he added, as if it was an afterthought. 'Humility isindeed very necessary. Some of the gurus make their disciples sweepout the latrines of the untouchables with their hair. I have a nephewat Agra who is doing some such thing.'

'Where could I find him?' I asked.

'I do not know exactly. At a burning-ghat probably. His name isSivanand Joshi. But I advise you to have nothing to do with Yoga. YouEnglishmen are practical about material things. Be practical aboutmysticism also. Build your Rome brick by brick.'

'I have no straw for the bricks of my mind, pandit-ji.'

'When you are ready to build, Hazoor, you will find the straw. Italways happens so.'

CHAPTER V

THE KING COBRA AND THE HERALD OF THE STAR

Chance seemed to guide my feet towards the sages of the Ganges, andanimals. The hare had awakened in me the ache for ahimsa.[1] Then abull had helped me on the road to Benares. Next, a king cobra uncoileditself as a portent of the things that lay about me, unseen. But theveils of maya[2] cannot be pierced save through experience. Theytwitched aside, then closed again.

The cobra came one afternoon in early spring when I was installed in mybungalow at Bareilly. I was studying maps of the district at themoment, considering how best we should plan our camps during the comingpig-sticking season; when unexpectedly—for it was the hour forrepose—Jagwant appeared. He salaamed, and said that a man had beenbitten by a snake.

'What man?' I asked.

'Just a man, Cherisher of the Poor,' said Jagwant. 'He is going to diein the road outside our house.'

I ran out to my bungalow gate, and found there a group of syces andgrasscutters gazing apathetically at a prostrate figure.

Evidently the man was a grasscutter who had been scraping up the sweetdhub grass by the roadside, for his implement was beside him and hisloin-cloth was half-filled with fodder. A passing postman had seen himand had told Jagwant. Jagwant had gone to look, and had decided thathe could do nothing personally, for the man was of low caste.

His lips were already blue when we carried him into the verandah. Iscribbled a line to the regimental doctor and sent Jagwant off with it,telling him to return with some brandy (there was no pollution for himin that). Then I searched for the mark of a wound on thegrasscutters's scaly legs and gnarled hands, but could find none.

When the doctor came he found two livid spots on the palm near thethumb, about half an inch apart, but it was too late to incise them.The man was dead.

'I know a saddhu who can bring even the dead to life,' said a nativehospital assistant as soon as his chief had gone.

At my request, he hurried off to the bazaar, and returned about an hourlater with the saddhu, who proved to be an emaciated, ash-smearedcreature with matted hair, carrying a begging bowl and a flute.

Immediately, without a word to me, the saddhu seated himselfa-straddle on the corpse, parted its lips, breathed into them, andbegan a sing-song mantra, trembling violently.

'Your Honour,' said Jagwant, who had observed those proceedingsgloomily, 'I shall have to pay money to the Brahmins if he brings thespirit back. This is magic of the left-hand path.'

But the saddhu sat back with a sigh, took a pinch of snuff from afold of his loin-cloth, and said:

'I can animate the body for a few minutes to-night, Sahib, if you willsend it to some lonely place, but it is too old and weak and full ofpoison to live. The Great One that killed this man is probably in yourHonour's house, or near it, and I can of course make it come out of itshiding-place.'

'You shall have ten rupees if you can find the snake,' I said: 'but howshall I know that it is the same snake?'

'I will show you the Prince,' answered the saddhu confidently, 'Ihave done the same thing for the Burra Lat Sahib [the thenLieutenant-Governor] and other Burra Sahibs.'

As he entered my room, Brownstone rose and stretched himself, sleepyand calm and friendly, but instead of his usual polite sniff at aguest, the hairs on his back rose like hackles on a cock. He waddledaway with stiff legs and limp tail.

The saddhu peered and poked about my room. Finally he said: 'ThePrince is in this house,' and sat down on the floor, with his reed pipe.

I took a chair, feeling rather excited, for no sound came from thesaddhu's instrument, although he was playing it. It was strange tothink that the snake might be already keeping time to the reed, wavingand weaving invisibly to this inaudible music.

After some ten minutes, Jagwant ushered in a waiter, carrying myafternoon tea. Brownstone came to sit by me, on the side away from thesaddhu, and gazed at the buttered toast with such intensity thaticicles of saliva formed at his chops.

'The Prince is there,' said the saddhu, pointing to a box near thebathroom door.

I went over and pulled it out from the wall, but nothing stirred. Thesqueak of Daisy's puppies came to us from an adjoining room, and thesaddhu laid his reed down.

'There are too many dogs in this house,' he said. 'My Lord isdistracted. Will your Honour send them away?'

I told Jagwant to remove Brownstone and that Daisy and her childrenmust be taken to the sweeper's house.

'I can give you another fifteen minutes,' I said, 'while I change forpolo.'

'He will come at once now, Hazoor,' he answered, mopping his forehead.'My Lord has been very close all the time.'

Trickles of sweat ran along his ashy ribs and he was trembling again,as when he had sat on the corpse. He played, and I could just hear himnow. For a minute he continued, then he rose and urged me with amotion of his whole body towards the bathroom door.

Under the bulge of the tin bath a shadow lay. I went closer, thinkingit would vanish. Instead, it uncoiled itself like a whip-lash. For amoment I feared that the cold at the pit of my stomach would paralysemy arm, but when the cobra hissed up on to its tail, with hoodoutspread, I hit out with the walking-stick I carried, and fearvanished. I struck at it two or three times. It was a hamadryad.

The saddhu piped loudly, and rolled his eyes, inspiring me with anunreasonable but instinctive revulsion.

'Hut! Hut! Hut!' said Jagwant, waving him away.

That was hardly fair.

'What is the matter with you, Jagwant?' I said. 'I want to talk tothis man who has saved us all from being bitten—and you hustle him outof the house.'

'Hazoor, the man is a Tantrik. What does your Honour want with abeef-eating magician?'

'That's my business.'

When I paid the saddhu, not ten, but sixteen rupees, I told him thatI would give him yet another gold mohur if he would tell me how hebrought the snake.

He laughed at that.

'I can teach you a first-class card trick, Hazoor.'

'I don't want tricks. How did the cobra come to be in my bathroom?'

'It came, Hazoor. That is all I know. If you send it to the hospital,the Doctor Sahib will tell you that its fangs are empty. It killed thegrasscutter.'

'How do you know?'

Again the saddhu laughed.

'I know there is a cat in your roof,' he said.

That was probable. Polecats lived in many of these old thatchedbungalows, and there was the stain of one on my cloth ceiling. Hewould answer none of my questions.

'My eyes are sharp,' was all he would say. 'So sharp that they gothrough walls.'

'Can I acquire your knowledge?' I demanded again.

'What does a great Sahib like your Honour want with such things? Ilearnt from my father and my father learnt from my grandfather. Myfather could pour water into his mouth and pass it directly through hisbowels. My grandfather was waxed all over and buried alive forforty-three days. I can swallow five different coloured handkerchiefsand vomit them up in any order you wish, and I can lift a cannon-ballwith my eyelids. If your Honour wishes to see these things, I can comeagain, but my ekka is waiting to take me into the city, where I havean appointment. Salaam Hazoor!'

After polo, I questioned Jagwant on the subject of Tantriks. He toldme that some of them were wise and good men, but generally difficult todeal with. It was best to avoid Tantriks. Some of them ate deadbodies. Others ate beef. Others could transport themselves to theHimalayas in the twinkling of an eye and talk with tigers as friend tofriend. One of their habits was to haunt the burning-ghats, wherethey would put rice and ghi between the teeth of a corpse—preferablythat of a woman who had died in child-birth—and summon a spirit intoit, so that it sat upright and spoke. When this happened there was abugling of ghostly conches and a rattle of unearthly drums, veryterrible to hear.

I demanded that I should be introduced to someone who was an expert inthese matters. As usual Jagwant salaamed.

Soon afterwards a Brahmin friend of his appeared—an overseer holding aposition in the Public Works Department—who unlaced his boots and leftthem in my verandah before entering, although I begged him not to do so.

'In Benares you will find real gurus' he said, accepting one of mycigarettes and speaking in fluent English. 'There are thousands ofteachers there of an unquestionable perspicacity and skill, sir, whowould look with disdain upon the art of charming cobras.'

'Have you heard of Mrs. Besant?' I asked.

'Of course! A great and good woman. She is truly a mother to myunfortunate country.'

We discussed Theosophy for some time and finding that he knew nothingabout it, I tried to steer the conversation towards the Tantriks.

The pundit looked shocked. He had never heard of dead men beingraised. There was a saddhu at Puri who claimed to be able toresurrect sparrows that had been wrangled by breathing prana[3] intothem, but it was possible that he was an impostor. He did not believesuch things. When he had taken his B.A. degree he had studiedcomparative religion and had come to the conclusion that all the greatfaiths of the world were true, and none of them completely satisfying.

'Do you believe in God, pandit-ji?' I asked.

'Oh, no! Not a personal God,' he answered. 'Such vulgar ideas areonly for uneducated men.'

The pundit would tell me nothing about his philosophy. We were politeto each other, but there was a barrier between us that nothing but timeor violence could have lifted. I afterwards discovered he was no meanVedanta scholar and could have said more in half an hour than I couldhave assimilated in a month. But I had not remembered a very simplething: in the East information is not to be had for the asking. TheBrahmins consider knowledge to be a dangerous tool, and the giving ofit to the ignorant like giving a razor instead of a rattle to a baby.

We Europeans are always giving something to somebody. Christianity,for instance. Then education. Now we give our ideas of democracy.All this is alien to the Hindu mind which has outgrown the culturewhich inspired that revealing hymn:

Can we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
Can we to men benighted
The lamp of light deny?

The high-caste Hindu is arrogant enough in his own way (coming as hedoes from the same stock as ourselves) but he is convinced that noillumination can be given to minds that do not wish for it; that noouter theory can make men free; that no medicine will work while thepatient sleeps, except to the patient's ruin.

These differences go deep down. We can bridge them with our brains,but hardly with our hearts. The best we can do, on either side, is toavoid arrogance.

Very humbly and hopefully I went to Benares for a week at Christmas, inorder to discover whether I might there find the bridge that I soughtbetween East and West. I sat at Mrs. Besant's feet on variousoccasions, out on others I must admit I danced with two Americantourists (one fair, one dark) whom I had met at the hotel. Lookingback on them, even from this distance of time, I am not surprised thatmy attention should have been distracted from the holy city of theHindus. It is true that I searched for Sivanand Joshi, and alsoattended the lectures at the Central Hindu College, but my pursuit ofknowledge was not as diligent as it would have been had there not beena curly head, and a pair of bow-shaped lips, and a Virginian burr in mymemory. But for this frailty I might have become wiser.

Or again, I might not.

As to Mrs. Besant, she was all that I had imagined her to be ineloquence, dignity, sincerity; and Krishnamurti, whom the esotericsection of the Theosophists believed was about to become the Saviour ofthe World, seemed a modest, handsome, straightforward lad. But I wasvery much disappointed in their friends.

Before the meetings, a venerable figure (who was later accused ofabducting the Theosophical Messiah, but acquitted) used to give uslithographed scraps of paper containing messages revealed to him by theMasters of the Great White Lodge. On their way from the snows of Tibetthese thought-transferences seemed to me to have lost their sting anddegenerated into platitudes. Krishnamurti generally sat on theplatform with Mrs. Besant. On one occasion he spoke. As bad luckwould have it I had made an appointment this evening to dine with myfriends, so I missed a scene which may (or may not) be remembered asepochal in future ages. For it was then that the Holy Spirit descendedon Krishnamurti. 'Great vibrations thrilled through the hall,' wrotean eye-witness afterwards in the Theosophist, 'and the slender figuretook on a surprising majesty. Indians, Europeans, Americans, bowedtheir heads at the feet of the sixteen-year-old Brahmin boy, whose bodywas shaken by the Coming Avatar, and asked his blessing.' These thingswe missed for grilled chicken and Pol Roger.

I can never forget the debt I owe to Mrs. Besant. But the masters, theGreat Ones, the Lords of Karma, and so on, were not for me. The fairand dark tourists taught me more of life.

[1] Non-violence towards all created things.

[2] Name, form, time, space and causation.

[3] Vital force.

CHAPTER VI

POLO

And now the scene changes to Naini Tal, a hill station near Bareilly,where I am playing in the final match of a polo tournament. The timeis a summer afternoon of the late Edwardian age.

My ponies are Daim, Tot, Crediton, with Ur of the Chaldees as areserve. I'll give Crediton his breather first. The white ball boundsbefore us: Crediton follows it without touch of rein or spur.Tap—tap—tap—I've dribbled it the length of the field and through thegoal at full gallop. That is easier to do on this little Naini Talpolo ground than on a field of regulation size. Shall I be able to doit again in the match?

Crediton has stopped, for he has seen the crowd and guesses that thisis the final. He's sweating in front of his saddle and dancing fromside to side; and now his muzzle's on the ground. He's bowing andscraping.... He's hysterical.

Now for Daim. You'll see the band from the middle of the ground, Daim,without standing on your hind legs. The noise puzzles you? Youshouldn't think so much; it's bad for ponies. And why, oh why, do youhave to twist your tongue over the bit? Rubber can't hurt you.

Still five minutes to go. Joey is hitting the length of the smallground in a single stroke. I wish I could do that. Billy—ourcaptain—is talking with the umpire. They're not nervous. They'reboth natural athletes, and both destined, as a matter of fact, to playfor England against America—Joey three times.

Nothing has happened to my lunch. Soup, meat, trifle have undergoneno diminution or digestion. Sick? Yes, it's curious how Nature canmake a violent effort of rejection when it would have been so much lesstrouble to deal with the meal in the usual way. And all this fuss isonly about a game.

I'm sleepy now, with funk. Why don't we begin? Flags and sun andpeople. I'm thick in the head.

I'll play Crediton first. None of your circus-tricks: this is serious.If I catch you bending... Rough-looking fellow, my opposing No. 1 witha red head to match his jersey and native-made breeches and boots toolow. The umpire is holding up his hand. Beyond him I see parasols,white dresses, glitter. The ball's the thing.

'Ride him, Y.B.!'

Isn't that what I'm doing? Crediton is leaning across the opposing No.1. We bear down towards the umpire, tussling: he has only to put theball at my feet and the game will begin. But he whistles, and turns,and sends us back. All to do again. I rein round in a daze. Shall Iever see the ball through this infernal sleep? Now we are galloping instep towards the umpire—now—now—and now! The ball has flown past usin the air. Joey has it. He turns, hits down the ground. 'Ride,Y.B.!'

'Get out of my way, damn you!'

I am still entangled with No. 1. No hope of catching the back, whoslashes down at the ball on his near side, returning it amongst us.Billy meets it and dribbles it again towards the enemy's goal.

'Ride, Y.B.!'

This time Crediton and I overtake the back so that he misses hisreturn. With a clean crack Billy drives the ball forward, past us,towards goal. There is a thunder and a crying. The back and I areneck and neck. He is a big man, but his pony is out of hand, snatchingat the bridle. Crediton leans on him, jerking his wise old head. Myknee is behind my opponent's. His grip is loosening and I am forcinghim off his saddle.

Billy is on the line of the ball, but he's being ridden-off. Joey,unmarked, bears down. The ball is six yards from goal, in its centre.Can he miss? Not Joey. He taps it through with a flick of the wrist:the whistle blows: we raise our sticks and yell for joy. First goal tous.

Cheers and fluttered handkerchiefs. Crediton faces the grand-stand andbegins to kneel down again.

'Hurry up, Y.B.!'

'All right, all right!'

The umpire won't throw the ball straight. It has gone to their No. 2,who is off like a streak. The crowd cheers. The ball bounces offJoey's helmet, so that he can't hit a backhander. Bad luck that, forNo. 2 is on it, and is tapping it round. He'll never do it at thatpace. God, he has. He—has——! It's a goal!

Whistle. Yells. One all. We must begin again. No, Crediton! Thatwas a goal against us and that's what you get in the mouth for being anidiot.

Where's the ball? Under my feet?

'Get out!'

'Go to hell!'

'Get off it!'

It's mine, out of the scrimmage. Hit or dribble?

'Ride, Y.B.!'

Must I leave it? God, that's hard!

Joey hits a glorious ball, clean and straight. Back and I are having agreat fight. He curses me, for he is a portly man of nearly sixty,while I am bony and ruthless.

'Damn it, can't you hear the whistle?'

Already? I thought we had only just begun. Seven and a half minuteshave passed. This is the end of the first chukkar.

What's the matter? I swing my leg over Crediton's neck. It's his offfore. Lifting his gaiter, I feel his nobbly fetlock wet with blood. Irun off the ground at his side, he on three legs.

'Well played, Y.B.,' said Billy. I hardly touched the ball, but praiseis sweet.

Daim is standing on his hind legs, again. I wish I didn't havetemperamental ponies. Will Crediton be fit for another chukkar?Khushal is wrapping his legs in hot bandages.

'Well played, Y.B.,' says Joey.

They've both said it, to encourage me, of course. It does encourage me.

We line up where we stopped play. Daim is on his hind legs when theball is thrown in, so that I can't reach it. Then he jumps six footinto space. But I have it, somehow. A tap now. We're off. We havethe legs of the field. Just now I dribbled the ball the length of theground: I must do it again. Hell's foundations quiver! As my stickcame down the ball bounced, or Daim did. Daim, you brute, we must bumpthe back.

Back won't be bumped. He's on a crafty Arab which turns on a sixpenceand leaves Daim cavorting about alone. Wait till we race for the ball,and then you won't see us for dust.

Is this chukkar never going to end? The last passed in a flash, now weseem to have been playing half an hour. My throat's dry, and the reinshave rubbed my fingers raw.

'For God's sake mark your man, Y.B.!'

I can't hold Daim, that's the truth. He needs two hands to stop him.There's the ball. I'll let the swine loose!

'Hi! Hi! God Almighty!'

Whistle. Foul against us.

'Man alive,' says Billy, 'you can't cross like that.'

A dangerous foul. That means a goal to them. In silence we ride backbehind our goal. All my fault.

Our opponents take up their positions fifty yards opposite us. Theback has only to hit the ball through our undefended flags. Twowhistles. That means the end of the second chukkar, so my misery willbe continued in the next period.

'We're holding them,' says Billy during the brief interval. 'It can'tbe helped about the foul. Ride at him as soon as he begins to hit.You never know.'

Tot feels like a battleship under me. I have had a sip of champagne.The band is playing Bonnie Dundee.

Back is making his stroke. He must be nervous with so much dependingon him.

Ride! Can I hit a ball in mid-air? I've missed, but why is Joeyyelling 'Played, Y.B.'? He thinks I've hit it. Well, Tot has, withher hoof. Billy is on the ball now, and I'm marking my man as I should.

Up and down we race. I'm clinging desperately to the back, using himas a cushion. That's useful, anyway. Time. That period was quicklyover. Is this match an agony, or is it bliss undreamed of? One all,and half time.

Can I ride Crediton again? He's better on three legs than Daim onfour. But Billy says that I must keep Crediton for the last chukkar.So my choice is between Ur of the Chaldees or that indiarubber son of agun, Daim, who's cut my hands to ribbons. Khushal has tied his tonguedown now. It lolls out bluely, still over the bit. I'll give him atrial. Yes, Brownstone; it's one all. Can't you read the numbers?Water on the back of my neck: how good it feels, dripping.

I think we'll win, if I don't disgrace myself. The opposing one trotsout lame, goes back. We wait. He has reappeared on a black carthorse.That's his reserve pony probably.

I've got the ball this time at last, and have tapped it forward toBilly under Daim's neck. Up and down, up and down. Will the ballnever come to me? I'm enjoying myself, though, bumping the back overthe side-lines, and turning under the carthorse's nose. Here's abackhander for me to hit—and I've hit it too, for once in a blue moon.Daim, you jewel! Joey has the ball. Will he—won't he? No, his shotgoes wide. My stick's broken. A spare stick—quick! They have hitout from behind, and No. 2 swoops down to our goal amidst a ripple ofclapping.

Goal to them, almost before I knew what was happening. Time. That'sthe end of the fourth chukkar and the score's two-one against us.

'I wish to God you'd keep on the ground and try to hit the ball,' saysJoey.

Yes, I know his censure is deserved.

Billy slices to the side wall as soon as we begin again: Joey takes therebound with a near-side shot. Two inches more to the right, and itwould have been a goal.

'Meet it, can't you?'

I can't. Tot is slow on her helm. My stick weighs a ton. These sevenminutes are seven hours.

The last period. It is only forty minutes since I began thisliving.... Crediton, poor, sweet, good angel! If you die it will bein a good cause, but you won't, for this game's gone to your head,making you more than a horse. Steady. We've met it, by God!

I wish everyone would stop shouting. I know I've got to hit that spotof white. The goal flags are a little to my left. Now is our chance,Crediton! You are smooth and steady and fast; no one can catch us.

I am alone in the world with an open goal in front. A steady shot: acalm shot amidst the hoof-beats and cheers. I can't bring my stickdown. It's stuck. Oh cruel, my stick has been hooked from behind.I'm helpless. The inviting ball bobs by; but Billy, bless him, isbehind. And following him, trying to hook his stick, comes thered-headed No. 1. His hat's fallen off. Will the umpire stop thegame? I can't look or listen. Back and I surge through thegoal-flags, scattering a group of spectators who shout even as theyrun, for Billy has sent the ball true and straight, whizzing past myface.

We're level. Two all and six minutes to play. There's Jagwant, solemnand tall. He is among a group who are waving their turbans—regimentalservants. The crowd is a wild beast roaring for its food.

Quick back to the line-up. Crediton is lame at the trot, but canforget his pain. I must get the ball again. Yes, no, yes—I pass itto Billy, who shoots, but the wind carries it wide.

The game is becoming sticky with tension.

'Don't stand on the ball!'

'Get to hell out of it!'

Crediton could creep under these scrums. Yes, we've nosed-in among thesticks, and are out with the ball.

But a bugle sounds, and I hesitate. The umpire is shouting to me toplay on (for the rule is that when we are level we continue until theball goes out) but I have missed my stroke and the ball trickles overthe back line. That ends the period.

After a minute's interval, we shall continue until one of us scores.I'll ride Daim again, my fastest pony, chastened now by hard work.

'Stick to the back, Y.B.!' says Billy, 'I'll meet the ball.' So be it.

When the umpire throws in, I hurl myself at my opponent. Billy has it.No, it is Joey, and he is taking it to the centre of the ground. Why,he's standing still! For an instant, that seems spun out to years,Joey stands there, a tower of blue and ivory, supremely sure ofhimself, glancing now at goal and now at two opponents who are turningon him. He taps the ball tenderly in front of his pony's forelegs, heaims, he brings his stick down with a crack that echoes yet in memory.

The driven ball sails low and swift. I've reined up to stare atVictory as she steals inch by inch over my senses.

Daim shies away towards the back whom he has been so cheerfullybumping, for he understands riding-off, but not this voice of a rangingbeast that is coming from all round us. How did Joey carve that secondout of eternity? How has he conquered time? The ball is still in theair: as it reaches the goal-posts it rises and soars between them. Thegoal umpire is gripping his signal flag. He's waved it. Finish!

People are running all over the ground. We've won! That's all, Daim.Bran mash for you. Baksheesh for the servants. The syces will getdrunk, I suppose.

Head in a bucket. Shake hands with Khushal. Jagwant is salaaming,rather lower than usual, but still impassive. Joey has lamed twoponies, and Billy one. Now we must go to receive the cup from theLieutenant-Governor. You've got the baksheesh money, Khushal? Good.I'll borrow that comb.

A red-faced man has heaved himself out of a wicker chair and is handinga silver bowl to Billy.

Hand-shaking with our opponents. We are dining with them at the Club,before the dance to-night.

We fight our battles over again at the bar. Back shows me his bruises:he is a tea-planter with a great thirst. Three whiskey-and-sodas is agood foundation for dinner—or isn't it? Another? I don't mind. I domind, but it can't be helped. My stomach shall be back's sacrifice.

But nothing will induce me to go on to the Lieutenant-Governor's ball.I have had enough of crowds.

When the dandy coolies arrive to carry us to Government House, someonesays: 'We'll race to the L.-G.'s.'

That's a good idea. I'll be the starter.

They're off, swinging down the path to the Boat Club. The mellowvoices, of men who have dined well fade away and the jigging lights ofseven hurricane lamps grow small. The procession is crossing the pologround now—a shout comes up through the firs as one lamp passesanother.

Here's five rupees for my dandy coolies: they can go to bed or pick upa chance fare.

I'm alone in the grateful dark.

The Club smoking-room, through which I must pass to reach my bedroom,is deserted save for an ancient Colonel, who is smoking a cheroot witha straw down the middle, and drinking white curaçao.

'Not dancin'?'

'Not yet. I'm going to look round my ponies first.'

The dogs are waiting for me: the puppies waddling crabwise towardsDaisy's teats, Daisy looking like Diana of the Ephesians, Brownstone ina prancing mood, his great paws striking this way and that. He is aperfect friend, too good for me, all twisted up as I am in fancies andphilosophies. He never thinks, but lives and loves and feeds andfights....

Brownstone and I go down to see the ponies, who have supped on bran andlinseed and molasses.

Crediton staled blood after he hobbled home, Khushal says, but he hasno fever, and he has just drunk two buckets of barley water. Daim'stongue is badly cut, but his appetite is unimpaired. Tot is lying atfull stretch, relaxed, a picture of equine content. I put a carrotunder her nose. She snuffles it, gobbles, sighs dreamily. Ur is wideawake; he cocks one ear back and the other forward, and turns his upperlip backward in a grin, clowning for attention. I enter his stall topat him. He rushes to the corner in simulated terror, ears flat back,off heel raised. I slap him hard: he turns and nips the air, thenmuzzles into the haversack in which Khushal carries carrots and sugar.

Below us, the syces are banqueting by firelight. They have sixhill-women with them and they all seem sober.

I wish I was. This life I lead is a drunkenness in itself, anintoxication whose natural complement is strong food and drink.To-night I've had too much of it; too much of everything.

Good-night, Khushal, I'm tired. Does he notice I'm not walkingstraight? He can't help smelling drink, with his unpolluted senses.But most of us smell of alcohol and tobacco.

Up and up, with Brownstone panting at my heels. Drink and dinner isbeing blown out of me. Brownstone has his second wind: ten days ago hethought he couldn't walk in the hills, but now he has caught my mood.We are following the path that leads to the crest of Cheena, behind theClub. Soon we shall be above the houses of Naini Tal.

'The albatross knows its way about the sea better than the mostexperienced captain.' Where did I read that? It is true. Instinct isbetter than knowledge. My life as a soldier is jolly enough while itlasts, but its pleasures are as fickle as the fumes of champagne. Hereon the mountains, alone with my thoughts and my dog, I am sober again.

The Himalayas stand up before me in the moonlight, so close, so high,that I catch my breath as I lift my eyes to them.

Dear mountains which India has worshipped since the dawn of history,before your mighty towers and turrets, your lonely heights and snows,your music of tree and water, I am humbled and content. I bless yoursilence and peace, cities of the Aryan soul.

Far below that white and blinding beauty, gleams the lake of Naini Tal.By its shores, and along the huddled houses, lights wink and pass. Onthe opposite mountain glows a replica of the night sky of London, fromthe invisible Government House, where there are medals, bows, whispers,pride, painted faces.

And here, in a grotto by the pathway, is a shrine. I strike a match.Brownstone stands on his hind legs, and together we peer at the redsymbol of Siva, decked with a garland of marigolds. Above it, roughlycarved out of the rock, his slender-waisted and great-breasted goddess,smiles with her full lips and her long eyes, as she writhes in herceremonial dance. She is his shakti, or creative aspect.

To live we must be created. That is how we may become aware ofeternity. Siva is the Lord of Change: his consort is the Mistress ofTime: their children do not grow up, or age, or die: but change. Thatis all, and everything. Brownstone puffs and wheezes beside me, a linkwith sanity, contemptuous of the gods of desire who drive the world.

These little games I play, and all this striving and scheming andsorrow, make up the world in which Brownstone and I pass as phantoms.Soon the lights of Government House will be swallowed up, and itsbricks will crumble, and all our works of power and pride will betransmuted to colloidal particles and gases. In the twinkling ofSiva's eye.

These mountains on which Brownstone and I are standing, the greatest inthe world, will be worn away rock by rock, in the revolution of thecenturies, as Siva and his consort tread their measure, until at lastthis Age is danced away, and Brahm, wearying of His world, shall sleep.

Change and fixed purpose; names and forms dissolving and reappearing;an infinite beauty and a precision beyond imagining through all kindsof apparent cruelty and confusion; a stirring in the womb of night; aglimmer out of nescience; sleep again—that is this world of desire anddeath. Sleep. We may know that as reality, my dog and I.

Soon the sun will flood the Ganges in a glow of gold and turn tovermeil the white domes of Delhi. Before me Ushas, the twilight maid,type of all the loves of Earth unsatisfied, will drive her chariotthrough the east; and Surya, her lover, will rise from his haunts inthe nether world to pursue the light of morning knowledge. We shallwake to more pain, more pleasure.

But to-night as I lie stretched on these pine needles, the desire ofexperiencing has left me utterly. Mother Earth has emptied my head ofthoughts and Brownstone's jowl is on my chest.

CHAPTER VII

PIGSTICKING

Half a dozen of us are lying inert on camp-beds behind mosquitocurtains, in the big banyan grove, near Ratmugri Bagh. We arelistening to the prelude to another day's pigsticking—beaterschattering to each other as gun-wads are distributed to them as tokensexchangeable for their daily wage of twopence, servants quarrelling foramusement, the cook pelting a prowling village dog, the dignifiedburbling of the camel which is being saddled for its journey to therailway station to bring ice and letters.

There is the Shikari, tall, grey bearded, with Grecian profile comingto tell the Tent Club Secretary of the prospects of sport. You can seeby his bearing that he carries in him the genes of a conquering race(the Robilla Pathans) but he is as much a native of these plains as anyof the Hindu beaters whom he curses so heartily and picturesquely inthe idiom of the country. With him are two elders of the Tent Clubstaff known as Paderewski and Kubelik.

They are remarkable old men, these wild-haired headmen of the Nuts.Respectable villages will have nothing to do with the Nuts, for theyare a Criminal Tribe, whose men are professional thieves, and whosewomen are whores, yet for all that they are a decent people. Theymight engage in much more profitable business than the beating-out ofpig for us to ride, but sport is more to them than money, and they arecontent to toil all day for a pittance with the Tent Club, often inperil of their lives. Civic virtues they lack, but fortunately thereis more than one standard of worth in this world.

Our horses are saddled, and the two elephants are ready—Mod Lai withhis howdah and crate of lager beer packed in wet straw, and LashkmanPiari with her pad, on which nothing but a medicine chest is carried.If there should be a casualty, it will be her office to convey thesufferer to hospital.

Last night I gave her a rupee for herself. She went to theneighbouring village, dropped the money into the baniah's lap andhelped herself to as much sugar-cane as she could carry in her trunk.Now she opens her mouth and raises her trunk sky-high in an impressivesalaam. She is a snob, like most elephants, and thinks I'm rich.

Mod Lai is not so sure of me. Mod Lai belongs to a Rajah (whereasPiari's master is only a zamindar) and attends all the tamashas ofthe district—marriages, festivals, tiger-shoots. He had seen twogenerations of men come and go, and has salaamed to two Viceroys andknelt to a King. He is old and conservative, and dislikes the look ofBrownstone. None of the great men he has met had a dog like this.

