Book: Son of Power

W >> Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost >> Son of Power




One big green eye burned now in the pit--steady as a beacon and turned
to them, enfolding them. Cadman Sahib cleared his throat.

"All right to talk?" he asked huskily.

"Sure. It will help--"

He cleared his throat again and inquired in an enticing tone: "You
actually don't mean to use the pistol?"

"I'm not a crack-shot," Skag said queerly.

"You might pass it to me. I'm supposed to be--"

"It is bad light."

"And then again, you might not," Cadman laughed softly. "I've got you,
son--"

"I will do as you say," Skag said steadily.

Cadman hiccoughed. "The eye moved," he explained. "There--it did it
again. I got a feeling as if an elevator dropped a flight. What were
you saying?"

"That I am here to take orders."

"I'm taking orders to-night, son. I wouldn't risk your good opinion by
shooting your guest--"

"He is perfect--not more than four or five years--got his full range,
but not his weight."

Skag stopped abruptly, until the other nudged him.

"Go on--it's like a bench-show--"

"We called them Bengalis--but that is just the trade-name--"

"You intimated he might have a lady-friend--do they hunt in couples?"

The boy didn't answer that. "You've never been in a tiger's cage?" he
asked suddenly.

"I'm telling you not, so you'll excuse my apprehensions about our
lodging--in case Herself appears. The fact is, there isn't room--"

"She won't come near, if we keep up the voices--"

"It becomes instantly a bore to talk," Cadman answered.


Sometime passed before they spoke again. The tiger didn't seem to
settle any; from time to time, they heard the tense concussion, the
hissing escape of his snarl. The kid had either escaped or strangled
to death.

"Will he stand for it until morning?" Cadman asked abruptly.

"He may move a little to rest his legs."

"And won't he try for the top?"

"I think not. He has already measured that. He sees in the dark. He
knows there's no good in making a jump."

"Nothing to jump at--with us here?"

"We have put it over on him. You have helped greatly."

"How's all that?"

"You don't smell afraid--"

"Ah, thanks."

Long afterward Cadman's hand came over to Skag's brow and touched it
lightly.

"I was just wondering, son, if you sweat hot or cold."

There was a pause, before he added:

"You see, I want to get you, young man. You really like this sort of
night?"

"It is India," said Skag.

Every little while through the dragging hours, Cadman would laugh
softly; and if there had been silence for long, the warning snarl would
come back. The breath of it shook the air and the thresh of the tail
kept the dust astir in the pit.

"There is only one more thing I can think of," Cadman said at last.

The waning moon was now in meridian and blent with daylight. The beast
was still crouched against the wall.

"Yes?" said Skag.

"That you should walk over and stroke his head."

"Oh, no, he is cornered. He would fight."

"There's really a kind of law about all this--?"

"Very much a law."

After an interval Cadman breathed: "I like it. Oh, yes," he added
wearily, "I like it all."

It was soon after that they heard the voices of natives and a face,
looking grey in the dawn, peered down. Cadman spoke in a language the
native understood:

"Look in the tea-pot and toss down my cigarettes--"

At this instant the tiger protested a second time. The native vanished
with the squeak of a fat puppy that falls off a chair on its back. For
moments afterward, they heard him calling and telling others the tale
of all his born days. Three quarters of an hour elapsed before the
long pole, thick as a man's arm, was carefully lowered. Skag guided
the butt to the base of the pit, and fixed it there as far as possible
from the tiger. This was delicate. His every movement was maddeningly
deliberate, the danger, of course, being to put the tiger into a
fighting panic.

"Now you climb," Skag said.

"No--"

"It is better so. I am old at these things. He will not leap at you
while I am here--"

"You mean he might leap, as you start to shin up the pole--alone?"

"No, that will be the second time. It will not infuriate him--the
second one to climb."

"I'll gamble with you--who goes first."

"You said that you were taking orders," Skag said coldly.

"That's a fact. But this isn't to my relish, son--"

"We do not need more words."


Cadman Sahib had reached safety. The natives were around him, feeling
his arms and limbs, stuttering questions. He bade them be silent,
caught up his rifle and covered the tiger, while Skag made the tilted
pole, beckoning the rifle back.

"It's been a hard night for him," he said.

The two men stood together in the morning light. Cadman's face was
deeply shaded by the big helmet again, but his eyes bored into the
young one's as he offered his cigarette-case. Skag took one, lit it
carelessly. Cadman was watching his hands.

"You've got it, son," he said.

"Got what?"

"The good grey nerve. . . . Not a flicker in your hand. I wanted to
know. . . . Say, cheer up--"

Skag was looking toward the tiger trap.

"Ah, I see," said Cadman Sahib.

"The circus is a hard life," Skag said.


That was a kind of a feast day. . . . At noon the natives had the
tiger up in sunlight, caged in bamboo. Skag presently came into a
startling kind of joy to hear his friend make an offer to buy the
beast. Negotiations moved slowly, but the thing was done. That
afternoon the journey toward Coldwater Ruins was continued with eight
carriers, the tiger swung between them. Skag was mystified. What
could Cadman mean? What could he do with a tiger at the Ruins or in
the Monkey Forest? The natives apparently had not been told the
destination, but they must know soon. It was all strange. Skag liked
it better alone with his friend. Halt was called that afternoon, the
sun still in the sky. The two white men walked apart.

