If only he were in the carpentry department with Master Brahmin, where there were axes, hammers, chisels, knives, saws, and various pointed instruments. Fancy teaching the young gentleman manners and ethnology with an axe! However, after one or two more journeys between the tap and the flower-bed, he would pass within striking-distance of the dog as he worked his slow way along the tract of earth he was supposed to be digging up with the silly short-handled pick.
Should he try and seize the pick and give him one on the temple with it?
No, the Brahmin would scream and struggle and the overseer would be on
Moussa Isa in a single bound. He must strike a sudden blow in the act of
passing.
A few more journeys to the water-tap….
Now! "Hubshi," eh?
Halting beside the crouching Brahmin youth, Moussa Isa swung up the heavy watering-can by the spout and aimed a blow with all his strength at the side of his enemy's head. He designed to bring the sharp strong rim of the base behind the ear with the first blow, on the temple with the second, and just anywhere thereafter, if time permitted of a thereafter.
But the aggravating creature tossed his head as Moussa, with a grunt of energy, brought the vessel down, and the rim merely struck the top of the shaven skull. Another—harder. Another—with frenzied strength and the force of long-suppressed rage and sense of wrong.
And then Moussa was knocked head over heels and sat upon by the overseer in charge of the garden-gang, while the Brahmin twitched convulsively on the ground. He was by no means dead, however, and the sole immediate results, to Moussa, were penal diet, solitary confinement in his palatial cell, a severe sentence of corn-grinding with the heavy quern, and most joyous recollections of the sound of the water-can on the pate of the foe.
"I have still to kill you, of course," he whispered to his victim, the next time they met, and the Brahmin went in terror of his life. He was a very clever young person and had passed an astounding number of examinations in the course of his brief career. But he was not courageous, and his "education" had given him skill in nothing practical, except in penmanship, which skill he had devoted to forgery.
"Why did you violently commit this dastardish deed, and assault the harmless peaceful Brahmin?" asked the Superintendent, a worthy and voluble babu, and then translated the question into debased Hindustani.
"He called me Hubshi, and I will kill him," replied Moussa.