Hussein

by Patrick O'Brian

  As he went out of the cave, Hussein noticed a track that led down to the stream; it was obviously used by a good number of animals. In one place, where it was muddy, there were the pug-marks of a tiger. They seemed very new, and Hussein felt rather uneasy. He shouted for Jehangir, and after a moment or two he heard the answering trumpet. He made towards the sound, hurrying along the little game tracks that wound through the jungle. He had an unpleasant feeling of being watched by something. Usually he rather liked the solitude of the jungle, and he seldom felt particularly afraid of anything; at this time, however, he felt that the jungle was unfriendly, and he was very much afraid. There were unaccountable little noises and movements that he would not ordinarily have noticed, but now they grated on his nerves. This feeling increased as he went on. He felt almost panic-stricken as he passed through a dark grove, and he started to run. The tiger that had been following him slid effortlessly through the undergrowth parallel with Hussein’s path: it was not quite sure of itself, as it had not come into contact with men before, and although there was something about the scent that warned the tiger against following it, Hussein’s feeling of terror reacted on it, and made it feel more confident. When Hussein began to run the tiger was almost ready to spring, but Hussein shouted for Jehangir again, and the sound disconcerted the tiger some what. Jehangir, very fortunately, was quite close at hand, and as the elephant came through the trees the tiger stopped, paused for a few moments, and slunk away. Jehangir caught its scent, and stood with his trunk outstretched, trying to locate it; he rumbled angrily in his throat, and sniffed Hussein all over, to see whether he had come to any harm.

  They went back to the place Hussein had chosen; it was a small island in the stream with about a dozen large trees on it. The stream was fairly wide at this point, but not very deep; Jehangir could ford it easily. One end of the island, the end that met the run of the water, was piled high with driftwood and debris left there when the stream was in flood, but the other end tailed off in a long spit of sand. There was a good deal of bamboo among the trees, but the undergrowth was not at all thick, and one could walk about easily. In the middle of the lozenge-shaped island there was a triangle of three magnificent dak trees — some call them the flame of the forest — and these were in full bloom; one could hardly see the leaves for the great blaze of scarlet that flowered from the very top to the lowest branches. Hussein made his hut in the space between them, gathering a great heap of the fallen petals for his bed. A day or two later he went to see the yogi again, but the old man was not in the cave, so Hussein left a few mangoes on the floor and went back to his island.

  That night there was a storm: for three hours the lightning hissed up and down the stream, and the thunder roared incessantly. Hussein sat on the sand-bank in the warm downpour, watching the lightning; seven times it struck trees on the banks, and twice it flickered low along the water by the sandbank, but it spared the trees on the island.

  Jehangir welcomed the rain, but he did not like the thunder at all; he gave little squeals and started like a frightened woman at each great peal, so after a while Hussein left the sand-bank and came to comfort him where he stood, black and glistening, under the dak trees.

  When the sun came up again, everything began to steam, and a very clean, sweet smell rose from the ground.

  The dak trees were half stripped of their bloom, which lay sodden on the ground; but the new washed green of the exposed leaves against the remaining flowers made them more beautiful than before.

  The stream had risen considerably and the island had shrunk correspondingly when Hussein went round on a tour of inspection. There was quite a number of leafy branches and pieces of creeper washed up on the top end of the island, and Hussein scrambled over the driftwood to investigate. He slipped on a wet trunk and fell forwards; before he could get up a python had flung a coil round his legs. The snake had been washed down-stream by the flood. The tree in which it had been sleeping had been pushed into the stream by one that had been struck by lightning. The python had only newly changed its skin, so it was very irritable; moreover, Hussein had startled it, otherwise it would not have attacked him, for it was not very large as pythons go; nevertheless, its strength was very considerable. Hussein tried to get up, but the snake threw two more coils around his thighs, and whipped its tail about a branch coming from a fallen trunk; this gave it something to pull against, and it tightened the coils, hissing furiously. Hussein fell flat again; he shouted once for Jehangir, and then the python shifted one of the coils with lightning rapidity round his neck; Hussein had time to get one hand in front of his throat before the coils tightened, and with his other hand he grasped the snake’s neck. When the coil tightened he could hardly breathe, much less shout, so he struggled silently. The python was not long enough to put another coil around him, so it just tightened its hold on the branch, and squeezed. Hussein was lying on his back in the driftwood; his legs were clamped together by two coils like steel bands; his neck and one hand were held by the third, and with his other hand he held the python’s head away from him: its tongue flicked in and out, and the transparent shutters on its eyes slid across and back.

  For a time they remained immobile; the python looked expressionlessly at Hussein, and kept up a steadily increasing pressure.

  Hussein’s nose began to bleed; there was a drumming in his ears, and black dots shifted before his eyes. Then the dead branch about which the python had lashed its tail broke with a loud snap, and the coils loosened. With all his remaining strength Hussein thrust the coil away from his neck, and writhed away from the driftwood. So long as the python could get no hold for its tail he had a chance.

  He rolled into a patch of grass; the python lashed its tail furiously, seeking something firm; it seized a clump of bamboos, but they pulled out of the ground. As it threshed about, it jerked Hussein up and down, bruising him very painfully, but he had time to draw a full breath and shout for Jehangir. The elephant, however, was not on the island; he had gone down the stream to a patch of wild sugar-cane.

  The coil about Hussein’s neck slipped down, seeking to pin his arms, but the python had nothing to pull against, and Hussein forced the coil away from him. He gripped its neck with both hands, and tried to twist it, but the snake was too strong. He managed to get to his feet, but just as he did so, the python’s tail found a sapling, and Hussein was jerked to the ground again. As he fell he saw a stone on the ground; he snatched it up with one hand, and rolled over so that he held the python’s head against the ground: then he hit it as hard as he could with the stone.

  The python crushed him convulsively, nearly breaking his thighs: the pain was agonising, and he hammered the snake’s head furiously, smashing it horribly. But the python still held him, and it was some time before he could get it away. Even then it writhed.

  Hussein limped away towards his hut; half-way there he fell down, and fainted. When he came to about half an hour later, he found that his legs were excessively painful, and that he could hardly move them.

  He crawled the rest of the way to his hut, and there the yogi found him.

  The old man had had a difficult time getting across the stream, but he had seen Hussein on the island, and he was still sufficiently human to be curious. He was an ascetic, this old yogi, and he had spent five years in the depths of the jungle by himself, endeavouring to perfect himself as a yogi. He said very little to Hussein: he sat down and meditated for nearly an hour, and then he began to massage Hussein very carefully. The yogi seemed immune to fatigue; he kept on and on for a long while, chanting in an undertone. The pain decreased steadily, and after a while Hussein slept, for he was quite exhausted.

  Suddenly the yogi was grasped firmly about the waist and lifted about six feet into the air. Jehangir had come up silently behind him. The yogi was perfectly calm; he did not move; he only coughed to awake Hussein, who saw what was the matter, and told Jehangir, in a peevish tone, to let the old man alone. The elephant did so, rather unwillingly, and felt
Hussein all over very gently with his trunk. The yogi continued his massage until Hussein was asleep again.

  Hussein did not wake until noon the next day: the yogi was squatting before him, brewing a decoction over a small fire. Jehangir stood behind the yogi, quite near to him. The elephant had been wondering all night whether to trample on the old man or not. The yogi had taken no notice of Jehangir at all, and this had rather worried him, because he was used to feeling some sort of response from people, either a friendly one, or one of fear, and to receive none at all was quite outside his experience.

  As soon as Hussein opened his eyes the old man made him swallow the vile brew that he had been preparing: it tasted very curious indeed, and almost immediately after it Hussein went to sleep again, and did not wake up again until the evening of the following day. By this time Jehangir had taken the yogi well into his consideration, and had decided that on the whole he was a good thing.

  Hussein felt very much better, and he thanked the old man, who pooh-poohed his thanks, saying that he had erred from his true course of contemplation in coming to see Hussein at all, and that he had gone even more astray by recognising the existence of physical ill-being. In fact the yogi became so morose at the idea of having descended from his sorely attained heights of contemplation that he moved to another part of the jungle when Hussein was whole again, and after that they never saw each other. But Hussein always kept an affectionate memory of the old man, who was a true yogi, very different from the average sadhu or sanyassi; he was, indeed, a man of very great psychic attainments, and it was only his complete disregard of the dangers that beset the ordinary man in the jungle that kept him safe. There were very few animals who could not feel that he did not fear them at all, and who were not very much taken aback when they felt this reaction; that is, of course, all those animals who were attuned to a reaction of fear in other beasts; the more timid deer and the myriad birds were rather attracted than repelled when they encountered the yogi, and they did not fear him in the least.

  Twelve

  Hussein grew better quite quickly, and after the yogi had left him, he decided that he had stayed in the jungle long enough, so he carefully pared the Government number from the nail of Jehangir’s off forefoot; he also took the silver bands from his tusks, putting them on his arms as bracelets, that he might look the more respectable, as one would who owned an elephant. Then one morning they started off up the stream, for Hussein knew that the Grand Trunk Road crossed it on a bridge quite near its source.

  Hussein wanted to keep to the little villages until he had gained confidence, and had perfected his story by hearing it questioned, so he desired to cross the great road unobserved. But as Fate would have it, the third man they encountered on the Grand Trunk Road was a man on a Government elephant. This was the same man who had caused Hussein to be beaten some time previously. They recognised each other immediately, and the man bawled ‘Stop thief,’ and urged his elephant forward, beating him with his heavy ankus.

  Hussein leant forward and spoke to Jehangir, who burst into a tremendous gallop. There was open country on the other side of the road, thinly interspersed with trees. Jehangir charged across the road and thundered away over the plain. The man set his elephant in pursuit, and the two rushed furiously away towards the west. Quite soon Hussein saw that Jehangir was losing ground, so he pulled up, and the two elephants faced each other.

