Rudyard Kipling

“ But, to-day, when the rain falls and the river rises, I creep into my hut and whimper like a dog. The strength is gone from me. I am an old man and the fire-carriage has made the ford desolate. They were wont to call me the Strong One of the Barhwi.
Behold my face, Sahib. It is the face of a monkey. And my arm. It is the arm of an old woman. I swear to you, Sahib, that a woman has loved this face and has rested in the hollow of this arm. Twenty years ago, Sahib. ”

“ I made haste, the river aiding me, but ere I had touched the shoal, the pulse of the stream beat, as it were, within me and around, and, behold, the shoal was gone and I rode high on the crest of a wave that ran from bank to bank. Has the Sahib ever been cast into much water that fights and will not let a man use his limbs? To me, my head upon the water, it seemed as though there was naught but water to the world's end, and the river drove me with its driftwood. A man is a very little thing in the belly of a flood. ”

“ A strange man in many ways was Janki Meah, the white-haired, hot-tempered, sightless weaver who had turned pitman. Every day—except on Sundays and Mondays, when he was usually drunk—he worked in the Twenty-Two shaft of the Jimahari Colliery as cleverly as a man with all the senses. At evening, he went up in the great steam-hauled cage to the pit-bank, and there called for his pony—a rusty, coal-dusty-beast, nearly as old as Janki Meah. ”

“ They are very wise, but they do not know all things about devils or—horses. Ho! Ho! I say to you who are laughing at my misery, that I have seen the Devils at high noon whooping and leaping on the shoals of the Chenab. And was I afraid? My brother, when the desire of a man is set upon one thing alone he fears neither God nor Man nor Devil. If my vengeance failed, I would splinter the Gates of Paradise with the butt of my gun, or I would cut my way into Hell with my knife, and I would call upon Those who Govern there for the body of Daoud Shah. What love is so deep as hate? ”

“ The Mohurrum, the great mourning-festival of the Muhammadans, was close at hand, and the things that Wali Dad said about religious fanaticism would have secured his expulsion from the loosest-thinking Muslim sect. There were the rose-bushes round us, the stars above us, and from every quarter of the City came the boom of the big Mohurrum drums. You must know that the City is divided in fairly equal proportions between the Hindus and the Musalmans, and where both creeds belong to the fighting races a big religious festival gives ample chance for trouble. ”

“ It will not shrink because of the anger in your eyes, and it will not be quiet on account of your curses. Which is louder, Sahib—your voice or the voice of the river? Call to it—perhaps it will be ashamed. Lie down and sleep afresh, Sahib. I know the anger of the Barhwi when there has fallen rain in the foot-hills. I swam the flood, once, on a night tenfold worse than this, and by the Favour of God I was released from Death when I had come to the very gates thereof. ”

“ When Wali Dad sings that song his eyes glow like hot coals, and Lalun leans back among the cushions and throws bunches of jasmine-buds at Wali Dad.
But first it is necessary to explain something about the Supreme Government which is above all and below all and behind all. Gentlemen come from England, spend a few weeks in India, walk round this great Sphinx of the Plains, and write books upon its ways and its works, denouncing or praising it as their own ignorance prompts. Consequently all the world knows how the Supreme Government, conducts itself. ”

“ Am I not alive? Though he run northward to the Dora and the snow, or southerly to the Black Water, I will follow him, as a lover follows the footsteps of his mistress, and coming upon him I will take him tenderly—Aho! so tenderly!—in my arms, saying:—"Well hast thou done and well shalt thou be repaid". And out of that embrace Daoud Shah shall not go forth with the breath in his nostrils. Auggrh! where is the pitcher? I am as thirsty as a mother mare in the first month. Your Law! What is your Law to me? When the horses fight on the runs do they regard the boundary pillars ”

“ I set the strength of my body against the strength of the stream, and nightly I ate in my hut here and drank at Pateera yonder. She had said that one Hirnam Singh, a swashbuckler, had sought Her, and he was of a village up the river but on the same bank. All Sikhs are dogs, and they have refused in their folly that good gift of God—tobacco. I was ready to destroy Hirnam Singh that ever he had come nigh Her; and the more because he had sworn to Her that She had a lover and that he would lie in wait and give the name to the lambardar unless She went away with him. ”

