Life in an Indian Outpost Part 17

"Get up, man, get up!" I whispered excitedly. "I tell you there's a tiger near us. It may come close enough to give us a shot at it."

But the fatigues of the day had been too much for him. A loud snore was his only answer; and although the tiger roamed around the house for half an hour, uttering its peculiar snorting roar, it never woke him.

However, he lost nothing but the noise; for, though I sat eagerly expectant by the window for a long time, the brute never came within range.

My next visitor was Prince Jitendra Narayen, now through the death of his eldest brother Maharajah of Cooch Behar. Before Darjeeling came into existence as a Hill Station the rulers of his State possessed a house in Buxa Duar, to which they used to come in the summer to avoid the heat of the Plains. But this was before the day of the present generation of the family, none of whom, except the then Maharajah, had ever visited Buxa.

So Prince "Jit" was glad of an opportunity of seeing our small Station, and spent several days with me. As he belonged to the Imperial Service Cadet Corps he was keenly interested in military matters, and pa.s.sed much time in watching our detachment at work. Like his father, he was an ardent sportsman and good shot; and, used to the more open country south of the forest, he enjoyed wandering on one of our elephants through our dense jungle in search of _sambhur_. His cheery manner made him popular with everyone in Buxa--except our pet monkey. For that little beast, having a severe cold, was given whisky-and-milk one day, and, imbibing too freely, became absolutely drunk. Its antics as it reeled about the mess-room were extremely comical and made us all roar with laughter. It seemed to pardon its owners' want of good manners but resented Prince Jitendra's mirth as an impertinence in a stranger. Swaying drunkenly as it tried to stand on its hind legs, it chattered and shrieked with rage at him and endeavoured to stagger across the room to bite him, falling down and rolling helplessly on the floor on its way. And next morning it was plain to see that it suffered from a bad headache. But when Jit entered the Mess at breakfast-time and condoled with it on its evident pain, it flew at him and attacked him savagely.

When my guest returned to Cooch Behar I accompanied him. At the Palace his account of the beauties of Buxa Duar made the ladies of the family eager to see the place; and it was arranged that Her Highness the Maharani and her two daughters, the Princess Pretiva and Sudhira, should pay us a visit in our outpost. The Maharajah's four sons were also to come at another time, bringing all the elephants belonging to the State, to join me in making a systematic search for a rogue which was committing havoc in the forest near Buxa. But the Maharajah's illness, which necessitated his going to Europe for medical treatment and which resulted in his lamented death the following year, deprived me of the pleasure of these visits.

Shortly after Prince Jitendra's departure an order from the brigadier to report on and sketch eighty-four miles of road and country across Eastern Bengal afforded me an opportunity of seeing something of this province south of the Terai Jungle. The task was no light one. The military sketch was to be executed on a scale of two inches to a mile; so that I had to make a map fourteen feet long! It was to begin more than twenty miles west of Jalpaiguri, a town on the railway to Siliguri and Darjeeling, the route running parallel to the mountains and thirty or forty miles south of them, and ended at Alipur Duar.

As the ground to be traversed contained no towns where I could purchase supplies, I had to make my own arrangements for food as well as transport. I might find an empty _dak_ bungalow here and there; but it behoved me to carry a tent with me. So, dispatching my pony and an elephant loaded with my baggage and stores to march across country and meet me at Jalpaiguri, I went by train to this station, reaching it of course several days before my animals could arrive. There I borrowed an elephant from the police officer, bought some tinned provisions and flour, and set out west along the twenty-four miles of road to the spot where I was to begin my sketch. I was fortunate in finding _dak_ bungalows on it every ten or twelve miles in which to shelter at night.

At the first of these I was informed by the native in charge of it that on a tank--as ponds and lakes are called in India--about six miles away I would find hundreds of duck. So I shouldered my gun and set out across the fields. I discovered the tank and from a distance saw that the water was dotted with birds. Cautiously stalking them, with glowing antic.i.p.ations of wild duck for dinner, I reached the bank to find that they were coots and "divers." Not even a snipe rewarded me for my long walk; and I returned to the _dak_ bungalow to give my misinformant my candid and unflattering opinion of him.