There is a cool wind from the hills, and a scent of flowering bamboosfrom a near-by bagh. What if the butter is rancid and the eggsstink? Sun and air are food on these marvellous plains.

The Shikari has mounted his flea-bitten mare. The Nuts, with theirmongrel dogs, move off in a separate group to the other beaters, forthey consider themselves a caste superior to the villagers whilepigsticking is in progress.

After drawing lots for our positions, we separate into 'heats' and rideoff to our appointed places. We are to beat Ratmugri Bagh first, aglade of linked bamboo thickets, full of shade and water and goodrootling-grounds. In its pools several bahut bhari baba have beenseen wallowing at their ease—'very heavy grandfather pig'—and we arereasonably certain of good sport.

My first horse to-day is The Devil, a bright bay country-bred, out ofan Arab mare by a thorough-bred English stallion. He is the bestcharger I have ever owned.

While the beaters are tapping their slow way through the thicket, helifts his beautiful head; nostrils wide, ears cocked; hearing,smelling, seeing, every nerve tense as he dances round and round mybridle hand. Two peacocks prance out of a ride, screech, flap back tothe village. Dust-whirls dance in the yellow plain, shimmering away tothe pale goddesses of the Himalayas. Leaves and branches stir to alight wind. It is good to be alive on such a day, with pipe in mouthand a good horse ready. A sow looks out of her shelter, goes back,gathers her family together—six blue-black babies with a gold bandround their bellies—and leads them all out past us not twenty yardsaway. They stop when The Devil snorts. He wonders why I don't mountand ride?

The squeakers stand stuffily, wondering who we are and what we want.When they are older, they'll know. The Devil quits prancing andpawing, for he has guessed, I think, that they are too small. Hesniffs the air, snatches nervously at some grass, jerks up his headagain to listen to the yelping of the Nuts' dogs. I can recognise thevoices of Jim (the terrier) and Majira (the semi-dachshund bitch) andBachu (the half-Airedale). Yes, Bachu has stirred a boar out of hissleep. Bang! That's the Shikari's blunderbuss, to speed the partingguest. One, two three, come the sounders out of the bagh, with adozen pig in each.

God, how glorious! The plain is black with pig, and amongst them areat least half a dozen rideable boar. My heat has swung into saddlewithout a word. We don't ride yet, however, for we must give thequarry time to break clear of cover.

The Devil's heart is drumming between my legs.

Lashkman Piari comes crashing out of the bagh at a trot. Her mahouttakes off his yellow turban and waves it and yells to us as if wehadn't seen the six big boar and their thirty brothers and sistersstreaming across the maidan under our noses.

Now another two sounders have broken towards the group at the far sideof the bagh, a mile away, and are making along the canal. I can seethe riders mount and cram down their hats and raise their spears.Through the heat-waves the sun looks distant and fantastic—maya,maybe?—that Becoming which is not illusion. The notion flickers inmy mind and is extinguished, for the time has come to ride.

We're off, each after a boar of his own. Mine is a big red one. Icram heels to The Devil and we eat up the ground between us and ourprey.

But as soon as he sees that he is being pursued, down goes his head andup his heels, with a spurt of dust behind them. He is making forKhaitola, a bagh some two miles away. If he keeps to that line Ishall certainly kill him, for it is open going and The Devil canovertake even a lean young boar within a mile. This one is fat, andobviously short in wind and temper.

He begins to tire, and sits down so suddenly that I can't stop. As Ipass, reining hard, I see his little bloodshot eyes with the hate ofthe world in them, and his lips' wicked lines, snarling back from apair of remarkably fine tushes. He is up again by the time I haveturned The Devil, and is making for some road menders' pits near theriver. It is foul going here; he stumbles and rips at the earth thattripped him.

Then he sees a tethered goat, and disembowels it in his rage. Justwith a flick of his neck as he gallops by!

The goat is done for. I must stop. Poor goat—what a fate—what amess! A thrust to the heart, and it is out of its pain.

That has lost me several lengths, but now the boar is loitering again.He is one of the red, truculent sort for which Bareilly is famous, whowould sooner fight than run. As we draw up, he stops, about turns,charges. It all happens so invisibly-quick that I can hardly put myspear down. We meet at eighty miles an hour and my spear-point strikesthe top of his skull, grazing down his shoulder. There is ajar, ascuffle. I turn The Devil with an oath and an unkind hand on the bit.

The boar has trotted to a bush where only the ridge of his back isvisible. I have at him again, but The Devil's thoroughbred skin is sodelicate that he refuses to face the thorns. Five, ten minutes I wait,cursing myself for a clumsy fool.

The Shikari canters up on his old grey mare. Behind him comes LashkmanPiari and some of the Nuts. The Shikari is very angry. Why did I stopto kill the goat? This is the best boar in Ratmugri Bagh. Unless Ihave wounded him badly he will recover his wind and make a dash for theriver and get away. Shall I go in on foot, I ask him? 'Don't be afool, Sahib,' growls the old man, waving to the elephant.

Lashkman Piari ambles up with a distinct smile behind her trunk. Whyshe enjoys this business no man knows. She is as nervous as a kittenon a bridge, dithers at slippery going, and becomes idiotic with frightat a quicksand, yet when bidden to stamp on a wounded boar—the mostdangerous brute in creation—she is transformed into an Amazon and aheroine.

The Devil is snatching at his bridle, and nibbling grass again,trembling, in a lather of foam. Piari, with her trunk lifted out ofharm's way, heaves her big feet about among the thorns. Woof! Theboar is away, making for the river, as the Shikari said. I am on histail, though. He can't escape me now, for I am between him and hisgoal.

Almost I'm sorry, because the advantages are all on my side. Yet theboar is too noble for pity. I see him calculating the moment that hewill charge: 'Give me liberty or give me death!' My spear is well downthis time. He throws himself on it. A fountain of blood jets up. Heis dead, only about a hundred yards from his sanctuary.

In the open, the odds are against the boar, but in blind cover he hasmore than an equal chance against a man. That is one of the purifyingrisks of pigsticking.

The other two of my heat have wounded a thirty-six inch boar who liesin a patch of thick thorn. We must go in on foot. The elephantscannot push their way into the tangle and it would not be fair to askthe beaters to risk themselves. Three of us, therefore, creep to hislair.

The dogs have been leashed. It is dark where we are. In front of mesomething grunts, crashes, splinters wood. The man on my right gasps;he has been charged and knocked down. A small wound in his breechesdrips blood; his spear is broken.

We work round again to the boar. There he is grunting and crashing andcharging—but whom? A disorderly pulse hammers in my throat.

I smell pig overpoweringly. A great head, each bristle on it distinct,confronts me out of the thorns. Something hits me in the ribs; it isthe butt of my spear, which the boar has driven into me as he passed.I've wounded him, but far back. I run to the edge of the bushes andsee him struggling out, treading on his bowels.

He makes for Paderewski, who attempts to avoid the charge by jumping uphis pole. The boar trips (for he is spent and dying) and falls on hisknees. Before he rolls over jerks at Paderewski.

Lashkman Piari hurries up with the medicine chest. Paderewski isholding his leg tightly, for his thigh is cut to the bone. The TentClub Secretary gives him half a tumbler of brandy, then a little ether.I dissolve a pellet of disinfectant in soda water. He is white to thelips under his brown skin, but this kind of thing is all in the day'swork; he has suffered a score of woundings in our service.

The veins knot at his temples, but he does not wince when I feel hisleg for a fracture. Nothing is broken this time, and the stitches canwait for the hospital. What's that stuff to stop bleeding? Hyoscine.A wad of that, and now we hoist him on to the pad elephant. He brushesback the long hair tumbling over his eyes with one hand, and stretchesout the other for more brandy, grinning, undismayed at his twenty-firstmishap. He will get no less than sixpence a day of blood money whilehe is being mended.

The Sahib comes next. His wound is larger than we thought, but onlyhalf an inch deep, looking like a streak of lightning on the inner sideof his thigh. We put him beside Paderewski on the elephant and sendthem both back to camp.

Now Moti Lal yields up his stores of lager beer and damp cheroots. Thebeaters squat round in a circle, nibbling grain and parched barley.Three boar have been killed this morning, and they are well content,although none of them has more in his belly than there is in a Londonpigeon's. Twopence a day is not much, even in India, but they haveseen good sport from the shade of Ratmugri. Now a harder-earnedpennyworth of work is in store for them, for we are to draw the grasscountry by the Ganges, and they will have to walk miles and miles,knowing that every step they take they may tread on a pig, panther, oreven the King of the Jungle himself. No doubt they will have much totell their wives this evening.

The Devil goes back to camp, where barley water and hot bandages awaithim. He whinnies and looks back as he is led away, as if to say thatone run is nothing for a big horse with a light-weight in the saddle.That's true, but he is too precious to risk so early in the season.

Ur of the Chaldees is also a country-bred, slower of foot, but quickerof brain. Indeed he is as clever as a man, and thinks more than isgood for a horse—qualities inherited from the Arab sire. In blindcountry I can always trust him to pick his way; and on the tail of apig he knows exactly where to place himself. When we fall, which isoften, he stands patiently beside me, waiting to be mounted again. Abit is unnecessary in his mouth; nothing but a white rope-halter hasadorned his intelligent face for more than a year now. If he were onlya little faster, he might win me the Kadir Cup.

On a small scale, this jhow pigsticking is like the hunting circle ofthe Mongols,[1] who drove every living thing before them, graduallydrawing in their line for a great slaughter, followed by a great feast.Our quarry is the boar, but everything else in the jungle flies infront of our horses; hog-deer who scuttle between beaters' legs, andhares, and cyrus-cranes, whose staid flirtations it seems boorish tointerrupt, and wild cattle, nilgai, peacocks, panther——

A group of beaters, sauntering by a grass-fringed stream, have stoppedand run together like frightened sheep. The Shikari gallops up; buthis mare plants her forelegs and refuses to move, for she smells whatis lurking there.

With a snarling that freezes my blood, a panther flashes by me in astreak of gold. We pursue him, but the jhow is so tall that it hideseven our horses, and he is soon lost to view, which is just as well,perhaps, for there are only two men alive who can face a panther withtheir hog-spear, and be sure of killing him. Now the beaters goforward again lightheartedly. A kingfisher dives smartly into theGanges. The shadow of a hawk passes over the wet sand.

I am feeling thirsty, and ride down a rutty road to a village, past amango-grove where monkeys gibber. A yellow and white dog squirms andbarks when I reach the little mud houses of Shikarpur; a water buffalolowers its long horns; women at the well veil themselves. I am anunwelcome intruder. One of the girls is young and beautiful; I ask herfor water, but she shivers, and presses both hands to her face andturns to the wall. Is that coquetry, or convention? I am as innocentas I am thirsty.

I explain my need to a merchant, who comes out of his shop salaaming,white as the flour he sells. He searches for an earthenware vessel,and gives me to drink. But I do not tarry, for I know that I am notwanted here.

I am hated in this kind village. The doves flutter scatheless roundthe village shrine; peacock tread the earth delicately and proudly,knowing that they are held precious; even the monkeys that loot thebaniahs' shops are sacred; but this white monkey that has ridden intothe village on a stamping horse, grasping a hog-spear, has broughtpollution with the very air he breathes. The cup from which he hasdrunk will be broken.

I am back with the line in time to see a pig break to another heat.Six hours we have been in saddle—and the last three without a hunt.Yet I could go on like this for ever with the magic of the Gangesplains before me. Here land and air are wide and worthy of giants.The crops, the soft-eyed oxen, the far horizon, the white masses of itsnorth-eastern limit, the dim blue baghs to southward, the pig, andpeacock, and panther, and scurrying deer; all sights and sounds underthis turquoise vault, except mankind, are heart of my heart and carryin some mysterious fashion memories of another life. A life in whichthe freedom of the villages was also mine.

Riding with me is the Civil Magistrate of the district, a goodsportsman and a good officer, loved by his people.

'Do you think,' I ask him, 'that it is possible to know India—I meanthe life of the peasants?'

'It is possible, but unwise,' he says. 'The people don't ask forfriendship, but fairness. They want someone from the outside to judgethem. All that is necessary is to be accessible to them when they comewith their complaints.'

'And that isn't as easy as it seems, I suppose? Do you think forinstance, that these villagers of yours have to bribe their way to yourpresence?'

'I hope not,' he says: 'for I ride about the district a great deal. Ofcourse I know there is a danger that my servants may take baksheesh.But I have an old retainer whom I trust. He comes with me everywhere.'

'That old man?' I ask, nodding to a grey-beard who follows us with achowri, to keep off the flies.

'Yes, I trust him absolutely.'

The Collector has hardly spoken, before a peasant flings himself underour horses' feet.

'I have only four rupees,' sobs the suppliant, 'for years I have beentrying to bring my case to you.'

'Four rupees?'

'Yes, Cherisher of the Poor, that man'—pointing to the patriarch withthe fly-whisk—'wants five rupees to allow me to enter your Court.'

That evening, after we have finished drawing the jhow, an enormousswarm of pig—a line at least half a mile in length—comes streamingout of Khaitola Bagh. It charges through a herd of cattle, scatteringthem in all directions, and darkens the plain with bodies of all sizesand both sexes. Each of us has marked down a monster for his prey.Mine is a beauty. Ur cocks his ears, I do believe he's judging itsweight.

He's a fast boar too. Ur can't gain on him at first. Khaitola Bagh isclose. If he jinks now, I'm done. I wish I had The Devil!

At last we draw level. Then, a foot too far away to spear him safely,my quarry turns in a right-angled left-handed jink. I flatten myselfin the saddle, and thrust at him, across Ur's forelegs. Crash! Flump!Where am I?

My mouth is full of dust and my nose of pig. I'm pinned to the ground,face down, and there's a most unpleasant pain in my legs. I can't movethem. Twisting my neck, I see the sweat-lathered hide of Ur, loomingabove me. His rope halter is in my left hand, torn off his head.Well, if that is all that is broken ... Ur is struggling to get up,damn him. The pig is on his other side, transfixed by my spear, whichis also under Ur's body. A carrion hawk observes us three unwillingbed-fellows, expecting something.

I can only wait.

My thoughts go back to England, where I hope to be, come May year. Ihave lost a tooth. I wish I had a quart of lager beer. Ur shall havea bottle too, if we get out of this mess. Lawn tennis is a goodgame—it doesn't jar. The Adjutancy—promising young officer cut shortin his career—paralysis? My brain is buzzing like a clockwork mouse.I wish Ur would either get up or lie down. I'd rather die quick thancontinue in this pain.

The pig is wriggling himself off the spear. I must think straight.Run straight, I mean, if I get the chance. Now Ur's heaved himself up.He's nibbling grass, the idiot.

Can I run?

Can't I? There's a tree.

I don't know how I've come here.

Does this swollen blue thumb belong to me?

The pig is dead with my broken spear in him, and the earth is heavingunder him. And under Ur too, who is grazing in a billowy plain, withhis saddle twisted under his belly. Men and horses and elephants areapproaching through an earthquake.

With a wet towel round my head, I am allowed to attend the eveningceremony of weighing and measuring our five mighty boar. Those of uswho have obtained a 'first spear' examine the tushes of their victims,while our syces press round us, watchfully, for it is their perquisiteto take away the bristles along the spine, and various other parts, oneof which is reputed to be an aphrodisiac. When all the particularshave been entered into the Tent Club log, the bodies are given to theNuts, who will cut them up and gorge themselves on pork to-night.

Then there is the paying of coolies. A hundred men squat before us ina semi-circle; each holding a gun-wad in his right hand. The Tent ClubSecretary has a stick and a bag of money, the Shikari, a lantern, forit is growing dark. The Secretary counts the men, while the Shikaricollects the gun-wads; every eighth man is tapped with a stick, whichis a signal for him to rise and receive a rupee to divide with theseven beaters on his left.

Finally we attend to casualties, not only our own but any sick folk ofthe neighbourhood who care to come. Our methods are quick, drastic,popular. No medicine which does not taste horrible is administered.Quinine we mix with asafoetida; itch we cure with neat sulphuric acid;purgatives we have a-plenty, and ginger; and Easton's syrup, but onlyfor eminent and elderly preservers of pig. For miles round our famehas spread. One of our members is a distinguished surgeon; we allowhim to deal with the difficult cases, but the Secretary and I are morepopular as consulting physicians, Paderewski needs a great deal ofbrandy, poor old chap, and is given enough to put a guardsman to sleep.Then Lashkman Piari's mahout comes to report she is feverish, and as ithas been a good day he is given half a bottle of whiskey, which hesolemnly shares with her. Ur sups off a Bass and cooked barley.

For me there is no dinner to-night. I lie on my bed near themess-table contentedly enough, listening to the tales of the veterans;how the great hog of Saidupur jumped upon the back of a horse; how thegods of the temple by the curving stream of Shahi were propitiated bybaksheesh before we drew the covert; how Wardrop manages the MeerutTent Club; how Faunthorpe kills panthers; how we speared ten boar onthe sunlit plain of Kicha; and of the prowess of those great horsesSausage and Cowdapple, and Bohemian, and Fizzer—a saga of stories thatwill never be written.

By my bed lies the Abbé Dubois' Hindu Manners and Customs to remindme that I once met a pundit who told me of a nephew of his. The book,however, remains outside the mosquito curtain. Instead of reading, Isharpen my hogspear.

I file away with my swollen hand, and spit blood. When I lie flat, thebed rocks gently, as if I were floating.

[1] The Kurultai.

CHAPTER VIII

MEN AND MUD TURTLES

One morning, after I had become Adjutant of my regiment, I noticed onrecruits' parade an Afridi shepherd lad, round-thighed and awkward inthe saddle, who was rolling off his horse like the White Knight.

His ride was in the jumping lane: at each obstacle Nairn Shah (for hismother had named him 'Merciful King') leant forward, snatched the reinsin his mutton fist, and jerked them so that he cut his horse's mouth.I put him on another horse and the same thing happened.

His new horse was an easy one. I rode it over the jumps myself to showhim how simple was the task I asked him to perform (forgetting that Ihad ten years' experience and he ten weeks) and I explained that he andI would stay here all day, if need be, until he stopped funking.

He scowled at that, but it was necessary to be firm, for if a beginnerloses his nerve, he may never regain it. I sent the rest of the rideaway, and ordered him to mount. He hesitated. I jumped off my horseand stood by him with my hunting-crop, and called him a coward, andworse. We were man to man in a sense, for I would have fought himlevel and probably been worsted physically had he mutinied. But unfairadvantages were on my side—my rank and experience against hisinnocence and ignorance—the military system against a sense of what isdecent between man and man in a free country.

He mounted in a dumb rage. Not content with his sulky obedience, Ilashed his horse's quarters, sending it careering over the first twojumps. His long body leant first this way, then that. At the thirdjump, after the turn in the lane, he would infallibly have beenunseated, but the horse (infected as animals sometimes are by acontagion of human emotion) instead of keeping to the track gallopedstraight ahead, and tried to jump the enclosing wall. Failing to clearit, it hung for a moment, balanced on its belly, half in and half outof the lane. Nairn Shah still sat with his arms crossed. Then thewall collapsed, and he was crushed against it.

My heart stood still. Rage melted into pity, and hate into love. Helay on the tan, with the horse beside him, entangled in reins andstirrup leathers. The Drill Major and I pulled him out, dazed. I knewit would be worse than useless to say anything at the moment. So Isent him back to his ride of recruits.

Later in the morning, I told him in the presence of his comrades thathe was excused foot drill for a week. But he only looked at me in acurious sullen way, meditating revenge.

That night, as I lay on my bed in the open air, hot and restless, andnot at all well pleased with myself some impulse made me get up and goback into the verandah.

What I expected to find there I do not know, but what I did find wasNairn Shah, in the shadow, hesitating, bare-headed, with turban roundhis loins, as is the habit of Afridis when raiding. I went to him, andtook both his arms at the wrist. 'Se de, wror me?—What is it,brother?' I asked.

He began to stammer. To-morrow was Saturday. His troop commander (acousin of his) wanted to borrow my rifle for black-buck shooting. Hehad not wanted to disturb me.

'Did he send you to me—at night?'

'Yes.'

It was a lie, but rather a good one, for the troop commander didsometimes borrow my rifle. Nairn Shah had come for another purpose.We stood still, close to each other, so that I felt what he did not say.

'Come inside, brother, and tell me what is the matter.'

We went to a long chair, and he sat down on its arm beside me.

'Thou hast made my face black,' he said, using the pronoun of equals.

'I am sorry for it, as you must know.'

Silence.

'You have a knife under your coat,' I said.

'Yes, Sahib.'

'Discipline is a hard thing. But it is necessary in the Army, becauseofficers are not perfect. You must do as you are told, even when youare wrongly abused.'

'In my country a man would be killed for speech like thine.'

'You are young, and so am I. Let us be friends.'

The tap of the night-watchman's stick came to my ears. Nairn Shah satthere wordless, his eyes wet.

'How did you get in without being seen?' I asked.

'I am an Afridi,' he sobbed. Then, as if that had explainedeverything, he added 'The chowkidar mustn't know that I am here. Itmight be misunderstood.'

I was silent until the night-watchman had clip-clopped away.

'I know why you came, Nairn Shah, and what you wanted to do,' I said.'Let's forget it.'

'You were right to call me a coward, Sahib. Otherwise——'

He unbuttoned his coat and showed me the dagger he carried, smiling ashe tested the needle-like point on his finger.

'It was common sense, not cowardice, that kept that in its place,' Isaid. 'Why make such a fuss?'

'Sahib, shall I ever be able to ride?'

'Not only will you be a roughrider, Nairn Shah, but within a year Iwill make you my orderly, if you behave yourself. Now go the way youcame. And——'

'Yes, Sahib?'

Breast to breast and knee to knee we took leave of each other.

For months I did not speak to him again.

Before the year was out, however, he had proved to be the best recruitof his class. The Colonel marked him for promotion (without anyrecommendation from me) and he would have become a lance corporal butfor the fact that he steadfastly refused to learn to read and write.Scholarship bred worms in the brain, he told the Drill Major. So whenKhushal Khan left the regiment on the death of his father to look afterhis property, Nairn Shah reigned in his stead, and brought with him hisyoung brother, Sher Dil, a lively lad of eleven.

This little Lion-Heart (for that was the meaning of his name) hadlove-locks curling down from either ear, and the features of aDonatello angel. He and Nairn Shah were like a double almond, alwaystogether. Wherever I went with the regimental polo team, Sher Dilwould come too, as a mascot and stick-holder.

One evening in Calcutta, where we had gone to play in the ChampionshipTournament, it occurred to me that Sher Dil was likely to fall intoevil ways, exposed as he was to the temptations of a great city and avagabond life.

'Sher Dil,' I said, 'why aren't you at school instead of sucking thethumb of idleness?'

Sher Dil didn't know.

'Why isn't he at school?' I asked Nairn Shah. 'This life is bad forhim. Who paid his fare in the train?'

'No one paid his fare, Sahib. He travels with the horses, and refusesto go to school.'

'Refuses! He is no bigger than a mongoose, and refuses to go toschool! ... Without book-knowledge, Sher Dil, you will remain poor,like your foolish brother. But if you learn to read and write you mayeasily earn fifty rupees a month by driving a motor car.'

'I don't want to drive a motor car, Sahib, but to be always with you.'

'Shaitan-ka-bacha, by the time you are a man I shall have left thiscountry. Put no faith in me, or any Sahib. Stand on your own feet.There is no power and no virtue save in the Most High.

'You spoil your brother,' I said to Nairn Shah. 'Why don't you sendhim to school? Is there any reason except your prejudice? Look atRissaldar Hamzullah Khan. Learning hasn't done him any harm.'

'Sahib, you don't know Sher Dil,' Nairn Shah answered thoughtfully.

I admitted that.

'Then you must know,' said Nairn Shah, 'that before I brought him downinto India, he quarrelled with Gul Must, my youngest brother, may Godgive him peace. Sher Dil had a hunting knife, and to give point to hisargument, he stuck it into his brother's belly. Gul Must died. SherDil was surprised, but he said nothing about it to any of us, and hehid him in a thorn bush. In the fort that night, Gul Must was missing.We asked Sher Dil where his brother was. He said he had not seen him.But some other boys told us that they had been playing together. So wewent out and found the body. Then Sher Dil confessed, and he confessedalso that he had tried to set fire to the bush. When the Malik heardthat, he called a council to consider whether he should be put todeath, for to burn the body of a son of Adam is a very shameful thing.But I pleaded with the elders and showed them that Sher Dil was a piouschild, for even then he could repeat both the Fatiha and the Cow[1] byheart. Now he knows all the Koran Sherif. So the jirga decided toexile Sher Dil to British India. That is why I brought him down toyou. No one except my relations knows about his blood-guilt, Sahib,even in the squadron.'

'Certainly Sher Dil must go to school,' I said when I heard this story,'and if he becomes as learned as he is pious, I daresay he'll be agreat man.'

I wonder what did happen to Sher Dil? I lost sight of him in the war,but heard later that he had enlisted in 1918 in the Supply andTransport Corps as a 'boy follower.' Neither Nairn Shah nor I havebeen able to trace him: he has disappeared: he may be dead now, or hemay be a rich contractor. Much will have been forgiven him for thesake of his beaux yeux.

I was very busy with the Adjutancy this year of 1912, and anchored to amass of pale brown paper.

Who that has served in India does not know those mind-defeatingdocuments beginning: 'Will you kindly refer to this office memo.O.P./110/26713 dated 15.2.30' and ending 'for favour of necessaryaction'?

As I write, a memorandum is before me which has pursued me across yearsand continents. It asks me (after five years' absence) to fill in aform allocating my periods of service under Provincial Governments(with dates) the Central Civil Government (with dates) the MarineDepartment (with dates) the Railway Department (with dates) the Postand Telegraph Department (with dates) the Military Department (withdates) and to give the period of leave I took during the whole of myservice 'with nature of leave.' A babu evolved this document inLahore, and only another babu could answer it in London.

Similar conundrums arrive daily, by dozens, in every civil and militaryoffice in India. If tyranny exists in that country, the despots arethose mild and well-meaning men who are snowing-under theadministration with sheets of foolscap, smudgily typewritten andillegibly signed by Deputy-Assistant-Something-Or-Others. The babuswrite to each other. We sign their letters, scribbling away ourbirthright amidst mountainous files, and losing all touch with thepeople of India.

Every day I wrote away until two o'clock in the afternoon, with theHead Clerk at my elbow to see that I did not miss anything.

By dinner time, a new flood of paper was ready to engulf me. Accounts.Objection statements. Confidential documents. Secret papers in threeenvelopes, of which the innermost was sealed. And a pile of petitionswhich were not trivial only because they were human. A syce demandedten days' holiday to Benares, in order to burn his mother, who had justdied there.

Benares! Why had I allowed five years to go by like a dream, a flash?

Agra! Sivanand! During all this time, my conversation with the pundithad lain fallow in my mind. Sometimes it would bob up to the surfaceat odd, impossible moments, but more often it had remained unseen, anidea working in the dark. Fifty pleasures and duties and anticipationshad kept me from the path that my inward eye had detected. Yet theinward eye sees more clearly than the frontal stereoscope. It seeswhat is good for us, as the compass needle points to the north.

I called for one of the beige papers on which applications fortemporary leave were made out and signed my name at the bottom of theblank sheet.

'Please fill in this form for me,' I told the Head Clerk, 'and have itcounter-signed by the Colonel, whose permission I am going to ask now,and then have it sent quickly to the Brigade.'

'Yes, Sir. What is the time, place and purpose of the holiday?'

'I am going to study the Kingly Wisdom and Kingly Mystery of theUnborn, Undying, Unbegun, babu-ji. I am going to Agra, and hope toreturn a wiser man.'

'That will be ten days only, Sir, unless it is to cut into yourprivilege leave. Agra. Recreation. Very good, Sir.'

Propped up on my sofa, I lay watching the delectable landscape thatunrolled itself before the window of my train.

My future seemed clear. Here were the plains of India, made for thepursuit of pig; and beyond them the holy cities and the mountains.Between the two my life was to follow pleasant paths.

In the twilight that precedes the dawn, I was standing on the far bankof the Jumna at Agra, looking across river to the Taj Mahal. Oneshould come to that light and lovely tomb as I approached it thatmorning, for then it will be seen as its builder intended, across aforeground of water.

I knew that if I did not find Sivanand Joshi here, I should findanother. I was under sway of the sanctuary and the hour. I felt arightness in the time and place—and a growing exaltation. Destiny hadled me here: not eyes, nor ears, nor nose told me this, but the skin,through millions of avenues. My fate had been built up day by day outof a thousand actions and reactions. It was for this moment that I hadwaited and worked.

On the crescent that crowns the dome of Mumtaz's tomb, the heralds ofthe morning had come. Where I stood it was dark, but the dome hadbegun to glow like a pearl, like a monstrance above an altar. For meit was a symbol of the unity of worlds visible and invisible. Onegreater than Mumtaz was there, Unity itself.

The life I led as a soldier and this jubilant dawn were but the formsand guises of reality, the veils and vestures of ultimate truth....

No one can describe the contact with Reality which is rapture, yeteveryone, I suppose, experiences it at some moment of his life. Themost we can do is to put down a few inadequate words that report notthe thing itself, but a memory of light, and more light.

The sense-world slid away, and I sat no longer by the river, but by anocean of bliss. It was a glimpse, a gathering-up, a heightening of thesenses on every plane, not least the physical—an effulgence ofeternity. I think that this was a turning point in my life: thesharpest turn.

Treading on air, in the freshness of that morning, I strolled along upthe river, following my feet, and arrived at a rustic funeral. Therelations must have been poor, or miserly, for the pyre was of greenwood, and smouldered. But death has no terrors for the Monist; andthere was no sadness in that simple rite. For five thousand years theHindus have faced the dissolution of the body in the lofty spirit ofthe Rig Veda:

Thine eyes shall seek the solar orb,
Thy life-breath to the wind shall fly,
Thy part ethereal to the sky,
Thine earthly part shall earth absorb.

Thy Unborn part shall Agni bright
With his benignant rays illume,
To guide thee through the trackless gloom
To yonder sphere of love and light.

Only the burners of the dead still lingered by the body. Thenext-of-kin had already sent the spirit to its home on the wings of thesacred mantra—'Go forth and follow the ancient paths our fatherstrod.' The flames burned low and like a witch's oils, and thescavengers of the Jumna—its crocodiles and tortoises andpariah-dogs—awaited all that remained from the pyre. I walked on, andalmost stumbled over a sack-like object huddled at my feet. It wasdressed in Yogi's yellow, and was looking at the dark river—not acrossit to the Taj Mahal in the splendour of the risen sun—where the eddiesof the Jumna swirled.

The figure turned, and looked up to me with a frank, unfalteringregard. I was puzzled as to its sex, for its face was powdered withwood ash, and its mouth gentle—a woman's rather than a man's. Ropesof black hair hung from its shoulders.

'Who are you?' it asked softly and in a boy's voice.

'I am an officer in an Indian Cavalry Regiment,' I answered, listeningto what I was saying with some surprise.

'Why do you come here?'

'Who are you?' I asked.

'I am a brahmacharin[2] from Benares,' he said. 'My father is apandit there. I read up to the Matric. exams. Then I became tiredof this world and turned to the greater wisdom.'

So saying, he pulled out from under him a part of the deerskin on whichhe sat cross-legged, and motioned to me to take my place beside him.

