Tom took me to the bungalow of the superintending officer, who is always an European, and whose duty it is to conduct the proceedings which he records, assisted by the regimental interpreter, who is also the quarter-master of the regiment.
Shortly after our arrival, the native officers composing the court made their appearance; they were all large, portly men, singular compounds of those moral antipodes, the European and the Asiatic.
Instead of the black military stock of the English officer, they wore, over white cotton collars, necklaces of gold, formed of massive embossed beads, each almost as large as a small bean or nutmeg; the overalls of the majority had been pulled up over the Dotee, or waistcloth, a Hindoo article of dress, containing almost cloth enough to serve for the envelopment of a mummy.
The Native Court-martial.
This swathing of the loins, gathered into a bunch behind and before, renders a considerable amplitude of waistband indispensably necessary, and causes, moreover, very often an unseemly protuberance under the jacket flaps on the hinder regions, ornamental, no doubt, in a dromedary or Hottentot Venus, though any thing but improving to the appearance of a military man.
In spite, however, of these little drawbacks, or, perhaps, I should say humpbacks, there was much in the general appearance of these Indian veterans which to me, as a novice, and not altogether an unobservant one, was exceedingly striking and interesting, not having yet had an opportunity of observing them so leisurely; to those, however, accustomed to see them daily, these feelings doubtless had long since died away.
Two or three were aged men, whose snowy whiskers and mustachios contrasted strikingly with the swarthy hue of their well-chiselled and manly countenances; gold and silver medals hung on their breasts, mementoes of past services under a Wellesley, a Coote, a Baird, a Harris, a Lake, or some other of the many commanders who have led the brave and faithful sepoy, where’er in this hemisphere Britain has had a cause to maintain, and whose deeds are chronicled in some of the brightest pages of Indian military history.
“How is it, Tom,” said I, “that the European officers, who have shared in the same dangers, and who have fought in the same fields, exiles from home and kindred, and grilling under your fiery sun here, are not also honoured with medals for remarkable services?”[[31]]
“Upon my life, Frank, I can’t tell you; it is one of those profound mysteries which it does not become unassisted reason to probe too closely: there must be some latent policy in it, though it is far beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. My old native officer, Subadar Davy Persaud, one day, in my presence, asked your friend Captain Marpeet, when lounging at my bungalow, what was the reason of it? ‘We are puzzled, Sahib,’ said he, ‘to make it out; they are either of no value, and given to us, as baubles are to the Baba Logue (children), or else you gentlemen, who led us on, and shared in our dangers and hardships, are very ill-treated by the Kumpany Ungruis Bahadour, in not being allowed to share in the distinction, which we should prize much more if our officers did share it.’”