Rudyard Kipling

“ It was all very wonderful to Adam, but not worth much thinking over; for a child’s mind is bounded by his eyes exactly as a horse’s view of the road is limited by blinkers. Between all these objectionable shadowy vagrants stood a ring of kind faces and strong arms, and Mata and Heza would never touch Adam, the first of men. ”

“ I wish the Government would keep our service for country-born men. Those first five or six years give a man a pull that lasts him his life. Adam, if you were only old enough to be my ‘Stunt’!” He looked down at the little fellow on the verandah. Adam was deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike a child, did not lose interest after the first week. On the contrary, he would ask his father every evening what had been done, and Strickland had drawn him a picture on the white wall of the verandah showing the different towns in which policemen were on the lookout for the thieves. ”

“ Strickland seemed to work harder over the case than if he had been in office on the plains.
“And sometimes I look up and I fancy the little chap’s laughing at me. It’s an awful thing to have a son. You see, he’s your own and his own, and between the two you don’t know quite how to handle him,” said Strickland. “I wonder what in the world he thinks about?”
I asked Adam this on my own account. He put his head on one side for a moment and replied: “In these days I think about great things; I do not play with Victor and the cow’s child any more. He is only a baba.” ”

“ Strickland.
“And Beshaki was paid four annas for her hire three days ago by the wood-cutter’s brother, who is the left-hand man of the jhampanis here,” said Adam, in a loud and joyful voice. “We all knew. We all knew. I and all the servants.”
Strickland was silent. His wife stared helplessly at the child—the soul called out of the Nowhere, that went its own way alone.
“Did no man help thee with the lies?” I asked of the groom.
“None, Protector of the Poor—not one.”
“They grew, then?”
“As a tale grows in the telling. Alas! I am a very bad man,” and he blinked his one eye dole-fully. ”

“ At the changing stations the voice of Adam, the first of men, would be lifted to rouse the sleepers in the huts till the fresh relays of bearers shambled from their cots, and the relief-pony with them. ”

“ He was my father.”
“Good,” said Adam, and turned on his heel without another word.
Imam Din looked after him. “An elephant breeds but once in a lifetime, but he breeds elephants. Yet I am glad I am no father of tuskers,” said he. ”

“ It is written elsewhere that Strickland was feared through the length and breadth of the Punjab by murderers, horse-thieves, and cattle-lifters.
Adam returned, halting outside the verandah, very white about the lips.
“I have sent away Juma because she saw that—that which happened. Until she is gone I do not come in the house,” he said.
“But to send away thy foster-mother—” said Strickland, with reproach.
“I do not send her away. It is thy blame, and the small forefinger was pointed to Strickland. “I will not obey her; I will not eat from her hand, and I will not sleep with her. ”

“ Strickland’s parents lived, and where Strickland might be noticed by the powers, they could send Adam home in the next spring. It would be hard pinching, but it could be done. In India all the money that people in other lands save against a rainy day runs off in loss by exchange, which today cuts a man’s income down almost exactly to one-half. There is nothing to show for money when all is put by, and that is what makes married life there so hard. Strickland used to say, sometimes, that he envied the convicts in the jail. ”

“ Adam had been to Simla three or four times, and knew by name the most of the Tonga drivers from Kalka to Tara Deva; but this new plan disquieted him. He came to me for information, his hands deep in his knickerbocker pockets, walking, step for step, as his father walked.
“There will be none of my bhai-bund [Brotherhood] up there,” said he, disconsolately, “and they say that I must lie still in a doolie [palanquin] for a day and a night, being carried like a sheep. I wish to take some of my mounted men to Dalhousie.” ”

“ Public schools don’t encourage anything that isn’t quite English.”
Mrs. Strickland shuddered, for she had been trying not to think of the separation that follows motherhood in India, and makes life there, for all that is written to the contrary, not quite the most desirable thing in the world. Adam trotted out to hear about more miracles, and his nurse must have worried him beyond bounds, for she came back weeping, saying that Adam Baba was in danger of being eaten alive by wild horses. ”