I did so, wondering whether I had at last taken a jump out of my dailylife, or whether I would be disappointed again.

'I would like to be a Yogi,' I heard myself saying.

'Many men wish to follow the Way, but it is not for all.'

'How can I find it?'

'The journey is a long one, Sahib, even to initiation. If you find thepath quickly, it is like finding money quickly—quickly lost again. Somy guru says, and I am sure he is right, although I have never hadany money to lose.'

Was he a beggar? I laid before him two silver rupees and a gold mohur.

He looked at the gold mohur doubtfully.

'With that I could take the train to Katgodam,' he said, 'and join myguru, who is going to the hills. But he told me to stay here anotheryear.'

'Does your guru always go to the hills and leave you in the plains?'I asked.

'Yes, he goes every year. He teaches me for three months at Benares.The rest of the year I earn my living by begging. Take your goldmohur, Sahib. These two rupees will feed me for two weeks.'

So saying, he put them into a small box, in which I noticed someVirginia cigarettes.

'So you smoke?'

'A little. After pranayama[3], sometimes, or when the stomach is tooempty for comfort.'

I opened my case and offered him my cigarettes.

'I ate gram and drank milk last night,' he said, 'a big meal. And allnight I slept here, so I am neither tired nor hungry now.'

'And wanting nothing?'

'Except wisdom,' he answered, 'and the man from the West. Perhaps youare he.'

'Is your name Sivanand Joshi?' I asked with a jump. 'If so, I met youruncle at Delhi.'

'I have an uncle at Delhi. But it was my guru who told me that anEnglishman might come.'

'Will you take me to him, then?'

Sivanand looked at me with level eyes.

'Will you take me to Benares?' I repeated, 'or wherever your guru is?We will go together. You said you would like to see him again.'

'Katgodam is a threshold. Beyond it we cannot pass.'

'Katgodam is a railway terminus,' I said, 'and from there we can goanywhere we like. Come, we will find your guru.'

'Sahib, I will tell you a story,' said Sivanand blandly, looking downto the river again. 'When I first began to study the Science ofSciences at the lotus feet of my guru, I was always asking him howsoon I could attain God-consciousness. So he told me of thebrahmacharin who said that he desired samadhi[4] more than anythingon earth. This brahmacharin and his guru were bathing at Gunga-jiat the time. Suddenly the guru took his pupil by the neck andplunged him under water. After a time he began to struggle and kick.The guru let him come up for a moment, just long enough for him totake one breath and to hear his teacher say that he would give himGod-consciousness if he could bear it. Down he went again, andremained under water quietly, waiting for the Clear Light to shine.But blackness came, instead of the Clear Light. And as thebrahmacharin could not find bliss by drowning he began to struggleviolently and escaped from the guru and ran away. The guru went onbathing as if nothing had happened, and the brahmacharin waited forhim, fearfully, on the bank. 'Do you still want God-consciousness?'the guru asked, when he had finished his prayers. The brahmacharintouched his master's feet and answered that he did. 'But what did youwant most when you were under water?' asked the guru. 'Air,' saidthe pupil. 'Then you don't want bliss as much as breath,' the guruanswered, and the brahmacharin had to admit that that was the truth.So he was sent out as I was, to seek wisdom by begging and meditationWhen my first year was over, my guru taught me a little, and thensent me out into the world again. Five times this has happened, and Iam not ready yet for the high and secret things which he will whisperto me when the time has come.'

'How long will it be to your initiation?'

Sivanand shrugged his shoulders, without answering.

'I wonder,' I said, 'why your guru told you to wait here for a manfrom the West?'

'He did not tell me to wait here. But there is no difference betweenone place and another. You would have found me, wherever I happened tobe.'

'I was told, years ago, that you were in Agra.'

'I have been to a hundred places since. If you had been ready, yourmind would have led you to any one of them. Everything exists in Mind.That which men burn here was never diseased or dead: they offer up asacrifice to that Becoming which is an aspect of the Godhead.[5]Existence-consciousness-bliss is never diseased, or dead, or burned,but always and for ever free from the conditions of avidya.[6] So tofind one's guru is a simple matter, once the aspects of thesense-world are seen for what they are.'

'I do not understand that.'

'I shall tell you another story, Sahib. In the beginning of this KaliYug[7] there were two saddhus in the Himalayas who discussed togetherhow they could make themselves more comfortable on earth, for neartheir cave there were many rocks and thorns which cut their feet. Oneof them suggested killing a quantity of cows and tanning their hidesand spreading them over all the earth as a carpet. The other saddhuconsidered this for a year. Then he said 'I have a better plan. Letus kill one cow only,' he said, 'and put its leather on the soles ofour feet, instead of on the earth, so that wherever we walk there willbe a carpet below us.' These two were the first Yogis. There is nodifference between one place and another, one woman and another, onereligion and another, one guru and another. The differences are theveils of maya. You and I cling to them still. But when we arestrong enough to know them for what they are, we shall rule our fate.'

'And I shall find my guru?'

'If you go to Benares, Sahib, you may find your guru. You may. Icannot tell. But I will give you his name, since I was told that youwould come. It is Paramahansa Bhagawan Sri. Having humbled your heartand slain the desire of works, you may find him.'

They were slow, dreamy words, spoken not to me, it seemed, but to theJumna which was carrying down the white flowers and the yellow flowersthat are the daily tribute of India to her gods and goddesses.

Amongst these flowers rose an arm, as if waving a good-bye. It sankunder the even waters, without sound or ripple, but the turtles hadseen it and were coming from every direction, making tracks like theperiscopes of submarines.

A big white turtle reached the body first, and worried it, and raisedits obscene idiot's head with a ribbon of flesh in its mouth, snappingand gobbling. Others arrived. Soon there was a red foaming andscuffling where the body of a girl had been.

I turned away, but Sivanand did not flinch.

'Sarvam Khalvidam Brahman,' he said, '—all this is indeed God.'

Somewhere in the distance, a bugler sounded réveillé. Its notesdrifted to me across the flower-strewn water, with its corpses, andturtles, and the reflection of the splendour that Shahjehan had madefor the love of a woman.

[1] The first two chapters of the Holy Koran.

[2] Ascetic student.

[3] Breathing exercises.

[4] That bliss which is knowledge of the One.

[5] Maya.

[6] Ignorance.

[7] The Iron Age.

CHAPTER IX

BENARES

Hysteria was close to Sivanand and all his world. These Yogis, itseemed to me, had the logic of lunatics. Was the everlasting solitaryintroversion of the Brahmins indeed more spiritual than the ethic ofthe beef-eating Briton?

The question kept recurring to me, both now and later, but theappraisal of differences and distinctions is a sterile pursuit, and Itried to put such thoughts out of my head. Whether or not the Brahminswere wiser than men of my own race, they had certainly an ancientculture whose exploration might fill my life and the lives of manyothers. It was an adventure, this blending of the creative impulse ofthe West with the traditions of the East, a new quest that might leadmankind to new Eldorados.

In Benares my search would begin. There I should discover the answersto my questions, if they were anywhere to be found. I would leaveaside my mental note-book and my innate tendency to seek for analogiesand comparisons. I would be a Hindu, in imagination at least, and walkthe swarming streets not as a man of this century, but as a mediævalpilgrim to Canterbury, or as a child who had listened to Peter theHermit.

Such was my intention. In Peshawar, some years ago, I had been aPathan to all intents and purposes. But in Benares, as soon as I hadsettled myself there for a proper visit, I knew myself to be astranger. I could not go back through the centuries: I could not viewmy surroundings with the eyes of indifference. Some reforming devilwould up.

With a part of me I wanted to sweep out the twisted by-ways of the holycity, to disinfect its temples, rebuild the crumbling river-front, putfly-proof netting round every sweetmeat stall. Yet I knew that if areformer were to attempt to do such things I should join in hisexecration, for then Benares would be herself no longer. The cityfascinated me and repelled me, like Yoga, like India.

It was no good pretending the repulsion did not exist: Benares is anincarnation of the Hindu mind, full of shocks and surprises. Youcannot view her through the eyes of the flesh, or if you do you willwant to shut them. Her real life burns in the Unconscious.

Her outer life is passed in the temples and by the river. The templesare terrible, the river beautiful. In the temples there is a worshipof foetus-like figures, smeared with red, that lurk amidst the acridcorruption of milk and wilted flowers, and cattle-ordure, and bats andblood. Elephant-headed Ganesha is there, with her silver hands andfeet; and the discs representing the Regents of the Planets; andserpent-girdled Kali; and the blue-throated god himself, Siva, whoswallowed the sins of the world that men may be immortal; and thesymbol of the sexes, united and complementary. These things theBrahmins will assure you—and it is true—are not idols. The true godis Brahm. For the rest, the world had worshipped always the samedivinities under various names, symbolising Desire, the eternal driver.

I turned away from these squalid sanctuaries. Corruption stank in mynostrils, but my soul smelt something different. At the Durga Temple aheadless goat twitched in its blood; close by a peasant couple fed thebaby monkeys with parched gram, and a little boy brought a piece oflemon peel to Vishnu's altar, in case the god was thirsty. Pigeonsnested between the gold plates of the dome of the temple of Siva, andwithin, a cow munched the votive wreaths festooned round the lingamof the Lord of Names and Forms. These things were not meaningless, buttheir meaning came to me from far away, along pathways my brain hadnever used.

The river, on the other hand, was intelligible.

There is no sight more wonderful in all the world than thecrescent-sweep of the Ganges on a bright morning, when Benares is atprayer. In that lustral rite, in which a hundred thousand peopleshare, the squalor and superstitions of the streets are forgotten; wesee here the ancient Aryans, still living in their descendants,glorying in sunlight and water, praying to God rather than to demons,untrammelled by the accretions of the centuries, and out of the clutchof their many-armed idols.

Three miles of crumbling palaces that lie in tumbled heaps with otherpalaces growing out of their ruins; and a confusion of richly-carvedcupolas pushing their way between tamarind trees and tall flag-poles;and a fluttering of endless companies of pigeon among a forest of strawumbrellas; and below them a multitude of people who worship by theglittering water—peasants and priests, beggars and monstrosities anddwarfs, sacred bulls that have been married to four holy cows, cowswith five legs, sleek girls with a skin of ivory and very poor andparched old women, fat merchants and thin fakirs, wise men and madmen,old and young, birds and beasts, all mingling on the bank and washingin the sacrosanct waters of the Mother—that is the river-front atBenares. The Ganges is so pure that you may drink beside her sewers,or amongst her corpses. She sprang from the feet of Vishnu, and fromher was born the Hindu race. Her waters are jewels to the eyes of theliving and a sanctification to the parted lips of the dead. Her cultis ageless and casteless.

The worshipper first offers flowers and rinses his mouth in her holywater. Then he kisses the earth she fructifies. Then, entering her,he worships the four points of the compass, raising his right handthree times, so that a trickle of diamonds drips down in homage to therisen sun, and whispering the oldest prayer known to man—theGayatri—with which the Brahmins have greeted the Giver of Life forthe mornings of five thousand years. Then he submerges himselfcompletely in the Mother, rinses his loin-cloth, and returns to theriver-steps.

In the temples, the cow's excreta is clean, but I am filthy. Wecreatures beyond the Brahmin pale may not touch a thousand objects inthe city, but here, lovers of Gangi Mai, we are one people.

If I stood on my head at the Bathing Place of the Sacrifice of the TenHorses, I should only be doing as a dozen others. Even lessconspicuous should I be at the Scindia Ghat, which is the favourite ofall the forty-seven bathing places of the city with the brahmacharinsand ascetics of every cult, who come here to find a peace the worldcannot give.

At the Scindia Ghat I am myself. Myself in skin and marrow. Asympathy reaches out across I know not what gulf of time and ancestryto unite me to these people. Some are insane, some have diverted theirvitality into their burning eyes, so that they live only above the neckand not in thought as I understand it at present, but all have a goalbefore their eyes which is also my goal. They are fellow-travellers ona difficult journey, some madder than I, some stronger, and all freer,less tied to names and forms.

In another life I have practised these austerities. I have satcross-legged, like that brahmacharin, with the sun in my half-closedeyes, restraining my breath. I have stood on one leg, like thatstork-like youth, whose right foot is tucked into his groin. I havebalanced on my head, like those two naked Yogis (as a child I wasalways looking at the earth inverted). I have been that girl, withcaressing eyes. She is myself in another incarnation. Surely she willrecognise her poor kinsman? She is sitting cross-legged, inpadmasana, the ancient lotus-posture, with soles of the feet turnedup and placed on the thighs. Buddha sat like that, and many beforehim. I also have locked my circulation at the femoral arterieslistening, listening to the tide of all the world's vitality in my ownbody. She could, if she would, bring back that vanished time. But howshall I attract her attention? Is it polite to call her from nirvanato my foolish questions?

Near her, an old man is rolling over in the dust, holding a baby abovehim. Over and over he rolls, keeping the baby always in the air. Isthe action symbolic of something? The baby finds the rotary motionagreeable and sucks its thumbs and smiles, but what kind of Yoga isthis?

'What kind of Yoga is this?' I say out loud.

The girl draws a deep breath: it ripples upwards under the ochre sheetthat covers her, expanding first her stomach, then her ribs.

'He is going to the shrine of Kali, Sahib,' she says.

'But why does he go like that?'

She does not answer. Ought I to know? Or doesn't she?

'I have come here to find a guru.'

'There are a thousand gurus in Benares.'

'It is better to follow no saint than six.'

'You know our proverbs: you also know then that a student may notreveal the name of his Master?'

'I didn't know that. I am looking for a particular guru, namedBhagawan Sri.'

'The Paramahansa!' she exclaims, looking at me with velvety butpassionless eyes. 'He speaks English. I can take you to him, if youlike. He lives on a pier by the house of Tulsi Das.'

Shall I give her a rupee? Yes, she will understand that it is aceremonial offering. I touch the back of her right hand with the coin:she turns it up, extending her slim fingers without a word.

'Will you take me to him?'

'Are you a missionary?'

'Of course not. I am a student, like yourself.'

She smiles a little, and her eyes assume a far-away look, beyond me,beyond Mother Ganges, beyond earth. Unless I keep silent she will helpme not at all. She is more incalculable than Sivanand, less sensitiveperhaps, but more firmly centred.

Are we conversing subconsciously?

She uncurls her legs and rises, smoothly, like a yellow mist.

'Come,' she says, 'but slowly. I cannot walk fast.'

Why cannot she walk fast? What rigours have crippled her limbs? Herbody is lithe and young, but she stumbles, and walks like one in adream.

On our way we meet a legless man, scrabbling in the dust with flipperssix inches long, and nails growing in them, disconcertingly. He begsfor alms and his gourd is empty. A rupee to him, to bring me luck.Here are three boys, squatting on a bed of spikes; and an ash-smearedcreature, distorted out of human semblance, who is hanging headdownwards over a fire; and a thin man, pulling in his navel so that italmost touches his backbone; and a crone loaded with chains, andanother with a withered arm held aloft. How much masochism is here,how much fraud?

How many women Yogis are there? My guide shakes her head. Has she aguru? She will not answer. What sufferings has she undergone, andto what end? This girl is as baffling as Benares. Her eyes arelambent with love, but not for me. She will take me to theParamahansa, but she absolutely refuses to give me any information.

I found the Sri sitting under a large umbrella, by a pier thatprojected from the house of the poet of the Ramayana. He wasmiddle-aged, clean-shaven, bald, naked save for a loin-cloth and thesacred thread of the twice-born.

'I was expecting you, Sahib,' he said joining his finger-tips in answerto my salutation, and bowing, 'for Sivanand has written to me of you.'

'You speak English perfectly,' I said, sitting down beside him andfeeling at home.

What could be more natural than the fruition of my hopes? For sixyears I had desired this meeting. Now it had happened. Time isnothing in India. Karma rules all, and the belief in its influence isinfectious. I felt neither hurried, nor eager, nor surprised: thistalk was planned before my birth: I had chosen the womb that shouldgive me ears to hear it.

'Certainly I should know your language,' said the Paramahansa, 'becauseI have had every opportunity. But that is a long story and I expectyou are in a hurry, like all Englishmen. I understand you want to be aYogi. You know that there are two Europeans already studying with me?'

I had not known this, and it disconcerted me a little to find that theguru was reading my thoughts more exactly than I knew them myself.At the back of my mind had been the idea that I was doing somethingoriginal.

'I am in no hurry, Sir,' I answered. 'I have waited six years since Imet your cheela, when I was at Agra. He told me that I might come toyou. As to being a Yogi, I am not sure whether I shall have either thetime or the opportunity. I have come to ask you what Yoga is about.'

'I am afraid I cannot say anything clever,' said Bhagawan Sri, 'likeyour Western lecturers. Moreover if I could show you a path straightand clear from your present world to the Brethren who live in theHimalayas—and I cannot do that—it would not help you at all, for atthe ending of the road you would find nothing you had not brought withyou. The Way is in your own heart. It exists only there.'

'There is nothing, then, but imagination?'

'From Brahma to a blade of grass, all is an aspect of Becoming. Brahm,not Brahma, is the only Truly-existent One, and it is profitless todiscuss Him.'

'Then what can be discussed?'

'Everything except the Original Cause. If you study the Science ofSciences for a few years you will understand why. The laws of mentalinvolution are no different from other laws: you cannot see theMysteries with unquickened sight. You must not shut your eyes to theworld, but rather develop the wings you have in order to fluttertowards the Most High. I admit that a knowledge of the physicalworking of these wings is not absolutely necessary, but I and thosethat think with me believe it to be useful. Man has achieved bliss bya religion of rapture alone,[1] but the Way we follow is different.Instead of dragging the physical senses behind us like so much lumber,we ride them as beautiful steeds. The Clear Light of Reality may beseen by the mind, by the heart, and by the physical senses; but mindand heart and body are never really apart. There is nothing but theSelf. The body is an ant-heap of activities, living out their lives inits sun. To the lives within you, you are God, and these lives are Godto principalities and powers invisible. They are in you and you are inthem, for without them you could not live, as our God could not livewithout us.'

'Amongst all these creatures,' I said, 'how can I pretend to be theOne? In all this realm of knowledge how can I be the Knower? Above meas well as below me extend ranges of temperature and vibration that myconsciousness cannot know. If I say there is nothing but the Self inthe unimaginable worlds of space, then I am a solipsist.'

'You have a name for everything,' said Bhagawan Sri, 'like ourpandits. But a name does not give knowledge. Beyond thinking andimagination, there are subtler bodies which remain for ever outsidemortal sense. Our Vedas said that, before your microscopes andtelescopes. No one will ever see the world as it really is, even thegreatest guru. Samadhi is but a rending of one veil, when thereare seven. It is an illusion, like everything else; like yourmathematics, which one day will prove to you that two and two do notmake four. Such beliefs are useful illusions, necessary props. ButSarvan Khalvidam Brahman: outside Him not even solipsists exist.'

'Some of our thinkers have already come to that conclusion,' I replied,'but their methods seem to me to be more elastic, perhaps, than yours.They make all kinds of useful discoveries in the course of theirresearches into the properties of matter, such as electric light, whichwill surely make us all cleaner and wiser than we were. Are not suchinventions more useful than centuries of inward-turning?'

'Your methods are good in their way,' admitted the guru, 'but you arebeglamoured by your achievements. Sheikh Abdulla Ansar of Herat usedto tell his pupils, 'To fly in the air is no miracle, for the dirtiestflies can do it, to cross rivers without bridge or boat is no miracle,for a terrier can do the same; but to help suffering hearts is amiracle performed by holy men.' You can turn day into night byelectricity, but that does not give you more time to think. You cansend messages over wires and so on, but such activities may be withoutdiscrimination. You have multiplied your bodies in enlarging yournational karma, and produced suffering in proportion to yourdiscoveries. England is full of monstrous phallic signs. You worshipyour factory chimneys. We also worship production, but knowing more ofwhat we do. We worship it as the sign of renewal and as the Destroyerof Ignorance. We attend to the rajasic and tamasic[2] qualities ofman. We deal with the three brains, the cerebral, abdominal andpelvic. We teach through the six principles of silence, listening,remembering, understanding, judgment, action. We consider theindividual as composed of the five qualities of akasha, vaya, agni,apas and prithivi[3] and give him knowledge according to his needs,studying his subtlety, voice-pitch, vibrations, motions, respirations,smell and conversation. We study sound emanating from three places,the perinaeum, the cardiac plexus and the mouth. All that exists isSound in various shapes, but its highest vibration, the stillness ofsamadhi,[4] is only reached through yama-niyamma, asana, mudra,pranayama, dharana, dhyana.[5] By an illusory attribution ofimportance to these steps, followed by their withdrawal, as yourmathematicians sometimes reason from a formula that is nothing but anabstraction and contrary to practical experience, we rise intoGod-consciousness. Then we knock the scaffolding away.'

There was a twinkle in Bhagawan Sri's eyes. My impression was that hewas talking to amuse himself.

'How, definitely,' I said, 'would you advise me to start learning Yoga?Could I, for instance, begin by learning something aboutbreath-control?'

'Pranayama would be more dangerous for you than polo, Sahib, for itcannot be performed without purification and prayer. The sleepingsnake must not raise her head before her time.'

Somewhere or other I had read that Yoga began with the internal purity,so I said that I was well aware of the necessity for making clean theinside as well as the outside of the cup and the platter.

Bhagawan Sri seemed pleased at my discernment, or glad to change thesubject.

'You are right,' he said, 'my pupils wash everything, even theirbrains. Mens sana in corpore sano is a tag I was always using when Iwas a Headmaster. But you eat meat and indulge in an unnatural amountof exercise. The way will be long for you. Great forces are astir inthe world, and you are living amongst these powers. They must work outtheir karma, even as you must work out yours, and we, ours.'

Bhagawan Sri's pupils had returned for their evening lesson and werestanding by the river steps, waiting to be called. Doves fluttereddown from the palace ledges and flirted and bickered on the raft; asacred bull stumbled down the steps and nosed the guru, as ifwondering whether he was edible; and a fox terrier bitch appeared,brought by one of the pupils, wagging her tail and frisking round us.

'If I became a Yogi could I keep a dog?' I asked.

'Of course. Why not? She bathes with me every morning.'

'In the holy Ganges?'

'The Mother washes her as she washes me. The Ganges loves all ourIndia, rich and poor, man and beast. There is nothing she cannotpurify. We give to her the bodies of our dead and we drink her waters.That surprises you, but even your test-tubes tell you that we areright, for if you analyse the Ganges water you will find that it ispure.'

'That is because it runs over such wide stretches of sand and beneathso much sunlight, guru-ji. But I do not question your views,' Ihastened to add, 'I only ask to learn them.'

'Your feet have been led to the path. You have come here, and you willcome again. To me, or to another, if I am dead. For you may notreturn for a long time.'

Bhagawan Sri held out his hand.

I took it and rose, feeling that I might have overstayed my welcome.He held my hand in both his, looking through me, rather than at me.

'Books will not show you Yoga,' he said, 'but life. You must live outyour time as a soldier. I cannot tell when you will be ready for thepath, but I know that you are not ready now, and that you will have tosuffer more. I shall be sitting here under my umbrella for some yearsstill.'

'It is a privilege, guru-ji, to know that I may return. Already Ifeel something of your peace.'

'When your breathing is equable,' he answered, 'you will have peace ofmind whether you are being jostled in the market place, or are sittingalone on a black antelope-skin. May you travel the royal path anddrink the fountain of its ending.'

Benares was hung with mist when I left Bhagawan Sri, and the melon bedson the far side of the Ganges had grown dark. Down-river, a train waspuffing over the red girder railway-bridge that my race has built inthis city of abstractions.

Was all this talk of the Brahmins—the doubt rose in my mind like thetortoise I had seen in the Jumna—a screen to shield them from modernlife? Or had they in truth a knowledge as dynamic as steam and steel?

A gong struck close to me, in contemptuous answer to my thought.

Men and women were surging into a temple doorway, an oil cressetfluttering over their glistening bodies. Inside, a throng pressedtheir foreheads to the floor, venerating the symbol of Siva, that hadbeen anointed with rice and milk.

I looked back to the river, now empty of boats and streaked withreflected stars. Men and women were still praying on the steps of theDasaswamadh Ghat and meditating there, for the Ganges is never withouther worshippers. She greets them at dawn, attends them through theday, hears their vespers when she is crowned with stars, serene, aloof,apparently eternal.

A sacerdotal courtesan leant against the temple door, in profile to me,looking towards the river. Her nose tip-tilted, her upper lip lightlyshadowed, her underlip a trifle projecting, her small breasts boldunder her striped sari.

The devadasi and the Ganges: between them they received the outerworship of Benares. Other gods there were in stone and brass; butthose were dead, these the quick and adored priestesses.

Our railway-bridge and the minarets of the mosque of Aurungzebdominated the city in a physical sense. But Christ and Mahomed had notprevailed; and at Buddha Gaya, near by, where the Enlightened One firstturned the Wheel of the Law two and a half millenniums ago, stood theruined shrine of what was now a great foreign religion. Creeds andconquerors had left Hinduism untouched.

The devadasi glanced in my direction, and I drew nearer, looking intoher so subtle and so carnal eyes. I expected—comprehension perhaps.But a conch bugled, and she turned her back on me, leaving me very muchalone.

[1] The guru meant samadhi by the path of Bhakti Yog.

[2] Practical and earthly.

[3] Roughly: ether, air, fire, water, earth.

[4] Bliss.

[5] Right emotions, postures, gestures, breath-control, sense-control,mind-control and meditation.

CHAPTER X

DEATH OF THE DEVIL

In the little world containing recruits to drill, ponies to ride, ballsand targets to hit, papers to sign, Benares and its problems were soonoverlaid by regimental duties, although not forgotten. One night whenI was in the office late, struggling with secret mobilisation paperswhich I had to hand over to the officer replacing me before I wentHome, the Woordie Major arrived to see me, all hot and bothered.

Two crimes of an unusual sort had occurred, on which my advice wasnecessary. I had hoped to finish my work in time to catch the midnighttrain to Richa Road, for a last pigsticking meet at Ratmugri. But nowI put my files away. One must be a patient listener if one would be anAdjutant of Bengal Lancers.

A pay sowar, the Woordie Major told me, had announced his intention ofbecoming a Christian. What was to be done with him? Obviously, saidthe Woordie Major, he could not stay in the regiment. We wereMuhammedans. A clerk could be a Hindu and join other gods to God asmuch as he pleased, but not a combatant of the 17th Cavalry. Could Inot reason with this misguided youth about his idolatrous desires?(Else he might get his throat cut, he added.)

No, I could not reason with him, I answered firmly. But it wasdesirable that he should go away and think over his conversion in acalmer atmosphere. Why not send him to the Regimental Farm by thenight train? Extra clerks were needed at the Farm, and it was athousand miles away. I scribbled a note to the apostate's SquadronCommander, explaining his sudden removal. A Christian, indeed!

The other difficulty had been caused by a spectre which appeared at thenew ammunition guard. It had come at midnight, last night, and it hadsaid to the sentry: 'If you don't go away, I will come again with sevenbrothers bigger than myself, and kill you all.' Whereupon the sentrywent mad. He was Ghulam Haider, a plump Punjaubi whom I knew well, forhe had recently been a recruit.

In what language, I asked, had it uttered its threat? Punjaubi, saidthe Woordie Major.

All day Ghulam Haider's friends had been holding him down to preventhim killing himself, or running amok. He had had several fits, and wasgrowing worse. The Hospital Assistant could do nothing.

I sent for my bicycle.

First I went to the guard, and doubled it. Two sentries wouldcertainly keep the ghost at bay.

Then to the hospital. Ghulam Haider turned the sightless white of hiseyes in my direction, and gibbered. When I touched his forehead, heyelled and threw himself on the floor in spite of the six sweatingPunjaubis who were attending him.

Was it epilepsy? Why had the doctor not been sent for? As theHospital Assistant did not answer, and seemed to have something on hismind, I took him aside and questioned him as to what was biting GhulamHaider.

'He has seen something, Sahib,' he replied—'but when the Doctor putshim in a straight waistcoat to-morrow, he will forget what he saw.'

'We can do nothing?'

'What can we do? The world is full of illusions.'

Yes; and I now remembered that the ammunition guard had been mountedfor the first time only a week ago, when a sowar stole somenitro-glycerine from it in order to dynamite fish in a near-by stream.He was court-martialled and sentenced to imprisonment, but the findingof the Court was quashed because the ammunition had been left withoutproper supervision. So now the regiment had to find an extra guard,which was a nuisance to all concerned, and Ghulam Haider must haveheard talk of this.

He was struggling like a man possessed, and screaming as if somethingwas being torn inside him. Devils were working his muscles and usinghis lungs. But it was not in my power to drive them out, and Naim Shahwas waiting outside the hospital with my dog-cart, to take me to thestation.

Riding out to Ratmugri Bagh in the small hours of the morning, lulledby the steady swing of the camel and exalted by the close stars, Iwondered what kind of Christ the pay-sowar had seen: had it been theGod of the Sahibs, or the Mahdi of Islam, or some avatar of the Hindus?And what was Ghulam Haider's ghost? Could it be that through him theunspoken wishes of six hundred men were foaming out of one mouth? Godsand devils were close to us in this climate.

We were all a little mad in India, a little touched by a sun thatover-ripens men's thoughts. My pursuit of philosophy and pigs, forinstance, was apparently illogical. Either I should devote myself toahimsa, or else forget Benares and be a Bengal Lancer.

Yet reconcile these things I must, for I had need of both. Yoga wassound at core: its worships were those of a sane dawn, compared to thestuffy subtleties of the formalised religions of the West.

So with pigsticking: it sweated the false civilisation out of me.

Besides, the difference between spearing a boar and munching a lettuceleaf is essentially one of degree, not kind. An ox is big and bellowswhen slaughtered: a mosquito merely stops its buzzing. The mosquitowanted to feed on us, we on the ox. Who shall say that God intendedthe one and not the other, or that we may choose which of His creationwe kill or cage or assimilate? Every breath a man takes proclaims thatlife lives on other lives. We are all killers. Perhaps Naturerepresents the power of evil. If so, what a beautiful devil she can be!

As I swung along on my elastic-footed untni, the roses of morninggathered between the stars. It was that serene instant when day anddark are balanced.

No dawn is so swift and solemn as that on the plains of India. Othermornings may be tenderer, more mysterious, but none compare with thesehuge sunrises in rhythm. The dark plains stir, and wake, and growradiant with promise: colours are massed and marshalled across the wideheavens, then swiftly, smoothly, light comes over the sleeping world.The rite is over and the miracle accomplished.

Surya reigned, and with his first rays I saw a big boar not two hundredyards away, following along the tow-path of the Kundra Canal.

Spurring my camel and whacking her neck, I galloped into camp, and asshe folded herself up by the breakfast table, I shouted the news to thecoffee-drinkers. The Devil was ready saddled: I returned on him toshow the way.

The boar had dodged into a patch of arrah; as he tried to slink outunobserved, he was viewed by a peasant, and chased into another crop,where we lost him. Six of us had arrived by now. We rode back andforth, beating the cover with our spears.

At last the boar breaks again, taking us over the road-menders' pits,and across the canal: ahead lies a branch of the Ganges. The Devilslithers down a sand-bank and plunges with a snort of joy into thewater. None of the others will face it: there's an ungentlemanlypleasure in that.