Next day I reached the spot where my sketch was to begin. My starting-point was near another _dak_ bungalow, perched on a little hill overlooking a broad river flowing through thin jungle and well-cultivated fields. Here I turned my face towards Jalpaiguri and commenced my task. Cavalry sketching-case in hand I walked along the road through open and uninteresting country, counting my paces as measurement and filling in the meagre details of the country on either hand on my map. I completed the mapping of the twenty-four miles in two days.

Arrived at Jalpaiguri I had to wait there a day for my elephant and pony, which were accompanied by my butler and a sepoy orderly, as well as the _mahout_ and a _syce_; so that with Draj Khan, who was already with me, I had quite a following. Jalpaiguri is built on the west bank of the broad Tista River, which flows from Sikkim through the Himalayas to the plains of Bengal. The civil Station contains the usual Anglo-Indian community of such a town, the deputy commissioner, a judge, a settlement officer, a Public Works Department engineer, a police officer and a few more Europeans. There are no troops there. The engineer who had visited me at Buxa, which was in his charge, kindly offered me the shelter of his bungalow; and I was hospitably entertained by everyone in the Station. I came in for a very merry dinner-party given at the club by a number of planters of the neighbourhood to two members of their community who were leaving India for England. Near midnight we escorted the guests to the railway station and considerably delayed the mail train by our lengthy good-byes and parting libations.

In vain the stationmaster, the guard, and the engine-driver in turn stormed, argued, and pleaded with the two departing planters to take their seats and let the train start. Sleepy and irate English pa.s.sengers put their heads out of the carriage windows and cursed the causes of the delay. One of our party had to be stopped by main force from pouring a whisky-and-soda into the interior mechanism of what he declared to be "a poor thirsty engine that n.o.body thought of offering a drink to." The native stationmaster, torn between his dread of official reprimand for delaying the mail and his fear of displeasing the Sahibs of his town, almost wept as he implored the party to end their farewells and let the train depart.

My transport having arrived that night I continued on my way next morning. I had to cross the Tista, which here, though the banks were more than a mile or a mile and a half apart, was at that season shrunk to a stream half a mile in breadth flowing between wide stretches of sand, over which I rode on my pony to reach the ferryboat. This was a broad, flat-bottomed craft, loaded with natives, cattle, bullocks and a cart which carried the baggage and camp equipment of a civil official going out to tour his district. The cart was festooned with wicker crates containing hens and ducks destined to supply "master's dinner in jungle," as the servant in charge informed me. With sail, oar and pole the ferry-boat made its way across the stream, until it reached a wide stretch of sand lying between the water and the bank. My pony, after much urging, jumped out; and I mounted. I had ridden four or five hundred yards when the animal stopped suddenly and its legs began to sink. To my horror I found that we were in a quicksand. The pony plunged and struggled wildly. I slipped from the saddle to ease it of my weight and sank at once up to my knees. Visions of a horrible death engulfed in the yielding ma.s.s of sand flashed across me as I struggled against the invisible monster that seemed to clutch me and drag me down. Luckily the pony got its forefeet on to firmer ground and fought its way out of the quicksand, pulling me out with it by the reins to which I clung. It stood terrified and quivering while I tried to soothe it. Fifty yards away was a group of natives who had been watching the incident phlegmatically and had made no move to come to our help. When I was safe they called out to me.

"That is a very dangerous place, Sahib. A cow was swallowed up there the other day."

Having told them forcibly what I thought of them for not warning me in time, I cautiously led my pony forward to the firm earth bank, which I was delighted to reach after the treacherous sand. Here the road to Alipur Duar began again. I swung myself into the saddle and continued my sketch on horseback, thus covering the ground much more quickly than on the first days. I was able to get my measurements by having previously counted the number of paces my pony took to cover a distance of a hundred yards at a trot.

