It was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket, and, stretching out, felt the little hand of a langur. “It is better here than in the trees,” he said sleepily, loosening a fold of blanket. “Take it and be warm.” The monkey caught his hand and pulled hard. “It is food, then?” said Purun Bhagat. “Wait a while, and I will prepare some.” As he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the langur ran to the door of the shrine, crooned, and ran back again, plucking at the man’s knee.
“What is it? What is thy trouble, Brother?” said Purun Bhagat, for the langur’s eyes were full of things that he could not tell. “Unless one of thy caste be in a trap—and none set traps here—I will not go into that weather. Look, Brother, even the barasingha comes for shelter.”
The deer’s antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed against the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhagat’s direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his half-shut nostrils.
“Hai! Hai! Hai!” said the Bhagat, snapping his fingers. “Is this payment for a night’s lodging?” But the deer pushed him towards the door, and as he did so Purun Bhagat heard the sound of something opening with a sigh, and saw two slabs of the floor draw away from each other, while the sticky earth below smacked its lips.
“Now I see,” said Purun Bhagat. “No blame to my brothers that they did not sit by the fire to-night. The mountain is falling. And yet—why should I go?” His eye fell on the empty begging-bowl, and his face changed. “They have given me good food daily since—since I came, and, if I am not swift, to-morrow there will not be one mouth in the valley. Indeed, I must go and warn them below. Back there, Brother! Let me get to the fire.”
The barasingha backed unwillingly as Purun Bhagat drove a torch deep into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit. “Ah! Ye came to warn me,” he said, rising. “Better than that we shall do, better than that. Out, now, and lend me thy neck, Brother, for I have but two feet.”
He clutched the bristling withers of the barasingha with his right hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped out of the shrine into the desperate night. There was no breath of wind, but the rain nearly drowned the torch as the great deer hurried down the slope, sliding on his haunches. As soon as they were clear of the forest more of the Bhagat’s brothers joined them. He heard, though he could not see, the langurs pressing about him, and behind them the uhh! uhh! of Sona. The rain matted his long white hair into ropes; the water splashed beneath his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning against the barasingha. He was no longer a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., Prime Minister of no small State, a man accustomed to command, going out to save life. Down the steep plashy path they poured all together, the Bhagat and his brothers, down and down till the deer clicked and stumbled on the wall of a threshing-floor, and snorted because he smelled Man. Now they were at the head of the one crooked village street, and the Bhagat beat with his crutch at the barred windows of the blacksmith’s house as his torch blazed up in the shelter of the eaves. “Up and out!” cried Purun Bhagat, and he did not know his own voice, for it was years since he had spoken aloud to a man. “The hill falls! The hill is falling! Up and out, oh, you within!”
“It is our Bhagat,” said the blacksmith’s wife. “He stands among his beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call.”
It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.
The people hurried into the street—they were no more than seventy souls all told—and in the glare of their torches they saw their Bhagat holding back the terrified barasingha, while the monkeys plucked piteously at his skirts, and Sona sat on his haunches and roared.
“Across the valley and up the next hill!” shouted Purun Bhagat. “Leave none behind! We follow!”
Then the people ran as only Hill-Folk can run, for they knew that in a landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each other by name—the roll-call of the village—and at their heels toiled the big barasingha, weighted by the failing strength of Purun Bhagat. At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pine-wood, five hundred feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him of the coming slide, told him he would be safe here.
Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and that fierce climb were killing him. But first he called to the scattered torches ahead: “Stay and count your numbers.” Then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: “Stay with me, Brother. Stay—till—I—go!”
There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled drums of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.
Never a villager—not even the priest—was bold enough to speak to the Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley, and saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-coloured lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.
And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before their Bhagat. They saw the barasingha standing over him, who fled when they came near, and they heard the langurs wailing in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill. But their Bhagat was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east.
The priest said: “Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very attitude must all Sannyasis be buried! Therefore, where he now is we will build the temple to our holy man.”
They built the temple before a year was ended, a little stone and earth shrine, and they called the hill the Bhagat’s Hill, and they worship there with lights and flowers and offerings to this day. But they do not know that the saint of their worship is the late Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., D.C.L., Ph.D., etc., once Prime Minister of the progressive and enlightened State of Mohiniwala, and honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next.
A SONG OF KABIR
Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!
Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet,
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat;
His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd—
He is seeking the Way, a bairagi avowed!
He has looked upon Man and his eyeballs are clear
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir);
The Red Mist of Doing is thinned to a cloud—
He has taken the Path, a bairagi avowed!
To learn and discern of his brother the clod,
Of his brother the brute, and his brother the God.
He has gone from the council and put on the shroud
/> (“Can ye hear?” saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed!
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE
Veil them, cover them, wall them round,
Blossom and creeper and weed.
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
And the smell and the touch of the breed!
Fat black ash by the altar-stone
Here is the white-foot rain!
And the does bring forth in the fields unsown,
And none may affright them again;
And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o’erthrown,
And none may inhabit again!
YOU will remember, if you have read the tales in the first Jungle Book, that after Mowgli had pinned Shere Kahn’s hide to the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee Pack that henceforward he would hunt in the jungle alone; and the four children of Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not easy to change all one’s life at once—particularly in the jungle. The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his adventures among men. And when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning-knife—the same he had skinned Shere Khan with—they said he had learnt something. Then Akela and Grey Brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli had managed his war.