This boar is a very good swimmer. So is The Devil. I leave his headfree, holding the cantle of the saddle and my spear in my right hand,and paddling with my legs and left arm. How delicious this cold waterfeels, through my clothes, down into my boots. With a squelch I am insaddle again, everything running and dripping. That's a stone handicapto our friend, but I'll catch him yet.

He's making for the jhow along the river-bank. Blind going, and I'malone.

The Collector has crossed, but he's far behind. A long rein and easyseat—The Devil must stand up without my help. I can see nothing inthis sea of jhow except the ridge of the boar's back. There's noskill in riding such a country: nothing avails but a good horse, andgood luck.

I have no luck. Just as we clear the jhow, and I am gaining, greenbranches and white sand hit me in the face. The Devil has caught hisfoot in a twisted root and fallen, but I have the reins. I'm out ofthe hunt. My fingers are a nasty yellow colour with the cold water. Iwish I'd had some sleep and breakfast. The Collector is on the boarnow, and another spear is riding wide, expecting a jink. The boar iswinded. He'll charge. Yes, but the Collector's missed him.

I'll have one more ride on The Devil. Whoa, lad. That's better. I'vesoused down into the saddle, gathered the wet reins, and am off again.After this ride, it will be nine months before I feel the lift of hisloins, and the snatch of his bridle as he judges the approach to aditch. I need a rest. Indian earth is hard to fall on. I haveswallowed much of it, too, and my loins ache. Am I growing old?

No, by God not yet! The boar's jinked again, away from the other spearand (oh, exultation incomparable!) towards me.

The Devil has the legs of the others, and of the boar. Steadily wedraw nearer. There is no cover here, and the boar is blown.

We draw level. The boar's mouth is open—in another two lengths thosebig tusks of his will furrow the sand. He's charged. He's come up myspear. I can feel his breath on my hand. I've killed, I think, butwhy doesn't The Devil go on?

Why doesn't The Devil go on?

This riding, and fall, and riding again seems to have happened agesago, but we are still on the same spot. The boar charged. I droppedmy spear, didn't I? Still The Devil is anchored, going up and downlike a hobby horse.

My poor Devil—why didn't I guess? When the boar turned over, a footof spear entered your belly by the girth. Poor Devil.

Isn't that better now I'm off your back? You are not dying, my friend?

The Devil's forelegs were straddled and his proud head was sunk betweenthem. He shook himself and lay down. He stretched himself out, as ifhe knew that the day's work was over. I staunched his wound with myhandkerchief: immediately it became a sop of blood. He gave a littlewhinny, as if I had brought him corn.

Then his eyes glazed.

A stimulant might have saved him, if only Lashkman Piari with hermedicine chest had been visible. The life was still there in him, butdammed up somehow in the sensitive nerves, so that the heart would notbeat.

I waited by him, helpless. Kites circled above us. They knew. Hislife had gone out of my reach, leaving carrion where fleetness and firehad been an instant before. It was the suddenness of it that washorrible; the knowledge that the ripple of his muscles and the swish ofhis tail and the pride of his eyes and the sweep of his stride werestill close to me, although separated from reality by the time-lag of anervous reflex. I sat still, not smoking, not thinking, growinggradually stony-hearted. Twilight came, and at last the elephants. Wehoisted The Devil on to Lashkman Piari's pad. Flies followed us backto camp.

I had no heart to continue pigsticking. There was a train back toBareilly at mid-day.

Before mounting my camel, I asked that one of The Devil's hoofs shouldbe cut off for me to keep (I am dipping my pen in it now) and that hisbody should be burned and scattered in the Ganges. Then, with the wailof his syce sounding in my ears I rode away from that good life forever. After a few hours of jolted stupor in the train, I was back inthe familiar round of cantonments.

CHAPTER XI

BEAUTY AND BOREDOM

In late May of this year, I was with my parents in a Castello on theItalian Riviera—and for the next five years my life was so far fromits previous channels that I might have been on another earth.

Sometimes I heard from Bareilly, and learned of the remote happeningsin the regiment.

The pay-sowar, I heard, had never intended to become a Christian atall, but had been a follower of a false Mahdi who lived in Quadian inthe Punjaub. Since my departure, he had announced his readiness toconfess to the faith of his fathers, and had duly repeated thequalimah[1] before the assembled Indian officers in the regimentalmosque.

As to Ghulam Haider, who had been put in a strait-waistcoat as theHospital Assistant had predicted, his return to sanity had been speedy.He had been passed fit for duty long before I had left Bareilly and Ihad ordered that a quart of goat's milk should be given to him daily,to fortify him against spectres. I now heard from the Woordie Majorthat he was becoming too fat for a cavalryman.

Brownstone and Daisy were doing well, as also were Maidstone,Tombstone, Judy, Jack, Whetstone, and the other puppies. To-day, theirdescendants encircle the Empire, but Brownstone and Daisy I never sawagain, for they died before the end of the Great War. When I hadpatted them good-bye, I did not know for what far journeys we were allof us destined.

I heard also that Monarch, my young black Arab who was shaping to beone of the fastest ponies in India, had been bitten by a krait[2]while grazing, and was dead.... Yet here by the sapphireMediterranean, Siva was incredible.

When the German Emperor entered the little blue bay of Portofino in theHohenzollern, I dipped the Union Jack to him and watched hisanswering salute. He made a fine Imperial figure on his bridge,dressed in all the stars and orders of an Admiral, with the sunlightglinting on braid and jewels, and the withered arm well hidden. Thefishermen of Portofino and I were much impressed. There was peace overthat enchanted land and sea.

There was peace throughout that radiant May and June while I basked onthe rocks, or lay in the bottom of my cat-boat, listening to herchuckling progress in a light breeze. And in London, in July, if therewas not exactly peace, there was such a façade of pomp and pleasurethat the war-clouds in Ulster and the Balkans loomed only slightlylarger to me than the Hunt Cup and the Eton and Harrow match.

How old I feel when I think of the opera, Ascot, Henley, Lord's, allthe fashions and frivolities of 1914! When I had first left England,bicycling had only recently gone out of fashion. Now had arrived theera of motors which often ran for hundreds of miles without abreakdown; and aeroplanes which looped the loop. We seemed to beevolving towards a splendid Golden Age. In 1914, hostesses kept listsof young men of respectable antecedents whom they asked to theirparties, and there was no limit to the number of invitations receivedby those whose names were on this register, provided they also had ahealthy appetite for pleasure. I had, and was rarely in bed beforedawn.

In that comfortable and well-ordered world, I took my small, butcomfortable and well-ordered place. Future generations will envy mine,that has seen the rise of skirts from ankle to knee, and now theirdescent, with all that that implies. I feel that I am linked with thecenturies in a way impossible to those born in this thin-faced, anxiousage.

'It was great fun,' I scribbled in a letter I wrote that summer. 'OnMonday I went to 'The Duke of Killiecrankie' with A's party, and thento a dance at Claridge's. On Tuesday to dine with A., and a dance atthe Ritz. On Wednesday to dine with someone I don't know (introducedby someone I forget) and on to a dance. While there, Lady H. asked meto come on to the Centenary Ball, and with true American kindness shesent two tickets and two fancy dresses. So I went on with a friend tothe Albert Hall. Such a sight. Lady Maud Warrender looked magnificentas Britannia, and when a suffragette came on to the dais and tried tomake a scene, she only moved a little to one side to allow her to beremoved. To-morrow I go to N. for Saturday to Monday. Next week Ihave to put on full dress uniform to bow at St. James's. There's greatexcitement over the Curragh business: no doubt Carson and F. E. Smithmean business, and some of the Navy will come over to our side. Thenthere'll be the deuce to pay.'

Suffragettes and suppers, house-parties, a levee.... These things wereblotted out of my mind by this friend with whom I went to the AlbertHall for the ball that celebrated a hundred years of peace betweenEngland and America.

She altered my view of life so profoundly that I never mentioned thechange to anyone.

Yet to-day I cannot recall the details, except that she was dark andslight, and wore roses. We began to dance as soon as we wereintroduced, and went on for hours. Presently we were alone, at supperat a near-by hotel. All that I can remember is that her face flashedup in welcome out of a sea of faces, and was then lost to me in thestorm that broke over the world. Except for this my mind is so blankabout her that I suspect it of hiding something.

At the house in which I was staying in Ireland, a telegram arrivedwarning me to be ready to rejoin my regiment in India. Presentlyanother telegram came, ordering me to a Cavalry Depot near Aldershot.

I went there in haste, hoping I was not too late to see the end of theWar, and found 'Kitchener's Kids' were pouring into barracks by thehundred. We had no saddles, but plenty of nice horses. The woundedfrom Mons had sad stories to tell.

The War was not over by September of that first year, and in SeptemberI landed in France, full of 'cavalry spirit,' and carrying with me oneof the new thrusting swords, with which I hoped to transfix numerousGermans. A man, they said, died more easily than a pig.

'Here I am in a café in Havre,' I wrote (then heavily deleted the wordHavre), 'drinking café-au-lait. I hope to catch the express to Paris,but may have to go in a troop train. The London Scottish came with mein the City of Chester. They are the finest lot of men I have everseen in my life.'

'The officers of the regiment I am with,' I continued later, from theAisne, '—never changed their clothes for three weeks during theretreat. We are billeted in a charming old farmhouse, resting. Thecountry all round is beautiful. The guns continue withoutintermission, and lorry-loads of wounded prisoners pass. I am glad tobe here, for we are sure to have lots of cavalry work. I rode outyesterday to see the battle. So far it has been in progress eightdays. You can't think how interesting it all is. Please send me apair of socks and some handkerchiefs every week.'

Interesting. Lots of cavalry work. Socks. That is what I wrote.

We slept in our clothes, ready for a summons to lead the van of thepursuit; lived on bully-beef, drank rum in our tea, read the Englishpapers to hear how the War was going, re-organised, re-equipped. Atdusk, each night, I climbed up to a plateau overlooking the Aisne, andwatched and wondered....

This was the war for which I had been trained, and for which I hadtrained my men, now thousands of miles away. A friend of mine (aBengal Lancer) had killed two men in a charge during the retreat, andhad been given a brevet Majority and a Croix-de-Guerre. Lucky devil.Here we hid our horses away. We gossiped and groused. Aeroplanesdroned over us.

The battle was being fought in a tangle of little trenches, towardswhich I was not allowed to approach. When I attempted to do so, Iencountered snubs and red-hatted Majors. 'Soon the Allies will beagain in full pursuit of a beaten enemy' ran a manifesto of Sir JohnFrench. As the days passed, we grew doubtful.

French reservists trailed into Soissons. 'White mice' we called them,because they were small and humble. In the town square, rode Frenchmenof another type: brass-bellied troopers with horse-hair plumes in theirhelmets. The Cuirassiers sat splendidly on their horses, watching thewhite mice. We watched each other. Did anyone know what washappening? I was getting indigestion, that was certain.

Now in this part of France the cooking is the best in the world. Itwas absurd to be eating our rations when we might get a country girl tomake us soup. I rode round; seeking what we might devour. But neithereggs nor milk nor chickens were obtainable. 'Les Allemands out toutpris—tout—tout!'

The guns never paused. One night, alone in my field, I wept over theworld. Heavy black clouds were massing upon the Aisne heights. Overthere machine-guns chattered and chattered and chattered like thedelirium of a giant hashish-smoker. All over Europe women wept, andthe harvest lay unreaped. I wanted to scream, and coughed and criedinto my handkerchief, much ashamed of myself. Was this lack ofexercise, or too much bully-beef?

At last the suspense came to an end, and we rode northwards in greatgood spirits, for our division was apparently engaged in a flankingmovement to take the Germans in rear. The weather was superb—andFrench girls were kind....

'They give us fruit, wine, flowers, everything except cigarettes. I'mfrightfully hungry in the mornings. To-day I breakfasted on a stick ofchocolate, a cup of black coffee, a jug of café-au-lait, an apple and apear, some pâté de dindon, a glass of wine and finally a cup ofchocolate, all taken from the saddle. The marches are delightful assoon as the sun comes out. We get up in the dark, however, and it'scold then. Yesterday I had my first bath for a fortnight (in a pigtrough). Beds are usually clean, but washing arrangements primitive.I have 'made' a good-looking German mare in a French farmhouse, whereshe was abandoned by the Allemands. I gave the farmer a receipt forher. She ought to be worth £100 after the show is over. A friend hasjust told me that an old lady in his last night's billet presented hisregiment with a 50 h.p. limousine car. She wanted to give themanother, but they had to refuse, as they only had one man to drive it.Every regiment keeps a car if it can—unofficially, of course. I wantanother pair of leather gloves, please, and a Jaeger cap to pull downover my ears. Also matches and cigarettes, as these can't be had forlove or money.'

I enjoyed myself until the day when we shelled the Mont des Cats, nearHazebrouck. In the evening, we bivouacked in the Trappist monastery onits summit. Our losses had been two officers and four men, but we hadkilled the same number of Germans. Our dead were laid out in a row.

My Bengal Lancer friend was one; he lay there on the dirty straw, greyand limp, with a parson mumbling over him. I stood dazed, for he was ahero, and I could not believe that heroes ended like this.

During the night, my eyes would not shut, as if to make up for the daysthat they had been as blind as a puppy's.

We rode into Belgium next day and were greeted by the populace atReninghelst with a barrel of beer. From there, I was sent forward fromMessines with a patrol, to discover how far the retreating Germans hadgone. Speed was vital. As I clattered along over the cobbles with mymen, making noise enough to wake the dead, and expecting to run into aGerman rear-guard at any moment, I became very clearly aware of thefact that, 'cavalry spirit' or no cavalry spirit, I did not want to die.

Here we were on the outskirts of Warneton. I had only to push on withsufficient bravery in order to meet an ambush. Some of my men woulddoubtless succeed in returning with the news that General Goughrequired, and one subaltern more or less didn't matter. But itmattered to me.

Stopping in front of a shuttered house, I roused the inhabitants,cross-questioned them, rode on cautiously, repeated the process, foundthe swollen corpse of a Uhlan. Gradually, we worked our way up to thecrossing of the Deule, and halted there for a stirrup-cup. Theinnkeeper came out unwillingly, but when he discovered that we werefriends, and that I spoke French, he told me that the Germans wereholding the opposite bank of the river. That was what I wanted toknow. Several citizens confirmed his statement. I had just scribbleda message to Headquarters and sent it back at the gallop, when aviolent fusillade broke out on my right and left. Both the otherpatrols had run into live, angry, invisible Germans. A loose horsegalloped by, striking sparks on the stones. We caught it and trottedslowly back to Messines. For twenty-four hours we had been in touchwith the enemy, but had only seen one, who smelt very badly, and seemedto me a good epitome of all this business.

I wrote out a full report, then lay dozing with my squadron in themarket square. Presently word came that the General was pleased withour work. Well, if he was pleased, I was not, but I had at any ratelearned a lesson not in the training manuals. I had grown much olderand wiser in the last forty-eight hours.

All day I dozed. A spy was arrested in the square and collapsed in thegutter. Someone said: 'He'll be shot at dawn if he doesn't die of funkbefore.' Again I went to sleep. When I woke, I found a nun asking themen whether they thought that the girls at the Institution Royale wouldbe raped if we retreated. I assured her that we were advancing, sothat the question could not arise, and that anyway the War would beover by the spring.

But spring was a long way off. This was November.

We attacked a farm south of Messines, then retreated. We dug shallowtrenches and left them. We cursed the plum jam. Our feet swelled withthe sudden cold. Some of the men could hardly walk, but no one wentsick. We became lousy. Lorry-loads and bus-loads of infantry keptstreaming into the market square: cannon-fodder we said, and they were.It rained always. No one knew just where the enemy was, nor even,sometimes, which way we faced. Sometimes I was so sleepy that I wishedthat a bullet would let me go on lying down.

Then came a rumour. An Indian Cavalry Division was sailing for thefront, and reinforcements of infantry. The more I thought over thisprospect, the pleasanter it seemed, for the 17th Cavalry, who had beencomplimented on their military efficiency by every Inspector of Cavalryfor the last five years, might well be chosen for service abroad.

My hopes came true, and I was ordered to report myself immediately tothe Disembarkation Commandant at Marseilles, in order to take over theadvance party of my regiment, which was due to arrive in France withina few days.

On my gay way through Paris, I bought a motor car for the mess, andarranged for four excellent interpreters and a marvellous chef. Wewould seek death or glory with the best advice, and on full stomachs.

De-loused and shining-booted and a month-old veteran of the Great War,I sauntered down the quays of Marseilles to report myself to theauthorities.

Here the blow fell.

'Your regiment? Didn't you know that you had a case of glanders atBombay?' said a Staff Officer. 'The 17th Cavalry isn't coming. I'mafraid we've nothing for you.'

I shall pass over the next few weeks quickly—indeed the next fewyears—for when one is stunned one is not articulate, even inretrospect. And I remained orphaned, lost, rudderless for theremainder of the War, except for a few happy months in Mesopotamia.

Here I was alone and unwanted on the streets of Marseilles. The fourwonderful interpreters would go to other regiments, the car would bere-sold, the cook waste his rum babas in the wilderness. Over a glassof light port in the Bodega, I considered the situation gloomily. Ihad nowhere to go. One place was like another to Sivanand at Agra, butthat was small consolation to me in France.

Unpleasant as the fighting was, however, it could hardly be drearierthan the line of communications. In the Royal Flying Corps I had heardthat there was adventure to be had without undue discomfort, so Idecided to apply to be trained as a pilot, and to fill in the timemeanwhile by becoming an interpreter to one of the Indian Cavalryregiments already in Europe.

Orleans was under snow when I arrived there as a French-Englishinterpreter with the Indian contingent. We moved up the line withchilblains and coughs, and found Flanders under a sheet of white, withwhite trees against a pale blue sky. It was a beautiful, crispChristmas.

Early in 1915 the weather changed. On a rainy afternoon a motorbicyclist came with orders from Brigade Headquarters and was away againin a flash. The news he brought spread from mouth to mouth.

The good lady who looked after my squadron insisted on preparing anearly dinner for us, consisting of soup, cutlets, haricots.

'You do not know when you may eat again,' she said. 'Ah, mon petitFanou,' she added to her pug, from whose nose I had been accustomed toinduce electric sparks by rubbing him in front of the stove on frostynights, 'it is better to keep warm by the fire, you think, than tofight for France. Hein?'

Her only son was a very young maréchal de logis, whose photographstood over the mantelpiece. When I rode that way again a month later,I heard from a villager that the boy had been wounded somewhere inAlsace and that she had left hurriedly, hoping to see him, but that ithad been too late, and that he was mort pour la patrie, and thatFanou had caught a chill and died also. I could not bring myself toface her, as I should have done.

We formed up on the Bethune road in the drizzling dark, our turbansheavy with the wet, and the men holding their lances in corpse-likehands. Our feet were frozen, too. Gulped cutlets lay heavy on mystomach; the hard-mouthed brute I rode kept stumbling. It was a mostunpleasant march.

We walked on and on very slowly through the raw night, with star-shellsgoing up in the middle distance and the voices of the guns growinglouder. Ammunition dumps, camps, bivouacs, a mile of buses loomed upon the outskirts of Bethune. In the town we halted for a long time,picketed, moved again, picketed, yawned away to sit in a café, and thenat dawn paraded once more, this time without our horses.

At last we were to see the Germans. Day broke as we formed single fileto enter the communication trench. On and on we trudged, through deepmud, past coils of wire, field kitchens, field hospitals, gnomes withscrawny beards who were Royal Engineers before they took to thetrenches. For an hour we plodded and twisted, then halted in a deepditch. Bullets splashed between our loopholes, and sometimes throughthem.

We were in the marshes of Festubert, with the Germans eighty yards away.

In the trenches we smoked our pipes and drank our rum. Our men knewnothing about this Western quarrel, but it didn't seem very dangerousat first, and they preferred being active in a wet trench to lyingnight after night in a barn, in the verminous dark. As we neitherattacked nor were attacked, our only discomforts were the wet and cold,neither of which were intolerable. Sniping and snipers kept us amused:the men were like children learning a new game.

A noise like a toy dog's bark came from a man in my section. Onopening his shirt, only a small hole was discernible. Yet his lungshad been sucked out at the back of his tunic, and he was, of course,dead. We carried him back to the latrine trench, which was the onlyconvenient place to put him at the moment, and here my foot sank in asoft place, and levered up a small brown leg, with toes splayed out.The Gurkhas had been there before us.

When night fell, I visited the dressing-station with a couple ofwounded. Near the doctor's table, with all its ugly sights, was aruined shrine in which stood a statue of the Virgin. Someone hadwritten out these lines from Kipling and placed them at Her feet:

Mary, born of woman,
Remember, reach and save
The soul that goes to-morrow
Before the God who gave.

Cloak Thou our undeserving,
Make firm the shuddering breath
In silence and unswerving
To meet Thy lesser death.

Who had thought of doing this, I wondered? The verses belonged toanother age.

The majority of us, of course, hoped for comfortable Blighty wounds.That was human. What was divine, was the bearing of those few whosesouls rose above the battle and gave of their strength to others, sothat bravery ran through the ranks like an electric current. All of usin the war saw such men, and the moments they inspired. For the sakeof that, the rest was worth while.

Had I been killed during this time, it would have been only because Ifeared to be out of a fashion. Instead, I succumbed ingloriously to afever. One doctor at Wimereux said it was appendicitis, another,bronchitis. Whatever it was, my temperature went down in a few weeksand I then became the willing prey of nurses in Mayfair. As soon as Icould stand, I tottered to the Air Ministry.

A month or two later I was convalescent, and found myself strollingfrom Winchester back to my house at Twyford, across the lovely lawns ofSt. Cross and along the gurgling, glutted Itchen.

Spring had come at last. Those poor nuns at Messines would be having ahell of a time. We were luckier in England. And I became awaresuddenly—as if a star-shell had glittered over my thoughts—of whatthe War meant to me. It was not a war for civilisation (which hadtwisted my mind out of shape) but for England. My veins were proudthat they carried English blood and that they were part of a streamgreater than all present lives. I saw the careful fields, the opaldistances, the lovely haze upon this land; its sleek cattle, its sheepthick-nibbling the pastures, its rich content and strength. Thephysical sources of my being were revealed. I was nearly thirty, andlearning to love my country.

Smile, reader, if you will. Your life may have always been passed ingreen places. Unless you have lived abroad you will have missed thecomparisons that a returned wanderer may make; as for me, I do not carehow many may have expressed the same thoughts better; nor would Iexchange the memory of that afternoon for any other in my life.

It was raining. I looked down the churchyard of Twyford to the river,and across to the fields, and I thought of the energies that had goneinto that soil to make it a garden, and of the blood that had beenspent to keep it so. I was English, grown like the corn like thegrass, like the yew under which I sat, but not so useful or so ancientas the yew. England came to me like a goddess then, and I have heldfast to her ever since, in a world where so much is so very uncertain.

[1] The creed of Islam.

[2] Bungarus cæruleus, a poisonous steel-blue snake.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE AIR

Outward bound, on the Red Sea, I looked across a little stretch ofwater, to where the hills of Arabia cut into the middle distance, andmelted away into the retractant ranges of the horizon, nebulous andhalf-guessed. Flying-fish came up to play about us; a shark showed itswhite belly, scavenging for tit-bits; jellyfish evaded us placidly,past our quivering side came creamy little patches of foam, and streakypatches, and hyaline patches that bubbled delightfully. I would havebeen content enough to be gliding on these agate waters, if only I hadbeen going back to the front, instead of having been ordered to returnto the 17th Cavalry, now a mere training depot in Allahabad.

I had not been at all the kind of man who was wanted in the RoyalFlying Corps, apparently. Its doctors had tapped and tested me with anair of disapproval, and said nothing. Then my orders for India hadarrived.

Over there in the glare, Arabs and Turks were fighting. From Damascusto Erzeroum, and from Beyrout to Basra, there were raids, marches,counter-marches, and insurrections. But I was being sent far from thegreat quarrel, to vegetate amongst recruits and young horses.

Sir Mark Sykes, who was a passenger on board, had been explaining theWar to me. Turkey would be dismembered, he said. The Arabs were tohave a kingdom; the Russians, Constantinople. If we won at Suvla Bay,where we were about to land a big force, the War would be over verysoon.... Would it? I could not imagine peace in the East, now thatthe train was set. The life-breath of continents is longer than thatof men, perhaps none of us alive would see the end of this unrest. Butmy path would be far from the blazes and explosions....

I shut my eyes, for they were blinded with light, too much light.

But at Bombay, unbelievably, I learned that my destination was notAllahabad, after all, but Basra. I had been gazetted as an Observer ofthe Flying Corps and was posted to the recently formed MesopotamianFlight.

Asking no more questions, lest this marvellous news should becontradicted, I sewed the coveted wings of an airman on my breast, andtook ship for Basra, happy that I was still to be concerned with thetwo greatest adventures of mankind: war and flying.

On disembarking in the city of Sinbad (after having puked through thePersian Gulf monsoon so that the deeps within me were as stirred as thedeep without) I found a little bald-headed Brevet-Major of the FlyingCorps, who was expecting not me but some aeroplane engines.

Had I brought the new Gnomes, he asked? Could I fly a MartinsydeScout? How did they spot for artillery in France? Could I work aGoerz Graflex camera?

Well, I had had a Brownie for years, I answered cautiously. I coulddevelop and print my own photographs. As to the Gnomes (should I saythat they had been sea-sick?) I knew nothing about them.

'Why are you here?' asked Reilly, rather crossly.

'Because I've been sent.'

'Haven't you got your ticket? Damn it all, I asked for a Martinsydepilot and two mechanics and two Gnome engines—and all they send me isan Observer!'

'I'm sorry. D'you remember we were at Sandhurst together?'

'So we were. Have you ever flown in Caudrons?'

Now I had never even seen an aeroplane at close quarters, but Iremembered someone saying over a cocktail in a chateau near Bethune(where I had once spent an evening with the R.F.C.) that Caudrons weredisgusting buses, and that they threw oil all over the place. Irepeated this observation.

'Especially in this climate,' agreed my Flight Commander, patting hispolished head. 'I don't quite know what we'll do with you,' he added.'It's a disappointment. I suppose you can spot for the heavy batteriesin the Farman Shorthorn?'

'Yes,' I answered firmly.

'Good. Two of us went west last week—forced landing amongst hostileArabs—so we do want another Observer.'

This is the morning of my first flight. Dust devils are swirlingthrough the date-palms. The wind lifts sheets of sand off the Arabgraveyard bordering the aerodrome, and the temperature is well over100° Fahrenheit in the shade.

Start the 'prop'? Certainly.

'Look out! You'll get your head chopped off!'

Stupid! I was trying to swing the propeller while standing underneathit. Here's a mechanic to help. I'll watch the way he does it.

'Contact!' A heave and splutter of the engine. 'Contact!' TheMaurice Farman is popping on most of her valves, slowly, fast, faster,now with a roar that rattles my teeth as I climb into the Observer'sseat behind the pilot. What's this strap for? To tie round me? Well,we're off. Rumpety-bump. The ground slips away.

We've left it. We're sailing over the twisting Tigris. There's acloud of yellow dust behind us. The leaves of my note-book are tryingto tear themselves out in this wind.

Basra looks cool and beautiful amongst its green groves. A filthy holeit is on foot, but here the world is different. There are the marshesof Shaiba, where a battle has been fought: and up there, to the left ofthe river, near the old Garden of Eden, is the place where two of ushad their throats cut by Arabs, the other day.

Revs, props, glides, pancakes, pockets, landing Ts, Longhorns,Shorthorns, Gnomes, Le Rhones; all this talk is not impossible to learnby careful attention to its context. No one knows that I have neverflown, and that until yesterday I had not the foggiest idea about eventhe theory of artillery observation from the air. It is really quitesimple, however. I am to fire red, blue and white Very lights toindicate 'short,' 'over' and 'range.' The battery has strips of clothto indicate the direction of the target, and the orders of itscommander: thus L means 'observe for line,' X 'observe for range,' E'repeat last signal.'

Also I have made a list of everything required for the equipment of adark-room. I have tested the Goerz Graflex.

I have learned the strength of Turkish battalions, brigades, divisions.I have been instructed in how to allow for mirages, count camels,distinguish between Arab and regular cavalry, calculate distance fromgun-flash. Soldiering is far more interesting than I thought.

There's a cold wind blowing up my shorts. We have left the layer ofhot lead that weighs on Basra. It's glorious up here. Has man everknown such bliss? 'To fly in the air is nothing wonderful,' my gurusaid 'for even the dirtiest flies can do it.' He was wrong. The worldhas found a new Yoga and will need new bodies before it can fulfil thepossibilities of its last and greatest triumph.

Where's my Very pistol? It's hard to find anything in this gale. Thebattery has just fired. That salvo fell short. Here's the pistol. Ared cartridge. Simple. Now a white, for they have the range.

Ouch! That was a bump, I suppose. I'll tell the pilot to circle tothe right, towards the Persian frontier, to see if he really does whatI tell him.

'Take O to R,' I scribble in my note-book, and leaning forward, show ithim.

He nods, and banks round so giddily that my inside jumps like a shotblack-buck.

I am an Observer. Ten minutes ago I was an ignorant earthworm, but asMasefield says, 'Life's an affair of instants, spun to years.' I amlord now of another dimension; the air is my hope and my love.

Damn! The battery fired again, while I was writing to the pilot, andnow we've swung round so that I can't see the result. What is thesignal for 'not observed'? ... Best do nothing.

The battery has now laid out an F on the ground—not 'fool,' but 'freshtarget.' Their shots have gone over: a blue light. Now short: a redlight. Now short again: another red light. Now over: a blue light.I've ripped a finger-nail on this foul pistol. They have the range: awhite light.

My pilot is scribbling in his note-book.

'Lot of oil on our tail,' he passes back.

Is there? What happens if you put oil on a Longhorn's tail?

The pilot points downwards. I shrug my shoulders: he shrugs his: inthis heat our engines are as temperamental as prima donnas. Yes, wemay as well land before anything goes wrong. In fact, the quicker thebetter, for, being an Observer, I want to remain one until the nextbattle.

I shall like Reilly, and my work also. We live sensibly, without fussor ceremony, in shorts, shirt-sleeves and sand-shoes. I have a goodFlight Commander, and by all accounts a good General. 'Alphonso,' thetroops call Sir Charles Townshend. He sings 'The Spaniard who blightedmy Life' and is a judge of champagne and of the dancing of the Gaietychorus; also a master-strategist. The men love him, and the Turks fearhim, for he is lucky and victorious.

We are steaming up the Tigris now, in a red-hot iron tug with a drunkenskipper.

We stick on sand-banks, are sniped by Arabs, drink a great deal ofbeer, eat, sleep and talk more than usual. The desert smells good atnight: its stars are so marvellous that there is madness in them.

'Jumbo' Fulton and I (Jumbo is the nineteen-year-old pilot with whom Igenerally fly) share a stifling cabin. We discuss bomb sights, and howto cool the beer, and whether we shall take Baghdad, and what Sir MarkSykes said, straight from the horse's mouth.

Before we reach Baghdad, however, we must defeat twelve thousand Turkswho are entrenched in the marshes and canals guarding Kut.