“ She knew all the songs that have ever been sung, from the war-songs of the South that make the old men angry with the young men and the young men angry with the State, to the love-songs of the North where the swords whinny-whicker like angry kites in the pauses between the kisses, and the Passes fill with armed men, and the Lover is torn from his Beloved and cries, Ai, Ai, Ai! ”

“ For jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.—Prov. vii. 34.
ALMONDS and raisins, Sahib? Grapes from Cabul? Or a pony of the rarest if the Sahib will only come with me. He is thirteen-three, Sahib, plays polo, goes in a cart, carries a lady and—Holy Kurshed and the Blessed Imams, it is the Sahib himself! My heart is made fat and my eye glad. May you never be tired! As is cold water in the Tirah so is the sight of a friend in a far place. ”

“ He said, using many bad words—"This much mercy will I do to you, Durga Dass, though there was no mercy in your dealings with my sister's son over the matter of the dun heifer. Has any one a pony on which he sets no store, that this fellow may escape? If the jaghirdar hears that one of the twain (and God knows whether he beat one or both, but this man is certainly beaten) be in the city, there will be a murder done, and then will come the Police, making inquisition into each man's house and eating the sweet-seller's stuff all day long." ”

“ THE SENDING OF DANA DA.
"When the Devil rides on your chest remember the low-caste man.
Native Proverb. ONCE upon a time, some people in India made a new Heaven and a new Earth out of broken tea-cups a missing brooch or two, and a hair-brush. These were hidden under bushes, or stuffed into holes in the hill side, and an entire Civil Service of Subordinate Gods used to find or mend them again; and every one said:—"There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy". ”

“ Is it the Baromba khad, the oldest, or the Twenty-Two where Tibu's gallery runs up to Number Five?"
"Hear the old fool talk!" said Kundoo, nodding to Unda. "No gallery of Twenty-Two will cut into Five before the end of the Rains. We have a month's solid coal before us. The Babuji says so."
"Babuji! Pigji! Dogji! What do these fat slugs from Calcutta know? He draws and draws and draws, and talks and talks and talks, and his maps are all wrong. I, Janki, know that this is so. When a man has been shut up in the dark for thirty years, God gives him knowledge. ”

“ There is a pleasant wind among the mulberry trees, and the streams are bright with snow-water, and the caravans go up and the caravans go down, and a hundred fires sparkle in the gut of the Pass, and tent-peg answers hammer-nose, and pony squeals to pony across the drift smoke of the evening. It is good in the North now. Come back with me. Let us return to our own people! Come! •••••••••••• Whence is my sorrow? Does a man tear out his heart and make fritters thereof over a slow fire for aught other than a woman? Do not laugh, friend of mine, for your time will also be. ”

“ It is very hard to die when one is young. Can the Sahib, standing here, see the railway bridge? Look, there are the lights of the mail-train going to Peshawur! The bridge is now twenty feet above the river, but upon that night the water was roaring against the lattice-work and against the lattice came I feet first. But much driftwood was piled there and upon the piers, and I took no great hurt. Only the river pressed me as a strong man presses a weaker. Scarcely could I take hold of the lattice-work and crawl to the upper boom. ”

“ The warrior-youth who earns his fee
⁠At peril of his head.
"At peril of his head," said Wali Dad in English to me. "Thanks to your Government, all our heads are protected, and with the educational facilities at my command"—his eyes twinkled wickedly—"I might be a distinguished member of the local administration. Perhaps, in time, I might even be a member of a Legislative Council."
"Speak my talk," said Lalun, bending over her sitár afresh. The chorus went out from the City wall to the blackened wall of Fort Amara which dominates the City. No man knows the precise extent of Fort Amara. ”

