And the huge bulk of Shere Bahadur turned slowly round and shambled off to the peepul tree like a lamb.
"By the trunk of Gunputty! I will make that lad a havildar, and the thousand rupees shall be his," swore the Maharaj.
"Pillar of the earth!" advised the Vizier, "let this unworthy one speak. It is Futteh Din, the dead Aladin's son. Give him five rupees, and let him be mahout."
When I last saw Shere Bahadur he was passing solemnly under the old archway of the "Gate of the Hundred Winds" at Kalesar. The Maharaj Adhiraj was seated in the howdah, with his excellency the Nawab Juggun Jung by his side. On the driving-seat was Futteh Din, gorgeous in cloth of gold, and they were on their way to the funeral-pyre of the Heir Apparent, who had died suddenly from a surfeit of cream.
As they passed under the archway a sweetmeat-seller rose and bowed to the prince, and Shere Bahadur, stretching out his trunk, helped himself to a pound or so of Turkish Delight.
"Such," said the sweetmeat-seller to himself ruefully, as he gazed after the retreating procession, "such are the ways of kings."
[REGINE'S APE]
It is a May morning in the north of India--such a morning as comes when the hot wind has been blowing for three weeks, and has shrivelled everything before it, like tea-leaves under the fan of a drying engine. The Grand Trunk Road, a long line of grey dotted in with dust-covered kikur trees, stretches for three hundred miles to the frontier, and to the right and left of it, beginning at the village of the Well of Lehna Singh, which lies but a quoit-cast from the roadside, spreads a plain, dry, arid, and parched--agape with thirst--the seams running along its brown surface like open lips panting for rain, the cool rain which will not come yet, although, at times, the distant rumble of thunder is heard, and dark clouds pile up in the horizon, only to melt away into nothing. The tall sirpat grass has been cut, and its pruned stalks, stiff as the bristles on a hair-brush, extend in regular patches of yellow, spiky scrub, with bands of mottled brown and grey earth between them. Here and again it would seem there are scattered pools, for the eyes, running over the landscape, shrink back from a sudden flash, as of water reflecting the fierce light of the sun. It is not so, however, for, except what the groaning Persian wheels drag up from the deep wells, there is never a drop of water for man, for beast, or for field. Those gleaming stretches from which the pained eyes turn are nothing more than the bare earth, covered with a saline efflorescence, soft and silver white, as if it were dry and powdered foam. It is yet early, and the light is not so dazzling as to prevent the eye resting on the patchwork of the plain, studded here and there with clumps of trees, that mark a well and the hamlet that has grown up around it. To found a village here it is only necessary to dig a well, and behold! mud huts spring up like fungi, and a hamlet has come into being. Right across the plain is a dark line of kikur and seesum trees. That is where the dry bed of the Deg torrents lies. Only let it rain, and the Deg will come down, an angry yellow flood, alive with catfish, and bubble its way to the wide but not less yellow bosom of the Ravi. Beyond the dry bed of the torrent, and towards the east, are a number of sand dunes covered with the soda plant, and looking like anthills in the distance. In the east itself the sun looms through a red haze, and against this ruddy, semi-opaque mist, a dust-devil rises in a spiral column, and opening out at the top, like an expanding smoke wreath, spreads sullenly against the sky line. On a morning such as this, two men are beating for a boar in a large patch of sirpat grass. One man is at each end of the grass field, and between them are twenty or thirty Sansis, a criminal tribe, who make excellent beaters whatever their other faults may be. With the man to the right of the field we have little concern. It is with the man to the left that this story deals. As he sits his fretting Arab, and the sunlight falls on his features, it would need but a glance to tell he was a soldier. The careful observer might, however, discover in that glance that there was something wrong about the good-looking face. The eyes were too close together, the bow of the mouth both weak and cruel, although the chin below it was firm enough. If the grey helmet he wore were removed, it would have been seen that the head was small and somewhat conical in shape, the head of a Carib rather than that of an European. As he slowly advanced his horse along the edge of the field, keeping in line with the beaters, it was evident that he was in a high state of excitement, and the shaft of his spear was shivering in his hand.
Whirr! whirr! A couple of black partridge rise from the grass and sail away till they look like cockchafers in the distance. Then there is a scramble, a hare dashes out, and scurries madly across the plain, his long ears laid flat on his back, and his big eyes almost starting out of his head with fright. The beaters yell at this, and the Arab plunges forward; but the rider, who is growing pale with excitement, holds him in, and he dances along sideways in a white sweat--both horse and man all nerves. Two mangy jackals slink out of the grass, give a sly look around, and then lope along in the direction taken by the hare. It will be bad for puss if they come across him. As yet not a sign of the boar, and the Arab is almost pulling Sangster's arms off. He looks across at his friend, and sees him well to the right, on his solemn-looking black, and he catches sight of a pale blue curl of smoke from Wilkinson's pipe.