Our tug anchors at Sunnayat, about fifteen miles from Kut, on the rightbank of the Tigris. The photographic barge arrives next day, and for afortnight I am flying, sketching, photographing, developing, printing,and pasting the result together into a pretty composite map—busierwith responsible work than I have ever been before in my thirty yearsof life. The temperature still touches three figures in the shade.Sometimes I spoil a plate with my brow's sweat: sometimes our work doesnot finish till midnight, but we are always up at dawn to fly. Here atSunnayat ten thousand of us are under canvas, with a couple ofgun-boats, and half a dozen river steamers, and a dozen barges. Kut istwenty miles up-stream. Five miles from it, nearer us, at Es-sinn, theTurkish army is astride the Tigris, which here runs roughly west toeast. Nur-ud-din's position is one of great strength. His right restson a high irrigation cut, heavily entrenched and wired. A ferryconnects this southern position with another system of trenches in theHorse-Shoe Marsh, north of the river. Then there are more trenches,another big marsh (the Suwada) and finally another mile of trenchesmore lightly fortified. Along this line, from south to north,Nur-ud-din is supposed to have five thousand regular and four thousandirregular troops, and eighteen guns. Another three thousand men are inreserve, nearer Kut, and on the Tigris he has six steamers, threelaunches, a dozen barges. The country is as flat as a pancake, exceptfor the irrigation cuts and the marshes.

The Turks dig like moles. A frontal attack would be fatal in this openground against such a difficult position.

Alphonso is full of confidence, however. He has telegraphed to Basrain his flippant way, to say that now that Nur-ud-din is within punchingdistance, he'll put him out for the count. We have pitched camp on theright bank of the river at Sunnayat, in order to make Nur-ud-din thinkthat we mean to attack on that side, and we shall make a demonstrationthere, on the day before the battle. Then we shall march our wholeforce (or nearly all of it) across the river by night, and fall uponthe Turkish left flank at the northernmost redoubt, which ismysteriously marked V.P. on my map.

V.P. That is the Vital Point, upon which Alphonso intends to deliverhis main attack. I mustn't look at it too long when I'm in the air, orthe Turks may guess our plans. One glance through my quiveringbinoculars is all that I may give it, then we bank over quickly and flysouth, down the length of the Turkish position, with shrapnel burstingharmlessly below us.

The main force of the Turks is concentrating on the right bank of theTigris. Here we circle round and round at our ease, counting camels,swooping down towards the square fort where we believe Nur-ud-din'sadvance headquarters to be, and occasionally dropping a few two-poundbombs to emphasise our presence and annoy the enemy.

We are safe, except for risk of engine failure, for there are no enemyaircraft. But two of us, in the only other Maurice Farman, haverecently crashed in front of the Turkish trenches, and are nowprisoners, leaving Jumbo and me and the Flight Commander as young godson whom Fate depends. To us three, and only to us, the past, presentand future of this country is spread out like a map each morning.

If only my eyesight were better, I should be happy. But sometimes theresponsibility of that morning glimpse of V.P. appals me. Are theyputting up more barbed wire? One line of it I have seen, compared withthree lines farther south, and some ugly-looking pits, with stakes inthem. Land mines also. And gun emplacements. I had hoped to showAlphonso a photograph of artillery positions this morning, but therewas no ice for my developer, and the tepid metolhydro-quinone curledthe film off my plate. That may cost the lives of soldiers.

The great day has come: dawn of the 28th of September, 1915.

Yesterday afternoon, Alphonso made a feint attack on the Turkish right.Now he has transferred his whole force to the north of the Tigris,except two weak battalions. Eight thousand men have been marchingthrough this stifling night to attack V.P. The remainder—a brigade ofinfantry—are to make a holding attack near Horse-Shoe Marsh at theTurkish centre.

If we succeed in this manoeuvre—one of the boldest in history, for wehave left only a thousand men to guard all our transport—we shallcapture all the Turkish army in these parts, and enter Baghdad within aweek.

We soar up over the black scrub of Nakhailat, and pass over the pale,pink face of the desert. Our men are still marching, marching downthere; the Turks waiting and wondering. This time we shall see V.P. asit really is. The Suwada marsh looms up; round it is a yellow mist.Now I can discern the blur of trenches where soon a multitude will die.

The stars vanish: a red sun rises: the guns speak. Here are myscribblings to Jumbo during a tense hour: they have survived the War,and I like to remember these snatches of talk.

'7.5. Hell of a bombardment in centre section. In front of Delamain.Our troops advancing.

'Down the front line to give them hell.

'7.25. Body of troops retiring 0.3.3.5 behind Turkish trenches. Not asoul in reserve line.

'Cavalry moving out from Kut. Where is ours?

'Down to Delamain. There's the landing T.

'8.10. Can't waste time. This looks as if we'd won.'

We have won. V.P. has been taken.

Shells fall round us where we land amongst some of our dead. As I runup to the headquarters of the attacking column, I see boys of theDorsets and Oxfords, and men from the Punjaub, from Central India, fromMadras, lying still, spread-eagled. The wounded are being carried backin stretchers. A batch of Turkish prisoners is being marched to therear, begging for water. There is no water that is not brackish inthese marshes.

Suppose we lost this battle? I don't know why the idea flashes into mymind in the moment of victory. But it does. Is this a dream? Whatare we all doing? I drop into a walk as I reach General Delamain, nearthe taken trenches.

He is white with sweat and salt. A night march is always anxious, andthree-quarters of his force is lost, for six battalions have marchedround the wrong side of Ataba Marsh, to the north of us. It washalf-past seven before he discovered this, but nothing daunted, heattacked with his remaining two battalions. It is a miracle that V.P.is in our hands. To gain it we have lost seven hundred killed andwounded, but the key of the Turkish position is in our hands.

Now we are sweeping round to attack the centre of this northernsection, where the Turks are more deeply entrenched. With luck weshall take them in rear, but the absence of six thousand men makes theissue uncertain.

Bits of arms and legs are lying at the lip of the trenches. Ourgunners had the range to a nicety. Yes, there was only one line ofwire. My eyes eat up the features of this ground that I have beenscanning for three weeks from the air. There were three gunemplacements instead of two—that was a mistake of mine. Most of ourlosses occurred when our men were enfiladed from the centre of theposition, but the air report was right enough in saying that V.P. wasweakly held in comparison to the other trenches. I must hurry back toAlphonso with this good-but-might-be-better news.

When I reach Jumbo again, I remember that I have a full water-bottle atmy belt, iced by flying, which I forgot to give to Delamain. Someonemust have it. There's an old Turkish sergeant groaning in his beardand holding his stomach. He sluices its contents down his throat,looks at me in grateful wonder, gasps, falls down. Water is said to befatal on a wounded stomach. Have I killed him by mistake?

Off we go. Alphonso is breakfasting in a kind of water-tower, fromwhich he hopes to survey the battle as soon as the sun rises higher.He will see nothing, I know, but mirages; still, he must do something,and this dallying with eggs and bacon serves its purpose. His SamBrowne belt is stuffed full of revolver cartridges: he is resplendent,calm, confident. Napoleon has committed his veterans: victory willlight on his eagles. The Staff seem grave (we have three hundred milesof desert behind us in case of retreat and only a handful of men toguard our communications) but not Alphonso. I tell him that V.P. istaken, that we have had heavy losses, that three-quarters of our forcehas gone astray.

'That's quite all right,' he answers. 'Fly back, and tell GeneralDelamain that I am very pleased with him.'

Not a word about the lost six battalions. I suppose be supposesthey'll turn up. Anyway, he is quite sure we'll win.

It is past ten o'clock when we return to Delamain, and deliverAlphonso's message. The lost battalions have been sighted, havingplodded round the Ataba Marsh in time to join in the battle for thecentre trenches.

It is lucky we have them. Delamain has not yet been able to dislodgethe strong-kneed Turks, and our men are exhausted with marching andfighting and thirst. Some of them—Punjaubis—creep under our wingswhile we are reporting to Delamain. They should be fighting. Havinghad plenty of water and sleep myself, I have also some courage, but Iam afraid of their fear, and am delighted when we are ordered to go upagain into the fresh air.

Things are not going too well, as seen from above. Enemyreinforcements are hurrying across the river in support of theircomrades, and the Mejidieh (a Turkish transport) is steaming downfrom Kut, laden with troops. All round the marshes mounted Arabs aremassing. It is curious being up here, cool and safe, watching theships and horses and men that crawl below us among puffs of smoke. Iam the first man, and I daresay the last, to see the whole of anold-fashioned encounter battle from the air.

There is no sign of our cavalry, who are supposed to be striking terrorinto the Turkish rear. In front of Horse-Shoe Marsh a battle is inprogress. We cannot break that line with two weak battalions. Willthe Turks counter-attack?

It is eleven o'clock when we return to Delamain. He has been able tocapture but very little more of the enemy line, and looks ten yearsolder than when I saw him at dawn.

Where is our damned cavalry? Nobody knows. I can't find out. TheTurks are massing steadily.

The decisive moment that occurs in every engagement has arrived.'We'll take those trenches before noon,' says Delamain: 'The Oxfordsare going to attack. I'll be with them. You two go up at once andreport what's happening: it's now or never.'

I salute, and run back to Jumbo who is standing by the aeroplane. Aswe take off, I see Delamain on a gun limber with field-glasses to hiseyes, a tall, gaunt man, with jaw set: inspiration incarnate.

'At 'em,' I scribble. 'We'll chance the height.'

A forest of rifles is pointing at us from the centre trenches, but theTurks will have no time to think of aeroplanes when the Oxfords getamongst them with cold steel.

Our troops have deployed and are advancing steadily, wave after wave ofgallant men marching through the Turkish fire as if they were on aKing's parade. Wonderful. The first wave has reached the trenches.Never shall I see such things again. A volley has burst through ourfuselage.

Jumbo is hit in the neck! Yet he's flying as if nothing had happened,with a red trickle at his nape. I must tie him up. Where's that firstfield dressing? Fool that I am, I've let it stream back into thepropeller. But we have dived out of rifle range. I lean forward andshout in his ear.

'What?'

'Your neck!'

He is too young to die.

Jumbo puts his hand up and is amazed at the sight of blood. He circlesround once more. The opposing forces look like ants, tapping eachother with their feelers. Some of the ants lie still. Hurrah, theTurks are leaving their trenches and the Oxfords are bayoneting them asthey run!

'Down!' I signal.

We must give the news of victory to Delamain. Jumbo makes perfectlanding.

'Go to the ambulance while I report.'

'Bosh!' says Jumbo, or words to that effect.

There is no time to argue.

When I return, he is munching a stick of emergency chocolate. He hastied up his neck with his handkerchief and refuses to report himself aswounded, lest the doctor should forbid him to fly. It is only ascratch, he says.

The Oxfords have won the main trenches. We are still far from water,and have had more losses, but we have captured eight guns, and manyprisoners. Delamain is so tired that he can hardly talk.

When we return to headquarters, Alphonso has come down from hiswatch-tower and is preparing for pursuit.

'The enemy will retreat,' he says, 'and I don't want them to escape inthe night.'

Is he as sure as he looks? Yes, in spite of the fact that we have lostas many men as the Turks, that our forces are about equal, and that wehave been marching all night and half the day under a blazing sun,while they have been sitting still, we shall win, for there is astrength upon Delamain and Alphonso.

Delamain is advancing towards the river now, and he may cut off theTurks by getting between them and Kut. On the other hand, he may notreach the river at all, for five thousand men and four Krupp guns ofNur-ud-din's force from the right bank are now crossing the Tigris bythe boat bridge, and are about to attack his flank. From the air I seethis clearly, but I can't tell Delamain, for there is no landing-groundwhere he is. We must try to drop a message.

I write it and drop it with a streamer attached. Then we follow up theTigris to Kut, looking for our cavalry, and for signs of a generalretreat on the part of the Turks. We keep at 4,000 feet—for Jumbo'sneck is precious to the 6th Division—and scatter some of our bombsround the Mejidieh, trying to drop them down her funnel.

After an hour's flying, we circle back and land by Delamain at theTigris. It is now a little after five o'clock, and he has won anotherbattle. He saw the Turkish reserves in time, turned on them like atiger, drove them back. But the men are too exhausted to pursue,having only just strength enough to drag themselves to the river, anddrink, and be sick, and drink again.

Our own and the enemy wounded are being evacuated in barges. They aremad with wounds and thirst: the few doctors are almost helpless: it isa really frightful scene: poor devils creep to the dressing-stations ontheir hands and knees, over decks slippery with blood and diarrhoea.

We can't reach Kut to-night.

Once again we go up in the twilight. Jumbo tosses the old MauriceFarman about like a tumbler pigeon, partly because we've won, andpartly because we must forget what we've seen. Groups of the enemynear Kut have clustered themselves together against the Arab bands thatskirmish closer and closer in the gathering darkness, hungry for loot.At A.5.15; A.5.1.6.7.8., there are groups of deserters on the Baghdadroad. I am busy with map and note-book.

At nine o'clock, in the dark, we land at Nakhailat. Alphonso hasalready embarked. His Staff have the figures of the Turkish losses: 17guns, 1,289 prisoners, 1,700 killed and wounded. Our casualties are1,220 killed and wounded. That's a fine victory.

For seventeen hours, Jumbo and I have been at full stretch, and for tenof them Jumbo has been in pain. Into them have gone anxiety, hope,fear, horror and joy, pressed down and brimming over. He and I andReilly say little over our tinned mutton and coffee; and my eyes beginto close before the food is finished.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS

The pursuit from Es-sinn failed because our barges stuck on thesandbanks of the always-treacherous Tigris. At Ctesiphon the Turksrallied. Our main body halted at Azizieh, a dusty little camp someeighty miles from Baghdad and thirty from the Turks.

For a couple of months, during the lull in the fighting, I continued myroutine between the desert and the dark-room. But by the beginning ofNovember, 1915, it was apparent that a change in our mode of life wasimpending. Clear-the-line messages had been throbbing over the wires.Unit Commanders had met Alphonso in high conclave. To advance, or notto advance? Something had to be done quickly, for reinforcements werearriving for the Turks as a consequence of our fiasco in theDardenelles. We had to go back or forward. So Alphonso made the bestof what he privately considered to be a wrong decision, and recalledevery available detachment from his lines of communication to preparefor the attack. Before the battle, he had convinced us all that theMesopotamian capital was within our grasp.

Meanwhile, an Australian pilot and I were chosen to cut the telegraphlines that run east and north of Baghdad, in order to isolate the cityfrom the troops hastening southwards under Marshal von der Goltz. Theround trip would be two hundred miles, at least, and as our machinecould only keep the air for three hours without refuelling it wasnecessary to take spare petrol and oil, and fill up before returning.

After dinner on the eve of this adventure, I spent an hour with theengineers, testing detonators, and primers, and slabs of gun-cotton. Iturned-in early and slept well, confident of success. We would have toland twice in hostile territory and make two demolitions; but I neverdoubted that all would go well.

Already I looked forward to a holiday after the capture of Baghdad. Ihad been promised a transfer to the training-school at Cranwell as soonas I could be spared; and I told myself now that I would return with anew ribbon under my wings, and a Persian carpet in my luggage.

Before dawn on November 13th 'Australia' White and I stowed away eightextra gallons of petrol and four of oil in the old Maurice Farman.

Up we went into the still air, away from our sleeping camp. Thebivouac fires of the nearest Turkish outpost at El Kutunie mountedstraight to heaven. It was a clear morning.

A few of the enemy were bustling about, and rubbing their eyes, andcursing us, for we had disturbed them earlier than usual. Away to thesouth, one of our steamers was threading her way up the shoals of theTigris, carrying reinforcements and the English mail. I told myselfthat I would find good reading on my return, and have good news towrite.

Down there the world was still in a velvety purple twilight, but ourfuselage was spangled with light from over the Persian hills. Aheadthere was Zeur, the chief Turkish outpost, with itstwenty-times-snapshotted trenches. Now the sun had begun to slantacross the scarred face of the desert, showing up men and horses andmounds and irrigation cuts in strong relief.

The enemy had been active since last I had viewed his dispositions,forty-eight hours ago. In the maze of trenches by Seleucia there weremore zigzags than ever. Grass huts were building by the Arch. Sixbarges were being towed down from Qusaibah to the main position, gravidwith troops. A thousand camels carried provisions towards the new'V.P.' A convoy drawn by white horses looked German in its glintingprecision. There would be much to tell Alphonso, when we returned. Ilonged to study these preparations better, but that would have to waituntil to-morrow—perhaps.

Perhaps? No, certainly to-morrow. Wire-clippers hung at my belt, andpencils of fulminate of mercury reposed in my coat-pocket, out ofharm's way but readily accessible. The brown road leading from Baghdadto Feluja stood up out of the surrounding pinkness. That was ourobjective, for the telegraph lines ran parallel to it, but near BaghdadI saw that there was a constant traffic of horsemen and camels. Wewould have to fly west, into the desert.

We turned away from Baghdad, looking immense and magical under itsdate-palms, and headed towards the Euphrates glimmering on the horizon.The two rivers, the five lakes, the city and the mountains, and far tothe north the gold domes of Kazimain, were sights to fill the eyes, hadit not been for the nearer view of five or six thousand camels, swayingand slouching towards the markets of the capital. Those brutes were ablot on the landscape.

I felt as if I were at the start of a race, watching for the gate torise.

We circled down towards the most solitary part of the line visible tous, at a place called Nimrod's Tomb. In two minutes we would know ourfate.

The next two years, however, I would like to pass over without comment,for they are a time apart in my life. But as I cannot leave the readerin mid-air, I shall repeat what I have already written in order tobring this exploit to its end.

'We made a perfect landing and ran straight and evenly towards thetelegraph posts. I stooped down to take a necklace of gun-cotton fromthe floor of the bus, and as I did so, I felt a slight bump and aslight splintering of wood.

'We had stopped.

'I jumped out of the machine, still sure that all was well. Andthen——

'Then I saw that our left wing-tip had crashed into a telegraph post.Even so, the full extent of our disaster dawned slowly on me. I couldnot believe that we had broken something vital. Yet the pilot was sure.

'The leading edge of the 'plane was broken. Our flying days werefinished. It had been my pilot's misfortune far more than his faultthat we had crashed. The unexpected smoothness of the landing-groundand a rear wind that no one could have foreseen had brought aboutdisaster. Nothing could be done. Nothing remained—except to do ourjob.

'I ran across to another telegraph post, leaving the pilot to ascertainwhether by some miracle we might not manage to taxi back to safety inour running partridge of a machine.

'By the time I had fixed the explosive necklace round the post, a fewstray Arabs, who had been watching our descent, began firing at us fromhorseback. I set the fuse and lit it, then strolled back to the bus,where the pilot confirmed my worst fears.

'Presently there was a loud bang. The charge had done its work and thepost was cut neatly in two.

'Horsemen were now appearing from the four quarters of the desert. Onhearing the explosion, the mounted men instantly wheeled about andgalloped off in the opposite direction, while those on foot took cover,lying flat. To encourage the belief in our aggressive force, the pilotstood on the seat of the bus and treated them to several bursts ofrapid fire.

'Meanwhile, I took another necklace of gun-cotton and returned to mydemolition. This second charge I affixed to the wires and insulatorsof the fallen post, so as to render repair more difficult. While I wasthus engaged, I noticed that spurts of sand were kicking up all aboutme. The fire had increased in accuracy and intensity. So accurate,indeed, had it become, that I guessed that the Arabs (who never can hita haystack) had been reinforced by regular troops.

'I lit the second fuse, then covered the hundred yards back to themachine in my best time, to reach cover and companionship. A heavyfusillade was now being directed on to the machine, at ranges varyingfrom fifty to five hundred yards.

'Bang!

'The second charge had exploded. The telegraph wires whipped back andfestooned themselves round our machine. The insulators were dust.

'Doubtless the damage would take some days to repair: so far so good.'

The rest was bad. Our captors were Shammar Arabs, who debated amongthemselves whether to cut off our heads, or whether to bring us livingto the Turkish Commander at Suleiman Pak and claim a modest reward forour capture. Fortunately for us, a detachment of Turkish mountedpolice arrived while this discussion was in progress, and decided ourfate by taking us from the Arabs. We were borne in triumph intoBaghdad, where the populace spat in our faces.

Then, while the British attack at Ctesiphon was at its height, we weresent north to Mosul, and imprisoned in the fortress there. So wepassed out of the world of living men, into prison life.

The truth about the next twenty-four months it would not be in my powerto write, even if I wished to do so. And I do not wish. Prisoners seewar without its glamour. The courage and comradeship of battle is farfrom them. They meet cruel men, and their own fibre coarsens. Achronicle of these wasted and miserable hours, of dirt and drunkenness,of savagery and stupidity, would not only be dull, but remote from mysubject.

I shall record only two incidents therefore: to write more would beuseless, to write less would be to forget that out of fourteen thousandprisoners of war in Turkey only some three thousand returned to England.

I saw a party of twenty English soldiers, who had been marched fromKirkuk across the mountains, arriving moribund on the barrack square atMosul. They were literally skeletons alive, and they brought with themthree skeletons dead. One of the living men kept making piteous signsto his mouth with a stump of an arm in which maggots crawled.Presently he died in a fit.

Then there was the saddest tea-party at which I have ever assisted. Wehad bribed a sentry to allow us to give two of these men a meal ofbread and buffalo-cream which we had prepared out of our slenderresources. Our guests told us that they were kept in a cellar, withhardly enough room to lie down. Only drinking water and bread weresupplied to them. They could not wash. Three times a day they wereallowed to go to the latrines, and sometimes not then, for if aprisoner possessed anything that the sentry wanted, he was not allowedto go until he had parted with it.

One of the men now fainted. The other explained that, starving as theywere, our fare was too rich. 'Australia' White, who was alwaysforemost in kind offices, carried the sick man on his back to thecellar, past the bribed sentry, and attended to him as long as hedared. But it was to no avail. When he returned, his clothes wereswarming with vermin, for lice leave the dying.

When our pay was given us, and an opportunity occurred to bribe theguards, it was a heart-breaking business to decide which of thesufferers we should attempt to save. Some were too far gone to help,others might manage to live without our smuggled food. But it waslittle enough we could do before we were transferred to Aleppo, andthence to Afion-Kara-hissar, 'the black opium city' in the centre ofAnatolia.

The soldier survivors followed. Many were clubbed to death by thesentries and stripped naked. Others, more fortunate, were found deadby their companions after the night's halt, when they turned out toface another day of misery.

A criminal's sentence is fixed, but not that of a prisoner of war.Settled in Afion-Kara-hissar, the future seemed an endless avenue,leading nowhere. Spring came, and the days succeeded each other in apageant in which we had no part, cooped up as we were. I know now whydrunkards drink, and how caged canaries feel, and all about bugs. Licewe are all familiar with, who served in the War. Fleas are livelylittle beasts. Scorpions, hornets, wasps, mosquitoes, leeches havenone of them the Satanic quality of bugs.

One squashes a bug and there is a smear of blood—one's own blood. Onelights a candle, and there, scuttling under the pillow, are five or sixmore of the flat fiends. Having killed every living thing in sight,one lies back, hoping to sleep. But they smell horribly when dead, andkeep alive the memory of their itching at neck and wrist. Presentlyout of the corner of one's eye one sees monsters darting about avidly,magnified and distorted by proximity. There is no end to them. Youkill them on the bed and they jump on you from the walls. Youslaughter them by fives and tens, but still they come from the crannieswhere they have lain for months—years maybe—waiting for the scent oflive bodies. They batten on the young: of two victims they will choosethe healthiest. They not only suck your blood, but sap your faith inGod.

Under these circumstances, I took to Yoga. It was little enough thatthe guru had told me, yet that little, with some books I had read,and the immense leisure of these days, enabled me to practise certainwrithings and breathings which I should not have attempted during anactive life. Time is the essence of Yoga. The exercises must berepeated until they become a habit. At first I was inclined to besceptical of results, then surprising things began to happen.

The 'head-stand' was a mild gymnastic which I had learned at Sandhurst.Performed according to Yogic directions, however, it did seem to washmy brain. I felt a little giddiness, a slight ache in the jawssometimes, but also distinct pleasure in a position which my ancestralrelatives must often have adopted. Sixteen hours a day of uprightnessis unnatural for the human inside: it is good for it to hangoccasionally the other way up.

Then I tried a breathing exercise. My early sensations were ofdizziness, but soon there came a kind of clearing in throat and eyesand ears and brain. My heart at first accelerated and then retardedits beat. After three spells of twenty-one breaths each, I triedanother group of breathings, quicker this time, until I became drunkenwith oxygen and rolled about and laughed.

But I might as well try to describe a trip to the moon as tell of suchconfrontations of the body with its Self.

Poised and relaxed and completely in my body (not out of it, as themystologues would have it) I saw myself at times impersonally. Thefuture lay at my feet. I surveyed it as an interested traveller,knowing that in some parts of it I could never live, with my volatilebrain; and that in others I was destined to be useful. I seemed tostop breathing then, as one gasps at some beauty suddenly revealed, butthis arrest of the heart (if it was that) was smooth and delicious, asliding into peace.

And I began to realise, with awe, a millionth part of the temptation inthe wilderness. When Christ saw the kingdoms of the world before Him,He may have known, in an unimaginably vivider degree, such a clearingof the mists of the desire-mind as I had experienced. His temptationmay have been a choice of paths.

In my enthusiasm, I practised the bhastrika strenuously. Again andagain I tried it, sending my pulse up to 110, 130, 140 and more. Mightnot the telescope of the lungs reveal the star of Christ? One night myfinger-tips became blue, and I could not sleep. When I experimentedwith the head-stand next day, in order to whip-up my circulation, Ifainted.

So I tried the writhing mudra. This gentle grinding of the inside sostirs the thermostatic arrangements that the student of Yoga begins toperspire freely, and with that opening of the pores comes a sense ofdetachment from the physical envelope, which may be (and often is)considered to be a self-revelation of Dualism. This thing that wastwisting itself about itself was a clearly subordinate Me, for I couldorder it to go faster, or to go slower, or to stop, or to go round theother way. My body was not Myself; and the feeling-realisation of thisobjective truth marked a point on the Way at which many searchers, asit seems to me, are content to rest prematurely.

At the end of two minutes I was a bored Dualist. But finally, a changeoccurred. As I persevered, a directing intelligence took charge ofconsciousness, and twisted me round without any apparent effort on mypart; and this intelligence was indeed the Self, and indeed allkingdoms, principalities and powers. Glancing at my wrist-watch I wassurprised to see that half an hour had passed.

I was in another current of Being, and a Dualist no longer. Time,instead of standing still, raced by my body. Space, instead ofdividing objects, linked them. The distinction between creature andCreator melted away. The difficult idea of an individual soulcommuning with cosmos disappeared in the confident serenity of Unity.There was a merging and an Emergence; the self that writhed was but areflexion of the true Self: its blood flowed in every vein, my soul wasthe world's: it was the face of the true sun of creation. A hymnechoed through my head, in time with my turning:

For ever with the Lord.
Amen; so let it be;
Life from the dead is in that word.

The lines took on an intenser meaning. Life from the dead: here inthis body pent: home of my soul, how near at times Thy golden gatesappear!...

Already, at Agra, I had had a glimpse of the ineffable. Great truthsare simple. This one has been described in many ways, but best by Himwho said: 'Neither shall they say 'Lo here!' or, 'Lo there!'...

Summer rode across the open lands of Anatolia. Women came out to bleedthe poppy-beds that stretched red and white to the mountain of thehorizon. Some were pretty, and some used to take the soldiers whoformed our guard into the crops. We remained in prison.

In the autumn, Afion-Kara-hissar was visited by a flight of storks whoswooped and circled over us in their thousands, finally alighting nearthe black rock, where they formed black silhouettes against the sunset,with one leg tucked up, and backward-turning beaks. I used to dream ofthose storks, and of their enchanted journeys, and of Polly, an opiumgirl.

But chiefly I dreamed of freedom, and planned to regain it. That,indeed, was the bulwark of my sanity.

It would have been comparatively easy to have eluded our sentries, butAfion-Kara-hissar was separated from the coast by a belt of countrywhere brigands and deserters roamed. Moreover, once the sea wasreached, there were only a few places from which Greek islands could bereached, and those were closely guarded.

I discussed the matter with various friends—Robin Paul inparticular—and we decided that our best and probably our only chanceof escape was an indirect route. First we must reach Constantinople.The capital became in our minds a stepping-stone to freedom: we shammedsick: we tried to bribe a Greek doctor: we even inflicted wounds onvarious parts of our bodies. Robin had a bad ear, and I had displaceda bone in my nose by boxing, but it was not until I took to smokingopium with the Cypriote interpreter attached to the TurkishCommandant's office that my departure became possible. I will not saythat I bribed him, but his intimacy helped me to bribe others.

Those nights I lay on a sofa with him, couché à gauche, as opiumsmokers say, weaving a tissue of deceit into the grey-white cloudsencircling us, will always remain among the strangest memories of mylife. The couches, the medley of cushions, the pipes, the profile ofmy host as he leaned over the green glimmer of the lamp which burnedfor the god to whom his heart was given, and the growth of that god inhim, as pipe followed pipe; and the beatitude in his eyes when theyfound the dream-world where the princes of the poppies reign, seem nomore part of me now than a play, yet I did and felt and saw manyunaccustomed things during that month of make-believe. And instead ofreading philosophy or playing chess, I was engaged in a game whosestake was liberty.

Having reached Haider Pasha Hospital with the use of much gold as wellas some guile, my purse was now empty. I needed two hundred Turkishpounds to be smuggled to Odessa, and I had only two lira.

However, there were other ways to freedom besides the sea-route, andwhen Robin and I were transferred to the Armenian Patriarchate atPsamattia (a suburb of Constantinople) an opportunity came to reach afriendly Christian house in the city.

The plan we made was simple. The window of the room in which we wereimprisoned was set in an apparently sheer wall-face. Escape from itlooked impossible, but as a matter of fact there were two small ledgesof moulding under the window-sill, which would give us a foot-hold anda hand-hold, enabling us to gain the shelter of a near-by roof. Fromthere we would work our way along other roofs to a place where we coulddrop down, out of the sight of sentries.

It was a good plan, because unexpected. To climb out of a window inview of six sentries seemed absurd, but we knew that sentries, likeother people, rarely look up above their own height and rarely look forthings that they do not expect.

So on the night appointed (and I must leave the reader to guess whatagonies of preparation preceded it—the subterfuges by which we hadprocured maps of the city—the thrill of making ropes—the suspense ofwaiting—the schooling of accomplices—the intrigue with the Greekwaiter who was to shelter us) we took off our boots, coiled fivefathoms of linen-strip round our waists, stuffed our pockets andknapsacks with chocolates, a Baedeker, a compass, a pistol; drank eachother's healths in raki, and blew out our lamp as if going to bed.That was the signal to an accomplice, who had promised to engage thesentries opposite our house in conversation.

Grouched under the window-sill, we waited. The four sentries directlybelow us lolled on a bench, smoking and talking. Two more sentrieswere stationed fifty yards up the street. We heard the cheery voice ofour comrade, offering cigarettes to our nearest guardians. That wasour cue.

Robin went first and I followed an instant later.

The waiting had been anxious, but the moment my feet were on thatblessed string course (how I blessed the architect who had designedit!) anxiety vanished and only the thrill of adventure remained. As weclambered along, like flies against the sheer wall, a passer-by in thestreet blew cigarette puffs almost into our nostrils. But no onelooked up.

We gained the shelter of the parapet, surprised that our plan hadsucceeded, and devoutly thankful. Very cautiously, now that the worstwas over, we wriggled on towards freedom. The parapet was lower thanwe thought, and the wriggling slow; in order to take advantage of ourcover we had to lie flat on our stomachs. After more than an hour ofthis progression, we had reached the place where we had thought to slipour rope, but found that just across the street an officer of the FireBrigade sat at an open window, overlooking us. By the manner in whichhe peered about him it was evident that he was expecting someone tokeep an appointment. He stared so intently that at one moment wethought he had seen us, as was very possible, for his window was on alevel with our roof and only a few yards away.

