‘Certainly, Master. When shall I begin?’
‘At once. Go back with Mr. Hunt and he will tell you just what each animal requires in the way of food.’
Hal liked Akbar and felt the job was in good hands. He and Roger were free to go, and they left at once for New Delhi where they could get a plane for the wonderful valley of Kashmir.
The plane climbed to a dizzy height, passed through a narrow gorge, and came down to the most beautiful spot they had ever seen.
The valley was a cradle surrounded completely by Himalayan peaks. The river Jhelum ran through it and there were dozens of lakes. All the land was so green that it looked as if it had been painted yesterday. The plains below were hot, but here the air was delightfully cool. When the British governed India they would come every summer to Kashmir to get away from the terrific heat of the plains. They would live on houseboats. Now the British were gone but the houseboats were still there, three hundred of them lined up ready for use.
After landing, the boys inspected the houseboats. They picked one name bone Star. At their request, it was poled across Dal Lake to a quiet little cove where it came to rest in
a great bed of lotus. These magnificent plants have leaves as big as umbrellas and flowers of great beauty.
The boys felt they were in a sort of heaven. This was a hidden paradise which, once seen, could never be forgotten. Hundreds of years ago the emperors of India had made this their summer home. One of them, the Emperor Jahangir, had written:
Kashmir is a garden of eternal spring. Its pleasant meadows and enchanting cascades are beyond all description. There are running streams and fountains beyond count. Wherever the eye reaches there is running water. In the enchanting spring the hills and plains are filled with blossoms.
The great Himalayas crowned with snow and gleaming with glaciers completely encircle the valley. The livery green of growing things with the silver threads of streams, canals and lakes turn the whole into a sort of Himalayan Venice. The broad Jhelum River passes through lovely lake after lake on its way to join the might Indus.
The mountains are the world’s highest. Nothing in the range stands at less than eighteen thousand feet. One soars to twenty-six thousand, another twenty-eight thousand while Everest tops the entire planet at twenty-nine thousand feet. Even the Vale of Kashmir itself is a mile high.
On a peak above the houseboat was a storybook castle, on another peak the maharajah’s palace, and on another an ancient fortress.
‘Let’s take a look at our floating house,’ Hal said.
In a hotel they would have one room. Here they had seven rooms. All were beautifully furnished. The ceilings were of fine wood. The windows were large affording a wonderful view, the carpets were thick, and the bulging lamps were made of camels’ stomachs. A stairway led up to the flat roof which was a hundred feet long, a fine place to stroll or sit and admire the beauty on every side.
‘No better place than this in the world to rest,’ Hal said.
One would not expect electric lights on a houseboat, electric fans, two baths, a well-stocked library, hand-carved furniture and oil paintings. But this floating palace had all that and more.
It did not have a kitchen. This was a blessing because there were no fumes from cooking stoves. Thirty feet behind the houseboat was the ‘kitchen boat’ where all the cooking was done and where the help lived. At mealtimes a butler came from the kitchen boat bearing trays of food which were unloaded on to the table in the dining-room and the butler stayed to serve the two lucky travellers.
And even that was not all. The houseboat itself did not move, but moored to its bow was a shikara or pleasure boat forty-five feet long, manned by four paddlers who would take you anywhere at any time of the day or night. You could take a trip by moonlight at two a.m. if you wished.
‘Something like the gondolas they have in Venice.’ Hal said, ‘but a lot better. Instead of sitting upright you lie on those cushions. You have cushions under your back, cushions beside you, cushions under your head and cushions under your feet. There’s a canopy above you and curtains that may be drawn against sun or wind. Let’s go for a ride.’
No sooner said than done. They stepped into the shikara, nodded to the smiling boatman, waved a hand to indicate that they wanted to go round the lake, and off they went in a boat that was named Abode of Peace.
