The Jungle Book 10 page

once a trunk came up and touched him on the knee.

Then an elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for

five or ten terrible seconds. The dew from the trees above

spattered down like rain on the unseen backs, and a dull

booming noise began, not very loud at first, and Little

Toomai could not tell what it was. But it grew and grew,

and Kala Nag lifted up one forefoot and then the other, and

brought them down on the ground —one-two, one-two, as

steadily as trip-hammers. The elephants were stamping all

together now, and it sounded like a war drum beaten at the

mouth of a cave. The dew fell from the trees till there was no

more left to fall, and the booming went on, and the ground

rocked and shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands up to

his ears to shut out the sound. But it was all one gigantic jar

that ran through him—this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet

on the raw earth. Once or twice he could feel Kala Nag and

all the others surge forward a few strides, and the thumping

would change to the crushing sound of juicy green things

being bruised, but in a minute or two the boom of feet on

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hard earth began again. A tree was creaking and groan-

ing somewhere near him. He put out his arm and felt the

bark, but Kala Nag moved forward, still tramping, and he

could not tell where he was in the clearing. There was no

sound from the elephants, except once, when two or three

little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a thump and

a shuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully

two hours, and Little Toomai ached in every nerve, but he

knew by the smell of the night air that the dawn was com-

ing.The morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind

the green hills, and the booming stopped with the first ray,

as though the light had been an order. Before Little Toomai

had got the ringing out of his head, before even he had shift-

ed his position, there was not an elephant in sight except

Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls,

and there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down the

hillsides to show where the others had gone.

Little Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he

remembered it, had grown in the night. More trees stood in

the middle of it, but the undergrowth and the jungle grass

at the sides had been rolled back. Little Toomai stared once

more. Now he understood the trampling. The elephants had

stamped out more room—had stamped the thick grass and

juicy cane to trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny

fibers, and the fibers into hard earth.

‘Wah!’ said Little Toomai, and his eyes were very heavy.

‘Kala Nag, my lord, let us keep by Pudmini and go to Peters-

en Sahib’s camp, or I shall drop from thy neck.’

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The third elephant watched the two go away, snorted,

wheeled round, and took his own path. He may have be-

longed to some little native king’s establishment, fifty or

sixty or a hundred miles away.

Two hours later, as Petersen Sahib was eating early

breakfast, his elephants, who had been double chained that

night, began to trumpet, and Pudmini, mired to the shoul-

ders, with Kala Nag, very footsore, shambled into the camp.

Little Toomai’s face was gray and pinched, and his hair was

full of leaves and drenched with dew, but he tried to salute

Petersen Sahib, and cried faintly: ‘The dance—the elephant

dance! I have seen it, and—I die!’ As Kala Nag sat down, he

slid off his neck in a dead faint.

But, since native children have no nerves worth speaking

of, in two hours he was lying very contentedly in Petersen

Sahib’s hammock with Petersen Sahib’s shooting-coat un-

der his head, and a glass of warm milk, a little brandy, with

a dash of quinine, inside of him, and while the old hairy,

scarred hunters of the jungles sat three deep before him,

looking at him as though he were a spirit, he told his tale in

short words, as a child will, and wound up with:

‘Now, if I lie in one word, send men to see, and they will

find that the elephant folk have trampled down more room

in their dance-room, and they will find ten and ten, and

many times ten, tracks leading to that dance-room. They

made more room with their feet. I have seen it. Kala Nag

took me, and I saw. Also Kala Nag is very leg-weary!’

Little Toomai lay back and slept all through the long af-

ternoon and into the twilight, and while he slept Petersen

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Sahib and Machua Appa followed the track of the two el-

ephants for fifteen miles across the hills. Petersen Sahib had

spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only

once before found such a dance-place. Machua Appa had

no need to look twice at the clearing to see what had been

done there, or to scratch with his toe in the packed, rammed

earth.

‘The child speaks truth,’ said he. ‘All this was done last

night, and I have counted seventy tracks crossing the river.

See, Sahib, where Pudmini’s leg-iron cut the bark of that

tree! Yes; she was there too.’

They looked at one another and up and down, and they

wondered. For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of

any man, black or white, to fathom.

