The Works of Rudyard Kipling Part 19

And gummed to the scalp was a letter which ran:-- "IN FIELDING FORCE SERVICE.

Encampment, --th Jan.

"Dear Sir,--I have honour to send, as you said, For final approval (see under) Boh's Head;

"Was took by myself in most b.l.o.o.d.y affair.

By High Education brought pressure to bear.

"Now violate Liberty, time being bad, To mail V.P.P. (rupees hundred) Please add

"Whatever Your Honour can pa.s.s. Price of Blood Much cheap at one hundred, and children want food;

"So trusting Your Honour will somewhat retain True love and affection for Govt. Bullock Train,

"And show awful kindness to satisfy me, I am, Graceful Master, Your H. MUKERJI."

As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake's power, As the smoker's eye fills at the opium hour, As a horse reaches up to the manger above, As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love, From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow, The Captain bent down to the Head of the Boh.

And e'en as he looked on the Thing where It lay 'Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins' array, The freed mind fled back to the long-ago days-- The hand-to-hand scuffle--the smoke and the blaze-- The forced march at night and the quick rush at dawn-- The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn-- The stench of the marshes--the raw, piercing smell When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell-- The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood Where the black crosses hung o'er the Kuttamow flood.

As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,

Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year, When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.

As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water, In his eye lit the pa.s.sionless pa.s.sion of slaughter, And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife.

For she who had held him so long could not hold him-- Though a four-month Eternity should have controlled him-- But watched the twin Terror--the head turned to head-- The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red-- The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to.

But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing, And muttered aloud, "So you kept that jade earring!"

Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend, "Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end."

The visions departed, and Shame followed Pa.s.sion:-- "He took what I said in this horrible fashion,

"I'll write to Harendra!" With language unsainted The Captain came back to the Bride... who had fainted.

And this is a fiction? No. Go to Simoorie And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri, A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin-- She's always about on the Mall of a mornin'--

And you'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced, This: Gules upon argent, a Boh's Head, erased!

THE LAMENT OF THE BORDER CATTLE THIEF

O woe is me for the merry life I led beyond the Bar, And a treble woe for my winsome wife That weeps at Shalimar.

They have taken away my long jezail, My shield and sabre fine, And heaved me into the Central jail For lifting of the kine.

The steer may low within the byre, The Jat may tend his grain, But there'll be neither loot nor fire Till I come back again.

And G.o.d have mercy on the Jat When once my fetters fall, And Heaven defend the farmer's hut When I am loosed from thrall.

It's woe to bend the stubborn back Above the grinching quern, It's woe to hear the leg-bar clack And jingle when I turn!

But for the sorrow and the shame, The brand on me and mine, I'll pay you back in leaping flame And loss of the butchered kine.

For every cow I spared before In charity set free, If I may reach my hold once more I'll reive an honest three.

For every time I raised the low That scared the dusty plain, By sword and cord, by torch and tow I'll light the land with twain!

Ride hard, ride hard to Abazai, Young Sahib with the yellow hair-- Lie close, lie close as khuttucks lie, Fat herds below Bonair!

The one I'll shoot at twilight-tide, At dawn I'll drive the other; The black shall mourn for hoof and hide, The white man for his brother.

'Tis war, red war, I'll give you then, War till my sinews fail; For the wrong you have done to a chief of men, And a thief of the Zukka Kheyl.

And if I fall to your hand afresh I give you leave for the sin, That you cram my throat with the foul pig's flesh, And swing me in the skin!

THE RHYME OF THE THREE CAPTAINS

This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.

... At the close of a winter day, Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye, And one was Lord of the Wess.e.x coast and all the lands thereby, And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall, And he was Captain of the Fleet--the bravest of them all.

Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer, When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.

Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze, Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that sp.a.w.ns in the Eastern seas.

Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled, And the skipper sat on the scuttle-b.u.t.t and stared at an empty hold.

"I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?

Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk, We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk; I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.

"There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.

"He would not fly the Rovers' flag--the b.l.o.o.d.y or the black, But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.

He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew--he swore it was only a loan; But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.