The Three Sapphires Part 29

Chapter XVII

Major Finnerty had made arrangements for a full day after Burra Moti.

Coolies had been sent on with provisions in round wicker baskets slung from a bamboo yoke, and soon the three sahibs started.

Perhaps it was the absence of immediate haste, a lack of pressing action, that allowed their minds to rest on their surroundings. Really, though, it was Lord Victor who drew them to a recognition of their arboreal surroundings with: "I say! Look at that bonfire--but it's glorious!" his riding whip indicating a gold mohur tree that, clothed in its gorgeous spring mantle of vivid red bloom, suggested its native name of "Forest on Fire."

"Yes," Finnerty said, "it seems to add to the heat of the sun, and, as if that weren't enough, listen to that d.a.m.n cuckoo, the 'brain-fever bird,' vocal in his knowledge that we'll soon be frying in Hades."

The bird of fiendish iteration squeaked: "Fee-e-e-ver, fee-e-e-ver, fee-e-e-ver!" till he came to a startled hush, as, with noisy cackle, a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, all golden beak and red crest atop his black-and-white waistcoat, shot from the delicate green foliage.

"It's a land of gorgeous colouring," Finnerty commented; "trees and birds alike."

"Minus the scent and song," Swinton added as a hornbill opened his yellow coffin beak to screech in jarring discord.

But just when they had pa.s.sed the sweet-scented neem, and then a kautchnor standing like some giant artificial wooden thing decorated with creamy white-and pink-petaled lilies, Finnerty drew rein, holding up his hand, and to their ears floated from a tangle of babool the sweet song of a shama. It was like the limpid carolling of a nightingale in a hedge at home; it bred a hunger of England in Lord Victor's boy heart.

When the song hushed, as they pa.s.sed the babool Finnerty pointed to a little long-tailed bird with dull red stomach, and the youth, lifting his helmet, exclaimed, "You topping old bird! I'd back you against a lark."

Perhaps India, populous with bird and animal life as well as human, was always as much on parade as it seemed this morning, and that they now but observed closer. At any rate, as they left the richer-garbed foothills for the heavier sombreness of the forest, their eyes were caught by the antics of a black-plumaged bird who had seized the rudder of a magpie and was being towed along by that squawking, frightened mischief-maker.

With a chuckle, Finnerty explained: "He's a king crow, known to all as the 'police wallah,' for he's eternally putting others to rights. That 'pie' has been looting some nest, and the king crow is driving him over into the next county."

Like a gateway between the land of the living and the land of beyond, its giant white limbs weird as the arms of a devil-fish, reaching through glossy leaves to almost touch a wall of sal, stood a pipal, its wide-spreading roots, daubed with red paint, nursing a clay idol that sat amid pots of honey, and sweet cakes, and gaudy tinsel, and little streamers of coloured cloth--all tribute to the G.o.d of the sacred wild fig. Beyond this they were in a cool forest; above, high against a blue sky, the purple haze of the sal bloom, their advent sending a grey-backed fat little dweller scuttling away on his short legs.

"A badger!" Lord Victor cried eagerly.

"Kidio, the grave digger, as our natives call him," Finnerty added.

"Even that chubby little cuss is enlarged mythologically." He turned to Mahadua, and in answer to a question the latter, drawing up to the Major's stirrup, said: "Yes, sahib, the _ghor kidio_ comes up out of the Place of Terrors on dark nights and carries away women and children.

Near my village, which is Gaum, one lived in the hills so close that he was called the 'Dweller at the Hearth.' A sahib who made a hunt of a month there broke the evil spell by some manner of means, for the great grave digger was never seen again."

"Shot him?" Finnerty asked seriously.

"No, sahib, else he would have had pride in showing the one." Then Mahadua dropped back well satisfied with the pleasure of converse with the sahibs.

Screened from the sun's glare, but warming to his generous heat, the forest held an indescribable perfume--the nutty, delicious air which, drawn into expanded lungs, fills one with holy calm, with the delight of being, of living, and so they rode in silent ecstasy, wrapped in the mystic charm of the Creator's work.

An hour of travel and they met a party of Finnerty's men carrying one of their number slung from a bamboo pole. He had been mauled by the black leopard. The story was soon told. The whole party with Bahadar had moved forward on Moti's trail, stopping when they felt she was near, the men spreading out with the object of bringing her in. In one of these encircling movements they had surrounded, without knowing it, the black leopard, and, in breaking through, the vicious animal had mauled one so that he would probably die.

The s.h.i.+kari, after he had asked the locality of this encounter, said: "It is toward Kohima."

"This shows that he is not a spirit, Mahadua; that he hasn't dissolved into air."

"Still, sahib, a spirit, leopard or tiger, can always change back."