“ But, as his legs grew under him, he found that by scaling an enormous rampart—three feet of broken-down mud wall at the end of the garden—he could come into a ready-made kingdom where every one was his slave. ”

“ He is a great talker.” The Naik spoke scornfully. He had no well-born uncles.
“He is a man of good birth,” said Imam Din, with the least possible emphasis on the first word, and the Naik was silent.
“Ho! ho!” Imam Din reached out to his pipe, chuckling until his fat sides shook again. “Strickland Sahib’s foster-mother was the wife of an Arain in the Ferozepur district. I was a young man then, ploughing while the English fought. This child will also be suckled here, and he will have double wisdom, and when he is a Police officer it will be very bad for the thieves in this illakha.” ”

“ He is a low-caste man, and desired consideration. Now he is a witness in a great law-case, and men will go to the jail-khana on his account. It was to give trouble and obtain notice.”
“Was it all lies?” said Strickland,
“Ask him,” said Adam, cheerily, through the mango-juice.
Strickland passed through the door; there was a howl of despair in the servants’ quarters up the hill, and he returned with the one-eyed groom.
“Now,” said Strickland, “it is known. Declare!”
“Beshakl,” said Adam, while the man gasped. “Imam Din has caught four men, and there are some more at Peshawur. Bus! Bus! Bus! ”

“ After that Adam could not sufficiently hurry the packing.
“First,” said he, “I shall ask that man Victor to let me play with the cow’s child. If he is muggra [ill-conditioned] I shall tell my policemen to take it away.”
“But that is unjust,” said Strickland, “and there is no order that the Police should do injustice.”
“When the Government pay is not sufficient, and low-caste men are promoted, what can an honest man do?” he replied, in the very touch and accent of Imam Din, and Strickland’s eyebrows went up. ”

“ He is a tiger’s cub.” The next time that Adam made his little unofficial inspection of the line, Imam Din, and by consequence all the others, stood upon their feet, with their hands to their sides, instead of calling out from where they lay, “Salaam, Babajee,” and other disrespectful things.
But Strickland took long counsel with his wife, and she with the cheque-book and their lean bank-account, and they decided that Adam must go “home” to his aunts. But England is not home to a child that has been born in India, and it never becomes home-like unless he spends all his youth there. ”

“ The Dhunnera and foot-hill people are highly respectable cultivators, and seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and I can’t trust my Inspector out of my sight, I am not going to turn their harvest upside down with a police investigation. ”

“ Strickland was a man of few words where his business was concerned. I had never seen a Police officer robbed before, and I expected some excitement; but Strickland held his tongue. He took the groom’s deposition and retired into himself for a time, evolving thieves. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Pathankot charge, an official letter and an unofficial note. Kennedy’s reply was purely unofficial, and it ran thus: “This seems a compliment solely intended for you. My wonder is, you didn’t get it before. The men are probably back in your district by this time. ”

“ If you strike me I will try to kill you. I do not wish my ayah to play with me. Go and eat rice.”
From that day Adam forswore the society of ayahs and small native girls as much as a small boy can, confining himself to Imam Din and his friends of the police. The Naik, Juma’s husband, had been presuming not a little on his position, and when Adam’s favour was withdrawn from his wife he judged it best to apply for a transfer to another post. There were too many companions anxious to report his shortcomings to Strickland. ”

“ Imam Din will cut off all their heads. I desire your saddle-cloth for a howdah to my elephant. Give it me.”
This was exciting, but not lucid. I went to the telegraph-office and found Strickland in a bad temper among many telegraph-forms. A dishevelled, one-eyed groom stood in a corner, whimpering at intervals. He was a man whom Adam invariably addressed as “Be-shakl be-ukl, be-ank” [ugly, stupid, eyeless] . It seemed, according to Strickland, that he had sent his wife’s horse up to Dalhousie by road, a fortnight’s march. This is the custom in Upper India. ”