Life in an Indian Outpost Part 8

A panther is a much bolder animal than a tiger. He generally returns to his kill earlier, often in broad daylight. I have seen one come out, five minutes after my coolies had left, from some bushes in which he had evidently been watching them. Even when shot at and missed or slightly wounded they will return the same night to a kill. And sometimes one has been known to discover the waiting sportsman in the _machan_ first and spring up the tree to attack him unprovoked. So that sitting up for these animals is not without its risks.

The method of shooting tiger from elephants undoubtedly gives the best sport. Seventeen miles from Buxa Fort the great forest ends abruptly.

From its ragged edge, five miles above the town of Alipur Duar, the cultivated plains stretch away to the south, seamed with _nullahs_ which run from inside the jungle through the open fields. They are generally deep and filled with low trees and scrub, and as they contain water form ideal bases of operation for a tiger issuing from the forest to carry on war against herds of cattle in the villages. The striped thief can lie up within a few hundred yards of a farm and kill the cows when they come to drink. If disturbed, he can retreat up the _nullah_ to the shelter of the forest. Consequently the stretch of ground just outside the south border of the Terai Jungle is full of tigers.

During a visit from our Colonel to Buxa for his annual inspection I received an invitation from Mr Ainslie, the Subdivisional Officer of Alipur Duar, to bring my elephants and join him in a beat for a cattle thief which was lying up in a _nullah_ three or four miles from the town. At that time I had only Khartoum and Dundora; as Jhansi had run away to the forest after being attacked by a wild elephant and had been missing for months. However, on our arrival, we found Ainslie had collected seven; so that we had nine altogether. This number was not a great one; but we hoped that it would suffice. Mrs Ainslie was to accompany us; for she was a great sportswoman and had shot five tigers herself, as well as various panthers, bears and bison. We started out in the early morning, crossed the railway line, forded a river--which each elephant carefully sounded with its trunk--and reached the _nullah_ in which the tiger was reported to be lurking. It was broad and dry, filled with scrub and low trees. Ainslie took the Colonel in his howdah; and Mrs Ainslie shared mine. Taking up our positions on the bank we sent the beater elephants half a mile further on to drive towards us. At a signal from Ainslie the beat began. The elephants formed line across the _nullah_ and advanced, forcing their way through the jungle. An occasional squeal from one of them when the _mahout_ struck it on the head for s.h.i.+rking a particularly th.o.r.n.y bit of scrub, the cries of the men and the cras.h.i.+ng of the huge beasts through the jungle as they trampled down the undergrowth and broke off branches from the trees, made din enough to scare anything. It soon proved too much for the tiger's nerves. My _mahout_ had carelessly allowed his elephant to draw back from the edge of the steep bank. I saw a sudden flash of yellow as the tiger darted through the scrub along under the overhanging brink in such a way that he was sheltered from my rifle. But I shouted a warning to the others, who were posted farther down where the bank sloped less steeply. The Colonel fired and wounded the beast, which dashed up the bank and received a bullet from Ainslie before it was lost to sight in the high gra.s.s on the level. The beater elephants emerged from the _nullah_, surrounded it, and drove it in again. They endeavoured to send it to us; but the tiger refused to face the guns a second time and broke through their line, my orderly, Draj Khan, hurling a heavy stick at it and hitting it as it flashed past his elephant. We tried for it again lower down, several times, but without success.

While we were thus engaged it seemed strange to see the mail train pa.s.s on the railway line not half a mile from us, driver, guard, and pa.s.sengers leaning out to look at us. Leaving the _nullah_ we ranged through the long gra.s.s on the level and put up a number of wild pigs, the Colonel shooting a fine old boar with long tusks as sharp as knives.

Having heard that a panther was supposed to be lying up in another _nullah_ a couple of miles away, we took our elephants there and tried a beat for it. This time the howdah bearers advanced along the bank in line with the beaters, s.p.a.ced across the _nullah_, which was fairly open, with patches of scrub here and there in it. We were unsuccessful in finding the panther but were afforded an excellent example of the terror with which elephants regard tiny, harmless animals. Over some bushes in front of me I caught a glimpse of a hare running through them down into the _nullah_. Its course brought it right across the line of beaters. Then these huge beasts, which had just faced a wounded tiger unmoved, went mad at the sight of it. All trumpeted shrilly, some planted their forefeet firmly and refused to advance, others turned and stampeded, despite the heavy blows showered on them with the iron _ankus_ by the enraged _mahouts_. I saw Ainslie and the Colonel, unable to discover the cause of the disturbance, stand up in their howdah, clutching their rifles and looking everywhere for the charging panther, which they imagined must have scared the elephants.

One afternoon in Buxa I received a telegram from Ainslie telling me to be with him early next morning as a tiger had killed in his neighbourhood that day. As Alipur Duar was twenty-two miles away it behoved me to start at once and march through the night. So, filling my Thermos flask and putting a loaf of bread and a tin of preserved meat into my haversack, I shouldered my rifle and walked down the three miles of steep road to Santrabari. Here I found the _mahouts_ and ordered them to get the two elephants ready, Jhansi still being a deserter. I bade them put the howdah on Dundora's back, as she was the steadier with a charging tiger. We started off at once; but before we reached the railway station at Buxa Road, darkness had fallen. My elephant stepped out briskly with the swaying stride that is particularly trying in a howdah, the occupant of which is shaken about like a pea on a drum. I kept slipping off the hard wooden seat; so I tried standing up, holding on to the front rail. This was almost worse; for if I forgot for a moment to brace myself up with stiffened arms I was thrown against the side. So for twenty-two miles I had to keep changing my position continually and found it tiring work. Through the forest we lumbered on without stopping. The night was dark. Fortunately, the road ran along beside the railway line clear of the trees, which would otherwise have swept the howdah off Dundora's back. Once or twice a wild elephant trumpeted in the jungle, much to the alarm of our tame ones; so I kept my rifle loaded, ready to drive off any we might meet. When I felt hungry I opened the tin of meat and, as we went along, made a frugal dinner, having to use my fingers as knife and fork, was.h.i.+ng the food down with water from my flask. The long march was extremely fatiguing; but by daylight we were clear of the forest. Arrived at the _dak_ bungalow at Alipur Duar I found one of the officers of my regiment, Major Burrard, who had come there on leave from headquarters at Dibrugarh in a.s.sam for a shoot. The Ainslies could not accompany us that day, but had kindly lent us their four elephants. The kill was reported to be in a _nullah_ about four miles away, close to the edge of the forest. Burrard and I started for it at once. Our way lay over open bare fields. Our elephants, as is their habit, persisted in tailing off in single file, though a hundred could have marched abreast. Each kept exactly in the footprints of the one in front of it. As we went along, I noticed half a mile to our left a _nullah_ fringed with trees. In these, or circling overhead, were a number of vultures. I remarked that every now and then one would swoop down to the ground, only to rise again into the air like a rocketting pheasant without alighting. They indicated the presence of a dead animal; and I asked the _mahouts_ if our kill was there. They answered that it was about a mile further on. I judged that another cow must have been killed in this _nullah_; and from the fact that the vultures did not dare to settle on it, I concluded that a tiger must be in the immediate vicinity. So I directed my elephant towards the spot. As we drew near I looked at the rows of bald-headed vultures, those repulsive-looking scavengers of India, sitting on the branches.

Every few minutes one would fly down towards the ground and, without settling, hurriedly shoot up again into the air. Cautiously approaching the edge of the bank we found, as I expected, the carca.s.s of a cow. We skirted the bank but could not see the tiger, which was probably asleep somewhere in the tangled scrub in the bottom of the _nullah_. So, marking the spot for a visit next day, we went on our way. Arrived at the place where the beat was to begin, we found another _nullah_ filled with jungle, with bare, open ground stretching away on either side of it. We took up our positions in it on our two howdah elephants and put the beaters in farther down.

