We turned away into the town. It needed no word from the chief of police to call attention to the ravages of plague and famine. The shopkeepers, humped over their wares, wore the air of dogs ever in the fear of a beating; the low-caste natives stared greedily at the stale, dust-covered foodstuffs spread out along the way; fleshless personifications of misery crawled by, whining for cowries—the sea-shells that charitable India bestows on her beggar army. The inhabitants were not hungry. That is their normal condition. They were starving. Yet the general misery made them none the less slaves of their omnipresent superstitions. The gaunt, sunken-eyed merchant screamed in frenzy when our fingers approached his octogenarian rice cakes and chappaties; he held his bony claw on a level with our knees to catch the coppers we offered. His stock was plentiful, if grey-bearded; his prices as low as in the days of abundance. It was, after all, chiefly a famine of annas.
At the great government bungalow, on a low hill to the eastward of the town, were few evidences of affliction. The official force, from the richly-gowned and turbaned judge, holding court on the veranda, to the punkah-wallah who cooled his court-room, were glossy, well-fed creatures. The commissioner, who drove up in a dog cart ornamented with two footmen in scarlet and white livery, and who marched with majestic tread through a lane of kowtowing inferiors, certainly had not come without his breakfast. But even he must have known of the famine, for in the stringy shade of thin-foliaged trees nearby huddled scores of wretches waiting for leave to appeal for government assistance.
Native starvelings, obviously, should not take precedence over a sahib. While I dropped into a proffered seat at the right hand of the judge, Marten followed the Englishman inside. A long line of prisoners, shackled in pairs and guarded by many native policemen, awaited judgment. Two by two they dropped on their knees in the sun-scorched dust, sat down on their heels, and, raising clasped hands to their faces, rocked slowly back and forth. The judge muttered a half-dozen words, which writers behind him jotted down in ponderous volumes, waved a flabby hand, and the culprits passed on.
“These,” whispered an interpreter in my ear, “are wicked thieves. They have stolen chappaties in the bazaars. They have prison for three months. These next escape quickly with six weeks. They have cut a coolie with knives. Those who kneel now have polluted high-caste food.”
Close to an hour the procession continued. An aged coolie, wrinkled and creased of skin as if he had been wrung out and hung up to dry, and a naked, half-grown boy brought up the rear. While they knelt, the secretary turned over the pages of his book.
“More thieves,” said the interpreter. “The boy has stolen a brass lota; the man, the lunch of a train guard, three months ago. Their prison is ended.”
The judge spoke and a policeman produced a large bunch of keys and removed their shackles. Man and boy fell on their faces in the dust, and rising, wandered away over the brow of the hill.
A moment later Marten emerged from the bungalow.
“The old song and dance is as good as ever!” he cried, when we were out of earshot. “I got a boost to Allahabad an’ two days’ batter an’ the commish’s sympathy. Come on; let’s take in the sights.”
Bankipore’s chief object of interest was a stone granary, in shape an immense bee-hive or hay-cock, depository in days of plenty for years of famine. As such things go in India, it was a very modern structure, having been erected in the time of the American revolution. It was empty. An outside stairway, winding upward, led to a circular opening in the apex, through which trains of coolies, in days gone by, poured a steady stream of grain. Within was Stygian darkness. We were rewarded for the perspiring ascent by a far-reaching view of the famine-stricken plains, and off to the eastward I caught my first glimpse of the Ganges.