Son of Power

by Will Levington Comfort; Zamin Ki Dost

"Once I told this thing, as I have told you, to a group of Europeans in a steamer's smoking room. And two of them laughed—thought I was telling a funny story. . . . These priests are apt to be very bitter toward one who wrongs one of their free-friends. They believe that it is a just and good thing to make a man pay with his life, for taking the life of a monkey; because it impedes his coming up and embitters the others. One way to look at it?"

Skag was in and out of the jungle most of the days after Cadman left for Bombay to sail. Closer and closer he drew to the deep, sweet earthiness and the mysteries carried on outside the ken of most men. One dawn, from a distance he watched a sambhur buck pause on the brow of a hill. The creature shook his mane and lifted up his nose and sniffed the dawn of day.

Skag knew that it was good to him, knew how the sensitive grey nostrils quivered wide, drinking deep draughts of cool moist air. The grasses were rested; the trees seemed enamoured of the deep shadows of night. The river gurgled musically from the jagged rocks of her mid-current to the overleaning vines and branches of her borders.

This was a side stream of the Nerbudda. Already Skag shared with the natives the attitude of devotion to the great Nerbudda. She was sacred to the people, and to every creature good, for her gift was like the gift of mothers. When all the world was parched and full of deep cracks, yawning beneath a heaven white and cloudless, and rain forsook the land, and every leaf hung heavy and dust-laden; when heat and thirst and famine all increased, till creatures crept forth from their hot lairs at evening and moved in company—who had been enemies, but for sore suffering—then would she yield up her pure tides to satisfy their utmost craving. . . .

Skag lived deep through that morning. The rose and amber radiance of dawn fell into all the hearts of all the birds; and wordless songs came pulsing up from roots of growing things. The sambhur lifted high his head again and spread the fan of one ear toward the wind, while one breathed twice. Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and swift along the river's brim, the sharp, plaintive cry of monkeys, beating down through all the startled stillness with their wailing voices. These turned, hurrying away in one direction, with fearless leaps and clinging hands and ceaseless chattering. Their cries at intervals, bringing answers, until the air was a-din with monkeys, leaping along the highways of the trees.

Women of the villages, children tending goats, labourers among the driftings of the hills and on the open slopes, holy men and those who toiled at any craft—heard the shrill calls along the margins of the jungle and knew that some evil had fallen on a leader of his kind among the monkey people.

Then Skag saw two priests of Hanuman rising up from the denser shadows where the river was lost in the jungle. Quickly girding themselves, they followed the multitudes. Skag did not miss their stern faces, nor the instant pause as they dipped their brown feet with prayers into the river. He dared to follow. The priests turned upon him, silent, frowning; but he was not sent back.

Skag recalled Cadman's words, but also that he was known among the natives as one white man not an animal-killer. His name Son of Power had followed him to Hurda; word about him had travelled with mysterious rapidity. To his amazement Skag found that the people of Hurda knew something of the story of the tiger-pit and his part in delivering the Grass Jungle people from the toils and tributes of the great snake. . . . He was not sent back.

For a long time, until the forenoon was half spent, the three marched silently. One halted at length to pick up from the leaves a white silk kerchief, bearing in one corner two English letters wrought in needle-work. This was lifted by the elder of the priests and folded in the thick windings of his loin-cloth. Deeper and deeper into the jungle they travelled, never far from the river.

Suddenly the branches parted, the path ceased; a smooth, perfect carpet of tender, green grass spread out before them and reached and clung to the lip of a deep, clear pool—beaten out through the ages, by the weight of the stream falling on a lower ledge of rock from the brow of a massive boulder. The mighty trees of the forest stretched their huge arms over this spot, as if to keep it secret, so that even the fierce sunshine was mellowed before it touched the earth.