It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and from time to time, Mother Wolf would throw up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.
“But for Akela and Grey Brother here,” Mowgli said, at the end, “I could have done nothing. Oh, Mother, Mother! If thou hadst seen the blue herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the man pack flung stones at me!”
“I am glad I did not see that last,” said Mother Wolf, stiffly. “It is not my custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals! I would have taken a price from the man pack, but I would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her alone.”
“Peace, peace, Raksha!” said Father Wolf, lazily. “Our frog has come back again—so wise that his own father must lick his feet. And what is a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Man alone.” Baloo and Bagheera both echoed: “Leave Man alone.”
Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man again.
“But what,” said Akela, cocking one ear, “but what if men do not leave thee alone, Little Brother?”
“We be five,” said Grey Brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word.
“We also might attend to that hunting,” said Bagheera, with a little switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. “But why think of Man now, Akela?”
“For this reason,” the Lone Wolf answered. “When that yellow thief’s hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make a mixed trail in case any should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang the Bat came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me. Said Mang: ‘The village of the man pack, where they cast out the man-cub, hums like a hornet’s nest.’ ”
“It was a big stone that I threw,” chuckled Mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe pawpaws into a hornet’s nest, and racing to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him.
“I asked of Mang what he had seen. He said that the Red Flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. Now I know, for I have good cause”—Akela looked here at the old dry scars on his flank and side—“that men do not carry guns for pleasure. Presently, Little Brother, a man with a gun follows our trail—if, indeed, he be not already on it.”
“But why should he? Men have cast me out. What more do they need?” said Mowgli angrily.
“Thou art a man, Little Brother,” Akela returned. “It is not for us, the Free Hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why.”
He had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. Mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but Akela was a wolf, and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on.
“Another time,” Mowgli said, quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, “speak of the man pack and of Mowgli in two breaths—not one.”
“Phff! That is a sharp tooth,” said Akela, snuffing at the blade’s cut in the earth, “but living with the man pack has spoiled thine eye, Little Brother. I could have killed buck while thou wast striking.”
Bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. Grey Brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while Akela bounded fifty yards up-wind, and, half-crouching, stiffened too. Mowgli looked on enviously. He could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a jungle nose, and his three months in the smoky village had put him back sadly. However, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the upper scent, which, though the faintest, is the truest.
“Man!” Akela growled, dropping on his haunches.
“Buldeo!” said Mowgli, sitting down. “He follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his gun. Look!”
It was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the old Tower musket, but nothing in the jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky. Then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. But that day was cloudless and still.
“I knew men would follow,” said Akela, triumphantly. “Not for nothing have I led the pack!”
Mowgli’s four wolves said nothing, but ran down hill on their bellies, melting into the thorn and under-brush.
“Whither go ye, and without word?” Mowgli called.
“Hsh! We roll his skull here before mid-day!” Grey Brother answered.
“Back! Back and wait! Man does not eat Man!” Mowgli shrieked.
“Who was a wolf but now? Who drove the knife at me for thinking he might be a man?” said Akela, as the Four turned back sullenly and dropped to heel.
“Am I to give reason for all I choose to do?” said Mowgli, furiously.
“That is Man! There speaks Man!” Bagheera muttered under his whiskers. “Even so did men talk round the king’s cages at Oodeypore. We of the jungle know that Man is wisest of all, If we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish.” Raising his voice, he added: “The man-cub is right in this. Men hunt in packs. To kill one, unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunting. Come, let us see what this man means towards us.”
“We will not come,” Grey Brother growled. “Hunt alone, Little Brother. We know our own minds! The skull would have been ready to bring by now.”
Mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. He strode forward, and, dropping on one knee, said: “Do I not know my mind? Look at me!”
They looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back again and again, till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and they trembled in every limb, while Mowgli stared and stared.
“Now,” said he, “of us five, which is leader?”
“Thou art leader, Little Brother,” said Grey Brother, and he licked Mowgli’s foot.
/> “Follow, then,” said Mowgli, and the Four followed at his heels with their tails between their legs.
“This comes of living with the man pack,” said Bagheera, slipping down after them. “There is more in the jungle now than Jungle Law, Baloo.”
The old bear said nothing, but he thought many things.
Mowgli cut across noiselessly through the jungle, at right angles to Buldeo’s path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the two-day-old trail at a dog-trot.
You will remember that Mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight of Shere Khan’s raw hide on his shoulders, while Akela and Grey Brother trotted behind, so that the trail was very clearly marked. Presently Buldeo came to where Akela, as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. Then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and about into the jungle to pick it up again, and all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be heard, and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the scale that untaught human beings can hear. (The other end is bounded by the high squeak of Mang the Bat, which very many people cannot catch at all. From that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.)
“This is better than any kill,” said Grey Brother, as Buldeo stooped and peered and puffed. “He looks like a lost pig in the jungles by the river. What does he say?” Buldeo was muttering savagely.
Mowgli translated. “He says that packs of wolves must have danced round me. He says that he never saw such a trail in his life. He says he is tired.”
“He will be rested before he picks it up again,” said Bagheera coolly, as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of blind-man’s-buff that they were playing. “Now, what does the lean thing do?”