In the old days knowledge of map-making was, in the army, confined to the Royal Engineers. A late inspector-general of fortifications, General Sir Richard Harrison, R.E., told me that in the China War of 1860 only two officers, he and Captain, afterwards Lord, Wolseley, in the Anglo-Indian Army there could make a military sketch, and very few others were able to understand it when made. Nowadays every officer can map any country and during the drill season is called upon to furnish at least one sketch. The civil engineers brought out in 1905-6 to Hong Kong to survey the route of the railway to Canton told me that in the British Hinterland they made no maps, and contented themselves with such annual military sketches of the country done by officers of the garrison. And these they found accurate enough for railway laying. The task that I was now engaged on, which was for the purpose of revising the military route-book of Eastern Bengal, was set me as part of my ordinary work; I being the nearest available officer.

The country through which my road lay for the next sixty miles was open, level, and well-cultivated, dotted with groves of feathery bamboos and the typical, compact, thatched villages and farm-buildings of Bengal. As usual, in India, the fields were not divided by hedges or any obstacles.

Even at that season of the year the country-side looked green, in striking contrast to other parts of the land then when the hot weather was drawing near. And always along and parallel to my route lay the wall of the mountains thirty or forty miles away, rising abruptly from the plains in a confused jumble of rugged hills overtopping each other until they culminated in the long white crest of Kinchinjunga, which now and then at sunset or dawn towered over them all above the clouds and seemed to float detached in the sky.

At the first _dak_ bungalow which sheltered me after leaving Jalpaiguri we had a splendid view of this magnificent mountain; and I overheard my orderly, Draj Khan, who had been with me in Darjeeling and had seen it from there, explaining to the Rajput sepoy with us that it was composed entirely of ice. The latter, a man from the sandy deserts of Bikanir, never having seen snow or more ice than a small lump in some native liquor-dealer's shop in the bazaar, refused to believe Draj's statement and appealed to me. I found it no easy task to explain the mystery of the Everlasting Snows to the intellect of this more or less untutored savage; and I fear that he understood me even less than he did Draj Khan's explanation. Natural physical phenomena that we accept as articles of belief we find not so easy to make clear to the minds of uneducated people. The Pathan subhedar-major of my regiment rejected my account of the causes of earthquakes in favour of his own theory that they arise from the movements of a dragon slumbering in the centre of the earth and occasionally shaking itself or turning round in its sleep.

I found my journey day by day along the road interesting from the many types of natives whom I pa.s.sed. Brown-skinned peasants, many clad simply in a cotton cloth wound round the waist and between the legs, and _puggris_ tied loosely about their heads, saluted me respectfully as I rode by. Native women, nose-ringed and gla.s.s-braceletted, modestly drew their _saris_ over their dark faces to hide their problematical beauty from my profane gaze. Naked little brown urchins with them stopped to gaze, finger in mouth, at the Sahib and scampered off in simulated fear when I waved my hand to them, but halted at a safe distance to wave back laughingly. Bearded Mohammedans uttered a "Salaam Aleikoum"[8] and grinned with pleasure at the correct reply "Aleikoum salaam."[9] Groups of lean-shanked jungle-dwellers shuffled by, the men unenc.u.mbered, the ragged women laden with cooking-pots, babies, and other possessions.

Once or twice I pa.s.sed a tall, stately Pathan, long-haired and hook-nosed, clad in baggy trousers, gold-laced velvet waistcoat and voluminous turban. These gave me a cheery salutation, with no trace of servility; for the Pathan is of a haughty race and thinks himself any man's equal. These individuals had wandered far from their homes among the mountains beyond the North-West Frontier to make small fortunes as usurers among the simple peasants of Bengal. Small boys herding cattle drove their black buffaloes to one side of the road to let me pa.s.s, fearlessly beating with shrill cries the savage-looking animals which seemed inclined to charge my pony. Heavy carts, their wheels solid discs of wood, drawn by stolid white bullocks, lumbered noisily along, the drivers twisting the _byles'_ tails to accelerate their speed. Although I was in so-called disaffected Eastern Bengal I met with no rudeness or black looks; for the sedition carefully fostered among the feather-headed young Bengali students has not affected the simple cultivators of the soil, who still respect the white man and look confidently to the Sahibs for justice. Even well-fed _babus_ on the road stopped and closed their umbrellas, a native sign of respect, and were always ready to answer my questions or enter into a chat.