Meanwhile the moon was creeping up the sky, and about to flood us withsuch a radiance that even a love-sick officer of the Stamboul FireBrigade could not fail to notice us. For a whole further precious hourthis annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed him in whispers, andcursed feminine unpunctuality. At last just as we had decided to letgo the rope and take our chance (for our protecting belt of shadow hadnarrowed to inches) Romeo began to yawn, and stretch, and look towardshis bed. He hesitated, yawned again, then gave up his hopes of Julietand retired.

That was our moment.

We made the rope fast to a convenient ring in the parapet and stood up.Traffic had ceased in the street. The moon was at our backs and shonedirectly in the sentries' eyes. If they had seen us and fired weshould at any rate have been uncertain targets.

I took a long breath and slid down, kicking the signboard of a shop inmy descent so that it clattered hideously. Robin, who followed, cuthis hands to the sinews in his hurry.

In spite of the noise, no one stirred. A dog's yapping stabbed thesilence.

Here we were, free, in an empty street. All the world was before us.

A moment before, the limelight of all the universe had seemed to shineon us; and the noise we had made still echoed in my ears. Yet we hadaroused not the smallest excitement in any breasts but our own.

Can you imagine the miracle, liberty-loving reader, that happens to aman who finds himself free after two-and-a-half years in Turkishprisons?

We were the proudest and happiest men in the world on that July nightof Ramadan. The slothful years had vanished as we drew a breath. Welit cigarettes. We strolled away pretending we were Germans, andsinging:

Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein
Fest steht und treu die Wacht am Rhein.

Only once did we think we might be recaptured. As we were passing theFatih Mosque, we heard a clatter on the cobbles behind us. A carriagewas being galloped in our direction. We doubled into some ruins, andlay there. I trembled so much that I might have had a bout of fever.After all our success, the Psamattia garrison might still hunt us down.

The moon had reached her zenith: I looked up, and longed to be amongstthe wispy clouds that crossed her light. A cat saw us, halted, watchedus with glazing eyes. Then the carriage passed, empty of passengers,with a drunken driver. It rattled away into the night.

We emerged, and took our way through the streets of old Stamboul, underthe chequered shade of vines, safe and free and triumphant.

CHAPTER XIV

CHRISTMAS, 1918

I cannot convey the thrill of that escape, for it will seem, as indeedit was, a fairly tame affair. Hundreds of prisoners have crept throughthe barbed wire of German camps, eluded bloodhounds, travelled longdistances in disguise. But to me my first escape was from more thanthe Turks: I have freed myself also from an 'inferiority complex.'

We knocked softly at the door of the house in Sirkedj where we hadarranged to hide; then flattened ourselves in the shadow, ready foranything—welcome, betrayal, blackmail.

Nothing happened. We were about to knock again, when the door openedan inch, and I saw an eye, low down, level with my waist.

'May we come in?'

'Are you the escaped prisoners?' asked a child's voice, addingsuspiciously, 'we expected you two hours ago.' (It was then fouro'clock in the morning.)

'Better late than never,' Robin said.

The door opened quickly, and we found a whole family of friendlypeople. Thémistoclé, the Greek waiter, and his mother, and aunt, andold grandfather, and the little twins who had greeted us.

We crept upstairs, careful not to awake the other inmates of the house,who were also fugitives from justice, according to Thémistoclé. Whenwe paid him the fifty Turkish pounds we had promised him as the priceof a week's shelter, his horn-rimmed glasses became dim with emotion.

'Everyone is starving here,' he said thoughtfully. 'Even the policemengo hungry for bribes. Yesterday one said to me, 'For the love of Allahfind somebody for me to arrest.'

'What did you answer?' I asked.

'I said I would do my best. But of course I didn't mean it. Only onemust be careful with the police.'

'Yes, you must be very careful. And where are we to sleep?'

We had been shown into an untidy room, with an icon shrine, and arumpled bed.

'Here,' said Thémistoclé—'my sister and I and the twins will turn out.'

'Were you all——?'

'Oh, yes, rents are high, and we are poor people.'

So we threw ourselves down, too exhausted to undress, and slept thesleep of free men.

Next moment, as it seemed to me, although in reality three hours hadelapsed, we were awakened by the twins, who looked on us as theirespecial charges and taken down to the pantry for breakfast.

All that morning we stayed there, dozing by snatches but always readyto bolt into the cistern if the police came. 'The last escapedprisoner we had lived there by day,' the twins told us. 'He was aforger and has left his tools in the water.'

By afternoon, we felt we were safe, and after sending the twinsupstairs to see that the other lodgers were not about, we went up toour bedroom again, and discussed the situation.

There were various routes out of Constantinople. Robin Paul decided totry his luck by land, and after many intrigues, decided to board aGreek melon-boat bound for Rodosto. When he left me, he was disguisedas an Arab beggar, and looked so villainous with his darkened face andhang-dog slouch that I feared he would be arrested at sight. But atouch of genius saved him: he carried a bowl of curds and half acucumber, which gave him the aspect of a poor but honest man lookingfor a seat on which to eat his mid-day lunch.

My own plan was more comfortable, although no more successful thanRobin's, as events proved. I was to leave Constantinople as theservant of a Russian Prince who was being repatriated to Tiflis, andmake my way from there to Baghdad. Unfortunately the prince failed me,and Robin was caught at Malgara. He deserved better luck.

As for me, a good angel to escaping prisoners of war in the person ofMiss Whittaker (now Lady Paul) took me under her wing and dressed me asa German governess in order that I might meet my Russian Prince withoutattracting the suspicion of the detectives who shadowed him. This planwas entirely successful as far as meeting him went, but Constantinople,where twenty thousand people were in hiding, and all were ready to selltheir souls to escape, was an easier place to live in than to get outof. One night, Eveline Whittaker sent word to say that my Prince hadbeen hustled off without having had time to say good-bye (or to returnthe money that I had lent him) and I had in consequence to make all myplans afresh.

There was now no object in dressing as a woman, and so I became aHungarian mechanic, in a shabby bowler hat, and spectacles, and a dyedmoustache. I began then to realise how easy it is to live unknown in alarge city; and I had many opportunities of studying the 'underworld,'and of learning history as it is never written but most strangely livedby a people on the brink of disaster.

Things were on a hair-edge in Constantinople; a burst tyre made usthink the revolution had come at last; we gossiped hopefully about theimminent downfall of Enver Pasha; and I attended a meeting ofconspirators in the cellar of an hotel where we discussed how we mighthasten the death-throes of the Committee of Union and Progress.

'We'll crucify the Turks,' said a Greek—'and eat them in little bits.'Then a bell rang, and the speaker, who was a waiter, hurried away toattend to his masters.

Rusty-looking muskets were unpacked. A silk flag was produced,stitched by Christian maidens, which was to fly from the summit of AyaSofia when the Crescent was at last abased. Enthusiasm is contagious,and as the evening wore on I began to feel that I was helping to makehistory. Still more jubilant did I feel when my friends cashed chequesfor me (written on half-sheets of notepaper) to the value of fivehundred liras. My private promise to pay was worth more to them,apparently, than Turkish banknotes.

With plenty of money, I first bought myself a forged passport fromThémistoclé's friend (an imposing document, stamped, sealed, signed anddelivered by the Governor of Constantinople; which certified, amongstother things that I was exempt from service in the Army owing tovalvular disease of the heart) and then arranged with a certain Lazzthat he should provide me with a motor boat to take me to Poti orOdessa.

This Lazz proved my undoing. We met at Thémistoclé's house and I wasabout to pay him one hundred pounds when the alarm was given and wefound that detectives and police had broken in. I tried to bolt forthe cistern, but the way was blocked. Presently Thémistoclé appearedwith two policemen: his spectacles were broken; he had a black eye anda bloody nose; his collar had burst; someone had rolled him in thedust. He trembled terribly as he protested that he had never seen mebefore, and no one believed him.

And so my five weeks' scheming ended in a sad little procession of twoterrified children, a weeping woman, a miserable Greek, and someseedy-smart individuals wending their way to the Central Jail.

How I was condemned first to an underground dungeon with criminals (theforged passport had been found in my pocket) and afterwards to solitaryconfinement; how I stole a knife and fork from the prison restaurantand fused switches with them; how I made friends with a nephew of theSultan, a prisoner like myself, who had been sentenced to a month'sdetention for blowing out the brains of his tutor; how this youth had asmall black eunuch who used to bring me grapes and French novels; howRobin and I escaped again; and how, a fortnight before the Armisticewas declared we stole General Liman von Sanders own motor car (aMercedes, which we hid in the back yard of the house we were occupying,and guarded with a performing bear) all sounds so improbable that Ishall not write it down in detail.

I lay in bed in a house in the Cotswolds on the first Christmas Eve ofpeace, watching shadows from the fire passing over my brass hot-waterjug. Outside, the waits were singing.

A few months ago, I was shivering on a couple of planks in a cellarlittered with tomato skins and crusts of bread, with sleek rats andmangy men for my companions.

One of the prisoners had been shackled to the wall by chains rivettedto his wrists and ankles.

'One gets used to anything in time,' he had told me, 'except thebastinado. I have been here two years, accused of spying (they willnever know the truth) and I am getting weak. But God is great. Unlessthey beat me again, I shall live for my vengeance.'

They did beat him, however, and I saw it, when I was transferred tosolitary confinement in an upper cell, whose window looked out on theplace of punishment.

His ankles were strapped together to a pole, and the pole was raised onthe shoulders of two men, so that he hung head downwards. A jailer hitthe soles of his feet with a stick as thick as my wrist. He fainted,but the beating continued, for the sentence was fifty strokes. Had hesurvived, he would probably never have stood upright again, for thebones of his feet must have been crushed to pulp. They untied him andlaid him flat on his back, and offered him water, but he made no sign,for he had died—of shock, I suppose, like my thorough-bred, The Devil.

There was one spy the less in Turkey.

How impossible that seemed to me now! Yet there were probably stillmen chained somewhere in that dungeon, and others being bastinadoed. Iwould search for no bugs to-night, and rise for no roll-call to-morrow.I had seen enough for a lifetime of wrath and bitterness and vermin.My pillow smelt of lavender.

Black Saddle The Freebooters Download Torrent Pc

CHAPTER XV

THE END OF SPORT AND SOLDIERING

For months I remained in London, ill. When at last I was allowed toreturn to my regiment, it was to take part in another war.

My hope had been that I should have some leisure to travel throughIndia and learn more of her people and philosophies. Instead, I wasjerked like a hooked fish from the waters of Yoga to the arid uplandsof the North-West Frontier. My only consolation was that I was a Majornow, commanding my own squadron.

In Waziristan I found that we had twice as many men under arms asWellington had at Waterloo. We were paying £30,000 a year insubsidising the tribes to keep the peace (Nairn Shah's section of theAfridis received £1,200 a year) and yet there was no peace. In fact,during the four years after the Great War, 578 civilians were killed,669 were wounded, and 981 were kidnapped in 1,315 raids, and propertyto the value of £175,980 was looted between Quetta and Peshawar.

In Paris, statesmen talked of self-determination. Here men fought forit, and enjoyed the fighting very much, for instead of being compelledto descend into British India for their booty it was now brought totheir doors.

At Wana, the fort to which I was taking my squadron, the Mahsuds hadrecently looted four hundred rifles and about a million cartridges.Although the fort was now in our hands, they were still playing thedevil in the surrounding country, sometimes carrying off fifty or sixtycamels, sometimes sniping our camps, sometimes raiding isolated postsand looting £10,000 worth of ammunition. Our troops toiled throughtreacherous passes to make the world safe for democracy, while theMahsuds praised Allah for our madness.

If the enemy were enjoying themselves, I was not, for my squadron had adifficult ride ahead of it through the mountains which led to Wana.From the bottom of my heart I cursed these contumacious highlanders,and the policy which sent vulnerable horses amongst them, instead oftanks and aeroplanes.

Where the river forks at Haidari Kach, I broke my fast with a youngofficer who was commanding the convoy of ammunition camels between thatcamp and the next, named Dargai Oba. He was full of enthusiasm, notyet having seen a year of service.

'I hope things'll jazz up just a little: it's dull seeing nothing butrocks,' he said.

'Isn't the sniping enough?' I growled over my eggs and bacon.

We had had a mule hit during the night, who had screamed until thehumane killer had done its work.

'One gets used to anything. I've been out eight months and haven't yetseen one Mahsud in all this wilderness. I wish I was in Cavalry,' headded, 'it's slow work with camels, though the fishing isn't bad in theTank Zam. If I catch any snow-trout, we'll have them for lunch atDargai Oba.'

Our advance guard galloped off, and I followed with the squadron, at awalk at first, then at a hound-jog. We obviously could not searchevery inch of country, so all that I attempted to do was to keep myweather eye lifting for cover, just as I used to look for landinggrounds in Mesopotamia in case of engine failure.

We were in a pretty valley, whose charm was emphasised by thesurrounding rockiness, and the peacock-hued sky above it, but itsfields were untilled and its mulberry-shaded mill-streams idle, for theinhabitants were all busy with this profitable war. Wolf-eyes, I knew,were watching our movements, counting our rifles, observing how wemarched. But along and above our route were smallblock-houses,—'Haig,' and 'Hunter,' and 'Ganpat' and 'Goli,' and so onto 'Jess,' and 'Jill,' and 'Oba' and 'Ox,' each guarding a section ofthe road between the camps.

The Indian Officer who was riding beside me was called Valiant Tiger.The trumpeter's name was Happy Heart. The leading section was composedof Tiger Rose and Tiger Heart and Blooming Rose and Rose of the World:one hundred and twenty lives were in my hands, and many of us had babyTigers and Roses and Kings. I hoped that the block-houses would dotheir work.

'Do you see those bushes,' I asked my Merciful King, 'near thefat-tailed sheep?'

Nairn Shah's eyes were better than my field-glasses.

'There is a boy with the sheep, Sahib.'

'Of course. And behind him?'

I saw nothing, but asked on principle.

'You are right,' said Nairn Shah, standing in his stirrups and shadinghis eyes. 'Away—away—aw-a-a-y on the skyline there is a womanmoving.'

'Head left wheel!'

I changed direction without checking, and signalled to the advanceguard to do the same.

'I have seen it all,' said Nairn Shah. 'There is a woman on theskyline. That is enough, Sahib.'

'One?'

'One woman on the bare hill between the picquets. She is not grindingcorn up there.'

I called up the troop sergeant.

'Gallop back,' I said, 'and tell the Sahib with the convoy that thereis a woman on that hill who may be carrying ammunition for men hiddenin those bushes. Tell the Sahib we have taken a chukkar round, andthat unless he hears any firing we shall be in Dargai Oba by the timehe reaches this place. Gallop.'

For an hour I trotted on, in a circle, returning to the road anddropping into a walk when close to camp, under the loopholes of 'Jess'and 'Jill.'

We were about to enter the barbed wire of the perimeter camp, whenhalf-a-dozen Lewis guns behind us began to chatter. Things had jazzedup, as my friend had hoped.

The squadron, however, could not fight amongst those boulders. Sendingit on to water and feed, Nairn Shah and I cantered back to see thebattle.

Ten machine guns and a hundred men were pouring torrents of lead intothe bushes, and into the rocks above them, but there was no answer fromthe enemy, who had already vanished.

A British corporal signaller had received a bullet through his throat.My friend was slightly wounded in the right hand.

One raider had had his skull smashed in. On the whole, the enemy'splans had miscarried.

A dozen Mahsuds had been hidden in those bushes. Opposite them, aparty of knife-men had lain in wait, so close to our path that we musthave almost ridden over them. They let us go, for their prey was lesskittle cattle. The first volley from the riflemen killed the corporal.Then the knife-men rushed in.

'Ganpat' and 'Goli' and 'Greaves' had sprayed them with machine-gunfire. It was all over in thirty seconds, so my friend told me. Acamel had escaped in the confusion, and it was presumed that theMahsuds had it, with its four thousand rounds of ammunition. Thatworried my friend a great deal, and I could not console him by pointingout that he had done well not to lose more; and that he had caught aMahsud instead of a snow-trout.

'Ganpat' continued firing, more to encourage itself than in any hope offinding an enemy amongst the echoing and empty rocks. For anothermonth at least, no enemy would be seen in those parts.

The corporal we wrapped in a ground sheet, and he lies somewhere inthat pleasant valley, where women are now grinding corn and theirhusbands making roads and driving cars.

In Wana, we did nothing whatever for several months.

The fortnight-old newspapers gave me news of politicians who complainedof the heavy cost of the Indian Army. The Ali brothers preached of thewrongs of Turkey, and Mr. Gandhi declared that he would oppose thetribesmen of the North with soul force.... Apparently there wassomething in what the Mahatma said, for I was surprised and shocked tolearn that some twenty sillidar cavalry regiments were to beabolished, my own amongst them. The authorities called the process'amalgamation,' which sounded better than abolition, but came to thesame thing, since our name, number and identity was to vanish.

Well, I thought, since my friends would soon be scattered, and I hadlong wanted to see horizons not discoverable from an Indian cantonment,I would 'send in my papers' as soon as possible.

As if to confirm my decision, I met with a polo accident on my returnfrom Waziristan.

It happened at Lucknow during a practice game. I was riding a bigwaler, fifteen hands and an inch without his shoes. I couldn't holdhim, but the collision which ended my career as a cavalryman was not myfault. I was on the line of the ball. An opponent in front of mehesitated while trying to hit a backhander. I shouted to him not tostand on the ball. It was too late. My impression, as we collapsedtogether, was that I was being squeezed by some resistless power intohis pony's brown quarters.

We sank down, and as I looked through the limbs of our entangledanimals I observed that the other players were reining up and that theworld seemed standing still. Instead of the whickering of whips, therattle of hoofs, and the shouting, I had passed almost instantaneouslyinto a state of silence and slow-motion. I turned as I fell, drawingup my legs and tucking in my chin.

I was now being pressed down into the earth, without haste or apparenthope of escape. The other pony and its rider drew apart, but my walerstood on me. One of his hoofs was on the back of my neck, and theother on my right forearm. I carried him, with my forehead to theground in an oriental salaam.

Which bone of me would break?

Time slipped backwards and forwards. With my brain I knew that myspine might crack, but with my imagination (working somewhere in themidriff) I saw myself getting up and dusting my breeches. Then everyincident of my life connected with riding—from a frosty day in Irelandwhen my legs first gripped a horse to this uncomfortableconclusion—passed before me slowly. It was neat and logical. It waskarma. Had I concussion of the brain?

No, for I was walking towards the refreshment table, arm in arm withtwo friends.

My arm was broken above the wrist.

'My head's all right,' I said, 'or isn't it?'

'Yes, of course, but you can't go on playing.'

'Who said I could?'

'You did.'

'How long ago was that?'

I could not remember how I had disentangled myself just a few momentsbefore. All the way to hospital I worried my friends for details ofthose mislaid seconds of my life, but I have never been able to tracethem.

Yet what I have forgotten, as well as what remains vivid in memory, hasits own tiny place in the Universe, and must therefore influence thisbook.

Nothing dies, not even the Present. Time is a tricky thing; and itssister, Space, preserves our voices and our gestures for all eternity.It is simply a matter of the point of view we take. Somewhere inspace, I am still in that awkward position on the turf of a Lucknowpolo-ground. Somewhere, also, the thunders of Trafalgar are echoing,and further back, the roars of a sabre-toothed tiger. But I wish Icould always think as I did at that moment, and that I had notforgotten the images which then raced through my mind....

CHAPTER XVI

THE FESTIVAL OF THE FISH-EYED GODDESS

While I lay in hospital, considering where I should go first after Ihad left the Service, a telegram came for me from the Army Departmentof the Government of India, suggesting that I should accompany anAmerican author and his photographer on a tour through the country.

I accepted this offer immediately, for I could imagine no moredelightful prospect. I tore up my resignation, sold my ponies, boughta typewriter, and as soon as my wrist was well enough I took the trainto Delhi and began four crowded months of travel.

We went first to the plain of Panipat, my American friends and I, andthen to the Ridge, overlooking the capital, from which one maycontemplate the ruins of all the races that have held the sceptre ofHindustan.

Round us were six ruined Delhis, with their history of a thousand yearsof Empire, and the seventh Delhi was at our feet. We were on the roofof Hindu Rao's house, of Mutiny fame, which stands like a bridge upon aship: a ship of rock, whose bow cuts into the dim sea of the plains.

'There is more land in this country than in Europe from Norway toSicily,' I said, 'and more languages, religions, gods, people. If youtook the peasants of it only, and stood them shoulder to shoulder, likean army, they would girdle the earth five times at the Equator. I knowit is a weariness to tell you such things, but I can't help it, for youtravellers always forget the peasants.'

'Don't they want to rule their own country for themselves, like thelawyers and merchants and politicians?'

'I don't know,' I answered. 'It is certain they want a just king andlight taxes, but whether they want democracy is doubtful. I don'tthink any Englishman knows. We are colonisers and traders, notwet-nurses. We are only a drop in the ocean of this humanity. Acouple of thousand individuals cannot maintain themselves in apopulation three times the size of the United States without the tacitconsent of those governed. If united India wants us to go, we shallvanish as the mists will vanish from the plain of Panipat at dawnto-morrow. But if we did, our tradition would remain, for India neverforgets...'

At that, the jackals began howling, and we returned to our hotel fordinner.

The next day we motored to Nizam-ud-din's tomb, where Jehanara lies,the lovely princess whose modest epitaph was composed by herself in theage which saw the glories of the Taj: 'Let nothing but green concealme. Grass is the best covering for the poor, the humble, thetransitory Jehanara, disciple of the holy men of Chist, and daughter ofthe Emperor Shah Jehan.'

Into her history is woven, by the twists and quirks of fate, our ownImperial destinies. But for her, British India would have had adifferent birth.

The story begins by Jehanara's maid upsetting an oil-lamp in the palaceof Shah Jehan. Jehanara tried to save her, and in doing so shescorched herself about the face and hands. Shah Jehan was in a feverof anxiety about his daughter: the æsthete as well as the parent in himdemanded that the best physician in his Empire must attend itsloveliest princess.

Thus it happened that Gabriel Boughton, the surgeon of the Englishfactory at Surat, arrived at Agra. Although hampered by the etiquetteof purdah (he was only allowed to feel his patient's pulse frombehind a curtain) he not only cured Jehanara but saved her beautyflawless. As reward, he would take nothing for himself, but asked thata charter should be given to the East India Company to trade in Bengal.

These are the threads of karma that go to the making of ant-heaps andEmpires: a clumsy slave-girl, a kind princess, and an altruistic doctorwho asked for the charter on which the British built Calcutta. Allround Delhi one may see the warp and woof of modern India.

At Tughlakabad, for instance, whither we went on leaving the grave ofJehanara, we found the hereditary well-jumpers of the Moghul courtstill plying their profession. In 1922 some twenty of these men werealive, and all still active, including the eldest, who was ninety-nine.

The shaft was eighty feet deep and only eight feet wide, so that if thejumpers had taken off with the slightest outward impetus they wouldhave hit the sides and killed themselves. The only way to reach thebottom in safety was to step off as if going down a stair, and this theold men did.

One after another they went down, making a noise like popping corks.It was not very exciting, but it was extremely whimsical. Obviouslythe Great Moghuls had enjoyed the sport, for they had cut away one sideof the well in a ramp to the water-level, and had made five archways inthe shaft, so that they could sit with their princesses to watch thejumpers flash by.

The old men insisted on going through their performance once again, forthey enjoyed the risk, and our admiration, irrespective of the reward Ihad offered them. With glistening eyes, naked, proud, they came to mein turn after their jump, and extended trembling hands.

'This is the India of tradition,' I could not help observing, 'the realIndia, rooted in the past. All round us history is being kept alive bypeople instead of books. Near here there is a lime tree, under whichAkbar's favourite musician, Tansen, was buried four centuries ago,about the time when this well-jumping began. To this day, thestrolling players of India pluck leaves from it, and eat them, thattheir voices may have the sweetness of 'that honey-tongued parrotwithout an equal.' Tansen's memory survives; and the tradition of theTaj survives in the craftsmen who are working at their hereditarytrades here and at Agra; and John Nicholson, who took Delhi, is stillworshipped by a sect in the Punjaub. Even Alexander the Great isremembered, for there is a legend that at a spot where he rested in thejungle the tigers come out on nights of the full moon, to sweep theplace clean with their tails.'

While I discoursed the eldest well-jumper came up to us, wringing hiswet, white beard.

'Sahib, what are we to do with our boys?' he asked. 'Government hasforbidden us to teach them to jump, saying it is dangerous, and thatthey must be educated. Are they to sit in schools withidol-worshippers instead of learning our ancient craft?'

'Who is to know what you teach them?'

'That is true,' he chuckled, 'and on bright nights we do still showthem how the trick is done, beginning from the bottom archway. Buttheir heads are so full of this new tyranny of education that I doubtwhether they will ever have our skill.'

'May Allah, Who is a reader of hearts, keep your descendants in theright path!'

'Ay, Sahib, He knows best. But a living is hard to earn. Before theMutiny a rupee bought twenty pounds of flour, instead of half-a-pound,as to-day. If our descendants are to become babus instead ofwell-jumpers, who is to support us?'

Alas, I did not know. I gave the old man my blessing and a small extragift.

We went northwards now, travelling three days and nights to NairnShah's village across the border, where we enjoyed an illicit tea-party(for British officers are forbidden to cross the frontier that dividesIndia from Afghanistan) and an Arabian night's entertainment of Afridiraids, vendettas, and other adventures, some of which I had to modifyvery severely in translation. We visited Bannu, where my youth waspassed, and Jandola, with its memories of snipers, and Dera IsmailKhan, and Quetta; and from there, with one of those sudden transitionswhich are always possible in India, we journeyed south to the rock-hewntemples of Ajanta, where the painters and craftsmen of a thousand yearsago have left their portrayal of a civilisation that rivals that of theHigh Renaissance in Italy.

The contrast was complete between the living frontier and this world ofstone. Instead of shepherds with their fat-tailed sheep here was alovely little Queen of Benares fainting in the lap of her negro slave;instead of dancing boys and camels and well-kept rifles and daggers,the kings of the frescoes were worshipping their golden geese, and bluegods were embracing fawn-eyes shaktis in mysterious attitudes andecstasies.

Who can say why nations rise and fall, why the spirit of genius alightshere and not there? Everywhere in India this puzzle is seen ofcivilisations that triumphed for their hour, and have now gone down todust and white ants. Consummate skill and tireless patience werelavished on Ajanta. The chisels of a million workmen hammered on thosecornices; the desires of a race for beauty, for romance, for truereligion are embodied here in stone and paint. But over the work ofthe painters and sculptors stands the doom of time. The darkness ofAjanta is full of death.

On the plinth of one of Buddha's altars, polished by the foreheads ofan unknown multitude of worshippers, I saw a dead bat lying, with asnarl on its rat-face; and I noticed then that there were batseverywhere, flying among the pictures, hanging from the pillars.

Outside, the sun beat down upon a barren valley.

The pageant of India that passed before us confirmed this sense of thefutility of human endeavour. The Residency at Lucknow, with its flagstill flying; Amritsar with its field of slaughter; the satimemorials of Muttra; Bijapur with its whispering gallery, and itsgold-and-ivory gun which used to be manned by artillery-men in pinkfleshings; Podanur where the recalcitrant Moplahs were suffocated by aghastly mistake; French Pondicherry where Dupleix dreamed of Empire;Cochin where the Jews of the tribe of Manasseh (exiled from Palestineafter the destruction of the Second Temple) are now dying ofelephantiasis; Mrs. Besant at Adyar, undaunted at the age ofseventy-five, busy with her Messiah and telling us in her vibrant voicethat 'the coming of His hour is nigh, when He shall come again tomankind, as He did so often in the past'; and more than all, CapeCormorin, the southernmost point of India, which has seen Roman andPhoenician galleys pass, and missionaries, merchants, pirates,politicians, each with his own doomed dream of conquest—all theseplaces and people seemed to us but shadows that have passed across thepeace of India.

We dipped down the Braganza Valley into Portuguese Goa and strolledthrough the cloisters of the Cathedral of Bom Jesus, where St. FrancisXavier lies under a magnificent altar. Round us were the ruins of GoaDourada, the richest city in India in the sixteenth century, now avillage of a few huts.

Through a broken gateway, which bore the deer-crest of Vasco da Gama, Icould see the Blue Mountains under the gathering monsoon. A storm wasabout to break: a bell tolled: it seemed to ring for an auto da fé.Thinking myself back across the centuries, I saw the Cathedral Squarefilling with priests and people. The bell rang slowly now, as if forsouls about to pass: there was a sharpness in the air.... I rubbed myeyes: wood smoke drifted across the courtyard: a lizard watched me froma crumbled wall. The Holy Inquisition was done with and forgotten,like Golden Goa, like every alien effort at domination over theapparently-defenceless millions who live between the breakers of CapeCormorin and the snows of Tibet.

And now to Madura, where the Festival of the Fish-eyed Goddess is inprogress.

Minakshi was a princess in Madura long ago; a girl with long andlustrous eyes, who subdued all earthly princes and even the heavenlydeities with her beauty. She had three breasts, but when she met Sivaher third breast disappeared, and she knew then that she stood in thepresence of her Lord.

The marriage was arranged and an enormous concourse of peopleassembled—as to-day—in the riverbed of the Vaigai. Amongst the chiefguests was Minakshi's brother, Alagar; but by some unfortunate slip thedate of the wedding was wrongly given in his invitation, so that hearrived late, and found that the ceremony had already been performed.

He went away in anger, and rested on the far side of the river. Everyyear since then, he comes late to the feast, retires, sulks.... Allover Southern India this story is told, and it brings together ahundred and fifty thousand people, very gentle and simple andscantily-clothed, to celebrate the anniversary of Fish-eyed Goddess'smarriage, and her brother's disappointment.

From the bridge spanning the Vaigai, we look down on a moving, mixingmass of colour: dark blue elephants, light blue water, yellow sand,green trees, gold chariots, pavonine tinsels of fans and shawls, undera turquoise sky which stuns the eyes with its hard brightness. I haveseen crowds as big, but never a kaleidoscope like this.

The heat is murderous, for the monsoon which has been threatening usfor a week has not yet broken. Young girls glisten under their load ofanklets and bracelets. Soon their eyes will lose their lustre, andtheir skin its glow of bronze, but to-day in their prime, with the kissof so much sun upon them, they are as lovely as Minakshi herself.Their elders fan themselves, wilting. Terra-cotta babies droop ontheir mothers' shoulders. Alagar himself feels faint in his marquee,and frankincense is burned under his nostrils to revive him.

Now there is a booming of mortars. Priests with forked white eyebrowsare clearing a way for the enamelled steeds of the goddess. There is acrowding and a crying and a scampering of sacred cows.

When she arrives, the voice of the multitude is hushed: elephants raiserespectful trunks: men, women and children touch finger-tips togetherand bow themselves down in a silence that is frightening after so muchclamour.

The heart of India seems to miss a throb; the people are sorry for thebelated wedding guest, sulking in his tent, across river.