The shikara brushed through beds of lotus with their gorgeous pink-and-white flowers and three-foot leaves, through squat, contented water lilies and tall, swaying reeds as graceful as young girls, under a sky so clear it seemed no sky at all, and over open stretches of water so smooth that they seemed to consist merely of mountains upside down. One man sang softly to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument called a sarangi.
‘Who knows what emperors have sailed in this boat,’ said Roger. ‘I feel like an emperor myself.’
The air was so clean that objects at a great distance seemed to be close by. It was as if they were looking at everything through a magnifying glass. There was good health in the breeze, no pollution anywhere. No wonder many Kashmiri lived to be a hundred.
Other shikaras drifted by, their names neatly displayed: Dancing Girl, Spring Rose, Kashmir Glory, Rock and Roll.
When the sarangist finished his song, there was no sound but the dip of paddles and the swoop of orange-breasted blue-backed kingfishers.
No roar of motors. A lake with no speedboats churning up the surface, destroying the mirror that held so many mountains.
‘Look at the gardens!’ exclaimed Roger.
They were not vegetable gardens, and they were not flower gardens although there were many flowers. They were lovely parks that had been established by the emperors of past ages. They covered miles along the shore. Great chinar trees as mighty and as old as the huge sequoia gigantea of California raised their heads almost two hundred feet high. Between them were dozens of streams, waterfalls and fountains. The shikara glided by the ‘Garden of Breeze’ laid out by the Emperor Akbar, the ‘Garden of Pleasure’ with its fountains falling over ten terraces, and the ‘Royal Spring’ designed by the Emperor Shah Jehan, creator of the Taj Mahal which is said to be the most beautiful building in the world.
In such a paradise the boys got back their strength. After a week they hired a car and drove up to Leh at an altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet.
Here they had none of the pleasant climate of the Vale. The thin, dry air could not resist the sun or hold the heat after the sun had gone. The temperature climbed to 120°F at noon and sank to 40°F at midnight.
The people of Leh got their living from herds of tough cattle and yaks. They could grow crops of barley and rice. They knew the ways of the otter and the antelope, the ibex and the Himalayan black bear, the gazelle, chital, musk deer, leopard, fox, jackal, wolf, wildcat and the handsome and graceful snow leopard.
The boys were sorry they had no way to transport some of these animals to their camp in the Gir Forest. But their chance would come later in the mountains above the Gir.
The boys came back to Kashmir and then travelled to Swat. This was a very small country surrounded by Pakistan which now governs its affairs.
But not so long ago it was a kingdom under the Ahkoond or King of Swat. The name ‘Swat’ is so curious that the playful poet, Edward Lear, wrote this jingle:
Who, or why, or which, or what
Is the Akond of Swat?
Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or sofa or chair,
or SQUAT?
The land of Swat is about a hundred miles long and fifty wide. It is watered by the Swat River. Its half-million Swatis speak the Swat language. Everything is Swat in Swat.
Edward Lear was answered by another poet:
What, what, what,
What’s the news from Swat?
Sad news,
Bad news,
Comes by cable led
Through the Indian Ocean’s bed.
Through the Pe
rsian Gulf, the Red
Sea and the Med—
Iterranean - he’s dead;
The Ahkoond is dead!
The boys stayed in the Swat Hotel and they dined on Swat’s chief export, honey. And they saw the Swat dungeon where criminals were confined.
Next door to Swat the Hunts found another tiny country, called Dir.
‘Dir me,’ said Hal. This is worse than Swat. No schools, no colleges, no hospitals, except one for dogs.’
The Prince of Dir kept forty dogs and forty wives. Some of the Diris were pirates. If the border was not carefully watched, a Swati cow would be carried off, or a Swati wife.
On the Hunts went to New Delhi and then to the Gir Forest and their precious animals which the mahout had cared for so well. In fact, he had added one more. It was a beautiful black-and-white giant panda, a visitor from nearby China, cousin of the red panda they had already captured.
‘Good to be home,’ said Hal, ‘and good that not one animal has been stolen.’ He tried to press some rupees upon Akbar but the mahout would not accept any payment.
