PIG.
Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather Ride, follow the fox if you can! But, for pleasure and profit together, Allow me the hunting of Man,-- The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.
The Old Shikarri.
I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a twist inhis temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by whom Nafferton wasnearly slain. There may have been other causes of offence; the horse wasthe official stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; but Pinecoffinlaughed and said that he had never guaranteed the beast's manners.Nafferton laughed, too, though he vowed that he would write off his fallagainst Pinecoffin if he waited five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyondSkipton will forgive an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but aSouth Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from theirnames that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin. He was apeculiar man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a newand fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from Mithankotto Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the Punjab,a large province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had nointention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups," in theshape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making their lives aburden to them.
Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work aftertheir first hot weather in the country. The boys with digestions hope towrite their names large on the Frontier and struggle for dreary placeslike Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. Whichis very bad for the liver. Others are bitten with a mania for Districtwork, Ghuznivide coins or Persian poetry; while some, who come offarmers' stock, find that the smell of the Earth after the Rains getsinto their blood, and calls them to "develop the resources of theProvince." These men are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to theirclass. He knew a great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks andtemporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn toomuch rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All thePinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took backher own again. Unfortunately--most unfortunately for Pinecoffin--hewas a Civilian, as well as a farmer. Nafferton watched him, and thoughtabout the horse. Nafferton said:--"See me chase that boy till he drops!"I said:--"You can't get your knife into an Assistant Commissioner."Nafferton told me that I did not understand the administration of theProvince.
Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural andgeneral information side, and will supply a moderately respectable manwith all sorts of "economic statistics," if he speaks to it prettily.For instance, you are interested in gold-washing in the sands of theSutlej. You pull the string, and find that it wakes up half a dozenDepartments, and finally communicates, say, with a friend of yoursin the Telegraph, who once wrote some notes on the customs of thegold-washers when he was on construction-work in their part of theEmpire. He may or may not be pleased at being ordered to write outeverything he knows for your benefit. This depends on his temperament.The bigger man you are, the more information and the greater trouble canyou raise.
Nafferton was not a big man; but he had the reputation of being veryearnest. An "earnest" man can do much with a Government. There was anearnest man who once nearly wrecked... but all India knows THAT story.I am not sure what real "earnestness" is. A very fair imitation canbe manufactured by neglecting to dress decently, by mooning about in adreamy, misty sort of way, by taking office-work home after stayingin office till seven, and by receiving crowds of native gentlemen onSundays. That is one sort of "earnestness."
Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his earnestness, and fora string that would communicate with Pinecoffin. He found both. Theywere Pig. Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig. He informedthe Government that he had a scheme whereby a very large percentage ofthe British Army in India could be fed, at a very large saving, onPig. Then he hinted that Pinecoffin might supply him with the "variedinformation necessary to the proper inception of the scheme." So theGovernment wrote on the back of the letter:--"Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin tofurnish Mr. Nafferton with any information in his power." Government isvery prone to writing things on the backs of letters which, later, leadto trouble and confusion.
Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he knew thatPinecoffin would flounce into the trap. Pinecoffin was delighted atbeing consulted about Pig. The Indian Pig is not exactly an importantfactor in agricultural life; but Nafferton explained to Pinecoffin thatthere was room for improvement, and corresponded direct with that youngman.
You may think that there is not much to be evolved from Pig. It alldepends how you set to work. Pinecoffin being a Civilian and wishingto do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the Primitive Pig,the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed thatinformation--twenty-seven foolscap sheets--and wanted to know about thedistribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and how it stood the Plains inthe hot weather. From this point onwards, remember that I am giving youonly the barest outlines of the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, ofthe web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin.
Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and collected observationson the comparative longevity of the Pig (a) in the sub-montane tractsof the Himalayas, and (b) in the Rechna Doab. Nafferton filed that, andasked what sort of people looked after Pig. This started an ethnologicalexcursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long tables showingthe proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. Nafferton filedthat bundle, and explained that the figures which he wanted referred tothe Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fineand large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. By this time,Government had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr. Pinecoffin.They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned well-oiledwheels to skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into thespirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do. He had afair amount of work of his own to clear away; but he sat up of nightsreducing Pig to five places of decimals for the honor of his Service. Hewas not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject as Pig.
Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire into"the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District. People had beenkilling each other with those peaceful tools; and Government wishedto know "whether a modified form of agricultural implement couldnot, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced among theagricultural population without needlessly or unduly exasperating theexisting religious sentiments of the peasantry."
Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather heavilyburdened.
Nafferton now began to take up "(a) The food-supply of the indigenousPig, with a view to the improvement of its capacities as a flesh-former.(b) The acclimatization of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctivepeculiarities." Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic Pigwould become merged in the indigenous type; and quoted horse-breedingstatistics to prove this. The side-issue was debated, at great length onPinecoffin's side, till Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong,and moved the previous question. When Pinecoffin had quite writtenhimself out about flesh-formers, and fibrins, and glucose and thenitrogenous constituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised thequestion of expense. By this time Pinecoffin, who had been transferredfrom Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he stated inthirty-three folio pages--all carefully filed by Nafferton. Who askedfor more.
These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the potentialPiggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own views. ButNafferton bombarded him with letters on "the Imperial aspect ofthe scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork, and therebycalculated to give offence to the Mahomedan population of Upper India."He guessed that Pinecoffin would want some broad, free-hand work afterhis niggling, stippling, decimal details. Pinecoffin handled the latestdevelopment of the case in masterly style, and p
roved that no "popularebullition of excitement was to be apprehended." Nafferton said thatthere was nothing like Civilian insight in matters of this kind,and lured him up a bye-path--"the possible profits to accrue to theGovernment from the sale of hog-bristles." There is an extensiveliterature of hog-bristles, and the shoe, brush, and colorman's tradesrecognize more varieties of bristles than you would think possible.After Pinecoffin had wondered a little at Nafferton's rage forinformation, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on "Products ofthe Pig." This led him, under Nafferton's tender handling, straight tothe Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin for saddles--and thenceto the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote that pomegranate-seed was the best curefor hog-skin, and suggested--for the past fourteen months had weariedhim--that Nafferton should "raise his pigs before he tanned them."
Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question. Howcould the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did in theWest and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics of itsoriental congener?" Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten whathe had written sixteen month's before, and fancied that he was aboutto reopen the entire question. He was too far involved in the hideoustangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote:--"Consult my firstletter." Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact,Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage; having gone offon a side-issue on the merging of types.
THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries! He complained to theGovernment, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to mein my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, andthe flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by agentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should at lest have taughthim the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshirevariety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the letter to whichhe refers me contains his serious views on the acclimatization of avaluable, though possibly uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelledto believe," etc., etc.
There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation. Thewretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for the Country,and not the Country for the Service, and that he had better begin tosupply information about Pigs.
Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that couldbe written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.
Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on theDravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in full. Theessay was rather highflown; but if the Editor had seen the stacks ofpaper, in Pinecoffin's handwriting, on Nafferton's table, he would nothave been so sarcastic about the "nebulous discursiveness and blatantself-sufficiency of the modern Competition-wallah, and his utterinability to grasp the practical issues of a practical question." Manyfriends cut out these remarks and sent them to Pinecoffin.
I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft stock. This laststroke frightened and shook him. He could not understand it; but he felthe had been, somehow, shamelessly betrayed by Nafferton. He realizedthat he had wrapped himself up in the Pigskin without need, and thathe could not well set himself right with his Government. All hisacquaintances asked after his "nebulous discursiveness" or his "blatantself-sufficiency," and this made him miserable.
He took a train and went to Nafferton, whom he had not seen sincethe Pig business began. He also took the cutting from the paper, andblustered feebly and called Nafferton names, and then died down to awatery, weak protest of the "I-say-it's-too-bad-you-know" order.
Nafferton was very sympathetic.
"I'm afraid I've given you a good deal of trouble, haven't I?" said he.
"Trouble!" whimpered Pinecoffin; "I don't mind the trouble so much,though that was bad enough; but what I resent is this showing up inprint. It will stick to me like a burr all through my service. And I DIDdo my best for your interminable swine. It's too bad of you, on my soulit is!"
"I don't know," said Nafferton; "have you ever been stuck with a horse?It isn't the money I mind, though that is bad enough; but what I resentis the chaff that follows, especially from the boy who stuck me. But Ithink we'll cry quits now."
Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad words; and Nafferton smiledever so sweetly, and asked him to dinner.