Roving East and Roving West Part 3

We began with a trial of nervous stamina--for a river far down in its bed below us almost immediately occurred, and this had to be crossed.

I abandoned all hope as the elephant descended the bank almost, as it seemed, perpendicularly, and plunged into the water with an enormous splash. But after he had squeeged through, extricating himself with a gigantic wrench, the ground was level for a long while, and there was time to look around and recollect one's fatalism. Far ahead in a blue mist were the Himalayas. All about were unending fields, with here and there white cattle grazing. Cranes stretched their necks above the gra.s.s; now and then a herd of blackbuck (which were below our hunting ambitions) scampered away; the sky was full of wild-duck and other water-fowl.

Of the hunting of the gond I should have something to say had not a diversion occurred which relegated that lively and elusive creature to an obscure place in the background. We had finished the beat, and most of us had emerged from the swamp to higher ground where an open s.p.a.ce, or maidan, corresponding to a drive in an English preserve, but on the grand scale, divided it from the jungle--all our thoughts being set upon lunch--when suddenly across this open s.p.a.ce pa.s.sed a blur of yellow and black only a few yards from the nearest elephant. It was so unexpected and so quick that even the trained eyes of my companion were uncertain.

"Did you see?" he asked me in a voice of hushed and wondering awe.

"Could that have been a tiger?" I could not say, but I understood his excitement. For the tiger is the king of Indian carnivorae, the most desired of all game. Hunters date their lives by them: such and such a thing happened not on the anniversary of their wedding day; not when their boy went to Balliol; not when they received the K.C.I.E.; but in the year that they shot this or that man-eater.

That a tiger had really chanced upon us we soon ascertained. Also that it had been hit by the rifle on the first elephant and had disappeared into the jungle, which consisted hereabouts of a gra.s.s some twenty feet high, bleached by the sun.

A Council of War followed, and we were led by Bam Bahadur on a rounding-up manoeuvre. According to his judgment the tiger would remain just inside the cover, and our duty was therefore to make a wide detour and then advance in as solid a semicircle as possible upon him and force him again into the open, where the hunter who had inflicted the first wound was to remain stationed. Accordingly all the rest of us entered the jungle in single file, our elephants treading down the gra.s.s with their great irresistible feet or wrenching it away with their invincible trunks. It was now that the shikaree was feeling the elephant shortage.

Had there been seventy-five instead of only twenty-five, he said, all would be well: he could then form a cordon such as no tiger might break through. For lack of these others, when the time came to turn and advance upon our prey he caused fires to be lighted here and there where the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle of burning stalks.

And thus, after an hour in this bewildering tangle, with the universe filled with sound and strangeness, and the scent of wood smoke mingling with the heat of the air, and the l.u.s.t of the chase in our veins, we drew to the spot where the animal was guessed to be hiding, and knew that the guess was true by the demeanour of the elephants. Real danger had suddenly entered into the adventure; and they showed it. A wounded tiger at bay can do desperate things, and some of the elephants now refused to budge forward any more, or complied only with terrified screams. Some of the unarmed mahouts were also reluctant, and shouted their fears. But the shikaree was inexorable. There the tiger was, and we must drive it out.

Closer and closer we drew, until every elephant's flank was pressing against its neighbour, the outside ones being each at the edge of the open s.p.a.ce; in the middle of which was the twenty-fifth with its vigilant rider standing tense with his rifle to his shoulder. The noise was now deafening. Every one was uttering something, either to scare the tiger or to encourage the elephants or his neighbour or possibly himself; while now and then from the depths of the gra.s.s ahead of us came an outraged growl, with more than a suggestion of contempt in it for such unsportsmanship as could array twenty-five elephants, half a hundred men and a dozen rifles against one inoffensive wild beast.

And then suddenly the gra.s.s waved, there was a rustle and rush and a snarl of furious rage, and once again a blur of yellow and black crossed the open s.p.a.ce. Six or more reports rang out, and to my dying day I shall remember, with mixed feelings, that one of these reports was the result of pressure on a trigger applied by a finger belonging to me.

That the tiger was. .h.i.t again--by other bullets than mine--was certain, but instead of falling it disappeared into the jungle on the other side of the maidan, and again we were destined to employ enclosing tactics.

It was now intensely hot, but n.o.body minded; and we were an hour and a half late for lunch, but n.o.body minded: the chase was all! The phrase "out for blood" had taken on its literal primitive meaning.