“ We were all brave men—Rustums. Wherefore we were sent to that Thana which was eight miles from the next Thana. All day and all night we watched for dacoits. Why does the Sahib laugh? Nay, I will make a confession. The dacoits were too clever, and seeing this we made no further trouble. It was in the hot weather. What can a man do in the hot days? Is the Sahib who is so strong—is he, even, vigorous in that hour? We made an arrangement with the dacoits for the sake of peace. That was the work of the Havildar who was fat. Ho! Ho! Sahib, he is now getting thin in the jail among the carpets. ”

“ Petitt, the Deputy Commissioner, covered with dust and sweat, but calm and gently smiling, cantered up the clean-swept street in rear of the main body of the rioters. "No one killed yet," he shouted. "I'll keep'em on the run till dawn! Don't let em halt, Hugonin! Trot 'em about till the troops come."
The science of the defence lay solely in keeping the mob on the move. If they had breathing-space they would halt and fire a house, and then the work of restoring order would be more difficult, to say the least of it. Flames have the same effect on a crowd as blood has on a wild beast. ”

“ He was once a great man. There will never be any more great men in India. They will all when they are boys go whoring after strange gods, and they will become citizens—'fellow-citizens'—'illustrious fellow-citizens'—What is it that the native papers call them?"
Wali Dad seemed to be in a very bad temper. Lalun looked out of the window and smiled into the dust-haze. I went away thinking about Kehm Singh who had once made history with a thousand followers, and would have been a princeling but for the power of the Supreme Government aforesaid. ”

“ Now no man, not even the little children, could at one glance see which was Ram Dass and which was Durga Dass. But all the people of Isser Jang—may they die without sons!—said that we were thieves. They used much bad talk, but I took money on their bedsteads and their cooking-pots and the standing crop and the calf unborn, from the well in the big square to the gate of the Montgomery road. They were fools these people—unfit to cut the toe-nails of a Marwari from Pali. I lent money to them all. A little, very little only— here a penny and there a penny. God is my witness that I am a poor man! ”

“ A head moved on one of the Ramparts—the grey head of an old man—and a voice, rough as a sharkskin on a swordhilt, sent back the last line of the chorus and broke into a song that I could not understand, though Lalun and Wali Dad listened intently.
"What is it?" I asked. "Who is it?"
"A consistent man," said Wali Dad. "He fought you in '46, when he was a warrior-youth; refought you in '57 and he tried to fight you in '71, but you had learned the trick of blowing men from guns too well. Now he is old; but he would still fight if he could." ”

“ One small lamp in the white room showed Lalun and her maid leaning half out of the window, breathing heavily and evidently pulling at something that refused to come.
"Thou art late—very late," gasped Lalun without turning her head. "Help us now, O Fool, if thou hast not spent thy strength howling among the tazais. Pull! Nasiban and I can do no more! O, Sahib, is it you? The Hindus have been hunting an old Mahommadan round the Ditch with club. If they find him again they will kill him. Help us to pull him up. ”

“ I have trodden every league of the road from Pubbi to this place; and from Nowshera my guide was only the Voice and the lust of vengeance.
To the Uttock river I went, but that was no hindrance to me. Ho! Ho! A man may turn the word twice even in his trouble. The Uttock was no uttock to me; and I heard the Voice above the noise of the waters beating on the big rock, saying:—"Go to the right". So I went to Pindigheb, and in those days my sleep was taken from me utterly, and the head of the woman of the Abazai was before me night and day, even as it had fallen between my feet. ”

“ Unseen hands played Gluck and Beethoven on finger-bowls and clock-shades; but all men felt that Psychic Life was a mockery without Materialized kittens. Even Lone Sahib shouted with the majority on this head. Dana Da's letters were very insulting, and if he had then offered to lead a new departure, there is no knowing what might not have happened.
But Dana Da was dying of whiskey and opium in the Englishman's godown, and had small heart for new creeds.
"They have been put to shame," said he. "Never was such a Sending. It has killed me." ”

“ Do you do nothing. The time has come for me to act. Write as I dictate, and I will put them to shame. But give me ten more rupees."
At Dana Da's dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal challenge to the Old Man of the Mountains. It wound up:—"And if this Manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from my hand, I will that the Sending shall cease in two days' time. On that day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all. The people shall judge between us." ”