‘You have already paid us,’ he said, ‘a hundred times over. Your elephant is a great logger. Any time we can help you, let us know.’
Chapter 21
Roger’s Wild Buffalo
Walking in the forest, the Hunts suddenly came upon a herd of some thirty wild water-buffalo, the biggest and most dangerous of all oxen next to the gaur.
These great animals, weighing more than two thousand pounds, faced about and regarded the boys with angry tosses of their heads and deep bellows that told the newcomers that they were not welcome.
‘Better get up a tree,’ Hal said.
Roger lost no time in climbing a great pipal just as the biggest animal, which seemed to be the leader of the herd, came plunging towards him. The bad-tempered animal stopped below the branch occupied by Roger and tried to reach him with one of its long horns.
One would think that a creature weighing more than two thousand pounds would not be a very good dancer. But the angry beast gave a good demonstration of the polka, the waltz, and the tango, and even stood on its hind feet trying to get one of its sharp horns into its enemy.
‘We’ve got to get him for Dad,’ Roger shouted.
‘Yes, she’s just what he wanted.’
‘What do you mean - she? No lady would ever act this way.’ declared Roger.
‘Perhaps you don’t know much about ladies,’ Hal said. They can be pretty tough sometimes. This lady would finish you off in a minute if she could reach you.’
‘I can’t stay here all day.’ Roger said. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Stay there all day.’ Hal suggested. ‘I don’t think your friend has any intention of leaving. She’s too fond of you.’
‘Why does she pick on me? Why doesn’t she chase you?’ Roger wanted to know.
‘Because I’m standing still. She probably thinks I’m just one of the trees. Water-buffaloes do not have very good eyesight. But they have a marvellous sense of smell. Perhaps you smell so good that she simply can’t resist you.’
‘You can joke.’ Roger said, ‘but it’s no joking matter if I have to stay here all day and perhaps all night.’
But the lady buffalo had no intention of waiting so long to get her horns into this troublemaker. She couldn’t reach him, so she tried something else. She would shake him out of the tree.
She backed off, then came at a run and threw every ounce of her tremendous weight against the trunk of the tree. The pipal shivered and shook and Roger fell.
But he did not fall to the ground. Instead, he found himself on the lady’s back. The back was so broad that he could hardly straddle it. But he clung on and away went beast and boy to an unknown destination. Hal tried to keep up. He could just do it, because an animal so heavy could not make great speed.
The whole forest was excited by the race. The bird called the whistling schoolboy whistled his very loudest tune. The plover screamed something that sounded like ‘Did-you-do-it? Did-you-do-it?’ The monkeys screeched to high heaven. It was a great day for monkeys. They had never seen anything like this.
Hal managed to get the lasso over one horn but he could not stop the animal’s wild rush. Instead, he lost his footing, fell down, and was dragged along like a sack of meal.
The plover seemed to be laughing. ‘Did-you-do-it?’ The bird was making fun of the boys. If anything was ‘doing it’ it was the gigantic beast, not the Hunts. The whistling schoolboy seemed to get a laugh into his whistling.
They arrived at a mudhole. Buffaloes love mudholes. The muddier the better. The muddy water cools them on a hot day. They come out covered with mud which is just what the doctor ordered to keep off biting insects.
So down into the mudhole went the beast and its rider. It was deep enough so that the muddy water came up to Roger’s neck and the animal was completely covered except for the eyes and nose.
Now here was a place where the buffalo was content to stay all day. Roger was thoroughly soaked and completely muddied. He would be a pretty sight when he came out - if he ever came out. The birds and monkeys found the whole show very entertaining.
A great osprey, or fish-eating hawk, came down from its enormous nest as wide as a car m the top of a tree to get a better look. Then its sharp eyes made out something that was even more interesting, a fish in the nearby river. It dropped like a stone into the river, dived deep, and came up with the fish in its beak. This was better than a boy in a mudhole. Quite satisfied with itself, it flew up towards its nest. It did not get there. An eagle swooped in from nowhere, seized the fish, and carried it off, perhaps to feed its baby eaglets.
Wasps began to buzz about the two heads, Roger’s and the buffalo’s. The buffalo solved her problem by sinking her entire head into the muddy pool. She held it there until the wasps gave up and centred their attention on the other head. To avoid being bitten, Roger took a lesson from the buffalo and buried his own head. When he could hold his breath no longer, he raised his head and was pleased to notice that the wasps had gone. He would not have been so pleased if he could have seen his own head and face plastered with mud.
Hal laughed. ‘You look like someone who’s Just been dug up out of the grave. Where, oh where has my beautiful brother gone?’
‘Stop your kidding,’ Roger said. ‘You ought to be thinking about how we’re going to get out of this. I think I have an idea. I don’t know whether it will work or not - but we might try it.’
‘Well, what’s the bright idea?’
‘I didn’t say it was bright - but it’s better than nothing. You have one horn noosed. Give me the other end of the rope and I’ll tie it on to the other horn.’
‘Whatever for? Have you gone out of your head completely?’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Roger. ‘But give me the rope end and we’ll see what we can do with it.’
He tied the rope to the horn. He drew it tight. The rest of the rope was in the boy’s hands.
‘What in the world are you up to?’ exclaimed Hal.
Roger explained. ‘If my lady and I ever get out of here, how are we going to get to camp? We can’t expect Her Ladyship to go straight there and walk into a cage. She could go in any one of a hundred directions. I think I have the answer. I have what amounts to two reins in my hands. By pulling on the left one, I can turn her head left. By pulling on the right one I can pull her head right’
‘What makes you think she will turn her head either way?’
‘I couldn’t do it if the horns were short. But a very long horn gives me a lot of leverage. I think it will work, but I don’t guarantee it.’
‘Okay,’ said Hal, ‘when do we start on this horn-pulling trip to camp?’
Roger said, ‘If you will give my fat friend a few good pokes with a stick behind, she may climb out of here and perhaps I can steer her to camp.’
‘I think you’re loony.’ said Hal, but he got a sharp stick and began prodding the animal’s rear. Sin
ce she was not so comfortable as she had been, she began to think of leaving the precious mudhole. A few more prods, and the buffalo struggled up out of the mudhole. She was beautifully plastered with mud from head to foot.
Hal laughed, ‘She looks as bad as you do,’ he said.
The lady started off in exactly the wrong direction. Roger pulled the rope attached to the left horn. That turned the animal’s head to the left and she kept going farther left until she was headed straight towards camp. Then Roger stopped pulling, but whenever the great beast began to change direction he could bring her back by a gentle tug to the left or right.
It was necessary to cross the river to reach home. There was a bridge, but whether it could bear up under a ton of meat and bone, who could say? The lady started when she > saw it. Perhaps she knew better than the boy on her back whether or not the bridge would hold her up. She tried hard to go to the right or the left along the bank. But her driver was determined to make her take the bridge.
So she took the bridge and when she reached the middle of it the bridge broke down and the buffalo and its rider got a bath that they had not asked for.
But, after all, the plunge into the clean river washed away two or three layers of mud. For this the boy was grateful. Cambering up on the other bank they proceeded, with some horn-jerking, towards the camp. Hal crossed by another bridge.
The buffalo was moving slowly now, probably thinking back to that lovely mudhole.
‘Run ahead,’ said Roger, ‘and open a cage. Perhaps I can horn her right into it.’
It was done exactly as Roger had planned. The buffalo was steered into the cage. Roger slid down from her back and came out, closing the door.
‘Well,’ said Hal, ‘I guess you’re a little cleverer than I thought you were.’
Thank you, my dear sir,’ said Roger, ‘for that lovely compliment. After this, anything you want to know about handling wild animals, just ask me.’
They both laughed, and at once started digging up great armfuls of long grass and stuffing them into the cage for a very hungry Madam Buffalo.
13 Tiger Adventure Page 10