‘Forty years and five,’ said Machua Appa, ‘have I followed

my lord, the elephant, but never have I heard that any child

of man had seen what this child has seen. By all the Gods of

the Hills, it is—what can we say?’ and he shook his head.

When they got back to camp it was time for the evening

meal. Petersen Sahib ate alone in his tent, but he gave orders

that the camp should have two sheep and some fowls, as

well as a double ration of flour and rice and salt, for he knew

that there would be a feast.

Big Toomai had come up hotfoot from the camp in the

plains to search for his son and his elephant, and now that

he had found them he looked at them as though he were

afraid of them both. And there was a feast by the blazing

campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and

Little Toomai was the hero of it all. And the big brown ele-

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phant catchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, and the

men who know all the secrets of breaking the wildest ele-

phants, passed him from one to the other, and they marked

his forehead with blood from the breast of a newly killed

jungle-cock, to show that he was a forester, initiated and

free of all the jungles.

And at last, when the flames died down, and the red

light of the logs made the elephants look as though they had

been dipped in blood too, Machua Appa, the head of all the

drivers of all the Keddahs—Machua Appa, Petersen Sahib’s

other self, who had never seen a made road in forty years:

Machua Appa, who was so great that he had no other name

than Machua Appa,—leaped to his feet, with Little Toomai

held high in the air above his head, and shouted: ‘Listen, my

brothers. Listen, too, you my lords in the lines there, for I,

Machua Appa, am speaking! This little one shall no more

be called Little Toomai, but Toomai of the Elephants, as his

great-grandfather was called before him. What never man

has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of

the elephant-folk and of the Gods of the Jungles is with him.

He shall become a great tracker. He shall become greater

than I, even I, Machua Appa! He shall follow the new trail,

and the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear eye! He

shall take no harm in the Keddah when he runs under their

bellies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips before the feet

of the charging bull elephant, the bull elephant shall know

who he is and shall not crush him. Aihai! my lords in the

chains,’—he whirled up the line of pickets—‘here is the little

one that has seen your dances in your hidden places,—the

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sight that never man saw! Give him honor, my lords! Sa-

laam karo, my children. Make your salute to Toomai of the

Elephants! Gunga Pershad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kut-

tar Guj, ahaa! Pudmini,—thou hast seen him at the dance,

and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among elephants!—ahaa!

Together! To Toomai of the Elephants. Barrao!’

And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their

trunks till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out

into the full salute—the crashing trumpet-peal that only

the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut of the Keddah.

But it was all for the sake of Little Toomai, who had seen

what never man had seen before—the dance of the elephants

at night and alone in the heart of the Garo hills!

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Shiv and the Grasshopper

(The song that Toomai’s mother sang to the baby)

Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow,

Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago,

Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate,

From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate.

All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.

Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made al ,—

Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,

And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

Wheat he gave to rich folk, mil et to the poor,

Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door;

Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite,

And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at

night.

Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low—

Parbati beside him watched them come and go;

Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest—

Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast.

So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver.

Mahadeo! Mahadeo! Turn and see.

Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine,

But this was Least of Little Things, O little son of mine!

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When the dole was ended, laughingly she said,

Master, of a mil ion mouths, is not one unfed?’

Laughing, Shiv made answer, ‘All have had their part,

Even he, the little one, hidden ‘neath thy heart.’

From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the thief,

Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new-grown leaf!

Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to Shiv,

Who hath surely given meat to all that live.

All things made he—Shiva the Preserver.

Mahadeo! Mahadeo! He made al ,—

Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine,

And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of mine!

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Her Majesty’s Servants

You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three,

But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.

You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop,

But the way of Pil y Winky’s not the way of Winkie Pop!

It had been raining heavily for one whole month—rain-

ing on a camp of thirty thousand men and thousands of

camels, elephants, horses, bullocks, and mules all gathered

together at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be reviewed by the

Viceroy of India. He was receiving a visit from the Amir

of Afghanistan—a wild king of a very wild country. The

Amir had brought with him for a bodyguard eight hundred

men and horses who had never seen a camp or a locomotive

before in their lives—savage men and savage horses from

somewhere at the back of Central Asia. Every night a mob

of these horses would be sure to break their heel ropes and

stampede up and down the camp through the mud in the

dark, or the camels would break loose and run about and

fall over the ropes of the tents, and you can imagine how

pleasant that was for men trying to go to sleep. My tent lay

far away from the camel lines, and I thought it was safe. But

one night a man popped his head in and shouted, ‘Get out,

quick! They’re coming! My tent’s gone!’

