“How was this, Grundy?” said I.
“Why, the doctor and the lads were always poking fun at him, and making him a boot (butt). One night, something such another as last, they made him believe he had been insoolted, and must fight. Sawney said he would rather take an apology, but they told him it was quite impossible that the affront could ever be washed out but with the blood of one of them. They said it must be settled immediately, and went out with lanterns to the back of the bungalow. The unfortunate lad was in a dreadful fright, but they made him fire; the pistols were loaded with powder only, but his antagonist fell; they said he had killed his man, and must fly immediately, or, if he fell into the hands of the civil power, he would inevitably be hanged. They hurried the poor young fellow off the ghaut, put him on board a fishing-canoe, telling him to row for his life till he came to some station, one hundred miles or so down the river, where he would have a better chance of a fair trial, and must give himself up. It was about a week before he was brought back to cantonments, burnt as black as a tinker. There was a terrible kick-up about it, and well there might be, for ’twas a cruel joke. The doctor and all the parties concerned were threatened with a court-martial; but, somehow or other, it all blew over.”
Pranks such as these are now, I believe, happily rare in India, as everywhere else; but those who remember the country twenty or thirty years ago will doubtless be able to recall many such manifestations of boyish folly.
It is not desirable that youth should be converted prematurely into thoughtful philosophy; care, in the ordinary course of things, will come, soon enough, and need not be hastened; but I am an advocate for its buoyancies being restrained within moderate bounds, that with it fun should not be allowed to degenerate into mischief or cruelty, wit in vulgarity, and friendly intimacy into coarse familiarity and practical joking.
We breakfasted very late, and the tenants of Griff Hall dropped in one by one en déshabille, evincing painful symptoms of the previous night’s debauch—red eyes, trembling hand, and glued lips. One took a dose of seidlitz, another five grains of calomel, and as for appetite, there was none.
These are a few of the early effects of intemperance; its ultimate consequences are not so briefly described.
I remained but one day more at Dinapore, which was partly devoted to reporting my arrival, en route to join—a measure enjoined on all military voyagers, but not always attended to. I also saw the troops, European and native, at brigade exercise, &c.; and in the evening witnessed a tattoo race—officers riding their own ponies. This was a very comical affair.
It was a little before sunset when Grundy, the Lieutenant Fireworker (who had entered his pony), and I, walked down to the course, which is situated a little behind the cantonment, being separated from it by a dry nullah,[[45]] over which there are one or two bridges.
We found a great number of the inhabitants of the cantonment—some in gigs, some on horseback, and others on foot—assembled to witness the sport.
There was a good show of ponies, some of them certainly “rum’uns” to look at, but, as was fully proved in the sequel, “devils to go.” Long tails and swish tails, stumps, crops, and wall-eyes were there in perfection. The young officers who were to ride them, amongst whom I recognized more than one of the inmates of Griff Hall, marched about in their top boots and velvet hunting-caps, cracking their whips with countenances expressive of the full sense they entertained of the awful contest in which they were about to be engaged.