They came on the tiger lying asleep under a tree. He sprang up in alarm and, instead of retreating along the _nullah_ towards us, rushed up the bank and broke away over the open past a group of natives who had come out from a farm close by to watch the hunt. As he was not fifty yards from them, they were very scared. It must have been a fine sight to see the big cat bounding across the bare plain until he reached and plunged into a parallel _nullah_ a few hundred yards away. But we in the bottom of our ravine saw or heard nothing of him until our beaters came up. We searched the other _nullah_ for him in vain. He probably had not stopped until he had reached the shelter of the forest.

That night, when dining with the Ainslies, our host told us of some curious happenings in tiger hunts around Alipur Duar. A former commandant was shooting one day on Dundora. Mrs Ainslie was in the howdah with him. A tiger burst out of the jungle before the beat. The officer fired and wounded it; but, hardly checking in its rush, it dashed forward, being missed by another bullet, and sprang on to the elephant's head. For a second it stood with its hind feet on Dundora's skull, its forepaws on the front rail of the howdah. The officer dropped his empty rifle and, seizing a second gun, shoved the muzzle against the tiger's chest and fired. The brute fell back off the elephant, dead. The whole incident had pa.s.sed like a flash. The tiger had actually stood right over the _mahout_ crouching on the neck; but the man, although he found afterwards a long tear in the shoulder of his coat from the animal's claw, was not touched. On another occasion a tiger was shot in mid air as it sprang clean across a _nullah_, crumpled up and fell into the stream at the bottom. When the sportsmen on their elephants reached the edge of the bank, it was nowhere to be seen; and they concluded that it must have escaped down the _nullah_. But a month afterwards a second tiger was similarly shot in the middle of a spring and was seen from a distance to fall into a stream in the _nullah_, try to struggle out of the water and collapse beneath the surface. So the mystery of the first one's disappearance was solved. It must have been lying under water at the bottom of the _nullah_; but no one thought of looking for it there.

Next morning I came out on to the veranda of the _dak_ bungalow and surveyed with pride the six elephants drawn up in line before me. On the neck of each sat the _mahout_, who raised his hand to his forehead in a salaam. Then at the word of command the six trunks were lifted into the air and the elephants trumpeted in salute. As I looked at them I murmured inwardly: "This day a tiger must die!"

We were to look for the animal that had killed the cow I had found the previous morning. So Burrard and I made an early start and proceeded to the spot I had marked. The _nullah_ was narrow, S-shaped, with almost perpendicular banks fifteen feet high. A stream of water filled it from bank to bank. On either side of it was thick scrub jungle and elephant gra.s.s eight feet high. I stationed Burrard at one end of the S and took up my position at the other about a hundred yards from him. My elephant was back a little from the _nullah_, along the far bank of which the tall, stiff gra.s.s stood like a wall. The beaters started a quarter of a mile from us and drove through the scrub on the other side of the _nullah_. A tiger, as a rule, begins to move at the first sound of the beat; so I stood up in my howdah with my rifle c.o.c.ked. I may mention that shooting from an elephant, even when it is standing, is not easy, for the animal is never still. It continually s.h.i.+fts its weight from foot to foot, flaps its ears, moves its head and beats its sides or chest with its trunk to drive off the flies.

The line of beaters advanced through the scrub with their usual din.

Now and then, under the tangled undergrowth, I caught a glimpse of my orderly or a _mahout_. They drew nearer and nothing broke out of the jungle in front of them. My heart sank when I saw them not a hundred yards from me. But at that moment a number of small birds flew up from the tall gra.s.s and I heard the sound of some heavy animal forcing its way through the tough stems. I held my rifle ready to cover the spot.

The next instant I saw the head and shoulders of a large tiger push out through the gra.s.s on the very brink of the _nullah_. Though the tall stalks on my side almost concealed my elephant, the tiger saw me at once and crouched for a spring. Its savage face was plainly visible, the fierce eyes fastened on me, the snarling lips drawn back over the white fangs, the bristling whiskers, all forming a fiendish mask appalling in its cruel expression. I threw up the rifle to my shoulder, took a quick aim and fired. The tiger started convulsively, sprang erect for an instant, then plunged head foremost into the _nullah_ with stiffened forelegs close to the body, as a man diving holds his arms straight by his sides and hurls himself into the water. I was too far back from the bank to see down to the bottom of the _nullah_; but suddenly the tiger sprang convulsively straight into my view and then fell back again. The _mahout_, shrouded by the high gra.s.s, had seen nothing of all this. I shouted at him to urge Dundora forward to the edge of the _nullah_. From the brink I peered down into it; but, to my intense disappointment, no prostrate body of a tiger met my eyes. The banks were sheer; and I could look up and down the _nullah_ for a hundred yards. I could not believe that the brute had escaped. I was convinced that I had not missed him, that my bullet had struck where I aimed, right between the shoulders, as he crouched for the spring. It should have been a fatal shot; but the tiger had vanished.

Suddenly Ainslie's stories of the previous night recurred to me. I glanced down the stream and saw, twenty yards from where we stood, a discoloured patch in the dark water. I had the elephant brought opposite it. I stared hard until I believed that I could make out the outlines of a tiger below the surface and see the stripes on the body. I pointed it out to the _mahout_. He gazed unbelievingly for a moment, then gave vent to an excited shout. The beaters had meantime reached the opposite bank and were calling across to ask if I had hit the tiger. When we told them where it was they laughed incredulously. I ordered Bechan to dismount from Khartoum's neck and enter the stream. With the air of one who does a ridiculous thing to please a fretful child, he slid down the bank and walked into the water. Suddenly he yelled in terror and sprang for the dry land. He had put his bare foot on the tiger's body. The animal was lying dead in three feet of water. The others urged Bechan to go in again; and with some trepidation he did so. Reaching down he lifted up the tail and held the tip up above the surface. The other _mahouts_ and my orderly shouted with joy, for it meant largesse to them, and jumped in after Bechan. They moved the body easily to the edge of the water but could not lift it up the bank. We called some coolies from huts close by; and it took twenty men to raise the carca.s.s up to the level.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TIGER'S LYING IN STATE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TIGER'S LAST HOME.]

The tiger was a fine young male in splendid condition, and measured nine and a half feet from nose to tip of tail. After photographing it, we brought the elephants in turn up to it as it lay on the ground and encouraged them to smell and strike it. This is done to show them that the animal is not a foe to be dreaded. We all had to help in lifting the limp body on to Khartoum's back; for a well-grown tiger weighs nearly three hundred and fifty pounds. It was fastened on to the pad with ropes; and we started back in triumphal procession to Alipur Duar, where the beast was flayed and the flesh scrambled for by the women of the neighbourhood, who gathered like vultures. The skin was pegged out on the gra.s.s to dry, before being sent to a taxidermist to be dressed and mounted to adorn my bungalow.

CHAPTER IX

A FOREST MARCH

Reasons for showing the flag--Soldierless Bengal--Planning the march--Difficulties of transport--The first day's march--Sepoys in the jungle--The water-creeper--The commander loses his men--The bivouac at Rajabhatkawa--Alipur Duar--A small Indian Station--Long-delayed pay--The Sub-divisional Officer--A _dak_ bungalow--The sub-judge--Brahmin pharisees--The _nautch_--A dusty march--Santals--A mission settlement--Crossing a river--Rafts--A bivouac in a tea garden--A dinner-party in an 80-lb.

tent--Bears at night--A daring tiger--Chasing a tiger on elephants--In the forest again--A fickle river--A strange animal--The Maharajah of Cooch Behar's experiment--A scare and a disappointment--Across the Raidak--A woman killed by a bear--A planters'

club--Hospitality in the jungle--The zareba--Impromptu sports--The Alarm Stakes--The raft race--Hathipota--Jainti.