I knew who ‘they’ were, so I put on my boots and water-

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proof and scuttled out into the slush. Little Vixen, my fox

terrier, went out through the other side; and then there was

a roaring and a grunting and bubbling, and I saw the tent

cave in, as the pole snapped, and begin to dance about like

a mad ghost. A camel had blundered into it, and wet and

angry as I was, I could not help laughing. Then I ran on,

because I did not know how many camels might have got

loose, and before long I was out of sight of the camp, plow-

ing my way through the mud.

At last I fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew

I was somewhere near the artillery lines where the cannon

were stacked at night. As I did not want to plowter about

any more in the drizzle and the dark, I put my waterproof

over the muzzle of one gun, and made a sort of wigwam

with two or three rammers that I found, and lay along the

tail of another gun, wondering where Vixen had got to, and

where I might be.

Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep I heard a jingle of

harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet

ears. He belonged to a screw-gun battery, for I could hear the

rattle of the straps and rings and chains and things on his

saddle pad. The screw-guns are tiny little cannon made in

two pieces, that are screwed together when the time comes

to use them. They are taken up mountains, anywhere that a

mule can find a road, and they are very useful for fighting

in rocky country.

Behind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet

squelching and slipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing

to and fro like a strayed hen’s. Luckily, I knew enough of

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beast language—not wild-beast language, but camp-beast

language, of course—from the natives to know what he was

saying.

He must have been the one that flopped into my tent,

for he called to the mule, ‘What shall I do? Where shall I

go? I have fought with a white thing that waved, and it took

a stick and hit me on the neck.’ (That was my broken tent

pole, and I was very glad to know it.) ‘Shall we run on?’

‘Oh, it was you,’ said the mule, ‘you and your friends,

that have been disturbing the camp? All right. You’ll be

beaten for this in the morning. But I may as well give you

something on account now.’

I heard the harness jingle as the mule backed and caught

the camel two kicks in the ribs that rang like a drum. ‘An-

other time,’ he said, ‘you’ll know better than to run through

a mule battery at night, shouting ‘Thieves and fire!’ Sit

down, and keep your silly neck quiet.’

The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot

rule, and sat down whimpering. There was a regular beat

of hoofs in the darkness, and a big troop-horse cantered up

as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped a gun tail,

and landed close to the mule.

‘It’s disgraceful,’ he said, blowing out his nostrils. ‘Those

camels have racketed through our lines again—the third

time this week. How’s a horse to keep his condition if he

isn’t allowed to sleep. Who’s here?’

‘I’m the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the

First Screw Battery,’ said the mule, ‘and the other’s one of

your friends. He’s waked me up too. Who are you?’

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‘Number Fifteen, E troop, Ninth Lancers—Dick Cun-

liffe’s horse. Stand over a little, there.’

‘Oh, beg your pardon,’ said the mule. ‘It’s too dark to see

much. Aren’t these camels too sickening for anything? I

walked out of my lines to get a little peace and quiet here.’

‘My lords,’ said the camel humbly, ‘we dreamed bad

dreams in the night, and we were very much afraid. I am

only a baggage camel of the 39th Native Infantry, and I am

not as brave as you are, my lords.’

‘Then why didn’t you stay and carry baggage for the 39th

Native Infantry, instead of running all round the camp?’

said the mule.

‘They were such very bad dreams,’ said the camel. ‘I am

sorry. Listen! What is that? Shall we run on again?’

‘Sit down,’ said the mule, ‘or you’ll snap your long stick-

legs between the guns.’ He cocked one ear and listened.

‘Bullocks!’ he said. ‘Gun bullocks. On my word, you and

your friends have waked the camp very thoroughly. It takes

a good deal of prodding to put up a gun-bullock.’

I heard a chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke

of the great sulky white bullocks that drag the heavy siege

guns when the elephants won’t go any nearer to the firing,

came shouldering along together. And almost stepping on

the chain was another battery mule, calling wildly for ‘Bil-

ly.’ ‘That’s one of our recruits,’ said the old mule to the troop

horse. ‘He’s calling for me. Here, youngster, stop squealing.

The dark never hurt anybody yet.’

The gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing

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the cud, but the young mule huddled close to Billy.

‘Things!’ he said. ‘Fearful and horrible, Billy! They came

into our lines while we were asleep. D’you think they’ll kill

us?’‘I’ve a very great mind to give you a number-one kick-

ing,’ said Billy. ‘The idea of a fourteen-hand mule with your

training disgracing the battery before this gentleman!’

‘Gently, gently!’ said the troop-horse. ‘Remember they

are always like this to begin with. The first time I ever saw a

man (it was in Australia when I was a three-year-old) I ran

for half a day, and if I’d seen a camel, I should have been

running still.’

Nearly all our horses for the English cavalry are brought

to India from Australia, and are broken in by the troopers

themselves.

‘True enough,’ said Billy. ‘Stop shaking, youngster. The

first time they put the full harness with all its chains on my

back I stood on my forelegs and kicked every bit of it off. I

hadn’t learned the real science of kicking then, but the bat-

tery said they had never seen anything like it.’

‘But this wasn’t harness or anything that jingled,’ said

the young mule. ‘You know I don’t mind that now, Billy. It

was Things like trees, and they fell up and down the lines

and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and I couldn’t find

my driver, and I couldn’t find you, Billy, so I ran off with—

with these gentlemen.’

‘H’m!’ said Billy. ‘As soon as I heard the camels were

loose I came away on my own account. When a battery—a

screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, he must be

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very badly shaken up. Who are you fellows on the ground

there?’

The gun bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both

together: ‘The seventh yoke of the first gun of the Big Gun

Battery. We were asleep when the camels came, but when

we were trampled on we got up and walked away. It is better

to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bed-

ding. We told your friend here that there was nothing to be

afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise.

Wah!’

They went on chewing.

‘That comes of being afraid,’ said Billy. ‘You get laughed

at by gun-bullocks. I hope you like it, young un.’

The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I heard him say

something about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock

in the world. But the bullocks only clicked their horns to-

gether and went on chewing.

‘Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the

worst kind of cowardice,’ said the troop-horse. ‘Anybody

can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I think, if they

see things they don’t understand. We’ve broken out of our

pickets, again and again, four hundred and fifty of us, just

because a new recruit got to telling tales of whip snakes at

home in Australia till we were scared to death of the loose

ends of our head-ropes.’

‘That’s all very well in camp,’ said Billy. ‘I’m not above

stampeding myself, for the fun of the thing, when I haven’t

been out for a day or two. But what do you do on active ser-

vice?’

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‘Oh, that’s quite another set of new shoes,’ said the troop

horse. ‘Dick Cunliffe’s on my back then, and drives his

knees into me, and all I have to do is to watch where I am

putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs well under me,

and be bridle-wise.’

‘What’s bridle-wise?’ said the young mule.

‘By the Blue Gums of the Back Blocks,’ snorted the

troop-horse, ‘do you mean to say that you aren’t taught to

be bridle-wise in your business? How can you do anything,

unless you can spin round at once when the rein is pressed

on your neck? It means life or death to your man, and of

course that’s life and death to you. Get round with your hind

legs under you the instant you feel the rein on your neck. If

you haven’t room to swing round, rear up a little and come

round on your hind legs. That’s being bridle-wise.’

‘We aren’t taught that way,’ said Billy the mule stiffly.

‘We’re taught to obey the man at our head: step off when he

says so, and step in when he says so. I suppose it comes to

the same thing. Now, with all this fine fancy business and

rearing, which must be very bad for your hocks, what do

you do?’

‘That depends,’ said the troop-horse. ‘Generally I have to

go in among a lot of yelling, hairy men with knives—long

shiny knives, worse than the farrier’s knives—and I have to

take care that Dick’s boot is just touching the next man’s

boot without crushing it. I can see Dick’s lance to the right

of my right eye, and I know I’m safe. I shouldn’t care to be

the man or horse that stood up to Dick and me when we’re

in a hurry.’

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‘Don’t the knives hurt?’ said the young mule.

‘Well, I got one cut across the chest once, but that wasn’t

Dick’s fault—‘

‘A lot I should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!’

said the young mule.

