“And what do they in Belait?” asked the recruit respectfully.
“Get instruction—which thou hast not,” returned the Naik. “Also they drink of belaitee-panee [soda-water] enough to give them that devil’s restlessness which endures for all their lives. Whence we of Hind have trouble.”
“My father’s uncle,” said Imam Din slowly, with importance, “was Ressaldar of the Long Coat Horse; and the Empress called him to Europe in the year that she had accomplished fifty years of rule. He said (and there were also other witnesses) that the Sahibs there drink only common water even as do we; and that the belaitee-panee does not run in all their rivers.”
“He said that there was a Shish Mahal—a glass palace—half a mile in length, and that the rail-train ran under roads; and that there are boats bigger than a village. He is a great talker.” The Naik spoke scornfully. He had no well-born uncles.
“He is at least a man of good birth,” said Imam Din, and the Naik was silent.
“Ho! Ho!” Imam Din reached out to his pipe, chuckling till his fat sides shook again. “Strickland Sahib’s foster-mother was the wife of a gardener in the Ferozepur district. I was a young man then. This child also will be suckled here and he will have double wisdom, and when he is a Police officer it will be very bad for the thieves in this part of the world. Ho! Ho!”
“Strickland Sahib’s butler has said,” the Naik went on, “that they will call him Adam—and no jaw-splitting English name. Udaam. The padre will name him at their church in due time.”
“Who can tell the ways of Sahibs? Now Strickland Sahib knows more of the Faith than ever I had time to learn—prayers, charms, names and stories of the Blessed Ones. Yet he is not a Mussulman,” said Imam Din thoughtfully.
“For the reason that he knows as much of the gods of Hindustan, and so he rides with a rein in each hand. Remember that he sat under the Baba Atal, a faquir among faquirs, for ten days; whereby a man came to be hanged for the murder of a dancing girl on the night of the great earthquake,” the Naik replied.
“True—it is true. And yet—the Sahibs are one day so wise—and another so foolish. But he has named the child well; Adam. Huzrut Adam. Ho! Ho! Father Adam we must call him.”