He spun the ring like a coin high into the air. Perhaps he had meant it to fall into the boat, but it did not, and as I leant over in dismay I could see it sinking in shimmering circles through the sunlit water.
Sambo did not even seem surprised, but crossing the oars leisurely proceeded to strip.
"It does not matter," he said briefly. "Mai Gunga[[28]] is kind to me, and I know my way to her bosom."
A minute or so afterwards he came up from the depths with the ring fast held in his teeth.
"The fish are lying between the shallow and the deep," he remarked, as if nothing had happened. "If the Huzoor will believe me, he will catch them."
Apparently the faith was wanting, for we did not see a fin till I commenced fishing; and even then the luck was all with me. Bannerman began to grow restive, suggesting that in a boat "one man's sport was another man's spoil"; so we moved across the range of the Siwaliks to higher ground. We pitched our tents between the river and a backwater, where the boat--which despite my advice Bannerman insisted on bringing round by road--lay moored beneath a big cotton tree. A desirable resting-place certainly; cool and shadowy, and haunted by many a kingfisher busy among the shoals of silvery fishlets in the still water. Across the river, just above its great race to the gorge below, stood a group of Hindu temples backed by sun-steeped slopes ablaze with flowering, scented shrubs. Further up, however, the hills sank almost to the level, leaving a wedge of sky clear, before rising again in swift gradations of blue, cleft by a purple chasm marking the further course of the river towards the snows of Kedarnath.
"You live yonder, do you not?" I asked of Sambo, pointing to the peaks, as I stood settling my tackle.
For the first time a slow smile showed on the man's fine delicate face. "No, Huzoor. I live everywhere. Wherever there are things to kill, and that is in most places. But not here, sahib," he continued hastily, turning to Bannerman, who was about to launch his minnow into a likely spot. "This pool is sacred to the god yonder."
And sure enough, close to the water's edge, beneath the shade of a banyan tree, stood a crowned image of Maha-deo, with his eight arms, his necklace of snakes, and chaplet of skulls.
"Dash it all," muttered Bannerman impatiently, "as if the world were not full enough of limitations as it is! I'll have it out with that old land crab some day."