The second rounding-up was less simple than the first, because the tiger had more choice of hiding places; but again our shikaree displayed his wonderful intuition, and in about an hour we had ringed the creature in. That this was to be the end was evident from the electrical purposefulness which animated the old hands. The experienced shots were carefully disposed, and my own peace of mind was not increased by the warning "If the tiger leaps on your elephant, don't shoot"--the point being that novices can be very wild with their rifles under such conditions. As the question "What shall I do instead?" was lost in the tumult, the latter stages of this momentous drama were seen by these eyes less steadily and less whole than I could have wished. But I saw the tiger spring, growling, at an elephant removed some four yards from mine, and I saw it driven back by a shot from one of the native hunters.

And then when, after another period of anxious expectancy, it emerged again from the undergrowth, and sprang towards our host, I saw him put two bullets into it almost instantaneously; and the beautiful obstinate creature fell, never to rise again.

THE SACRED CITY

The devout Hindu knows in Benares the height of ecstasy: but, if I am typical, the European experiences there both discomfort and inquietude.

Nowhere else in India did I feel so foreign, so alien. To be of cool Christian traditions and an Occidental, an inquisitive sightseer among these fervent pilgrims intent upon their pious duties and rapt in exaltation and unthinking inflexible belief, was in itself disconcerting, almost to the point of shame; while the pilgrims were so remarkably of a different world, a different era, that one felt lost.

This, however, is not all. India is never too sanitary, except where the English are in their own strongholds, but Benares--at any rate the parts which the tourist must visit--is least scrupulous in such matters. The canonization of the cow must needs carry a penalty with it, and Benares might be described as a sanctified byre without any labouring Hercules in prospect. G.o.dliness it may have, but cleanliness is very distant. The streets, too, seem to be narrower and more congested than those in any other city; so that it is often embarra.s.singly difficult to treat the approaching ruminants with the respect due to them. Fortunately they are seldom anything but mild and unaggressive. Part perplexed, part inquisitive, and part contemptuous, they are met everywhere, while in one of the temples in which the unbeliever may (to his great contentment) do no more than stand at the entrance, they are frankly worshipped. In another temple monkeys are revered too, careering about the walls and courtyards and being fed by the curious and the devout.

Holiness is not only the peculiar characteristic of Benares: it is also its staple industry. In the streets there is a shrine at every few feet, while the shops where little lingams are for sale must be numbered by hundreds.

The chief glory of Benares is, however, the Ganges, on one side of which is the teeming sweltering city with its palaces and temples heaped high for two or three miles, and bathers swarming at the river's edge; while the other bank is flat and bare. A watering-place front on the ocean's sh.o.r.e does not end more suddenly and completely. There is nothing that I have seen with which to compare the north bank of the Ganges, with the morning sun on its many-coloured facades and towers, but Venice. As one is rowed slowly down the river it is of Venice that one instinctively thinks. As in Venice, the palaces are of various colours, pink and red and yellow and blue, and the sun has crumbled their facades in the same way. But there is this difference--that over the Benares roofs the monkeys scamper.

Gradually Venice is forgotten as the novel interest of the scene captures one's whole attention. At each of the ghauts (a landing place or steps) variegated ma.s.ses of pilgrims--no matter how early the hour, and to see them rightly one ought to start quite by six--are making their ablutions and deriving holiness from the yellow tide. You saw them yesterday trudging wearily through the streets, the sacred city at last reached; and here they are in their thousands, brown and glistening.

They are of every age: quite old white-bearded men and withered women, meticulously serious in their ritual, and then boys and girls deriving also a little fun from their immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the extremities of the corpse twisting among the f.a.ggots. Here and there is a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach. And over all is the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but soon to be unbearable.

I was not sorry when the voyage ended and we returned to the Maharajah's Guest House for a little repose and refreshment, before visiting the early Buddhist stronghold at Sarnath, the "Deer Park," where the Master first preached his doctrine and whither his five attendants sought a haven after they had forsaken him. Drifting about its ruins and contemplating the glorious capital of the famous Asoka column--all that has been preserved--I found myself murmuring the couplet,--

With a friendly Buddhist priest I seek respite from the strife And manifold anomalies which go to make up life--

but the odds are that even the early Buddhists were not immune.

CALCUTTA

Calcutta and Bombay are strangely different--so different that they can only be contrasted. Bombay, first and foremost, has the sea, and I can think of nothing more lovely than the sunsets that one watches from the lawn of the Yacht Club or from the promenade on Warder Road. Calcutta has no sea--nothing but a very difficult tidal river. Calcutta, again, has no Malabar Hill. But then Bombay has no open s.p.a.ce to compare with the Maidan; and for all its crowded bazaars it has no street so diversified and interesting as Harrison Road. It has no Chinatown. Its climate is enervating where that of Calcutta, if not bracing--and no one could call it that--at any rate does not extract every particle of vigour from the European system.

