Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Rudyard Kipling

  He was marked down by a little waterhole at the head of a ravine, full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the shattering roar of the charge with a single shot – it seemed to him hours as he sighted – which tore through the throat, smashing the backbone below the neck and between the shoulders. The brute couched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened Bukta bade him stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing jaws.

  ‘Fifteen,’ said Bukta. ‘Short paces. No need for a second shot, Sahib. He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I said there would be no need of these, but they came – in case.’

  Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta’s people – a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had Chinn’s shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as interested beaters, some five or six waiting the word to skin. Bukta watched the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.

  ‘No need to show that we care,’ said he. ‘Now, after this, we can kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.’

  Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. ‘That also was your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and, perhaps, forget that I am his officer?’

  ‘But those men – the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps –’

  ‘Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In the lines I am one thing. Here I am another.’

  This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects, he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings. He gave his flask to the elders of the village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to waken late the next day – half a march from the village?

  ‘The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep,’ Bukta explained. ‘My people carried him here, and now it is time we should go back to cantonments.’

  The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.

  ‘My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget. When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and they will give him as many men as we need.’

  Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of many. When Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings, by talks at twilight or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed man could have come at in a lifetime.

  Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their relatives – mostly in trouble – and to lay cases of tribal custom before him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the rash voyager return alive?

  ‘But what have I to do with these things?’ Chinn demanded of Bukta, impatiently. ‘I am a soldier. I do not know the law.’

  ‘Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order, and they will abide by it. Thou art their law.’

  ‘But wherefore?’

  Every trace of expression left Bukta’s countenance. The idea might have smitten him for the first time. ‘How can I say?’ he replied. ‘Perhaps it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange things. Give them orders, Sahib – two, three, four words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads. That is enough.’

  Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond the smoky hills was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back to earth, to oversee the third generation, in the body and bones of his grandson.

  There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils knew that Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta’s village with his presence after slaying his first-in-this-life-tiger; that he had eaten and drunk with the people, as he was used; and – Bukta must have drugged Chinn’s liquor very deeply – upon his back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh of Jan Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn, who had made the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to carry his words, careful never to alter them on the way.

  Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept their convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he knew his regiment, never guessed that each one of the six hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, to attention beside their rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demigod twice born – tutelary deity of their land and people. The Earth-gods themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to doubt the handiwork of the Earth-gods?

  Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name served him well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no trouble – one does not commit regimental offences with a god in the chair of justice – and he was sure of the best beaters in the district when he needed them. They believed that the protection of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.

  His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their god. It is true he was unbribable, but bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big game pleased him. In other respects, too, he lived up to the Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof. A night’s sitting out over a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would have filled the Major with a month’s malaria, had no effect on him. He was, as they said, ‘salted before he was born.’

  Now in the autumn of his second year’s service an uneasy rumour crept out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn heard nothing of it till a brother-officer said across the mess-table: ‘Your revered ancestor’s on the rampage in the Satpura country. You’d better look him up.’

  ‘I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m a little sick of my revered ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What’s the old boy supposed to be doing now?’

  ‘Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger. That’s the story. He’s been seen by about two thousand Bhils, skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to death. They believe it devoutly, and all the Sa
tpura chaps are worshipping away at his shrine-tomb, I mean like good uns. You really ought to go down there. Must be a queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a god.’

  ‘What makes you think there’s any truth in the tale?’ said Chinn.

  ‘Because all our men deny it. They say they’ve never heard of Chinn’s tiger. Now that’s a manifest lie, because every Bhil has.’

  ‘There’s only one thing you’ve overlooked,’ said the Colonel, thoughtfully. ‘When a local god reappears on earth, it’s always an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are about as wild as your grandfather left them, young un. It means something.’

  ‘Meanin’ they may go on the warpath?’ said Chinn.

  ‘Can’t say – as yet. Shouldn’t be surprised a little bit.’

  ‘I haven’t been told a syllable.’

  ‘Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back.’

  ‘Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn’t he tell me that?’

  Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and the answer surprised him.

  ‘Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is out in the Satpura country.’

  ‘What do the wild Bhils think that it means?’

  They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what is coming? Say only one little word, and we will be content.’

  ‘We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do with drilled men?’

  ‘When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet.’

  ‘But he has not waked, Bukta.’

  ‘Sahib ‘ – the old man’s eyes were full of tender reproof – ‘if he does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight? We know he is awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib, we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee in my arms – not knowing.’

  ‘Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening,’ Chinn thought; ‘but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I must. It’s like the Mutiny rumours on a small scale.’

  He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his first tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed paws over his shoulders. He laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke, drawing the painted hide, cloak-fashion, about him.

  ‘Now will I tell the truth, Bukta,’ he said, leaning forward, the dried muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.

  ‘I see that it is the truth,’ was the answer, in a shaking voice.

  ‘Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded Tiger, ye say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for the Satpura Bhils only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough in the north and east, the Bhils of the Khandesh, or any others, except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we know, are wild and foolish.’

  ‘It is, then, a sign for them. Good or bad?’

  ‘Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those whom he has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill to lie in one bed over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would look again upon his people. So he rises, whistles his Clouded Tiger, and goes abroad a little to breathe the cool air. If the Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after dark, they would not see him. Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than that he would see the light again in his own country. Send this news south, and say that it is my word.’

  Bukta bowed to the floor. ‘Good Heavens!’ thought Chinn, ‘and this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as a die! I may as well round it off neatly.’ He went on: ‘If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that Jan Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good living. Perhaps they have plundered; perhaps they mean to disobey the orders of the Government; perhaps there is a dead man in the jungle; and so Jan Chinn has come to see.’

  ‘Is he, then, angry?’

  ‘Bah! Am I ever angry with my Bhils? I say angry words, and threaten many things. Thou knowest, Bukta. I have seen thee smile behind the hand. I know, and thou knowest. The Bhils are my children. I have said it many times.’

  ‘Ay. We be thy children,’ said Bukta.

  ‘And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father’s father. He would see the land he loved and the people once again. It is a good ghost, Bukta. I say it. Go and tell them. And I do hope devoutly,’ he added, ‘that it will calm ’em down.’ Flinging back the tiger-skin, he rose with a long, unguarded yawn that showed his well-kept teeth.

  Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting enquirers.

  ‘It is true,’ said Bukta. ‘He wrapped himself in the skin, and spoke from it. He would see his own country again. The sign is not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of night-running. He has said it.’

  The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.

  ‘He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said it to me.’

  ‘But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?’

  ‘Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life.’

  ‘And what if they do not?’

  ‘He did not say.’

  The light went out in Chinn’s quarters.

  ‘Look,’ said Bukta. ‘Now he goes away. None the less it is a good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a man? His protection is on us; and ye know Jan Chinn never broke a protection spoken or written on paper. When he is older and has found him a wife he will lie in his bed till morning.’

  A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state of mind a little before the men; and this is why the Colonel said, a few days later, that someone had been putting the Fear of God into the Wuddars. As he was the only person officially entitled to do this, it distressed him to see such unanimous virtue. ‘It’s too good to last,’ he said. ‘I only wish I could find out what the little chaps mean.’

  The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the moon, when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to ‘allay any possible excitement’ among the Satpura Bhils, who were, to put it mildly, uneasy because a paternal Government had sent up against them a Mahratta State-educated vaccinator, with lancets, lymph, and an officially registered calf. In the language of State, they had ‘manifested a strong objection to all prophylactic measures,’ had ‘forcibly detained the vaccinator,’ and ‘were on the point of neglecting or evading their tribal obligations.’

  ‘That means they are in a blue funk – same as they were at census-time,’ said the Colonel; ‘and if we stampede them into the hills we’ll never catch ’em, in the first place, and, in the second, they’ll whoop off plundering till further orders. Wonder who the God-forsaken idiot is who is trying to vaccinate a Bhil. I knew trouble was coming. One good thing is that they’ll only use local corps, and we can knock up something we’ll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy us potting our best beaters because they don’t want to be vaccinated! They’re only crazy with fear.’

  ‘Don’t you think, sir,’ said Chinn, the next day, ‘that perhaps you could give me a fortnight’s shooting-leave?’

  ‘Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!’ The Colonel laughed. ‘I might, but I’d have to antedate it a little, because we’re warned for service, as you might say. However, we’ll assume that you applied for leave three days ago, and are now well on your way south.’

  ‘I’d like to take Bukta with me.’

  ‘Of course, yes. I think that will be the best plan. You’ve some kind of heredit
ary influence with the little chaps, and they may listen to you when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them wild. You’ve never been in that part of the world before, have you? Take care they don’t send you to your family vault in your youth and innocence. I believe you’ll be all right if you can get ’em to listen to you.’

  ‘I think so, sir; but if – if they should accidentally put an – make asses of ’emselves – they might, you know – I hope you’ll represent that they were only frightened. There isn’t an ounce of real vice in ’em, and I should never forgive myself if anyone of – of my name got them into trouble.’

  The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.

  Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever since the official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by indignant Bhils, runner after runner had skulked up to the lines, entreating, with forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn should come and explain this unknown horror that hung over his people.

  The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn’s presence. Nothing would have pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the Satpuras, whom he, as an ‘unmixed’ Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to all his nation as Jan Chinn’s interpreter; and he devoutly believed that forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered with that obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he rode the Clouded Tiger.

  They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be. Bukta was very silent.

  They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near sunset ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side of a rifted, jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid, as he had desired, that he might overlook his people. All India is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of the eighteenth century – tombs of forgotten colonels of corps long since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on shooting expeditions and never came back; factors, agents, writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East India Company by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands. English folk forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has done good in his life it is remembered after his death. The weathered marble four-square tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about with wild flowers and nuts, packets of wax and honey, bottles of native spirits, and infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and plumes of dried grass. At one end was a rude clay image of a white man, in the old-fashioned top hat, riding on a bloated tiger.