Dr. Dillon looked up cheerfully. "By George! I'd have given something to see that water-fight between him and Am-ma! By the way, what are you going to do for that queer fish? But for him, we would never have seen Lance Carlyon's face again."
The Commissioner's expression was curious. "It's a bit hard to do anything for a man who wants nothing but earth, air, and water, and has got all three; besides--" he drew a paper out of a file, looked at it, then looked at the doctor--"besides it wasn't altogether Am-ma!" He paused, smiled an infinitely kind smile, then went on: "I was a brute, entirely, to talk about a heavy toll just now. We get its worth back, me dear fellow, over and over again. See! here is Am-ma's affidavit. I took it this morning, and upon me soul, Dillon, I should be obliged if you would tell me whether to hush it up, or inform the party concerned." So saying, his brogue took possession of the sun-bright, sun-dry air--
"I, Am-ma, of the river folk, solemnly affirm that, knowing the Dee-puk-râg to be in the power of the Huzoors, I several times warned Gu-gu not to follow other masters. But he had learned books, and become ignorant. He could not even feel when a current changed its course; and then he thought he must die, because of the ghost, and that made him wild. So when I refused, and set off, as ordained, for the raft, he took the Brahmin's money and stopped the miracle. Of a surety, the Awarder of Justice is right. This slave knew what was to come. He did not tell of it because, where the Dee-puk-râg is, there is victory; so there was no fear. Yet when the Miss-sahiba bade me help her, I obeyed, because she has power over devils, and my son, Huzoor, is still in the first week of life. Therefore, for that reason, I guided the raft. But when I saw that the Light-bringers had smitten the darkness of evil-doers, and that the raft would be needed no more, I went on with it to the place appointed by the Wood-wallah-sahib whence it could float of itself.
"So I returned to my home and ate my bread. And the day was quiet, as the Huzoor knows; only the folk reviled, because I had no fish to sell.
"But, at night, at the waning of the sunset stars, about the third jackal cry, came the Miss-sahiba to my hut."
Dr. Dillon ceased twiddling his hat, and looked up in sudden interest.
"To my hut," reiterated the reading voice. "I deemed it because of devils first; but it was not. It was because of Carlone-sahib who could not be found,--only his clothes and pistol on my craft, stranded on a sand-bank by the mid-channel.
"'He has not been killed,' said the Miss-sahiba 'He would not have fought with his clothes off. Nor did he go to fight. He would not have left the pistol if he had. He has gone swimming, to get quicker and find help. So he is drowned. He is in the river still, and I cannot think of it. Am-ma! you know every inch of the river. Find him! Find him!'
"Then I said: 'Yea, Miss-sahiba I will find him when his body rises. No man can find a dead one in the river till then.' But, as I spoke, the son at his mother's breast left sucking, and cried aloud. The Miss-sahiba said it was but the gripes, but we--my house and I--knew more than that. We knew it was the devils, winning a way because the Miss was not content. So I said: 'I will find him while his beauty is still on him, for you to see again,'--since that is in the heart of all women, O Awarder of Justice. Thus at the dawn--the dawn after the dawn of darkness--I, Am-ma, set out with my nets, seeing that fish, anyhow, could be found, and the market would be dear, because none had come to the bazaar during the commotion. So, remembering where my craft had stranded, I went first to mid-channel; thus, working up, came to where it had stranded once before. Then, seeing footmarks, I followed them, till in an island, eating his bread, I found the evil-begotten Gu-gu.
"He had a knife in his bead belt, at the sight whereof I gave glory to gods and devils alike, for I knew the handle of it. It was Carlone-sahib's shikar knife, and I had been his shikari many a time.