"Ai!" whispered Bukta. "Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!"
"I have come on foot from my house" (the assembly shuddered) "to make clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen with both eyes from a distance. Ye know the Small-pox who pits and scars your children so that like wasp-combs. It is an order of the Government that whoso is scratched on the arm with these little knives which I hold up is charmed against her. All Sahibs are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos. This is the mark of the charm. Look!"
He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars of the vaccination-mark on his white skin. "Come, all, and look."
A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely. There was certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden by the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and there proclaimed his godhead!
"Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you."
I did - a hundred times; but they answered with blows," groaned the operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.
"But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save you, first from Small-pox, next from a great folly of fear, and lastly, it may be,from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to me; it is no pleasure to me: but for the sake of that one who is yonder, who made the Bhil a man" - he pointed down the hill —" I, who am of his blood, the son of his son, come to turn your people. And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn."
The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket by twos and threes to join it. There was no anger in their god's face.
"These are my orders. (Heaven send they'll take 'em, but I seem to have impressed 'em so far!) I myself will stay among you while this man scratches your arms with the knives, after the order of the Government. In three, or it may be five or seven, days, your arms will swell and itch and burn. That is the power of Small-pox fighting in your base blood against the orders of the Government I will therefore stay among you till I see that Small-pox is conquered, and I will not go away till the men and the women and the little children show me upon their arms such marks as I have even now showed you. I bring with me two very good guns, and a man whose name is known among beasts and men. We will hunt together, I and he and your young men, and the others shall eat and lie still. This is my order."
There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A white-haired old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up: