In The Permanent Way Part 13

"Sambo," said some one.

"His name is Rudra, sir," replied Mr. Chuckerb.u.t.ty.

"Nilkunta,[27] _Huzoor_," suggested the captain of the launch. I looked from one to the other interrogatively.

[Footnote 27: Blue-throated; the name of the kingfisher.]

"The bridge-diver," said the first speaker, "sees after the foundations and that sort of thing--knows the bottom of the river as well as most of us know the top. A queer sort of animal--there he is to your right."

Out of the yellow-brown flood a grave yellow-brown face crowned by a curious bra.s.s pot not unlike a tiara, then two yellow-brown arms, reminding me unpleasantly of snakes, curved up in the overhead stroke as the swimmer slipped down to where a rope hung from one of the huge ribs. He swarmed up it like a monkey, to sit still as a carven image on the outermost b.u.t.tress of the pier, his legs crossed under him, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on the swirling water below, so that the full eyelids drooping over them gave them an empty, sightless look.

"By George!" said Bannerman carelessly, "he reminds me of the big idol over at the temple. What's its name, Chuckerb.u.t.ty? You're posted in such things; I'm not."

The a.s.sistant-engineer, mindful of the B.A. degree superadded to his ancestral beliefs, became evasive.

"Well, it doesn't matter. I mean the brute like a land crab with a superfluity of arms. The brute we were talking of just now who crowds life and all its joys into one eternal and infernal birth and death--the most uninteresting events of life to my mind."

Bannerman was right. That figure on the b.u.t.tress could not fail to remind one of Siva, or Mahadeo,--the Creator and the Destroyer,--barring, of course, the arms. And as I looked, the two which the figure possessed rose slowly from its knees and hovered up in the oddest fashion above its head; then sank again as slowly, leaving one with the impression of any number of circ.u.mambient members.

"Does it when he dives," said a boy who was watching also; "must have thought he saw something in the stream. He brings up all sorts of things."

The notion was absorbing until Chuckerb.u.t.ty's idiomatic English, in reply to a query of Bannerman's, roused me.

"Sambo is nickname; but indubitably verbal corruption of the Sanskrit _Sambhu_, lord or master. Rudra, real name, has equivalent synonymous meaning. The most ancient G.o.d mentioned in _Rig Veda_. Symbolised in eight attributes, sun, moon, water, earth, air, fire, ether, and soul of man. In other words, the visible and invisible universe--as Siva the Creator, the Preserver, the Destroyer."

Chuckerb.u.t.ty puffed at his cigar in quite a European fashion.

"What rot!" murmured Bannerman under his breath.

"And as for Nilkunta," put in the boy, "that is simple. It means blue-throated, and Sambo is tattooed all round."

"Yet is that also name of Siva," interposed Chuckerb.u.t.ty with importance. "As per _Mahabharata_--

'To soften human ills dread Siva drank The poisonous flood which stained his azure neck.'

"Nil-kunt is also sometimes applied to the bird kingfisher by Europeans; but this is erroneous. It belongs properly----"

I heard no more, my thoughts being with that odd figure again. It was certainly a most extraordinary resemblance.

"Well, if you really are going to fish for _mahseer_ at Hurdwar, Mr.

Bannerman, you should take advantage of that man's knowledge," said the chief pompously. "He goes on leave next week--his home is somewhere in the hills--and he knows everything that is to be known about fishing."

Bannerman laughed. "Back myself against him any day, even on the Ganges. I expect I've as much general good luck--in everyway--as any one in this world."

He gave you that impression. In addition he was eminently handsome--if a trifle dark for a country where people fight shy of any admixture of blood. Extraordinarily graceful and supple too, doing everything with extraordinary grace and skill. Beyond that, rich. For the rest, cosmopolitan in mind and manners. As for morals, that does not enter into the equation of a pleasant chance acquaintance, and the only blemish I could lay finger on was an excess of jewellery. But that was a hobby of his. He was for ever waylaying the pa.s.sers-by and wanting to make a deal for their ornaments, regardless of injured feelings. It was a mere question of money, like everything else, he a.s.serted, and he generally succeeded in getting what he fancied. Apparently he fancied Sambo, or Rudra, or Nilkunta--whichever you choose to call him--for, a day or two afterwards, the man came to me clothed in the loose garments and aggressive turban usually worn by Mohammedans. He looked less startling, but the type of face was utterly new to me.

"I am a hunter, _Huzoor_," he said gravely; indeed I think his face was the gravest I ever saw. "I kill to live; I live to kill. That is all. I come from the mountains, and I know the river. Wherefore not, since it is my birthplace? None know it as I; others may claim it, but it is mine, and the fish also. It is all one to Nil-kunt the diver, _Huzoor_. _Eshspoon_ bait, feather fly, or poach-net. I kill to live; I live to kill. That is the old way, the best way; and if the _Huzoor_ comes with 'Buniah-man' sahib, he will catch big fish."

"And the sahib also, I hope?"

"The sahib thinks he knows, but he is a stranger to the river and the old ways. He must learn them."

A week after this, Bannerman and I were encamped on the south side of the gorge through which the sacred river debouches on the plains, with Sambo, who was on leave, as our boatman. And curiously out of place he looked in the English-built wherry which my host had insisted on bringing up by rail. He had never, he said, been able to stand the discomforts of a Noah's Ark, and he did not intend to begin self-denial, even though he was in the birthplace of the most ascetic cult the world had ever known; if indeed the worshippers of Siva had right on their side in claiming Hurdwar as _Hara-dwara_--the gate of Siva. For his part he inclined to the Vaishnava view. _Hari-dwara_, gate of Vishnu, was just as likely a derivation. It was only the change of a letter; and yet that made all the difference between believing in pleasure or penance. He talked away in his reckless fashion about this as we fished fruitlessly, the first evening; fruitlessly, for I was crippled with a slight sprain of the wrist, and Bannerman caught nothing. And Sambo sat gravely sculling, with a perfectly immovable face, until Bannerman, who was changing his fly for the fiftieth time at least, leant forward suddenly and laid his hand on the other's wrist.

"That's a fine cat's-eye," he said, looking at a ring on the supple brown finger. "How much will you take for it?"

"I do not sell," replied Sambo, still without a quiver of expression.

The water dropped from the upheld oar like molten gold. I could hear it fall in the silence, as those two sat looking at each other. But my eyes were on those hands clasped upon each other; they were extraordinarily alike in contour and not far apart in colour.

"Ten rupees! twenty! forty!" he went on. "What! you won't? Here! let me see it closer. I don't believe it is worth more--even to me--unless I'm mistaken. Hand it over, man!"

Bannerman turned the ring over curiously, and a sudden interest came to his face.

"It isn't worth five, but I've taken a fancy to it. Fifty! a hundred!

a thousand!"

"I do not sell," repeated Sambo indifferently.

"Not sell! then you're a fool! Here, catch!"

He spun the ring like a coin high into the air. Perhaps he had meant it to fall into the boat, but it did not, and as I leant over in dismay I could see it sinking in shimmering circles through the sunlit water.

Sambo did not even seem surprised, but crossing the oars leisurely proceeded to strip.

"It does not matter," he said briefly. "_Mai_ Gunga[28] is kind to me, and I know my way to her bosom."

[Footnote 28: The Ganges.]

A minute or so afterwards he came up from the depths with the ring fast held in his teeth.

"The fish are lying between the shallow and the deep," he remarked, as if nothing had happened. "If the _Huzoor_ will believe me, he will catch them."

Apparently the faith was wanting, for we did not see a fin till I commenced fishing; and even then the luck was all with me. Bannerman began to grow restive, suggesting that in a boat "one man's sport was another man's spoil"; so we moved across the range of the Siwaliks to higher ground. We pitched our tents between the river and a backwater, where the boat--which despite my advice Bannerman insisted on bringing round by road--lay moored beneath a big cotton tree. A desirable resting-place certainly; cool and shadowy, and haunted by many a kingfisher busy among the shoals of silvery fishlets in the still water. Across the river, just above its great race to the gorge below, stood a group of Hindu temples backed by sun-steeped slopes ablaze with flowering, scented shrubs. Further up, however, the hills sank almost to the level, leaving a wedge of sky clear, before rising again in swift gradations of blue, cleft by a purple chasm marking the further course of the river towards the snows of Kedarnath.

"You live yonder, do you not?" I asked of Sambo, pointing to the peaks, as I stood settling my tackle.