Every day after completing ten or twelve miles of my sketch I halted at a _dak_ bungalow or pitched my tent. My servants and elephant had usually arrived before me; and I found my breakfast of biscuit, tinned meat and tea, occasionally supplemented by eggs from the nearest village, awaiting me. My orderly, scouting on ahead on my bicycle, had sought for information of sport; and, if the prospects of it were good, I took my gun or rifle and went out in search of something to shoot.

But in such well-cultivated country there was very little game.

At one village near which I halted for the night I heard that a man-eating tiger was lurking in the neighbourhood. It had killed two natives on the road within the week. Of course I went out to look for it, but with scant hope of finding it, as I could only stay a day in the place. Mounting my elephant I started after breakfast and beat through all the small patches of jungle for miles round and along the banks of a small stream flowing by the village. But, though I hunted until after dusk, I found no traces of it, and returned disappointed to the _dak_ bungalow.

As I sat smoking after dinner out in the compound under the stars I heard the tinkle of bells coming along the road and drawing nearer and nearer. Then past the gate of the enclosure around the bungalow a native postman shuffled by at a dog-trot, his spear and bells over his shoulder. I stopped him and asked him if he had heard of the tiger.

The little old man, bent almost double under the weight of his mail-bag, wiped his brow, as he answered:

"Yes, Protector of the Poor, the _shaitan_ (devil) killed two men of this village on this very road by which I come each night."

"Are you not afraid of meeting him?" I asked.

"That is in the hands of G.o.d, Sahib. I must earn my pay by carrying the _dak_ (mail) along that road every day."

"But why come by night?"

"The _dak_ only reaches my post office after nightfall, and must be sent on at once. _Hukm hai._ It is the order." And with a farewell salaam he trotted off into the darkness and danger of the night; and the tinkle of the bells died away down the fatal road.

Next morning I moved on, deeply regretting that I could not afford the time to remain and make a systematic search for the man-eater. It was tantalising to be in its hunting-ground and yet be unable to stay longer and devote myself to its destruction. To shoot an ordinary tiger is not much of an achievement; but to circ.u.mvent and kill a murderous beast, grown daring and wily in the slaughter of human beings, is something to be proud of, and a good and useful deed. The hunter must pit his brains against its cunning and risk his life freely; for the man-eater is acute beyond all others and has lost the wild animals' usual dread of man. It is fortunate that such are rare; for last year tigers killed eight hundred and eighty-five persons in India, one being credited with forty-one deaths. Other wild beasts were far behind in the grim count.

Wolves killed two hundred and fifty-five; while panthers slew two hundred and sixty-one human beings. But these figures fall far short of the havoc caused by venomous reptiles. In 1911 over twenty-five thousand persons died from snake-bite; in 1912, twenty-one thousand four hundred and sixty-one deaths were recorded from the same cause. But it must be remembered that in villages far from police investigations and coroners'

inquests, snake-bite is a very convenient explanation of a sudden and violent death.

As I rode along day by day busy with my sketch I had not time to feel lonely; though, with the exception of my brief stay in Jalpaiguri, I had not exchanged a word with one of my own colour for over a week. But in India one grows accustomed to that. Soldiers, planters, forest and civil officers are used to being cut off from their kind; and on detachment I have pa.s.sed months without seeing another European. The evenings, when the day's work is done, are the hardest to bear; and now in this long and solitary ride, when I sat in my tent or a _dak_ bungalow after dinner by the flickering light of a hurricane lantern I did occasionally wish for a white man to talk to.

My road, running parallel to the hills, crossed many rivers flowing from them. Most of these were, at that season of the year, easily fordable; though in some the water was up to my pony's girths. Warned by my experience at the Tista, I kept a sharp look-out for quicksands. At one broad stream villagers bade me beware of crocodiles; and fording a river in which these brutes lurk is not a pleasant task.