‘You must,’ said the troop horse. ‘If you don’t trust your

man, you may as well run away at once. That’s what some of

our horses do, and I don’t blame them. As I was saying, it

wasn’t Dick’s fault. The man was lying on the ground, and

I stretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at

me. Next time I have to go over a man lying down I shall

step on him—hard.’

‘H’m!’ said Billy. ‘It sounds very foolish. Knives are dirty

things at any time. The proper thing to do is to climb up a

mountain with a well-balanced saddle, hang on by all four

feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl and wriggle

along, till you come out hundreds of feet above anyone else

on a ledge where there’s just room enough for your hoofs.

Then you stand still and keep quiet—never ask a man to

hold your head, young un—keep quiet while the guns are

being put together, and then you watch the little poppy

shells drop down into the tree-tops ever so far below.’

‘Don’t you ever trip?’ said the troop-horse.

‘They say that when a mule trips you can split a hen’s ear,’

said Billy. ‘Now and again perhaps a badly packed saddle

will upset a mule, but it’s very seldom. I wish I could show

you our business. It’s beautiful. Why, it took me three years

to find out what the men were driving at. The science of the

thing is never to show up against the sky line, because, if

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you do, you may get fired at. Remember that, young un. Al-

ways keep hidden as much as possible, even if you have to

go a mile out of your way. I lead the battery when it comes

to that sort of climbing.’

‘Fired at without the chance of running into the peo-

ple who are firing!’ said the troop-horse, thinking hard. ‘I

couldn’t stand that. I should want to charge—with Dick.’

‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t. You know that as soon as the guns

are in position they’ll do all the charging. That’s scientific

and neat. But knives—pah!’

The baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro

for some time past, anxious to get a word in edgewise. Then

I heard him say, as he cleared his throat, nervously:

‘I—I—I have fought a little, but not in that climbing way

or that running way.’

‘No. Now you mention it,’ said Billy, ‘you don’t look as

though you were made for climbing or running—much.

Well, how was it, old Hay-bales?’

‘The proper way,’ said the camel. ‘We all sat down—‘

‘Oh, my crupper and breastplate!’ said the troop-horse

under his breath. ‘Sat down!’

‘We sat down—a hundred of us,’ the camel went on, ‘in

a big square, and the men piled our packs and saddles, out-

side the square, and they fired over our backs, the men did,

on all sides of the square.’

‘What sort of men? Any men that came along?’ said the

troop-horse. ‘They teach us in riding school to lie down and

let our masters fire across us, but Dick Cunliffe is the only

man I’d trust to do that. It tickles my girths, and, besides, I

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can’t see with my head on the ground.’

‘What does it matter who fires across you?’ said the cam-

el. ‘There are plenty of men and plenty of other camels close

by, and a great many clouds of smoke. I am not frightened

then. I sit still and wait.’

‘And yet,’ said Billy, ‘you dream bad dreams and upset

the camp at night. Well, well! Before I’d lie down, not to

speak of sitting down, and let a man fire across me, my heels

and his head would have something to say to each other.

Did you ever hear anything so awful as that?’

There was a long silence, and then one of the gun bull-

ocks lifted up his big head and said, ‘This is very foolish

indeed. There is only one way of fighting.’

‘Oh, go on,’ said Billy. ‘Please don’t mind me. I suppose

you fellows fight standing on your tails?’

‘Only one way,’ said the two together. (They must have

been twins.) ‘This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to

the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpets.’ (“Two Tails’ is

camp slang for the elephant.)

‘What does Two Tails trumpet for?’ said the young

mule.

‘To show that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on

the other side. Two Tails is a great coward. Then we tug the

big gun all together—Heya—Hullah! Heeyah! Hullah! We

do not climb like cats nor run like calves. We go across the

level plain, twenty yoke of us, till we are unyoked again, and

we graze while the big guns talk across the plain to some

town with mud walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and the

dust goes up as though many cattle were coming home.’

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‘Oh! And you choose that time for grazing?’ said the

young mule.

‘That time or any other. Eating is always good. We eat

till we are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where

Two Tails is waiting for it. Sometimes there are big guns in

the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, and then

there is all the more grazing for those that are left. This is

Fate. None the less, Two Tails is a great coward. That is the

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 871