There is a tale told of the Indian Army in the good old days when soldiering in peace time was an easy life and very different to what it has now become. The story runs that a general order was published to the effect that "Officers are forbidden to drill the men from the verandas of their bungalows." For it was said that, attired in pyjamas, they lounged comfortably in long chairs and shouted out the words of command to their companies drilling on the parade ground in front of the bungalows. But those delightful days have gone for ever. Despite what democratic orators say, the British Army has become a professional one; and soldiering in it is a strenuous existence. In India only the Rains, when outdoor work is almost impossible, give rest to the hard-worked officer and man. Musketry, field firing, company training, both winter and summer, keep them fully employed until battalion training leads up to the culminating point of the year--the brigade or divisional manoeuvres, or both. And then it begins all over again. And this, mark you, in a tropical climate!

Up to the rank of Colonel every officer must pa.s.s difficult examinations for promotion to each successive grade. And generals and colonels sit on the benches of cla.s.s-rooms in the Schools of Musketry, and in their own commands lecture, or listen to other officers lecturing, on military subjects.

In the good old days I could have sat in my bungalow in Buxa Duar and watched my sepoys drilling in the narrow limits of our small parade ground. But nowadays too high a standard of efficiency is required from the troops for this method of commanding to pa.s.s muster. So, for the first month after our arrival, we scrambled up and down the steep mountains, scaled precipices and fought our way through th.o.r.n.y jungle practising hill warfare. Then I determined to take the detachment farther afield, where the men could have more varied ground to work over and learn something of jungle life. So I mapped out a ten days' march, under war conditions, through the forest below. We should go out as a self-contained force, like the little columns that are sent against the savage tribes along our North-East Frontier. We should carry our own supplies with us, find our own transport, move by day and bivouac at night exactly as we should do in an enemy's country. As the route selected would emerge into open country for a couple of days, the men would have a change from jungle work.

I was influenced in my decision to march through the surrounding; country and "show the flag" by private representations made to me by civil officers of the district. They pointed out the advisability of letting the natives of the neighbourhood see soldiers, probably for the first time in the lives of many of them. Asiatics have short memories; and the inhabitants of the Bengals, who rarely see troops, are inclined to forget that the British Army still exists. At that time sedition was supposed to be spreading among them. For it is a curious fact that it chiefly makes headway among the unwarlike races of India, probably for the very reason that they have never learned in the field the respect that the brave man feels for the still braver antagonist who has conquered him. And British rule is more popular among the races that we have only vanquished after a hard struggle than it is among those whose ancestors never dared to meet us in battle. In all history the Bengali never was, never could be, a fighting-man. He was the easy prey of every invader; and, like the cowardly Corean, only the extreme suppleness of his back saved him from extermination. If the British left India the cities and rich lands of Bengal would be scrambled for by every warrior race in India; and her sons would not venture to lift a hand to defend themselves. But cowards are ingrates. Forgetful of all this the so-called educated Bengali whispers of the day to come when the English tyrants will be driven into the sea. He does not suggest that he and his kind will do it themselves. The young Calcutta student, crammed with undigested, ill-understood European knowledge, will talk treason glibly.

Insulting women, hurling bombs, a.s.sa.s.sinating in secret or, gun in hand, plundering unarmed villagers even more timorous than himself, he is a hero in his own eyes. But even in the wildest frenzy of his ill-balanced brain he never pictures himself facing British troops in battle. The cowardly agitator allots that task to the native soldiers when we shall have succeeded in seducing them from their allegiance. But the sepoys, recruited from races that hold only the warrior in honour, look on him and his race as something more despicable than dogs. My Rajputs--descendants of the gallant fighters who conquered half India, who struggled through b.l.o.o.d.y centuries against the Mohammedan invaders, whose women killed themselves when their lords had been slain and preferred death to dishonour--my sepoys regarded the effeminate Bengalis as uns.e.xed beings.

The Duars abound in tea states; and each manager rules six or seven hundred coolies by moral force. Several planters hinted to me that it would be a good thing to let these coolies see the gleam of bayonets for once, and realise that the white man has something more than the baton of an occasional native policeman to rely on if need arise.

Thrown on our own resources as we were in Buxa, the question of transporting the supplies and baggage of nearly two hundred men required some thinking out. We had no funds at our disposal to hire coolies; and all we could depend on was our three elephants. Ten days' food supply for so many men weighs a good deal; and we had to carry with us as well their bedding, cooking-pots, blank ammunition, pickaxes and shovels for entrenching. It needed some careful arrangement to enable three elephants to do the work of ten. I was obliged to send them out to form depots of sacks of flour, grain, and other food-stuffs at places along the route, and bring them back again to accompany us carrying the other things we required with us. Each sepoy was limited to two blankets and a change of clothing and boots rolled up in his _dhurri_ or strip of carpet. Contrary to the usual custom on peace manoeuvres each man carried a packet of ten rounds of ball cartridge in his pocket; for, had any sudden call for our services come before we could communicate with the magazine in our fort, we would have been of little use with only blank ammunition for our rifles. And in the forest at night we might require ball to protect ourselves against wild animals.

At last, our arrangements complete, we left forty men behind at Buxa to guard the Station; and one morning in February saw us, a hundred and sixty strong, marching through the jungle in the direction of Rajabhatkawa. We moved with fixed bayonets and all the proper precautions of a column pa.s.sing through an enemy's country. Advanced, rear and flank guards protected us on all sides. These detachments, instead of being thrown out a mile or more from the main body, as they would have been in open country, were not a hundred yards from it. And even that was often too much in the dense jungle. Every man carried at his belt a _kukri_, the Gurkha's heavy, curved knife, and used it to hack his way through the tangle of creepers and undergrowth. The progress was necessarily very slow, and we hardly advanced a mile an hour. We marched by compa.s.s, no easy task in thick forest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY SEPOYS DRILLING."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUGLERS AND NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS OF MY DETACHMENT.]

At the first fire line, as there was an open s.p.a.ce, I halted and closed the detachment to give them their first object-lesson in the jungle. To my men, inhabitants of the sandy deserts of Rajputana or the cultivated plains of the North-West Provinces, forest lore was unknown. And as all the warfare the a.s.sam Brigade, to which we belonged, would be called upon to wage would be fought against savages in thick jungle, I lost no chance of teaching our men all conditions of the bush. I now asked them where, when the rivers were dry, would they look for water in the forest. They mostly replied:

"We would dig for it, Sahib."

I told them that Nature had been too generous to call for such exertion and had kindly provided water in the trees. They looked at me in surprise and evidently thought that I meant to be facetious. I pointed to a thick creeper swinging between the trees in front of me and introduced them to the mysterious _pani bel_. A piece was cut off; and the water flowed from it. That astonished them.

"_Wah! wah!_ but that is _jadu_ (magic)," they said to each other.

"Marvellous is the Sahib's knowledge. Like us he is new to the forest.

Then how could he know of such a wonderful thing?"

The water creeper grew freely all round. Permission given, they broke ranks and rushed into the jungle, each resolved to handle the marvel for himself. In a few minutes I was surrounded by scores of sepoys leaning on their rifles with heads well thrown back to catch in their mouths the water dropping from the cut pieces of creeper. The _pani bel_ was a great success. They filled their haversacks with it, and all that day, at every halt, pulled it out to taste and marvel at the magic plant.

We moved on again in our original formation. Carrying my sporting rifle I walked a few yards behind the advanced line of scouts. So dense was the jungle that, out of all the hundred and sixty men around me, I could only occasionally catch glimpses of three or four. Suddenly from a hundred yards ahead I heard a large animal forcing its way through the undergrowth. Fearing that it might be a wild elephant I pushed on in front of the scouts, as my rifle would be more effective than theirs.

The animal retreated before me without my being able to see it; and I followed, glancing over my shoulder now and then to sight the sepoys behind and ensure that I was keeping the proper direction. But neglecting this precaution for five minutes, I completely lost the whole detachment. The beast I was pursuing had gone beyond hearing; so I turned back to rejoin my men. But search as I might I could not find one of them. It seemed absurd to lose in a few minutes a hundred and sixty men spread out in a loose formation. But I had succeeded in doing it.

It was a ridiculous position for the commander who was supposed to be instructing his soldiers in jungle training. But, fortunately, I already knew the forest in the neighbourhood fairly well; and guiding myself by the sun, I succeeded in getting ahead of my warriors and rejoining them at the place on which they were marching by compa.s.s without any of them realising that they had lost me. We halted for the night and bivouacked close to Rajabhatkawa Station.

The next day's march brought us out clear of the forest. As we emerged on the cultivated plains to the north of Alipur Duar, it seemed quite strange to be on open ground again and able to swing along at four miles an hour. The sepoy is a faster marcher than his British comrade and will do his five miles in the hour on a road if wanted. In his own home he thinks nothing of covering forty miles a day, shuffling along at the native jog-trot that eats up the ground.

After Buxa Alipur Duar seemed almost a city, though it is not an imposing town. The houses, when not made of mud or bamboo and thatched with straw, are built of brick and roofed with corrugated iron. But it boasts a jail, a hospital, a _dak_ bungalow and a sub-treasury. And the last was the cause of my including it in our itinerary; for the detachment was in the throes of a financial crisis. None of the officers or men had received their pay for December and January; and we had not five rupees between us. But the long-delayed pay-cheque on this sub-treasury had just reached me; and I was anxious to cash it at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately we arrived at Alipur Duar after office hours and were forced to wait another day for our money, instead of marching on next morning as I had intended.

The town had no amus.e.m.e.nt to offer us Britishers. The only Europeans who resided in it were the Ainslies; and they were then absent; for throughout the winter the district officials are out in camp, moving from village to village in their districts, and administering the law and carrying on the ground work of the Government of the land.

However, Alipur Duar boasted among its public buildings that useful inst.i.tution, a _dak_ bungalow. In little Stations and dotted every ten or fifteen miles along the highways of India, the _dak_ bungalow is there to shelter the European traveller whom Fate or his work leads far from cities and railways. It is a humble, one-storied building, erected by Government, and containing one two or three scantily furnished rooms.

It is in charge of a native attendant, who sometimes provides food for the hungry traveller, though as a rule the latter has to bring his own with him. Luckily India is the land of tinned food.

The Alipur bungalow boasted a _khansamah_, or butler, who was able to furnish us with meals. We found already installed in it a native sub-judge who had come from the headquarters of the district to try some cases in Ainslie's absence. I got into conversation with him and found him a cheery, pleasant little Bengali, a follower of the new reformed _Brahmo Samaj_ faith and consequently free from the caste prejudices of the orthodox Hindu, which do so much to keep him and the Englishman apart. Finding that our new acquaintance had no scruples about eating with Europeans, I invited him to share our dinner. He held very decided opinions on what he termed the hypocrisy of the educated Brahmins who, in public, profess to adhere strictly to the severest caste restrictions in the matter of eating with others, particularly with Europeans.

"Sir, I am not possessed of patience to endure them," he said in his quaint English. "In the town where I have the habit to reside, the Brahmin lawyers and under-official strappers invite to the farewell entertainment of a garden-party our much-to-be-regretted late Deputy-Commissioner, when being about to depart from us. They request me to pose as a host with them. I say to them: 'No; I am not willing. You ask to Mr and Mrs----, an English gentleman and lady, to come partake of your hospitality. But you put on a table in corner of tent cakes, tea and other cheering refreshments and tell them to eat alone while you turn your faces, lest to see them eat would break your caste. It is all a bos.h.!.+ I have seen many of you in strange places to eat of forbidden food at the restaurants of railway stations where you sit cheek-by-jowl with unknown Englishmen. And yet you cannot indulge in cake, refreshment, etcetera, with the esteemed departing Deputy-Commissioner.

It is all a bos.h.!.+'"

He more than repaid our hospitality that night by his amusing remarks and shrewd comments on Indian and European manners. He said that, never having come in contact with military officers before, he had watched us all that day and was astonished to see that we were on friendly terms with our native subordinates, knew the names of all our men, and did not treat them with disdainful hauteur, as alleged by the Bengali journals.

And I thought of an untravelled Englishman who had told me in a London drawing-room that we British officers were in the habit of beating our sepoys!