The crocodiles of India are divided into two species. The _ghavial_, or fish eater, attains a length of eighteen feet and is reputed not to attack human beings. Yet with their long, narrow snouts studded with a serrated row of sharp teeth they look much more formidable than the man-eating, blunt-nosed _muggers_. The latter are similar to the alligators of the New World and the crocodiles of Africa, though they do not reach the length of the latter. The largest I have known was an old veteran twelve and a half feet long, which I shot in the Jumna near its confluence with the Ganges at Allahabad. The latter river is full of _muggers_; but the former is reputed locally to contain only _ghavials_.

My crocodile may have been a stray. From a boat in which I was drifting down stream I saw it, looking like an immense log, lying on the bank; for these brutes are in the habit of coming ash.o.r.e to sun themselves during the heat of the day. They are not easy to shoot, as at the least sign of danger they are p.r.o.ne to dive into the river. Even if wounded they are hard to secure; for they nearly always lie at the water's edge, so that the least movement takes them into the stream and, if they die below the surface, their bodies do not float for some time.

Having spotted the crocodile in question from a distance I landed on the opposite bank and, cautiously stalking it, managed to get within two hundred yards without its being alarmed. I was armed with a 303 carbine and, aiming at its neck, luckily paralysed it by my first shot with a bullet in the spine. To make sure of it I fired several more rounds at it, then, hailing my boat, crossed over to where it lay. It feebly snapped its huge jaws at me as I approached, but was unable to move otherwise; and a final bullet laid it out. It was an old and immensely powerful brute, broad out of all proportion to its length. Its thick hide studded with bosses was like armour-plate, and over its back impenetrable to bullets. Its teeth were large and blunted and its nails long and thick.

At the sound of my shots a number of natives had run out from a village close by. When they saw the _mugger_ lying dead, they streamed down to the bank and to my surprise swarmed round me, hung garlands about my neck and lauded me to the skies. I learned from them that the dead monster had closed a ford from their village to one on the other side of the river for two years, had carried off several women bathing or drawing water (this was a minor offence to the native, women being cheap in India); but, worse still, had killed several of their sacred and valuable cows. Hence my ovation. The brute was so large and heavy that it took fourteen villagers to drag and push it up an inclined plane of planks into my big native sailing-boat. We brought it down the river to the Lines of my regiment, which were built close to the bank. There we landed it and cut it open. In its stomach were seven metal anklets or armlets of different sizes, ornaments such as are worn by native women and girls, and--a horrible sight!--the entire body of a child about a year old. It was in the process of being digested; and, when exposed to the air, the flesh fell away from the bones. The stench was unforgettable.

The rivers of Bengal are full of these unpleasant saurians. And crocodiles do not always confine themselves to the water; for they are reputed to have an undesirable habit of wandering across country by night from stream to stream and, if these are far apart, hiding by day in any convenient tank. I have seen a large one in quite a small pond which was rapidly drying up and would contain no water in a week. A friend of mine in the Civil Service told me that once, riding into a village in his district in Eastern Bengal, he found it in a state of commotion and the whole population gathered in front of the local post office but keeping a respectful distance from the building; for on the steps of it was a crocodile about six feet long, snapping fiercely at anyone who approached it. It must have been overtaken by daylight when pa.s.sing through the village on its way from water to water. My friend shot it, to the intense relief of the besieged postal officials inside the building.

A crocodile would certainly be an unpleasant animal to meet on the land in the dark. However, I forded all the streams I came to without mishap.

When I reached the Torsa, a broad and rapid river, across which, some thirty miles to the north, I had driven the man-killing rogue elephant months before, I found it unfordable. A large ferry-boat was plying across it; and in company with two carts and their bullocks and drivers, a wandering Pathan, several peasants and a gipsy family, I embarked on it. We had an adventurous voyage. Heavy squalls sweeping down from the mountains churned up the dark surface of the river and drove our shallow, top-heavy craft back. The few boatmen, striving with paddles and poles, to propel it against the wind, were helpless. I seized a long bamboo and tried to aid them. The Pathan followed my example, while the other natives on board sat watching our efforts apathetically. This infuriated him; and he fell upon them with kicks and cuffs until they rose, took up other bamboos and helped to pole the boat across. But such was the strength of the gale that it took us two hours to force a pa.s.sage against it; and once or twice we were nearly capsized.