But then their mood changes and gives place to gaiety and clamour.Swings and merry-go-rounds and hawkers and religious freaks compete forcoppers; there is a brisk business in mangoes and fans; a goat is beingsprinkled with water before its head is chopped off; pilgrims arehaving their heads shaved; a priest adorns another with the crimsontika of his caste; children are playing thoughtful games in the sand,like a motionless hop-scotch; and their mothers are comparing their newbangles. But for this heat, I could stay here for hours, watchingIndia at play and prayer.

Yet what could I learn of the people's heart, so far from mine? If Iwere six years old I might understand it better, but now ... I floatback towards the great temple of Madura upon a stream of pilgrims.

Suddenly that strange, orgiastic pile hulks above me, tier upon tier ofsculptured reliefs that are by turns monstrous and graceful and lewd.This is only one corner of it: it is repeated in the east and west andnorth, and it is one of a thousand such temples. What an extraordinarypeople it was who made these gods and goddesses and hermaphrodites ofstone, that go swarming up to the sky in exuberant confusion, inrenunciations and exaltations inconceivable, and cruelties andtendernesses I cannot begin to fathom! If I could know who built thisterrible place (but no one knows) or what these pullulating deities areabout, or even why Minakshi had three breasts, I might begin tounderstand this India of the South.

Across the open courtyard, men and women are surging in a maze ofcorridors. Hidden in the darkness of the central shrine stands alittle lingam. The courts and shrines and great carved pyramidswhich surround it have been built on an esoteric design which only thepriests understand, and they but dimly.

Somewhere in the temple a parroquet is screaming as if Satan werepulling his tail-feathers, but where or why I cannot tell, for I maynot set foot beyond the threshold.

Indeed, I do not want to, for I am afraid.

CHAPTER XVII

JAGANATH, LORD OF THE WORLD

At Puri, near Calcutta, where Jaganath rides in his car, we found thatthe festival of the year was not due for a few days yet, so we decidedto bathe and then to seek out a temple official to inform us aboutJaganath, and his brother Balarama and his sister Subhadra, thosewooden idols that have been the adored of millions for uncountedcenturies.

Fortunately—for the priests were not very informative—I had anintroduction to the Superintendent of the shrine, and found him readyto talk.

We broached first a delicate subject—the sculptures of the BlackPagoda at Konarak. How, we asked, could any community that claimed therespect of the modern world condone representations of depravity suchas those which we had seen at Konarak a few days before (even admittingthat they were mingled with other figures of singular beauty and grace)?

'You must remember,' said the Superintendent, 'that these sculpturesare old. We Hindus need not justify the manners of a franker age. Butwe can justify them, if you like, by comparing the teaching ofancient Konarak with that of modern Vienna. We had a school as youhave a school, that maintains that the roots of psychology lie in sex.You in the West are inclined to begin the consideration of psychologywith your brain, instead of with your nerves. Yet the nerves made thebrain. You must learn to control feeling before you can controlthought, if you would not be meshed in illusion.'

'That is the lesson of Konarak?'

'Yes, in so far as the artists who worked there were concerned withanything but beauty. They idealised Woman, without whom we could notbe born, nor enjoy,' he said. 'To know Woman, through the ministeringsenses and the attendant angels is the greater wisdom. Humanity hasbeen shaped by Her and through Her it must be saved. The lingam-yoniis the symbol of the entry of spirit into matter, without which theworld could not have been made, and through whose right function itmust be sustained. Our human lingam-yoni is but a tiny fraction ofthe cosmic energy, a spawning between a certain range of heat andmoisture, beyond which extend Himalayan heights and unutterableabysses; but even what we have is the greatest of mysteries humanitymay contemplate. It is the link between the visible and invisible, theconductor of souls, the fountain of religion. If even physical love(to say nothing of the other kind) ceased on earth then the love of Godwould disappear, for its knowers would not exist.'

'There is a Yoga relating to your worship?'

'Certainly, the Laya-siddhi, by which we know the subtlest of thesubtle, who holds within Herself the mystery of creation. Even in theWest, you have such a philosophy, but disguised, for your wholematerial prosperity is based on sex-control, which drives you out toconquer new worlds, partly in compensation for what has been denied andpartly to enable you to gain the object of your desire. Up to a pointour teaching is the same, but ours is not inculcated throughrepression. Modesty and continence are virtues necessary to every kindof Yoga, in the East as in the West, but that does not mean thethwarting of natural functions.'

'Not thwarting, but control,' I agreed. 'Yes, in the West we arebecoming choked with desires—and not only for sex—which are driveninto the Unconscious because they cannot find their normal expression.'

'You are playing with fire, it seems to me. Many of your amusementsand most of your ambitions are unnatural. So are your hours of work,your hours of sleep, your late marriages, your cheap reading, yourpatent foods. You cannot live unnaturally and have natural sex lives;and unless you do have natural sex lives either your civilisation willperish, or your women will revolt.'

'Our women are patient, pandit-ji, as yours were under conditionsthat condemned them to burn themselves alive when their husbands died.'

'Yours have no husbands, and burn out their souls in a loneliness morecruel than the fire of the sail sacrifice.'

'I wonder if they would think so?'

'Perhaps not. The agonies of the Unconscious are not always known,even to the sufferer. But there is a vast secret misery in all thecities of Europe and America, chiefly among your women, but also amongmen who have been sacrificed to your chaste commercial Mammon. Livingas you do, you have neither the time nor the energy for love. Yourwomen are not as happy as ours. They have a fuller exterior life, buta starved interior life. Under our caste system, with all its faults,the deep unseen existence of humanity is better provided for.'

'Admitting that for the sake of argument,' I said, 'I still do not seehow the portrayal of depravity is going to help humanity. Even here inyour temple I am told there are frescoes in the corridors——'

'—As ugly as a treatise on psycho-analysis!' exclaimed theSuperintendent. 'Certainly they are shocking, for they are meant toshock. Everything connected with the worship of Jaganath issymbolical, and its meaning lies deep in the truths of our religion.The people understand what they can of such things: we do not demandthe impossible. Surely it is the same everywhere? The worshipper canreceive only what his brain or his feeling-realisation can sustain.Many things must remain hidden. The approach to the shrine ofJaganath, for instance, is by avenues corresponding to man's life inthe exterior and interior worlds. First there are the snares of thesenses, portrayed by paintings and sculptures which your missionariesdescribe as of 'appalling indecency.' Is Freud indecent? Can truth beindecent? I am sure that future ages will look on our Tantrikpsychology of the Unconscious with understanding. Until a man ismaster of his gross body, he cannot see the Godhead.

'But remember,' he continued, 'that we are only at the exteriorthreshold of the divinity symbolised by an earless, legless block ofwood about a yard high, which is Jaganath. If the worshipper beblinded by his carnal appetites in these outer courts, he must returnand compose his mind, for he is not worthy of the god. Only withundistracted senses may he enter the Dancing Hall, where thedeva-dasis portray the rhythms of creation, not any longer in stoneor paint, but in their living bodies. That is the second stage. Fromthere, the worshipper passes to the Audience Chamber, where his eyesgrow gradually accustomed to the Light Invisible. I wish I couldescort you round the temple, Sahibs, and explain these thingspersonally. We are not fanatical in Puri, but unfortunately suchlibels about our worship were published some years ago that now noEuropean may enter the Lion Gate.'

'We never expected to see the inside of the temple pandit-ji' I said,'and although I am a Christian—or because of it—I detest the methodsof some of our earlier missionaries. But now all that is changed, Ihope.'

'Yes, you have come to understand that you need not attack our religionin order to uphold yours. The Hindus are the most catholic-minded racethe world has ever seen. We have never persecuted any faith. We havenever proselytised any people. All we ask is to be left alone.'

'But frankly, you will admit, I suppose, that all human ordinances havetheir defects, even those of Manu? Surely there must be reform insuch matters as purdah, child-marriage, and the position of widows?'

'The women of India will change their customs sooner than you think,Sahib. But they will not change their religion, for our sacred bookshave seen very far into their hearts.'

'Yet they teach such things as that a woman should worship herhusband's big toe in the morning: isn't that a relic of slavery?'

'No. A thousand times no! Woman with us is a queen, not a slave. Sheis not man's inferior, but a part of him. The most important part,perhaps. Without her, he is nothing. If she smears his foot withsandal-wood paste at dawn, that may seem strange to you, but to us itis an act of reverence to the Creator who has the two sexes in Himself.It is done for the glory of Hara, who is half-man and half-woman, andwhose adored spouse is part of her own being. Your new psychologyteaches the same thing in other words when it asserts that theunconscious part of the individual is oppositely sexed. And I beg younot to credit the stories you hear about Hindu women being frail andfainting creatures. Have you heard two washerwomen talking to eachother across a river? The Hindu wife is mistress in her own house.She is worshipped as the mother of the race, as the keeper oftradition, as the partner in religious rites, as giver of life, andcreative goddess in human form. Marriage is the pivot of our religion.The union of the sexes is not a concession to the flesh with us, but asacrament. On the bridal night the husband must enter his wife's roommediating on Praja-pati. He must touch her and say: 'HRING, O bed!Be thou propitious to the begetting of a good offspring between ustwo.' He must sit with his face east or north, and looking at her andembracing her with his left arm, he must touch her head one hundredtimes, saying KLING, and touch her chin one hundred times, saying AING,and touch her throat twenty times, saying SHRING, and again SHRING onehundred times over each of her breasts. And so on. There is also aritual for conception, weaning, the end of childhood, the beginning ofadolescence, marriage, home-making, and dissolution—all the chiefmoments in the life of the spirit from the time when it enters thewomb, to the time when it rises from the burning pyre. From birth todeath, and dawn to dark, Jaganath is saviour of our people.'

'You have said that he is only a block of wood, pandit-ji. How canhe also be a vital force in your lives? To us it seems hard tounderstand how he and his relations can be more than dressed-up dolls.'

'It is our age-long veneration that has brought them to life. Ours isa religion of the Unseen, but it must have a focus.'

'A bright object on which the mind of the multitude may concentrate?'

'Not quite. Jaganath is what you call a catalyst,' said theSuperintendent, 'a mysterious agent that out of two things induces athird. Out of our religion and our people, he has made the CarFestival. A hundred and twenty deva-dasis dance in his honour; hehas twenty temple elephants, a wardrobe such as no king of the earthpossesses, and two cellars, knee-deep in pearls and rubies and othervotive jewels, which have not been opened for three centuries. He hasthree thousand panders who travel throughout the country on his behalf,arranging for parties of pilgrims to pay their homage to the Lord ofthe World; and a thousand regular priests. I cannot tell you of allthe wealth and worship he has received since the beginning of time. Heis an image, but he is also a god, since we have desired him.'

'That is a miracle,' I said.

'You mean, Sahib, that you think that the age of miracles has passed?Not so. We still believe in them.'

'Can you tell us, then,' I asked, in order to change the subject,'whether there are any Yogis now living in Puri who possess thosesupernatural powers of which we hear in the West?'

'The rope trick and the mango trick? I have heard of such things,'said the Superintendent. 'But I have never seen any of them. If theyhappen, they are not supernatural, but due to collective suggestion.Let me advise you to beware of miracles made to order, especially inthis country. In India a real student of Nature's finer forces neverwants for a living, and never produces phenomena for cash. If you areinterested in experiments of an unusual kind, however, there is a Yogihere who is carrying out researches in animal Kundalini. He is saidto be able to resurrect dead sparrows.'

'Could we visit him?' I asked.

'Of course. Go to his bungalow by the sea. Anyone can tell you wherehe is. His name is Babu Bisudhanan Dhan.'

'Could you give us an introduction?'

'That is quite unnecessary, but you had better tell him I sent you....He is being watched by the police,' he added with a laugh. 'In Europeof the Middle Ages he would have been burned as a sorcerer; here on thecontrary he is honoured as a teacher. His friends have equipped alaboratory for him in Calcutta, and have given him a house in Benares,and a bungalow here so that he can carry on his work wherever the fancytakes him. You will find a group of his students with him, if you goin the morning.'

'I remember that I was told of the babu years ago,' I said, 'when Iwas a youngster in Bareilly. Certainly we shall call on him,pandit-ji. Couldn't we go this afternoon?'

'In the afternoon he may be invisible.'

'Doesn't he receive callers then?'

'Well, he sometimes vanishes.'

'Vanishes?'

'Floats away.'

Here was something that my American friends had not been expecting tofind—a man who could raise the dead and vanish!

Accompanied by Nairn Shah, who carried the Americans' cameras, wedescended on the babu next morning and found him teaching hisdisciples in the verandah of his house, just as the Superintendent hadsaid.

He was a very fat man, wearing nothing but the usual loin-cloth and theBrahminical thread. He sat in a long chair with his legs curled underhim, talking to ten or a dozen white-habited, middle-aged Bengalis,most of whom wore spectacles. Seeing us, he nodded casually, finishedwhat he was saying, and then smiled.

The Superintendent may, of course, have warned him of our possiblearrival, but if so, he had not told his pupils, who demandedexplanations of our visit from Nairn Shah, and demanded them rathernervously, I thought. The babu himself remained inscrutable. NairnShah looked sheepish; he disliked being mixed up with such matters andleft me to explain.

'I heard of the Mahatma's fame many years ago,' I said, 'and I haveventured to bring my friends here so that they may meet a great Yogibefore they return to the United States.'

'What is it,' a disciple asked me, in English, 'that you want theMahatma to do?'

'Anything he pleases,' I answered. 'We want to learn something of hissupernatural powers, if that is at all possible; and at any rate toenjoy the privilege of talking to him.'

A few words of Bengali passed between the pupil and his master, thenthe former answered:

'The Mahatma is in the middle of a lecture about the aspects andappearances of our Lord the Sun, whose energies he can control. If youlike, he can summon any scent to appear before us out of thecircumambient ether.'

I glanced quickly at the nude babu to see if he were joking. Hiseyes were exceptionally large: they blinked rapidly in my direction, asif I were some new but not unpleasant kind of creature.

'We should be honoured if the Mahatma would do this,' I said solemnly.

'May we take his picture first,' my friend suggested, 'now that thelight is good?'

I translated.

The Mahatma had no objection. He posed readily, and with a dignitythat few of us clothes-cramped people possess.

'He lives on a banana a day,' the English-speaking pupil told us, witha kind of paternal pride, 'and such is his power over ethericvibrations that he can quicken his molecular activity until he floatsin the air. We have seen this, both here and in Benares. No one knowshis age. He says he is fifty, but we think he is nearer three hundredyears old. During my lifetime he has been thirty years in Tibet,studying the radiations from the sun and moon. Before that he wastravelling for seven years in the jungles of Central India, where wildbeasts followed him like dogs.'

'A banana a day!' repeated my friend, looking at the Mahatma's solidform.

'And a little water,' our informant added, 'that is all. He makesthese concessions to mortality in order to remain on the earth plane.He never sleeps. His power over Nature is simply a question of usingthe rays from our Lord the Sun.'

'What about the sparrows?' my friend asked.

'Unfortunately we have no sparrows here, or the Mahatma would show you.He brings life to them after they are dead by using the sun's rays in acertain way. The sparrows are strangled by a sweeper, and left in thesun for four hours, to make sure that they are dead. The Mahatma thenlets a little light fall on them through a magnifying-glass, using amantra taught to him by his Tibetan guru, whose vibrations canreach the heart of birds. Their feathers begin to ruffle. They movetheir wings and open their beaks. In a moment they are on their feet,hop about, flutter away. It is very curious.'

'Most remarkable,' we agreed.

Meanwhile the Mahatma had curled himself up again in his chair. Hecalled for cotton-wool and a magnifying-glass, which were brought tohim by a disciple. I watched this man carefully without being able todetect the slightest sign of collusion. Indeed, on making enquiriesabout him afterwards, I learned that he was a respectable small banker:this fact would not indeed preclude his being a conjuror's accomplice,but makes it less probable.

The Mahatma took the cotton-wool in his left hand and the glass in hisright, focusing a spot of light upon the wool. Immediately the roomwas impregnated with the perfume of attar of roses.

He waved the scent away with his hand, and I certainly had theimpression that it vanished at his gesture.

'What other scent would you like to come?' he asked me in Hindustani,with a smile that showed two rows of perfect white teeth.

I suggested violets, and instantly the room was full of the scent ofviolets. Then I suggested eau-de-Cologne, and there was a hitch, forhe did not understand.

'Name any Indian scents, and he will bring them at once,' said thepupil.

My friend suggested carnations, but I could not remember the Urdu forthem, and the pupil could not visualise them from my description.

'Can he make the scent I am thinking of appear?' I asked, 'even thoughI cannot give it a name?'

The Mahatma smiled and shook his head.

So I named musk, and sandalwood, and opium, and heliotrope, andflowering bamboo, and nicotine plants at evening. Each came instantly.There was nothing near him that could have served as a receptacle. Hehad no sleeve, no table, nothing but a magnifying-glass and a piece ofcotton-wool.

'Has the Mahatma powers of hypnotism as well as the power to directsolar energy?'

I asked the question to the room at large. There was a general laugh.

'In one instant, the Mahatma could hypnotise all of us together,' saida little man in horn spectacles, who looked like a shop-keeper, 'or allof us separately,' he added.

'May we photograph him while he is summoning a scent?' my friend asked.

The Mahatma seemed to be getting bored, but consented to be snapshotedtwice, while he produced out of the air—or was it out of ourimaginations?—the heavy odour of jasmine and the acridity of burningcattle-dung. The latter seemed to make my eyes water, and if that wasimagination then everything is of the stuff of dreams.

We three men of the West had all had some training in the use of oureyes, yet we were led by our noses into an impasse on this hot, brightJune morning.

Acknowledge a miracle I would and will not. With my brain I refusedand rejected it, but with my body I was fain to believe. And nowanother emotion overrode curiosity. I wanted to escape the contagionof credulity that the Mahatma had induced in us.

My friend suggested that in a few days' time the Mahatma might show usthe resurrection of sparrows. He smiled and stared ahead of him,vaguely, until I repeated the observation. Then he spoke in Bengali,instead of Urdu; and not to me, but to a pupil.

'He says that he is not fond of crowds and will not be here for the CarFestival,' said the interpreter.

'Ask him if he knows why we came?' my friend persisted.

Again the answer had to be translated from Bengali.

'He says he knows, but that his guru told him long ago that suchquestions should never be answered.'

Silence.

I was conscious of something hostile in the atmosphere.

'I fear we have been interrupting the Mahatma's lecture,' I said, andpaused, in case he should deny it. As he did not, I observed that wewere grateful to him for the time he had given us, and that if it wasconvenient we would now take our leave.

'You are masters in this house,' said the Mahatma, bowing in hisdeck-chair. 'You have greatly honoured me.'

'On the contrary, it is we who have been honoured.'

What had we seen? Conjuring? Black magic?

'The babu may be a fraud or a hypnotist,' I suggested, 'or he mayhave some way of harnessing etheric vibrations. Anyway, he has a bandof disciples who believe in him sufficiently to pay for his work.Experiments like this have been continuing for centuries, along linesvery different from those of any Western science. Perhaps there issomething stirring, something shaping itself out of the mists ofsuperstition on this old continent which will spread its influence overall the world. Even along our own narrow lines, Indians have arisenwhose extraordinary attainments are unquestionable. Disbelieve in thisbabu if you like, but you must accept Bose, Raman, Meghnad Saha,Tagore, Gandhi. By whatever standard you judge them they are men ofdistinction, and there will be many more, when we discover more ofIndia.'

And the more I considered these matters in which my mind disputed withmy senses, the less confident I became that my brain was right.

The monsoon had broken, but pilgrims were still flocking into the wetand insect-ridden city. A hundred thousand of them had arrived, andbillions of insects of every kind.

At dinner these latter made a massed attack upon our lamp and fell inbattalions around it: their scouts even reached our soup. Ourmosquito-curtains were coated with praying mantis and beetles, moths,winged ants.

Outside the hotel, pilgrim waggons creaked by. Ox-nose to tailboard ofthe cart ahead, a multitude of creatures were being drawn into theflame of the Lord of the Age of Iron.

It is early morning. From the Lion Gate, for a mile of broad avenueleading to the Garden Temple, the concourse of the people of Jaganathmakes one vast composite body of brown skin and white cloth.

We are in a roped-off enclosure, containing high officials and thevehicles of the gods. The cars are cottages on wheels, withthirty-foot towers, betinselled and beflagged, and embroidered withcelestial beasts. That of Jaganath is a little bigger than the others,and has sixteen wheels: the others twelve. They are made new eachyear, being broken up after the return from the Garden Temple, in orderthat the sacred wood may be sold to the people.

In front of the cars sit the drivers of the gods, magnificent woodencoachmen in a striped livery of yellow. They are quaint figures on theground, whipless, reinless, grinning at the crowd, with their elbowsout in regular coaching style; but when the gods take their seats theywill be demigods themselves, driving three thousand pilgrims each. Theropes to which the worshippers will be harnessed lie coiled beside them.

In this enormous crowd, there is not the colour and animation of theMadura festival, for the people are squatting; but the bourdon note ofall these blended voices drowns the roar of the sea a few hundred yardsaway. Priests move among the people with fans, and sprinkle them withholy water. There is a coming and going at the Lion Gate. We arepacked to suffocation, and blanketed under clouds. The air is electricin every sense, for the monsoon overshadows our bodies and the gods oursouls.

It is now eight o'clock and I hear that the gods are not likely tohurry over their toilette. The morning hymn must be sung to them,camphor burned before their beds, their libations poured, the holy foodoffered, and their teeth cleaned by rubbing their reflection in a sheetof burnished gold. These things will take time, and I shall breakfastwhile the gods make ready.

Ten o'clock. Two policemen are with us, but even with their help itwould be impossible to return to the Temple Square, so packed is it.Instead, we enter the back of a house which has a balcony overlookingthe car enclosure. Amongst the elect, I see the temple Superintendentrushing about with a garland of marigolds round his neck. He issignalling to a mounted Englishman in khaki—the DistrictSuperintendent of Police.

Subhadra is coming. Ripples of excitement spread over the surface ofthe brown and white mass, as if it were stretching its muscles in thesunshine. The panders tell the pilgrims that the sister of the Lord ofthe World is coming: the pilgrims lift up their voices: the pandersjoin hands in worship: the pilgrims join theirs: the panders sprinkleand fan the multitude, and its voice becomes the purr of one tremendoustiger.

An hour passes, and Balarama arrives like Subhadra to take his seat.Here and there a fainting woman is carried away. The crowd talkswithout pause.

It is not until high noon that the climax comes, when a shimmer ofwhite plumes and a waving of wild, braceleted arms heralds the entry ofthe Lord of the World through the Lion Gate. Now nothing can restrainthe crowd: the tiger rises, roars, lashes its tail, sweeps away theroped-off enclosure and ramps over the cars.

In this welter it is hard to see Jaganath himself, but I catch aglimpse of a painted mouth, a hooked nose, jewels. A hundredbackward-moving priests precede him: a hundred bear his litter: athousand come behind. For this occasion he has been provided with goldhands and feet. He has trumpeters and peacock fans and a Noble Guard,like the Pope in Rome. A Rajah, with jewelled broom, sweeps the groundbefore him. With each step of the bearers, Jaganath's shading fancomes forward, as if keeping time to the cries of his people. The sunemerges to join in the rejoicing.

Jaganath is ready to begin his drive.

The British policeman takes his place in front of the car. Jaganathcannot be disregarded by the temporal power, for men and women stillsometimes throw themselves under his sixteen wheels, or fall in hispath in the confusion; also it is important that the car should bepulled straight, for Jaganath is so holy that he cannot be movedbackwards, even an inch. If he should slant across the square and buttagainst a house, then the house must come down. He may bring ruin aswell as redemption in his path.

Pilgrims fight and cluster round the ropes. At the blast of a whistle,the human horses pull, and the traces stretch and stretch, like piecesof elastic. The cottage shudders and seems about to tip forward, thenits wheels revolve.

Jaganath has begun his immemorial journey. A group of priests aredancing on the platform above the yellow coachman, gesticulating andfoaming at the mouth whilst the multitude prostrates itself inadoration, or throws showers of marigold and jasmine and money upon theholy car. All over it, men, women and children are clinging and cryingand trampling and fainting; for Jaganath gives fertility to the barren,heart's ease to the widow, sons and kine to the householder. The sightof him is bliss unimaginable. He is Lord of the oldest living faith.

Slowly, slowly through his worshippers Jaganath goes forward, on such atide of faith and ecstasy as I may never again witness.

Near by, a temple elephant, with the eye of Siva drawn upon his gildedforehead, is watching his hundredth procession. Pilgrims salute him,touching his trappings of cloth-of-gold and then their own foreheads.They give him money, putting annas and even rupees into his trunk: heswings the coins up lazily to a mahout who is almost as blasé ashimself. Not quite, however, for his master has only seen the showfifty times.

The elephant sways on his soft feet and blinks his small eyes, but notcynically. He seems to be wondering, as indeed I wonder also, whythese people, whose rishis rejected idolatry several thousand yearsago, still bow down to Jaganath.

Neither he nor I can tell. Hindu India flows by us, seething,inscrutable, ecstatic, withdrawn into her sorceries, like Leonardo'swomen. We can only guess at what lies in her secret heart, and even toguess wisely we must have an imagination that will stretch like theropes of Jaganath's car.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TEMPLE OF THE UNDISTRACTED MIND

There came a night in Lucknow when I threw off my mess-dress, medals,Wellington boots, and all my gear as a soldier, as if I could then andthere forget these toys and start afresh with new ones. My time as a'bear-leader' was over, and every fibre in me was in revolt against myghost-like existence as an officer of vanished Bengal Lancers.

The Colonel who commanded our amalgamation made no difficulty about mytaking ten days' leave to the hills. There were three dozen officersin our confluent regiments; certainly I could be spared.

Next day, Nairn Shah saw me off to Katgodam. He knew this was thebeginning of the end of our happy life; and although he disapproved ofmy cult of strange gods, at the back of his mind he held to a thoughtwhich was too great to be uttered, but not difficult to guess for hiseyes roved often to a possession of mine which is the Afridi's god. SoI gave him a promise, which I shall not particularise owing to the lawsabout gun licences.

As I travelled towards the Himalayas, I looked out once more over thegreat plains, which have seen so many conquerors, and say so little tothe unquiet West.

It was 'cow-dust hour.' Ox-carts creaked slowly to a mud-walledvillage. Blue buffaloes browsed along in front of a naked pot-belliedbaby: black-buck bounded high, as if to see the train better: aprocession of peasants trailed out towards a shrine: a peacock preenedhimself by a bamboo covert: men and beasts were gentle and wellcontent. An infinite serenity lay under all that sky.

And as background to this pervasive peace, stood the Himalayas, whiteand holy, their summits reaching into an after-glow of crimson. Wouldit be my work, I wondered, to tell the West a little of what may bediscovered there, and how Christ Himself threw the light of Hisdivinity upon the truths that were known in the childhood of the Vedas?The task was broad and big as these plains I travelled, and myequipment scanty. Would anyone listen to the stammering of a soldier?

I knew little, then, except by instinct. And to-day I have learnedonly the extent of my ignorance, but I know that even that is worthrecording, for others will take up the tale. There are philosophies inIndia which the nations need, and my own country most of all, for herdestiny is bound up with the peoples who profess them.

I had heard that Bhagawan Sri was at Katgodam, preparing for his annualpilgrimage to the Shaivite shrine of Amarnath, but when I arrivedthere, I found that he had left the previous evening with two disciples.

Hoping to overtake him while still on the highways of civilisation, Ihired a car to drive me up to Naini Tal; and had hardly begun enquiringfor him in the rambling outskirts of the bazaar below the lake when Isaw his tall, loose-limbed, saffron-robed figure at a sweetmeat stall.He was buying parched-barley for his bitch, who sat up and begged forit.

'I have been longing for this moment,' I said, as I clasped his hand.'You seem younger, guru-ji, than when I saw you nine whole years ago.'

'Age is nothing, Sahib. I am happy, too. We have been expecting youfor some time.'

'Sivanand is with you?'

'Sivanand and his wife, Sahib. They were married in Cashmere thisspring. We three are going to Amarnath together.'

'With me, I hope, and your dog?'

'Come weal or woe, I will never desert my faithful dog,' he answeredpromptly. 'Those were the words of Yudisthira on reaching heaven, andI hope to be able to echo them when my time comes.'

'And as to me?'

'I see signs that you have progressed in the Path,' he answered. 'Butthe journey is a far one.'

'I wish I had progressed, guru-ji. But while your disciples havebeen engaged in worship and meditation, I have only been soldiering,which is a waste of time. Or isn't it?'

'You have passed your years of begging and meditation in a differentway from ours, that is all. Tell me of the War.'

'How can I talk about it, guru-ji, when I have so much to hear fromyou? Has Sivanand been initiated yet? And who is his wife?'

'You will soon find out, Sahib! You and I have all eternity before us,just as Sivanand and Hastini have all eternity in which to study themysteries of love and devotion. You remember Hastini—who brought youto me?'

'The girl with the limp?'

'Yes. She has become rich in worldly possessions. But they will tellyou their story, and you must tell me yours while we walk to the placewhere we are staying, over there on the terrace by the single tree. Isthat a wound on your right arm?'

'It is only a polo accident, guru-ji. The War left no outer marks.'

'But it made you suffer? Tell me.'

His voice was smooth, but I felt that he commanded. There was a coreof steel in that benign body.

As we strolled through the bazaar, and on by a mountain path which ledaway from the lake and upwards to the charcoal-burner's hut at whichthey had halted, I spoke easily to him of many things which I found itimpossible to say to others, for there was a stillness in his mindwhich drew me out. He seemed to understand everything, and tounderstand in three dimensions. When I told him of my walk fromWinchester to Twyford, for instance, he gauged both my physical andmental states, and saw beyond them to larger questions.

'It is good to love your country,' he said, surprisingly, 'for war is adisease which patriotism can cure.'

'Yet patriotism may lead to terrible conflicts?'

'It may, but it need not. If it does, it is better so. Last yeareight millions of us died by influenza. That also is nothing. Sivamust take his toll until men know him for what he is. The worst enemyis not death, but wrong desire. Wars are fevers, mass-perversions ofthe sexual instinct. They come as a fever does, when disease ispresent; and do good like a fever. The alternative to a fever, whenyou are diseased, is death. But it is better not to have the diseaseor the fever, but to love. It is better if your heart is pure.'

'A national as well as a personal Yoga?'

'There is no difference, Sahib. A body whose units are in harmony isat peace with all the world.'

'But how can there be peace when conflict is a law of Nature? Natureis ugly, guru-ji. She makes the turtles eat the dead in the Ganges,and plans the unpleasant fate of various insects, as well as that ofhumanity. I know your Siva and his Kali now: I first saw her when Ihad sunstroke, years ago; and again when I killed a favourite horse;and I saw her gloating in the deserts of Mesopotamia. For these lastfour years she has been dancing on the body of her husband with hergirdle of dead hands and bloody breasts, so that the whole earthtrembles.'

The guru's small bright eyes wrinkled in laughter.

'You have seen much and learned much during these years, Sahib,' hesaid, 'but you have not learned to love. And love, you know, is thefirst as well as the last virtue of the Path.'

'Can it be taught?'

'You must first learn indifference, Sahib, for love can only come intostillness. You must make a void and then let love flood in from itsinfinite source. But Sivanand and Hastini will tell you of thesethings better than I, for they are studying them. Moreover, I must godown the valley, to bathe before the evening meal.'