  Suddenly they both charged, and met head-on with a thud that shook the ground. Forehead to forehead they pushed furiously, each trying to force the other backwards. The two mahouts hurled abuse at each other as their mounts strove together with all their giant strength. His opponent was gaining a little, being somewhat heavier, so Jehangir, getting a foothold in the loose soil, made an immense effort, so great that his fore-feet left the ground, and he leaned with all his weight on his enemy, who began sliding slowly backwards, his feet slipping in the dust. At the same moment Hussein leapt across on to the other elephant’s neck, and seizing the mahout, he cast him down. In another second Jehangir had defeated his opponent, thrusting him backwards and sideways; very quickly Jehangir backed, and then charged, ramming the other in the side. He went over with a crash right on top of his mahout, who was struggling on the ground. Hussein had time to leap clear, and immediately he ran to Jehangir to stop him battering the other elephant to death. Jehangir obeyed at once, and Hussein, mounting on his neck, guided him back into the forest.

  Having concealed him in a clump of bamboos and forbidden him to move, Hussein went back to the dead mahout. There was nothing to be done for him; the falling elephant had killed him instantly, and in a panic had run back to his elephant lines.

  Presently the people who saw him return without his mahout sent out a search party, who found the body, and Hussein, coming up as if he knew nothing about it, learnt that the man had been trampled to death by his own elephant, which he was known to have treated very harshly.

  Nobody recognised Hussein or suspected him even when he appeared riding on Jehangir; it was a district in which he had never been before, and his story was accepted without question.

  After that Hussein moved towards the south, finding a good deal of work on the way. As soon as he could he wrote a long letter to Sashiya, telling her all that had occurred.

  It was five months later, in a little village called Laghat, that Hussein found that which he sought.

  A childless man had died, and his heir, a distant cousin in Bombay, wished to sell the land that he had inherited. There was a little house, and four fields, but the house was rather tumble-down, and the fields were untilled, so the man did not ask a large price; even so, it would cost more than Hussein had saved, but after a great deal of bargaining with the man’s agent, it was arranged that a lump sum should be paid, and the rest in the form of instalments, payable when the crops were sold.

  Hussein was overjoyed when he stood for the first time in his own fields: there was something so solid and real about them. He felt a curious love for the brown earth.

  His little farm lay between two others, with the village behind it, and the jungle before it. His house stood near the others in the village, and the fields stretched away, one after the other, almost to the green edge of the jungle. They were not separated by hedges, but by little irrigation ditches which led water to the crops. With his four fields, Hussein was quite a considerable man in the village, and his elephant gave him a great advantage, for Jehangir had more strength than six bullocks, and many times their sense. Although many of the villagers were Hindus, Hussein soon became popular, for he told his tales in the open space where the men of the village sat after sundown, talking of this and that; he asked no recompense other than part of the knowledge that the villagers had of the land, and this they gave him willingly, and with good will, for there are few things more pleasant to give than advice. Indeed, their ardour could hardly be restrained, and many of his neighbours would come and work in his fields to show him how a thing should be done, so as to prove that their advice was of more avail than another’s.

  He made real friends, however, of his immediate neighbours, for they were fine men, both Sikhs of the Khalsa. The one was called Rustum Singh, and the other Hurri Singh; they were cousins, and they were both ex-army men, fine, tall, upstanding men with large black beards; they both had sons in their old regiment. On high days and feasts Rustum Singh and Hurri Singh would array themselves in fine attire, and they would don their medals, acquired in Mesopotamia and on the Frontier. They both liked Hussein, and Hussein liked them. They did more for him than all the rest of Laghat put together.

  Sometimes, when they needed great power, Hussein would come and help them with Jehangir, and they helped him to plant millet in the two fields nearest his house, and sugar-cane in the other two. This sugar-cane crop, if it were successful, would enable Hussein to buy a plough — a great thing for him, as he had to hire one, which was expensive. He had, therefore, taken much trouble over the sugar-cane, spending long hours in the
sun preparing the earth for it, and doing similar things that were essential for its well-being.

  On the advice of his neighbours he built a thorn hedge at the end of the field that lay next to the jungle, in order to keep the deer out of his crops.

  Hussein had never worked so hard in all his days, but he liked it, for it was his own land, or would be, and he wished to have it perfect so that he could bring Sashiya to it, and say, ‘I did all this by myself.’

  Sashiya, by her letters, seemed delighted with everything, only she wished the crops would hurry, so that he could return to Haiderabad and take her away, for the man to whom she had been betrothed was anxious to have her.

  When Hussein read this he cursed aloud, and straightway he took paper and pen, and wrote a letter to Abd’Arahman, the old letter-writer of Haiderabad, with whom he had been in communication since he left, charging him to go at once to the red-bearded fakir, and to request him to terrify Nurredin Shah that he might renounce the idea of marrying Sashiya. He enclosed all the money he could spare, and then waited impatiently for an answer.

  Two weeks went by, and then a third, before the old man replied; he said that the business had been performed, and that Sashiya was unbetrothed, but that the fakir had demanded a greater sum than Hussein had been able to send, and he (the fakir) had said that if Hussein did not send it before a certain date, his crops would be withered. Hussein felt intensely relieved, and he borrowed the extra eleven rupees from Rustum Singh, sending them off at once, for he had a great respect for the fakir’s curses.