Another couple of days or so brought me to the end of my task. When I saw the tin-roofed buildings of Alipur Duar rise before me on the road, I struck spurs to my pony and finished my sketch at a gallop. And the next day saw me back in Buxa Duar, glad to be among the friendly hills again, for the charm of the mountains was upon me. And on them I hoped to spend another year; but the G.o.ds willed otherwise.

Such outposts as ours may not be as good for the training of the rank and file as service in large garrisons. But for the individual officer there is no better way of developing his power of initiative and teaching him to rely on himself than the command of these small detachments. And in these jungle outposts the sport to be found is an additional advantage. Save only active service what better education can he have than the pursuit of big game, when every sense is trained to be on the alert, and quick decision becomes a second nature? An eye for country, readiness of resource, generals.h.i.+p and courage is needed in this "image of war." The time he spends in the jungles is not wasted.

The British military officer is a much-maligned individual. It seems an article of faith among civilians in England to believe that he leads a life of luxury, is ignorant of the science of his profession, and leaves the training and instruction of his men to be done by the sergeants. As to luxury--see him in his plainly furnished one room in barracks in the British Isles or his rat-infested Indian bungalow for which he pays an exorbitant rent! Examinations all through his service up to the rank of colonel; examinations for promotion to each grade, signalling, transport and musketry cla.s.ses, each with its final examination, examinations in Indian and other foreign languages keep his brain from rusting for want of exercise. I have had to pa.s.s nine professional, and three obligatory language examinations myself during my service; and there are many who have pa.s.sed more. That there is no army in the world that has as many officers qualified as interpreters in foreign tongues as ours was well exemplified in North China during the Boxer War of 1900. And as for leaving his work to be done by the non-commissioned ranks, only a person absolutely ignorant of our army to-day would venture to make that a.s.sertion. Who created the auxiliary armies throughout the Empire, who made the Indian, the Egyptian, the West and the East African Armies? Not the drill-instructor, not Sergeant What's-his-name, but the British officer!

Little did I think as I rode into Buxa, after making my sketch, that my time among my beloved mountains was drawing to a close. One day, not long afterwards, when out tiger-shooting I was taken suddenly ill and was barely able to remain in the howdah long enough to fire my rifle and bag the tiger. Hardly capable of sitting in the saddle I made my way on my pony back to my Station, there to lie on a sick-bed for over a month.

And I raged at my helplessness when news was brought me during that time that the man-killing elephant I had fought with was back in our forests again. Within a few miles of us he surprised a Bhuttia woodcutter and his wife encamped in the jungle. He came upon them at dawn. They fled before him; but he overtook the woman, struck her down, and crushed her into a shapeless ma.s.s under his feet. When I heard of it I longed to be well enough to go out to meet him again. But the Fates forbade it.

Thanks to the devoted care of our Indian doctor, Captain Sarkar, I.M.S., I recovered sufficiently to be sent to England on sick leave, much against my will, for I had no desire to quit Buxa. But four st.u.r.dy _kahars_ (bearers) carried me in a litter down the steep road from our little outpost through the forest to the train. Beside me walked Captain Balderston wis.h.i.+ng me farewell and a speedy return to health. I little knew that I was never to see him again, as he shook my hand for the last time. Four months afterwards his sorrowing sepoys laid my cheery little comrade to rest in his grave in the deserted cemetery of Buxa. He died there all alone.

As the train bore me out of the forest and through the green plains of Eastern Bengal, I raised myself from my couch in the railway carriage and with sadness in my heart looked back to where the white Picquet Towers shone out on the purple background of the fast-receding hills.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] "Peace be with you!"

[9] "With you be peace!"

THE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS, THORNTON STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE