Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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Besides being dangerous. There is no sort of use in playing with
fire, even for fun.

The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic
Club;
and, when the Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did at
once, The Worm sank the money in scenery and dresses. He was a
good
Worm; and the "Shikarris" are proud of him. The only drawback
is
that he has been christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern;" and as there
are now two Mrs. Senior Subalterns in the Station, this is
sometimes
confusing to strangers.

Later on, I will tell you of a case something like, this, but with
all the jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble.

THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.

While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
While horses are horses to train and to race,
Then women and wine take a second place
For me--for me--
While a short "ten-three"
Has a field to squander or fence to face!

Song of the G. R.

There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than
pulling his head off in the straight. Some men forget this.

Understand clearly that all racing is rotten--as everything
connected with losing money must be. Out here, in addition to its
inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham;
looking pretty on paper only. Every one knows every one else far
too well for business purposes. How on earth can you rack and
harry
and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and
live in the same Station with him? He says, "on the Monday
following," "I can't settle just yet." "You say, "All right, old
man," and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing
is
immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a
man
wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a
subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a
brace of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies
with
hogged manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab
because she has a kink in her flag. Racing leads to the shroff
quicker than anything else. But if you have no conscience and no
sentiments, and good hands, and some knowledge of pace, and ten
years' experience of horses, and several thousand rupees a month, I
believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay your shoeing-
bills.

Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g., 15.13.8--coarse, loose,
mule-
like ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--
and the queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was
of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the
Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a head to make up freight, and sold raw and
out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275. People who lost money
on
him called him a "brumby;" but if ever any horse had Harpoon's
shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles was that horse. Two
miles
was his own particular distance. He trained himself, ran himself,
and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him
hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He objected to
dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand this, and
lost money in consequence. At last he was bought by a man who
discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles
only, would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.

This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest
thing a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on
sitting still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles
devastated the country. No weight could stop him at his own
distance; and The fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the
South,
to Chedputter in the North. There was no horse like Shackles, so
long as he was allowed to do his work in his own way. But he was
beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough to make
angels weep.

At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn
into the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-
mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the
funnel
is not six feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding
peculiarity of the course is that, if you stand at one particular
place, about half a mile away, inside the course, and speak at an
ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds
and makes a curious whining echo there. A man discovered this
one
morning by accident while out training with a friend. He marked
the
place to stand and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept
his knowledge to himself. EVERY peculiarity of a course is worth
remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the
elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps to suit their own stables.

This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering
seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate
tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for
short, Regula Baddun.

Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his
nerves had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races
in
Melbourne, where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of
the
jockeys who came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will
recollect it--of the Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial
ramparts--logs of jarrak spiked into masonry--with wings as strong
as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or
fall. He couldn't run out. In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses
were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side,
and threw out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the
space
between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking
shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very
badly
hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the
Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how
Whalley on
Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm
done
for!" and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had
crushed the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell
of men and horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-
races and Australia together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that
story
by heart. Brunt never varied it in the telling. He had no
education.

Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his
owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and
humble the pride of his owner." The Districts rose against
Shackles
and sent up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do
his mile in 1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry
regiment who knew how to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the
75th;
Bobolink, the pride of Peshawar; and many others.

They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to
smash Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and
the
Fund gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the
course for all horses." Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the
race with regard to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him
under weight-cloths, I don't mind. Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I
throw in my mare to fret Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance,
and she will then lie down and die. So also will Ousel, for his
jockey doesn't understand a waiting race." Now, this was a lie, for
Regula had been in work for two months at Dehra, and her chances
were good, always supposing that Shackles broke a
blood-vessel--OR
BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.

The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand-
rupee lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in
the
Pioneer said that "favoritism was divided." In plain English, the
various contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the
Handicappers had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary
shouted himself hoarse through the din; and the smoke of the
cheroots was like the smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like
the rattle of small-arm fire.

Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner
cantered
out on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where
two bricks had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds
at
the lower end of the course and waited.

The story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first
mile, Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to
get round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight
before the others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still,
perfectly happy, listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs
behind, and knowing that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would
draw one deep breath and go up the last half-mile like the "Flying
Dutchman." As Shackles went short to take the turn and came
abreast
of the brick-mound, Brunt heard, above the noise of the wind in
his
ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, saying:--"God ha'

mercy, I'm done for!" In one stride, Brunt saw the whole seething
smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him, started in his saddle
and
gave a yell of terror. The start brought the heels into Shackles'

side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a
bad
third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by
the
two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the
stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.

It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly
all
the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.

He went down to interview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping
with fright, where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the race
never seemed to strike him. All he knew was that Whalley had
"called" him, that the "call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two
for it, he would never get up again. His nerve had gone altogether,
and he only asked his master to give him a good thrashing, and let
him go. He was fit for nothing, he said. He got his dismissal, and
crept up to the paddock, white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees
giving way under him. People said nasty things in the paddock;
but
Brunt never heeded. He changed into tweeds, took his stick and
went
down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering over and
over again:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!" To the best of my
knowledge and belief he spoke the truth.

So now you know how the Broken-Link Handicap was run and
won. Of
course you don't believe it. You would credit anything about
Russia's designs on India, or the recommendations of the Currency
Commission; but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can
stand!

BEYOND THE PALE.

"Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of
love and lost myself."
Hindu Proverb.

A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and
breed. Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black.

Then, whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--
neither sudden, alien, nor unexpected.

This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe
limits of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.

He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in
the
second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will
never do so again.

Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee,
lies Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one
grated window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the
walls on either side of the Gully are without windows. Neither
Suchet Singh nor Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk
looking
into the world. If Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he
would
have been a happier man to-day, and little Biessa would have been
able to knead her own bread. Her room looked out through the
grated
window into the narrow dark Gully where the sun never came and
where
the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime. She was a widow, about
fifteen years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send
her a lover; for she did not approve of living alone.

One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's
Gully
on an aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes,
stumbled over a big heap of cattle food.

Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and
Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and
whispered
that verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:

Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?

There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind
the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth
verse:

Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
to the North.

There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.

Call to the bowman to make ready--

The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir
Nath's
Gully, wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love
Song
of Har Dyal" so neatly.

Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw
a
packet into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken
glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not
a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.

Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to
puzzle them out.

A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over;
because, when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on
her
wrists. Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass.

The flower of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write,"
or
"danger," according to the other things with it. One cardamom
means
"jealousy;" but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter,
it loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a
number
indicating time, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also,
place. The message ran then:--"A widow dhak flower and
bhusa--at
eleven o'clock." The pinch of bhusa enlightened Trejago. He
saw--
this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge--that the
bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had
fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the message must come from
the
person behind the grating; she being a widow. So the message ran
then:--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of bhusa,
desires
you to come at eleven o'clock."

Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He
knew that men in the East do not make love under windows at
eleven
in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in
advance.

So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad
in a boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the
gongs in the City made the hour, the little voice behind the grating
took up "The Love Song of Har Dyal" at the verse where the
Panthan
girl calls upon Har Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in
the Vernacular. In English you miss the wail of it. It runs
something like this:--

Alone upon the housetops, to the North
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Below my feet the still bazar is laid
Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
The camels and the captives of thy raid,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered:--"I am here."

Bisesa was good to look upon.

That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a
double
life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not
all a dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the
object-letter had detached the heavy grating from the brick-work
of
the wall; so that the window slid inside, leaving only a square of
raw masonry, into which an active man might climb.

In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work,
or put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the
Station; wondering how long they would know him if they knew of
poor
little Bisesa. At night, when all the City was still, came the walk
under the evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's
bustee, the quick turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping
cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the
deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door
of
the bare little room that Durga Charan allotted to his sister's
daughter. Who or what Durga Charan was, Trejago never
inquired; and
why in the world he was not discovered and knifed never occurred
to
him till his madness was over, and Bisesa . . . But this comes
later.

Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a
bird; and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside
world that had reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as
much as her lisping attempts to pronounce his
name--"Christopher."
The first syllable was always more than she could manage, and she
made funny little gestures with her rose-leaf hands, as one
throwing
the name away, and then, kneeling before Trejago, asked him,
exactly
as an Englishwoman would do, if he were sure he loved her.
Trejago
swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world.
Which
was true.

After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life
compelled Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his
acquaintance. You may take it for a fact that anything of this kind
is not only noticed and discussed by a man's own race, but by some
hundred and fifty natives as well. Trejago had to walk with this
lady and talk to her at the Band-stand, and once or twice to drive
with her; never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his
dearer out-of-the-way life. But the news flew, in the usual
mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till Bisesa's duenna
heard
of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubled that she did the
household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's wife in
consequence.

A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She
understood no gradations and spoke openly. Trejago laughed and
Bisesa stamped her little feet--little feet, light as marigold
flowers, that could lie in the palm of a man's one hand.

Much that is written about "Oriental passion and impulsiveness" is
exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true;
and when an Englishman finds that little, it is quite as startling
as any passion in his own proper life. Bisesa raged and stormed,
and finally threatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once
drop the alien Memsahib who had come between them. Trejago
tried to
explain, and to show her that she did not understand these things
from a Western standpoint. Bisesa drew herself up, and said
simply:

"I do not. I know only this--it is not good that I should have made
you dearer than my own heart to me, Sahib. You are an
Englishman.

I am only a black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint--
"and the widow of a black man."

Then she sobbed and said: "But on my soul and my Mother's soul, I
love you. There shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to
me."

Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she
seemed quite unreasonably disturbed. Nothing would satisfy her
save
that all relations between them should end. He was to go away at
once. And he went. As he dropped out at the window, she kissed
his
forehead twice, and he walked away wondering.

A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa.

Trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough,
went down to Amir Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three
weeks, hoping that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would
be answered. He was not disappointed.

There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into
Amir
Nath's Gully, and struck the grating, which was drawn away as he
knocked. From the black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the
moonlight. Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the
stumps were nearly healed.

Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed,
some one
in the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife,
sword or spear--thrust at Trejago in his boorka. The stroke missed
his body, but cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he
limped slightly from the wound for the rest of his days.

The grating went into its place. There was no sign whatever from
inside the house--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall,
and the blackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind.

The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a
madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near
the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his boorka and
went
home bareheaded.

What the tragedy was--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless
despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and
she tortured to tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and
what
became of Bisesa--Trejago does not know to this day. Something
horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been
comes upon Trejago in the night now and again, and keeps him
company
till the morning. One special feature of the case is that he does
not know where lies the front of Durga Charan's house. It may
open
on to a courtyard common to two or more houses, or it may lie
behind
any one of the gates of Jitha Megji's bustee. Trejago cannot tell.

He cannot get Bisesa--poor little Bisesa--back again. He has lost
her in the City, where each man's house is as guarded and as
unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into Amir
Nath's
Gully has been walled up.

But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent
sort of man.

There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness,
caused by a riding-strain, in the right leg.

IN ERROR.

They burnt a corpse upon the sand--
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging boats
That beat from Zanzibar.

Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise.

Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!

Salsette Boat-Song.

There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk
more
often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who
drinks secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never
seen to drink.

This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it.

Moriarty's case was that exception.

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put
him
quite by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk
to and a great deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four
years he was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and
solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and
worn and haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make
him.

You know the saying that a man who has been alone in the jungle
for
more than a year is never quite sane all his life after. People
credited Moriarty's queerness of manner and moody ways to the
solitude, and said it showed how Government spoilt the futures of
its best men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very god
reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night
of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation
with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little nips of liqueurs, and
filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution and a great brain,
or else he would have broken down and died like a sick camel in
the
district, as better men have done before him.

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