"The dickens she is," blurted out my companion, somewhat abashed for the time. Perhaps that was Sambo's intention. At any rate I have no means of knowing if he spoke the truth or not. Indeed, looking back on it all, I scarcely seem to know what really happened, and what must have been sheer fancy. Only this remains clear; a growing antagonism between these two, a growing disinclination on Bannerman's part to do anything but lounge away his days.
"Can't help it, my dear fellow," he would say, "it's the air, or something. If I had a shepherd's pipe I'd play it. And as for flowers! Do you know some one puts a bunch of them on my pillow every night. I believe it's the milkmaid!"
There were flowers, too, garlanded round his door, while just over the way those ominous splashes of red on Ishwara's feet seemed to grow deeper and deeper.
At last I put the case baldly and crudely before him. Something was going on which I didn't understand, which might get him into mischief at any moment, and I appealed to his good sense to put the Siwaliks between him and a temptation which seemed to have fascinated him. He laughed, admitted the fact, and yielded; the more readily because our time was almost up.
For the first two days he was rewarded by success in the lower reaches; possibly--since fish shy at novelty--because we used a native Noah's Ark, our own boat remaining in the backwater till we could send coolies to fetch it. On the third he left the river early on plea of a headache. As he had been in wild spirits all day, quoting the Prem Sâgar and singing French songs, I half thought he was going in for fever, the day being exceptionally hot. But on my return at dusk the servants asked if I would wait dinner for the sahib or not. Beset by immediate misgivings I rushed into his tent, where I found a slip of paper impaled like a bait on some tackle lying on the table.
"Off to the divine milkmaid! Don't wait. Vogue la galère!"
"How far?" I asked Sambo breathlessly.
"Twenty kos by the road--the sahib borrowed the police inspector's mare--not half that over the hills. But the moon is late, and the snakes love the dark."
If it had been the darkness of Egypt I had no choice but to follow, and half an hour afterwards I was stumbling along after Sambo. Even by daylight the hills, heat-cracked, rain-seared, strewn with sharp rocks, were bad walking; on a dark, hot night, with the snakes' eyes gleaming from the stones, they were horrible--most horrible. The straight fingers of the stiff candelabra bushes pointing up and up, the gnarled stunted trees growing into strange shapes, reminding one involuntarily of those antediluvian animals whose bones lie buried all along the Siwaliks. A cold sweat of suspense lay upon my forehead despite the scorching blast tearing down the ravines; scorching yet laden with the scent of earth, as from a new-made grave.
"There has been rain in the hills beyond," said Sambo's voice out of the dark. I lost sight of him constantly, and at the best of times he was little more than another weird shape among the shadows. "Holy Maha-deo! Have a care, Huzoor! Let the snake pass in peace!"