"It proves to me," Swinton declared, "that there's an exit to that cave which we did not discover."

They had forgotten Lord Victor's presence, but the young man said blithely: "I say, I heard you two Johnnies had gone out after a leopard this morning. What luck?"

"He got away; he's just mauled this man. And it means"--Finnerty turned and faced Swinton--"that we've got to follow him up."

Finnerty's voice had scarcely ceased when the trumpeting of an elephant, loud and shrill, sounded ahead. "That's Raj Bahadar," Finnerty declared.

"I expect Moti has come back with another walloping."

They urged their horses, and came to where the party had camped through the night, a fresh trail showing that the men had moved on. Following this, they came within hearing of human voices, high-pitched in a babel of commands and exhortations and calls, drowned at times by the trumpet of Bahadar. Emerging from a thick clump of trees, they could see the natives darting and hopping about something that looked like the top of a submarine emerging from the waters.

"Bahadar has fallen into a pit," Finnerty declared.

Before the three sahibs reached Bahadar there was an encouraging "phrut, phrut" from beyond, and Moti's gleaming tusks showed through the jungle; and then the old lady herself halted just beyond the pit for a brief survey, as if to make sure that it wasn't a game to trap her. Then she advanced gingerly, feeling the ground, and thrust out her trunk for Bahadar to grasp with his. The natives saw that Moti had come to help Bahadar and not to belabour him. With sticks and jungle axes some of them started to tear down to a slope the end wall of the pit, while the others gathered sticks and branches and threw them beneath the trapped elephant as a gradually rising stage.

Finnerty dismounted, and, calling a man, said: "While Moti is busy noose both her hind legs, leaving the ropes in the hands of men so that she will not find the strain, and when Bahadar is out fasten them quickly around trees."

Moti was for all the world like the "anchor man" on a tug-of-war team.

Clasping the bull elephant's trunk in a close hitch, she leaned her great bulk back and pulled with little grunts of encouragement. Bahadar soon was able to catch his big toes in the partly broken bank, and helped the natives in its levelling.

At last he was out, and seeming to recognise what Moti had done, was rubbing his trunk over her forehead and blowing little whiffs of endearment into her ears, while she stood warily watching the puny creatures who kept beyond reach of a sudden throw of her trunk.

A native with a noose, watching his chance, darted in and slipped it over a forefoot, and Moti, in a second, was moored, fore and aft, to strong trees. Either in a cunning wait or from a feeling of resignation to fate, she put up no fight beyond a querulous "phrump, phrump!" as if she would say: "My reward, you traitors!"

Bahadar was cut about the legs, for the pit, being an elephant trap dug by Nagas who captured elephants for their meat and ivory, was studded with upright bamboo spears, and, unlike the local pits with their sloped sides, its walls were perpendicular to its full depth of ten feet.

"Tell me why you left the main trail, and how Bahadar stepped into this pit?" Finnerty demanded of Gothya, the mahout.

"We heard the bell, sahib----"

"Fool!" and Finnerty pointed to Moti's neck, on which was nothing.

"We all heard it, sahib, and some talk between a voice and Moti, who would answer back '_E-e-eu-eu--phrut! E-e-eu-eu--phrut!_' as though she were saying, 'Wait, brother!' No doubt, sahib, it was a jungle spirit that was drawing Moti along for our destruction, for, as we followed this old Naga trail, Bahadar suddenly went through the covering of leaves and dead limbs that was over the pit."

It was now past noon, and Finnerty said: "We'll have tiffin, a rest-up, and, with Mahadua, make a wide cast toward the hills to see if we can pick up tracks of the leopard; he's both ugly and hungry, so will do something to betray himself. We'll leave Moti here with the party--the tie-up will quiet her--until we return."

A leg chain was fastened from one of Moti's front feet to a hind foot, which would shorten her stride should it so happen that by any chance she broke away again.

PART FOUR

Chapter XVIII

Mahadua, the hunter guide, led the three sahibs always in the direction of Kohima, sometimes finding a few pugs in soft earth. About three o'clock two natives overtook them, their general blown condition suggesting that their mission was urgent.

"I am Nathu, the s.h.i.+kari," one said, "and the Debta of Kohima has sent for the sahib to come and destroy a black leopard who has made the kill of a woman, for my gun--that is but a muzzle-loader--is broken. It is the man-eater who was taken from Kohima by the rajah, and is now back; he has cunning, for a spirit goes with him, sahib. Three women were drying mhowa blooms in the sun, and they sat up in a machan to frighten away jungle pig and deer who eat these flowers; perhaps they slept, for there was no outcry till the leopard crawled up in the machan and took the fat one by the throat and carried her off."