Not one word would he say as to my discipleship. Our talk plungedabout like a restive horse, without advancing in any direction; yet itoccurred to me now that we had reached the hut, that perhaps he hadbeen the rider and I the steed, and that I was being guided.

The cheelas welcomed us with open arms and cries of 'Ram! Ram!'While the guru gathered his brass vessels for washing and drinking,Sivanand and Hastini spread a blanket for me between themselves, andoffered me warm milk. Sivanand was the same as he had been at Agra,except that his ropy locks were brushed and parted in the middle, as asign, perhaps, that he had received the diksha[1] which ended histime of wandering. As to Hastini, she seemed to me to be more tidiedand more mundane than I remembered her. She wore the saffron robe of aYogi, like Sivanand, but hers was of silk, and was adorned with aturquoise necklace. A diamond shone in each ear, setting off theglossy black of her short hair, and her caressing eyes.

She told me that she had inherited six villages near Patna on the deathof an uncle, and that the Bhagawan Sri had advised her to settle downand administer her inheritance, but that she had begged first to beallowed to visit an ashram kept by the Maharajah of Cashmere, and thatthere she had met Sivanand; and she told me also of how Sivanand hadled her round the sacred marriage fire, and of the lilies on the DalLake, and of the garden of Shalimar, and of devil-dancers, and red-caplamas, and the glittering icicle of Siva in the cave they were tovisit....

She talked without pause, simply and smoothly; while I listened withhalf my mind, and wondered with the other half whether this was reallythe girl who had stumbled along with me, almost sullenly, towards theDasaswamedh Ghat.

'And you'—she asked, having exhausted her news—'are you married,Sahib?'

'No, and I don't expect to be,' I answered.

'You don't want to have a son to send your spirit on its last journey!I am sorry, Sahib.'

When Bhagawan Sri returned, he said in his dry way that I was right notto undertake the duties of a householder, for I was a seeker after thewisdom of the ages. Domestic bliss was not for the brahmacharin.They must instruct me in higher matters, he said, such as the mysteriesof Being and Not-being and the methods by which the illumined Self maytaste the nectar of Attributeless Brahman.

'But what can we teach him while you are here?' protested Hastini.

'I shall not be here,' said the guru. 'Look at the little Westerngod, on your left wrist, Sahib, and tell me what it says.'

'Five-thirty, guru-ji!'

'In two hours it will be nearly sunset. Until the shadows lengthen Ishall meditate. I am an old man with nothing to say, but you three areyoung, and can edify yourselves by discussing the quintessence of theVedanta.'

Hastini clapped her hands.

'I understand, guru-ji, for you did the same with me! When you areready,' she explained to me, 'he will teach you more in five minutesthan we can tell you in five years, but not till then. Meanwhile, whatshall we talk about?'

'There are so many things——'

'The Sahib is stiff!' said Sivanand suddenly.

'Perhaps he doesn't cry and laugh enough,' suggested Hastini. 'It mustbe stifling to wear an English mask.'

'As to that,' I answered, 'you know what it is to be shy yourself, Ithink.'

'Indeed I do,' she admitted.

Silence fell between us, and the two watched me curiously.

The guru, meanwhile, had spread his antelope skin under the singletree. Completely enfolded in his robe, with back and neck as straightas the fir under which he sat, he looked out with unwinking eyes overthe mountains where the Vedas were revealed.

Sivanand stretched himself, and lit a cigarette.

'Have you ever tried to calm your mind, Sahib?'

'Of course.'

'And how?'

'By relaxing, and—being calm.'

'You cannot control thought by thinking. The lungs are the keys to thetreasuries of vision. Let us be practical, and talk of that excellentpath to peace.'

'By all means. And you shall judge for yourself whether or not I havealready taken some steps along the road.'

'Show me,' said Sivanand.

I showed him the bhastrika then, as I had practised it in Turkey, buthe told me that I had only been wasting my time.

'You will become more flexible with practice,' he said. 'Your ribs arelike an old cask at present. They should be like young branches. Evenyour tail-bones should move, and your skin should grow luminous and thevital force should tingle at your finger-tips when the lotuses of yourbody are fully opened.'

'Your words slip through my mind, Sivanand. All I know is that thisbreathing makes me giddy.'

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'Your heart was not pure if it made you giddy. The life of the body isthe blood. The life of the blood is the Spirit. The life of theSpirit is God. God is Spirit. You cannot know Him through the brain,but through the purified and exalted body. As food is turned by thebody into blood, and the seed into life, so by the transmutation ofdivine energy are ideas born. This is a hard saying, even for thegods, and may only be known through purification and active prayer,including asana and mudra.[2] You will never understand your Self,or the Creation of which you are a part, as long as you separate itinto pieces. Every attribute of the Universe is in your mind. Everyquality of your mind—stiffness, strength, fear, joy—is reflected inyour body, somewhere, somehow.'

'A child can perform every asana with ease,' added Hastini, 'and manyof the mudras, but not an adult. The seeds of death begin in thejoints, and to free them means pain. I know, for I began Yoga onlywhen I was twenty, after a fever in which I would have died but forBhagawan Sri, and I had almost to break my ankles in order to acquirethe lotus seat. For you it will also be difficult.'

'And what shall I gain if I do these things?' I asked.

'The right to breathe,' she said solemnly, 'and therefore a mind atpeace, for, as Sivanand says, the breath and brain are linked. Youcannot think deep thoughts with shallow lungs and you cannot absorbprana[3] through a poisoned body. Hence the necessary purifications.Bliss really begins with the bowels. The Tantra Sanhita has adhauti[4] in which the worshipper stands navel deep in water anddraws out his long intestine. That is not possible for you. But youcan fill it with a gallon of tepid water. Then you must learn to drinkwater through the nose and expel it through the mouth, and drink itthrough the mouth and expel it through the nose[5]; and thepurification of the heart by vomiting,[6] and the ventilation of thealimentary canal by means of the crow-bill pout.'[7]

Then, seeing I was puzzled, she continued:

'These things must be learned from a teacher, as also the postures andexercises which force the evil humours from the joints, and enable theseeker after knowledge to concentrate the currents of his body.'

'It seems to me you think too much about the body.'

'When its gross elements are vivified, Sahib,' she answered, 'you willunderstand, but that can only come with practice.'

'I think I had better begin now!'

Hastini was utterly in earnest, and took me at my word.

'Begin, then,' she said, 'by inhaling the beauty of the world: theindividuality that the new-born child proclaims with its first cry: thefragrance of the gardens of Shalimar: or the stuff that God gave toyour nostrils to make you a living soul, if you like. It is all thesame prana. Receive it thankfully and humbly. Do not expect toabsorb more of it than you are ready to build with. There is nogreater sin than pride, and no greater friend than breath: itsinspiration, retention and exhalation is your life, and all life;through it you shall know the truth of Sivagama's words: 'There isnothing, O Lotus-faced goddess, beyond the breath.' Sivanand will showyou, and you can copy him.'

Sivanand made me place one hand at his navel and the other at the smallof his back. Then he swelled himself with air and collapsed himselfwith rhythmic speed, each inhalation seeming like a light hammer-tap.Finally, with breath retained and eyes upturned, he remained still, yetstrangely vibrant. Through this hidden energy I drew through him asense of power, not directly derived from his physical envelope, butcoming, perhaps, from all thought in all worlds. I saw distant mindsand the souls of the dead, and reached out to them with the fingers ofspirit, but grasped only air: I could not enter them.

'Once a guru was able to possess himself of the mind and body of aQueen of Benares by this power of prana, so that he became the Queenherself,' said Sivanand. 'But the control of such forces is verydifficult. The bhastrika is first of all a cleansing breath. Beyondthat you need not look. During the inward breath, imagine that you areabsorbing some portion of the Cosmic Consciousness. During the outwardbreath, send your spirit out to the four corners of the earth. Andduring the holding of the breath, listen attentively to the lifewithin. In that stillness the five illusions fade in the knowledge ofSiva, and Reality is seen as a candle in a windless place. The flameis in every heart, but it cannot shine amidst confusions of desire.'

Three times I took twenty-one breaths and held my breath.

The first time I felt as if something had caught me by the throat.

The second time I again felt suffocated, but knew that prana wasmobilising the armies of the blood and forcing its way through thebarriers of the body. There was a struggle between opposing forces, adescent into hell, a search of Orpheus for his bride; then so-calledmind asserted its dominion over so-called matter, light replaceddarkness and my stimulated blood-stream flooded through every cell. Ifelt buoyant and calm and intuitively aware.

The third time, a sense of ease and equipoise almost instantly replacedthe initial struggle, and with this physical balancing came anapprehension untellable. With my Angel I took wings of wonder andtraversed continents and worlds, and seemed to reach the last stars,beyond thinking, where mind is not, and where that nothing out of whichcame something seems almost clutchable.

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'If you practise this restraint three times a day for six months atregular hours,' said Sivanand, 'you may begin to obtain results.'

'Results?'

'Sounds: they will be but your own blood in your arteries. Sights:images in your own retina if you care to separate them from otherillusions. Sensations: the quivering of Kundalini in the spine, ifyou so imagine it. But if I tell you what to expect, what you expectwill come to pass, but not in its natural order. You must haveconfidence. Open your heart and lungs to the source of life andprana will work for you. Remember that the purpose of allpranayama—and this is a truth on which you must ponder—is to makethe breath come slowly and slowly. When its inspiration and expirationare exactly balanced, you will have peace of mind, whether you know itor not.'

Bhagawan Sri, I remembered, had told me the same at Benares. What washe doing now, I wondered, so aloof and still?

An hour and a half had passed, and still he remained immobile,unseeing, as if carved against a red sky. Sivanand guessed my thought.

'We could not disturb him, even if we would, Sahib, for he is rapt.But let us go to him, for he would not have meditated like this in theopen unless he had desired you to see him.'

We went to the place where he sat, followed by the terrier, growling.

'Touch him,' said Sivanand, 'and you will see that he is cold. He iswith his shakti, in the isolation of bliss. He has drawn Kundaliniupwards so that all life has left his body except in one place. Thethousand-petalled jewel of the lotus glows. There only his life burnsin one fiery point.'

I hesitated, but the cheelas made me put my hand on his ankles andhis neck. They were icy-cold. His eyes were turned upwards into hisskull. He did not seem to breathe. To all intents and purposes he wasdead, except that the extreme top of his head was hot.

'Do not be alarmed, Sahib,' said Hastini. 'He can recall Kundaliniat will.'

'You are sure that he can come back?'

'He will bring Kundalini down at nightfall,' said Hastini. 'Come,Sahib, you are cold.'

She drew her arm through mine, and we returned to the hut. The glow ofher body warmed me through and through.

A curious comprehension seemed to link us, but whatever thisunderstanding was, she was its mistress as she was its begetter: shecould make me burn or freeze, but I did not feel that I had any effecton her.

She began to speak of that serpent-lore of the Tantriks which is atonce so mystical and so material that it baffles the Western mind.

'The goddess is more subtle than the fibre of the lotus,' she said,'and lies asleep at the base of the spine, curled three-and-a-halftimes round Herself, closing with Her body the door of Brahman.Sometimes She awakes of Her own volition, which you call falling inlove. Falling in love! Yes, like slipping on a mango skin. The rightway to arouse Her is through breathing. Then you do not fall, but riseinto love. Then She uncoils Herself, and raises Her head, and entersthe royal road of the spine, piercing the mystic centres, until Shereaches the brain. These things are not to be understood in a day.When She reaches the thousand-petalled jewel of the lotus, then the Sunat the navel meets the Moon at the throat, and you taste Her nectar,and know that She is Life, and that Life is God.'

Hastini held me as if I had been entranced. I could not take my eyesfrom hers: they were my gates of pearl.

One can, if one will, describe what happens when four hands meet. Onecan, if one will, describe the sudden understanding between a man andwoman, the conflagrant moment when two Selves come into the sunlight ofunity, knowing each other. But there are moments stranger still, whichno tongue can tell, or pen write, when nothing happens on the physicalplane, unless the eyes between themselves spin some etheric web inwhich something dances, like the sex-chromosomes in the womb. It isnot in the body alone that a child is born. Every woman carries withinher another seed: she is the begetter of more than bodies. That whichwas born between Hastini and I that night still lives, and cantherefore reproduce its kind, but what and where it is I cannot say.

When the guru returned, he joined in our conversation as if he hadnever left us. I did ask him about his trance, for the talk still ranon the mysteries of love and devotion, and Bhagawan Sri was disposed tolisten to his cheelas. 'Sivanand and I have renounced even theVeda.' Hastini was saying: 'We are crossing the ocean of Maya, and wedo not know what we shall find on its farther shore. But after allthis is the playtime of the spirit that cannot always live in one room,nor always fix its thoughts on eternity.'

'The wife and the mother is the sole and sacred path,' said BhagawanSri, quoting a text. 'In her you shall be born again.'

Hastini considered this a moment, and added a saying of Bhartihari's:

'The true object of love is the union of the hearts of theparticipants. When that is not accomplished, the mating might be thatof two corpses.'

'Through breathing you shall come to Layasiddhi,' said Bhagawan Sri,'as through walking you reach a place of pilgrimage. Sivanand willfind Her who is his hidden half, and you, Hastini, Him. The trueknowledge of Being comes out of the masculine awakening in woman, andthe feminine in man, which is manifested on the earth-plane as sexualunion. In that super-sensual bliss the rock of egoism is riven, andthe two become One, and Very God.'

'And then, after a long time,' said Sivanand, 'when we see the childrenof our children, we shall abandon all food taken in towns and takerefuge in a lonely forest. And so we shall have escaped from the netof desire, although still together, and Siva shall be seen by us in histrue aspect.'

'Instead of as Kali,' I said, 'who dances upon the body of her husband?'

'Yes, Sahib, instead of in the mayik form necessary for creation.Every instant upon this earth there is a great out-pouring offertility. Every second a new-born child is somewhere crying, andsomewhere another soul is leaving the skull it inhabits. These changespertain to maya; their perception is the higher wisdom. There are amillion lives in Sivanand, waiting to meet Hastini's. Their willsshall choose them, by a knowledge and control of their dual natureswhich is the microcosm of the world-process between Siva and hisshakti.'

Again I suspected, but I think now wrongly, that Bhagawan Sri was notbeing as explicit as he might have been.

We ate a few mangoes and drank a little milk. We looked up to thestars, and warmed ourselves at our fire. Sivanand smoked incessantly.

'I have found clues, guru-ji, to some of the things which I have beenseeking,' I said at last, 'but there is one of my questions which youhave avoided. To-morrow I shall know the answer; so why not tell menow whether I may come to Amarnath?'

The guru took a piece of biscuit and showed it to his terrier, whojumped round him expectantly. When he tossed it up, she caught it inmid-air.

'Look at that for concentration!' he said. 'That is the quality ofekagrata, the faculty of sinking the mind in space, as a lover intothe arms of his adored.'

'You will not take me?'

'The bee buzzes when it is outside the flower,' said Bhagawan Sri, 'butwithin the chalice it drinks honey silently. In the West you may finda guru who knows the skilful management of your times and values, tolead you to the threshold of the temple of the undistracted mind.'

I swallowed my disappointment. In the light of the embers over whichwe crouched, I could see Hastini's eyes, narrowed, observant, like aline of black bees in a summer sky.

We talked far into the night, of many things of both East and West; andI knew that I was receiving a lesson in that virtue of the Path whichcomplements love.

We spoke of the teachings of Christianity in regard to death (theguru considered that we sometimes relinquished this life with anunseemly struggle); and of the connexion between modern mathematics andthe word iva—relativity—so constantly appearing in the Vedas; andagain of breathings such as the brahmarai,[8] and the sitali,[9]and the one-four-two rhythm, by which the mind may pass behind thelights and shadows of the phenomenal world.

'How may the knower cut the knot of appearances with a knife of greypulp?' said Sivanand. 'A knock against the hard facts of existence mayblunt the brain: too much sleep may rust it: too little sleep may makeit as brittle as a dry twig. Then snap—you cannot know Reality untilyour next incarnation!'

Presently I lay down, telling myself I could listen better like that.

'Your civilisation has done marvellous things,' he continued, suckingat the cup of his hands in which a cigarette burned, so that he drew inlungfuls of mixed smoke and air. 'You have almost conquered the earth.With your telescopes and trains and battleships you can move andcontrol almost everything, except your thoughts, and the food in yourbowels.... You look outwards too much. Our methods are morereasonable. We do not bother about engines. The shakti-nadi is amore important machine.'

I rose, startled. Sivanand was still speaking, but in another tone.

'As the dew is dried by the morning light,' he was saying, 'so are thesins of mankind dispersed by the glories of Himalaya.'

Then Hastini capped him with: 'He who has seen Himalaya is greater thanhe who has performed all the worships of Kashi.'

Hours had passed, and although it was not yet dawn, its foreglow hadalready lit three hundred miles of snow before me, remote, and plumedwith storms that never cease; yet in appearance so close and so quietthat it seemed to me that I might stroll there in an hour or two, andbask in a white peace.

The three now sat silent, with the old bitch at my guru's feet,looking over those titanic masses that have given India her fertilityand her faith. In the increasing light, the clouds above them took theshape of beasts. A dragon pounced on the mountains of Nepal, a lizardwith eyes of flame devoured a fly upon Nanda Devi, a sprawling giantessstretched her length from Trisul to Diwalghiri and searched the valleyswith a luminous rapier.

Surya had begun the skyey chase that never ends. For all his pains hecan do no more than touch the hem of the twilight maid, and gather theroses of morning that she scatters. Yet it is for her that the worldis lit. But for her, flowers would not open, nor man walk the earth.But for her darkness, there would be no light.

The old mountains looked indulgently on the five of us who faced theshrines of Aryavarta. Buddhas and birds and butterflies and trees wereone to them. The world was still young, and full of a blossoming and afluttering and a search for things unfindable.

The sun lit up the yellow robes of my friends, and their lips moved,but I heard no sound, for the Gayatri is very sacred:

OM TAT SAVITUR VARENYAM BHARGO DEVASYA DIMOHI DHIYO YO NAH PRACHODAYATOM.

O face of the True Sun, now hidden by a disc of gold, may we know ThyReality, and do our whole duty on our journey to Thy Light.[10]

'Guru-ji, when may I say that prayer?'

'Soon or late you will be one of us, for there is that within a manwhich is stronger than any outer circumstance. When you have learnedmore of the breath which is a reflex of the Great Breath, you willnotice the tricks time plays on man, and know that it is not within theframe of our measurements.'

'In this dawn I am aware of that!'

'You have begun to be aware of love. But mortal mind cannot know itsheights and depths. In the Upanishads it is written that in thebeginning nor time nor change, nor speech, nor shape, nor Aught, norNaught, existed. Love came to this emptiness as the in-drawn breath ofcosmos, and out of it the worlds were made. Nature and Will wereformed then and both are bound by Love, so that the three are one.Every religion in the world says this, and I have studied them all!'

The words rang true. In his mind, so resilient and so sane, werefaiths flooded over by the sands of Atlantis and Chaldea; the Vaishnatrident and the Shaivite eye were there; the seal of twi-sexed Hermes,the vulture cap of Isis, the serpent-circled rod, the Crescent and theCross. And as all colours mingle and merge in sunlight, so in him theblending of these beliefs showed forth love.

[1] Initiation.

[2] Posture and exercise.

[3] Air, which the Hindus have always held to be something more than amixture of gases.

[4] Purification.

[5] Vayut Krama and s'it Krama.

[6] Hrid-dhauti by vamana.

[7] Vatasara-dhauti by Kakini-mudra.

[8] A droning sound.

[9] A serpent-hiss.

[10] This is what I understand the Gayatri to mean: the literaltranslation is 'Let us contemplate that glorious Light of the divineSavitur: may He inspire our minds.'

THE END

APPENDIX

The word Yoga comes from root yug, meaning to join: it signifies theunion of the body of the disciple with the visible world, and of hisspirit with cosmic consciousness. Further, Yoga has the sense of ayoke, or discipline, which the student must undergo in order to reachhappiness and heaven.

Yoga, as I know it, is monistic. 'All that exists is one, though sagescall it by different names.' Many centuries after these Vedic wordswere written St. Athanasius was made responsible for the idea that:'the reasonable soul and flesh is one man. One, not by conversion ofthe God-head into flesh; but by taking of the manhood into God; onealtogether, not by confusion of substance: but by unity of person.'

There is no notion in Yoga, as I know it, of a divinity disjunct fromthe Self, no doctrine of a Creator ruling His Universe from an outsideheaven. Such a possibility may be admitted or implied in some Hinduscriptures, but my guru, at any rate, concerned himself entirely withMan and his Becoming.

Yoga is the study of You.

The body of the Yogi is the universe. It is not, however, either somaterial or so metaphysical a body as is commonly believed; but thewhole subject is so enmeshed in prejudice, misunderstanding, andunfamiliar Sanskrit terms that I despair of condensing into a fewthousand words what Arthur Avalon and Professor Radha Krishnan havediscussed brilliantly—in many volumes.

I take courage, however, from the fact that the knowledge of the Vedasis beginning to spread in Europe. 'In the whole world there is nostudy so beneficial or so elevating,' said Schopenhauer, adding that'the Vedas have been the solace of my life: they will be the solace ofmy death.' On this Max Müller observed that 'if the words ofSchopenhauer required any endorsement from me I would willingly give itas the result of my own experiences during a long life devoted to thestudy of many philosophies and many religions. If by philosophy ismeant a preparation for a happy death, I know no preparation betterthan the philosophy of the Vedas. The early Indians possessed aknowledge of the true God. All their writings are replete withsentiments and expressions that are noble, clear and severely grand.Not to know what the Vedas have already done in illuminating thedarkest passages of the human mind—of that mind on which we ourselvesare feeding and living—is a misfortune.' Two modern authorities (SirJohn Woodroffe and M. Maeterlinck) support these statements. Theformer, in The World as Power-Reality, claims that 'an examination ofIndian Vedic doctrine shows that it is, in important respects, inconformity with the most advanced scientific and philosophic thought ofthe West, and that when this is not so, it is science which will go tothe Vedanta and not the reverse'; while M. Maeterlinck, in La GrandeFéerie, writing of the problems of time and space, says: 'Seule, àl'origine des âges, l'antique religion de l'Inde wut l'intuition de cesgigantesques et insolubles problèmes. Elle regardait l'univers enmouvement comme une illusion qui apparait ou disparait selon un rhythmesans fin que scandent le sommeil et le reveil de la Cause Eternelle....N'est-ce pas dans cette voie que marche notre science?'

But Hindu philosophy will require many more libraries andexpositors—say another thousand man-years of work—before it isrightly valued in the West. A system whose scriptures number fivehundred volumes and go back five thousand years cannot be understood ina day, or even in a generation. To sift and refine, to analyse andcompare, will be a labour in which the exact scholarship of Europe andAmerica may co-operate with the intuitive feeling-realisation of therace to whom the Vedas belong. Already the University of Oxford haspublished some forty translations of Sanskrit texts. Harvard haspublished twenty-six texts, and Johns Hopkins the whole of the AtharvaVeda, but there are many more books that await translation, and evendiscovery, for some of the Tantrik scriptures have been hidden away.

Further, there is an immense exegesis in Sanskrit, German, French andEnglish; and, incomparably more important than all else, there stillexists a living tradition of Vedic culture by the banks of the Ganges.The Brahmins of to-day, like their ancestors, have a great appetite forabstractions: they have always discussed everything and triedeverything of which man has ever thought. In a material sense this hasperhaps been their undoing, but it has also been a source of innerstrength. No other race has delved so deep into the Unconscious. Andno other race has survived so long in racial purity. Theirs is themost ancient civilisation on earth. Benares was a venerable town whenLondon and Paris were villages. Down the centuries the Brahmins havecarried the torch of the Vedas above the heads of the crowd, and theyare rightly proud of the light it has given the world.

But with Hindu philosophy as a whole I am only indirectly concerned. Ihave no knowledge of the meditational environments of the ashrams andmonasteries of Asia. There is only one branch of Yoga which I haveexperienced in my bones and breathing, and that a very practical one,which would be well adapted to meet the increasing nervous strain ofmodern life.

The Hindus have never held that matter is some inert outside substance.It is a commonplace with them that the body is an aspect of the mind.God is life. Life is God. Yoga is an orderly and objective process ofself-realisation; the handmaid of religion, not a religion in itself.It has nothing to do with mystery and Mahatmas.

Moreover, there is more than one Yoga. Here are six, which I have setdown as a concession to our Western love for classification:

1. Mantra Yoga, or the science of vibrations;

2. Gnana Yoga, in which the intellect is invoked to obtain aknowledge of heaven;

3. Bhakti Yoga, where the disciple finds 'paradise here in this bodypent' by means of love and devotion;

4. Karma Yoga, which is the philosophy of work and the attainment ofhappiness through action;

5. Raja Yoga, which aims at a synthesis Gnana, Karma and BhaktiYoga by service and self-sacrifice in the management of worldly affairs;

And 6. Hatha or Gathastha Yoga, with which I have been chieflyconcerned, and which seeks in its early stages to awaken the sleepingserpent of Kundalini, or vitality, by a physiological psychology.

But there is no real dividing line between these Yogas nor between theeight stages (corresponding to the Buddhist's 'noble eight-fold path')into which every one of them is divided. These stages are:

1. Right thought, or yama-niyama, meaning literally 'death-notdeath.' The pundit at Delhi gave me a list of these preliminaryvirtues, which includes the moralities of all religions.

2. Asana, or right positions. These relate to the balance andposture of the body. Buddha, for instance, is generally representedwith his right foot on his left thigh and his left foot on his right,in what is known as the lotus seat, which has as definite an effect onthe mind as has the Christian asana of kneeling in prayer.

3. Mudra consists of exercises and gestures, including thedhauties, or purifications, or baptisms.

4. Pranayama is the study of the various rhythms of breathing. Itcannot be undertaken until both mind and body have been rendered suppleand pure by previous exercises.

The four succeeding stages are: 5. Pratyahara, 6. Dharana, 7.Dhyana, and 8. Samadhi. These steps are described at great lengthin some English works on Yoga, but the true teaching never will andnever can be put in print, being personal and infinitely flexible. Allthat is written in Sanskrit concerning it is in the nature of notes oroutlines to enable the guru to pass on the teaching to his cheelain the accustomed order. Roughly, pratyahara is nerve control;dharana, mind control; dhyana, meditation; samadhi, bliss,isolation, emancipation, ecstasy. The Jesuits, whose exercises Loyolamay have borrowed from Moorish mysticism, possess the nearest approachto dhyana in the West.

Before the fourth stage can be entered upon (pranayama) threebaptisms are necessary; by water, fire and the Holy Ghost. Baptism bywater is of the skin, teeth, nasal passages and lower bowel.Purification by fire is concerned with control of the digestivesystem—for an active metabolism is considered in Yoga as a function ofpurity. Finally the sloughing of the shell of egoism, the preparationof the mind for the illumination of the Spirit, is a combination ofexercises for the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic nervous systemstogether with an individual course of character-training under theguru. Hot baths and white linen will not of themselves make usclean; nor sexual repressions. The Eastern purity is more thoroughthan ours, and insists on an elimination of poisons of the intestinaltract, a proper digestion of food, and a riddance of the lumber ofthwarted will and unsatisfied desire that hamper the brain.

Here in the West we make an exact science of medicine and are inclinedto consider religion as something rather esoteric; the Brahmins, on thecontrary, see in our body a mystical microcosm of the Universe, and inideas about God only a formal and rather sterile intellectual exercise.A balance between these views would certainly contribute to theadvancement of knowledge and be of benefit to both races. The Hindus,as I think they would themselves admit, should come closer to certainpractical realities; as to ourselves, if we studied the mysticalphenomena of India, we might well discover facts of importance not onlyto Harley Street, but to Christendom.

I am a Christian myself, and it seems to me clear that Christ based histeaching on a tradition existing in His time and country, and that thattradition originally came from India, and is still being followedthere, passing from father to son, from guru to cheela, with someaccretions and superstitions perhaps, yet still one of the most ancientof languages 'in which men have spoken of their God.'

Consider, for instance, the healing miracles of Christ from thestandpoint of the aphorisms of Patanjali. In the vivid and mysterious11th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, the disciple whomJesus loved would appear to have been prepared for an ancient exercise,no doubt practised by the Essenes of that time as it is by the Coptsto-day, and known in India as the Kali-mudra.[1]

This Kali-mudra is a self-induced trance which is only entered intoby the aptest pupils of a great teacher, and then only afterpreparation and purification, for it is dangerous, and success in it isproof that the student can transcend the limitations of time in his ownflesh. Quite properly, such powers were kept secret in past ages.Even to-day they are not for the crowd, but if they do exist (and Iknow that they are still being practised) then I think that knowledgeof them would elucidate certain incidents in the life of the Founder ofour Faith.

There is nothing in the following 'reconstruction' of the story ofLazarus that need strain our sense of probability.

First, then, let us assume, as we surely may, that the mysteries of theKingdom of Heaven were given to some and not to others of those whomChrist taught. Between Jesus and the Little Eleazer (Lazarus is anaffectionate diminutive; moreover he was unmarried, which again pointsto discipleship) there existed some special bond which may well havebeen that of master to initiate.

Lazarus stopped breathing. His heart-beat could not be felt.Naturally his sisters thought that he was dead and sent word to Jesus,their friend.

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What did Jesus do? Hurry to the house that had so often sheltered Himand help the boy to whom He had given His divine love? On thecontrary, He said that the sickness was 'not unto death, but for theglory of God'—words which seem to indicate that Lazarus was undergoinga step in his training which the Master did not wish to interrupt.

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The disciples come to the Master and say that if Lazarus is only asleep'he will do well.' There is no reason, they add, to risk the danger ofa journey into Judea.

Two days pass. Lazarus has not yet awakened from his trance and is nowin danger.

Then Jesus says to his disciples plainly, 'Lazarus is dead.'

To all intents and purposes Lazarus is dead, for unless the Masterraises him, the ordeal will end in tragedy. First Jesus says that thesleep is not unto death and two days later that the sleeper is dead:how better are we to account for the apparent contradiction in Christ'swords than by the hypothesis that Lazarus has been in a trance? Noother explanation, it seems to me, will square with all the facts givenin the Fourth Gospel.

Jesus comes to Bethany and finds that His disciple has been in thegrave for four days. Martha says, 'Lord, if Thou hadst been here mybrother had not died.' True, Lazarus would not have died. But eachsoul must go out alone to meet its God: the divine arms can only helpit after it has tried to walk.

The terrible moment of His tears and groaning as He draws near the tombis now understandable (indeed it is suffused with new light) if weaccept this theory. The one being who could have understood the hiddenside of His teaching and might therefore have given Him a humansympathy, has been unable, through bodily weakness, to carry the burdenof the knowledge given. Amongst these folk Jesus feels himselfsurrounded by love, but not by comprehension. Lazarus knew a littlemore than they, but less than He had hoped. A friend has failed him,not for the first or last time.

When the stone is about to be removed, Martha says that the body willstink. So it would have in that climate; but Yogis have been known toremain as long as forty days in Kali-mudra.

They take away the stone. Jesus lifts up His eyes and says: 'Father, Ithank Thee that Thou hast heard Me.' Then he calls Lazarus in a loudvoice (or a 'piercing' voice, for the dearly-loved voice of the Mastermust reach a numbed consciousness) and the soul of the disciple isbrought back from the borderland where it hovers.

Christ speaks and there is life.

[1] Literally, 'death-gesture.'

[End of Bengal Lancer, by F. Yeats-Brown]