But the special glory of Calcutta is the Maidan, that vast green s.p.a.ce which, unlike so many parks, spreads itself at the city's feet. One does not have to seek it: there it is, with room for every one and a race-course and a cricket-ground to boot. And if there is no magic in the evening prospect such as the sea and its ships under the flaming or mysterious enveiling sky can offer to the eye at Bombay, there is a quality of golden richness in the twilight over Calcutta, as seen across the Maidan, through its trees, that is unique. I rejoiced in it daily.

This twilight is very brief, but it is exquisite.

It is easier in Calcutta to be suddenly transported to England than in any other Indian city that I visited. There are, it is true, more statues of Lord Curzon than we are accustomed to; but many of the homes are quite English, save for the mult.i.tude of servants; Government House, serene and s.p.a.cious and patrician, is a replica of Kedlestone Hall in Derbyshire: the business buildings within and without are structurally English, and the familiar Scotch accent sounds everywhere; but the illusion is most complete in St. John's Church, that very charming, cool, white and comfortable sanctuary, in the manner of Wren, and in St.

Andrew's too. Secluded here, the world shut off, one might as well be in some urban conventicle at home on a sunny August day, as in the glamorous East. St. John's particularly I shall remember: its light, its distinction, its surrounding verdancy.

ROSE AYLMER

Ah, what avails the sceptred race, Ah, what the form divine!

What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine!

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and sighs I consecrate to thee.

One curious task which I set myself in Calcutta was to find Rose Aylmer's grave, for it was there that, in 1800, the mortal part of the lady whom Landor immortalised was buried. But I tried in vain. I walked for hours amid the sombre pyramidal tombs beneath which the Calcutta English used to be laid, among them, in 1815, Thackeray's father, but I found no trace of her whom I sought. I have seen many famous cemeteries, all depressing, from Kensal Green to Genoa, from Rock Creek to Montmartre, but none can approach in its forlorn melancholy the tract of stained and crumbling sarcophagi packed so close as almost to touch each other, in the burial ground off Rawdon Street and Park Street. Let no one establish a monument of cement over me. Any material rather than that!

JOB AND JOE

If I did not find Rose Aylmer's tomb, I found, in St. John's pleasant G.o.d's Acre, the comely mausoleum of Job Charnock, and this delighted me, because for how long has been ringing in my ears that line--

"The tall pale widow is mine, Joe, the little brown girl's for you."

which I met with so many years ago in "The Light That Failed," where the Nilghai sings it to his own music! He got it, he said, from a tombstone, in a distant land; and the tombstone is now incorporated with Job Charnock's, the distant land being India; but the verses I have had to collect elsewhere. I found them in Calcutta, in my host's library.

Joe was Joseph, or Josiah, Townsend, a pilot of the Ganges, and tradition has it that he and Job Charnock, who, as an officer of the East India Company, founded Calcutta in 1690, saved a pretty young Hindu widow from ascending her husband's funeral pyre and committing suttee.

Tradition states further that Job Charnock and his bride "lived lovingly for many years and had several children," until in due time she was buried in the mausoleum at St. John's, where her husband sacrificed a c.o.c.k on each anniversary of her death ever after. The story has been examined and found to be improbable, but Charnock was a bold fellow who might easily have started many legends; and the poem remains, and if there is a livelier, I should like to know of it. I have been at the agreeable pains of reconstructing the verses as they were probably written, so that there are two more than the Nilghai sang. The whole is a very curious haunting ballad, leaving us with the desire to know much more of the lives of both men--Job Charnock the frontiersman, and Joseph Townsend, "skilful and industrious, a kind father and a useful friend,"

who could navigate not only the Ganges but the shifting Hooghli. Rarely can so much mixed autobiography and romance have been packed into six stanzas--and here too the adventurous East and West meet:--

I've shipped my cable, messmates, I'm dropping down with the tide; I have my sailing orders while ye at anchor ride, And never, on fair June morning, have I put out to sea With clearer conscience, or better hope, or heart more light and free.

An Ashburnham! A Fairfax! Hark how the corslets ring!

Why are the blacksmiths out to-day, beating those men at the spring?

Ho, Willie, Hob and Cuddie!--bring out your boats amain, There's a great red pool to swim them o'er, yonder in Deadman's Lane.

Nay, do not cry, sweet Katie--only a month afloat And then the ring and the parson, at Fairlight Church, my doat.

The flower-strewn path--the Press Gang! No, I shall never see Her little grave where the daisies wave in the breeze on Fairlight Lee.