"You get the drift, my son?"

Skag shook his head.

"Of course, the natives won't like it; they won't understand. But
we're sure he isn't a man-eater--"

Skag's chest heaved.

"I never knew a more decent tiger--" Cadman went on. "Besides, he's a
friend of yours, and not too expensive--"

"You bought him to--"

"I bought him for you, son--a tribute to the nerviest white man I ever
stepped with--"

That evening a great whine went up from the bearers. It appears that
while some were cutting wood, others preparing supper and others
gathering dry grass for beds, the younger white man, who had made magic
with the tiger in the pit, suddenly failed in his powers. The natives
were sure it was not their fault that the cover had not been securely
fastened. The bearers repeated they were all at work and could find no
fault with themselves. They were used to dealing with white men who
did not permit bungling. Their wailing was very loud. . . . To lose
such a tiger was worth more than many natives, some white men would
say. . . . But Cadman Sahib was rich. He fumed but little; being of
all white men most miraculously compassionate. . . . Also it was true
the beast, though full grown, was not a man-eater. . . .

"And to-morrow we shall go on alone--it is much pleasanter," said Skag,
after all was still and they lay down together.




CHAPTER II

_Son of Power_

His Indian name was given to Skag in the great Grass Jungle; but he did
not know the meaning of the words when they first fell upon his ear.
There India herself first opened for him the magic gates that seal her
mystery. But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly
forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle
days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his
own birthright, in the paralysis of perfect fear.

A part of her mystery is this forgetting--while she reveals canvas after
canvas of life--uncovers layer beneath layer of her deeper marvels. Skag
was involved with his animals--and interests peculiarly personal--till it
all came to seem like a dream. Yet underneath his surface consciousness
it was working in him, as the glamour of India always does, to colour his
entire future--as the magic of India always will.

After their night in the tiger pit-trap, Cadman and Skag had wandered
southeast-ward--still searching for the Monkey Forest and the Coldwater
Ruins--and had become lost to the world and the ways of civilisation in
the mazes of the Mahadeo mountains. They had found a dozen jungles full
of monkeys, but none of them looked to Cadman like his dream. The
monkeys were all so melted-in to everything else; and there was so much
too much of everything else.

As for Ruins, the thing they found was too old. It was like an exposure
of the sins of first men--alive with bats and smaller vermin. The
monkeys there had preserved from age to age the germs of all depravity.
Without words the two Americans turned away from that spot, to forget it.

Skag was learning that his training in the circus had been but a mere
beginning in the study of wild animals. It seemed impossible that there
could be a jungle anywhere with more beasts or greater variety, than they
heard at night.

It was as hard to come in good view of any wild creature--excepting
monkeys--as it had been hard at first to sleep, on account of the voices
of all creation after sundown. To approach undiscovered, and to lie out
and watch undiscovered, taxed and developed all their faculties; the
fascination and excitement of it stretched their powers; and their
successes enriched them both for a life-time.

After the first eagerness to get twenty different positions of a tigress
playing with her kittens, Cadman had become a miser of material and an
adept in noiseless movement. Finding that he was in danger of going
short on sketching paper, he used it more and more as if it were fine
gold, till his outlines were not larger than miniatures. Also, he
learned to glance for the flash of approval in Skag's eye.

The two men had grown into a rare comradeship. This time of year,
sleeping in the open was luxury. They had not suffered for food,
excepting in the memory of such things as had once been most common.
Well above fever-line, no ailment had touched them. So, eating simply,
sleeping deeply and working hard, they toughened in body and keened in
mind--the days all full of quickening interests, every next minute due to
develop surprise.

It was by a little headlong mountain stream, that the revelation came.
Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush
that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife. The accident was a
calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb
out of khuds, and this was all they had left to serve such a purpose.

"That settles it, we must go," said Cadman, looking ruefully at the stump
of his old blade. "Our nearest kin wouldn't know us, but we are still
recognisable to each other, and I'm not exactly ready to quit--are you?"

"No," Skag answered absently--unwilling to realise the necessity.

Cadman studied the crestfallen face--they had loved this life together
and equally.

"But do you realise, my son," he asked, "that others will have to see us,
before we can ever again be clothed and groomed properly?"

Now Skag looked at his friend with seeing eyes and blushed.

"It's not the clothes, so much as--" Skag stopped.

Cadman focused on Skag's face through his queer spectacles, then he
laughed as only Cadman could laugh.

So they climbed down and took train for Bombay. Like fugitives they
dodged the sight of correctly dressed Englishmen all the way; stopping
over more than seven hours at Kullian--so as to reach the great city at
night.

Next morning two clean-faced and very much alive Americans arrived at the
Polo Club for late breakfast. Indeed they were good to look at, being in
the finest kind of health and full of initiative. That breakfast was
royal in every flavour; they felt like young spendthrifts squandering
their patrimony. Just as they were finishing, a distinguished looking
Englishman came across the room and greeted Cadman:

"Now this is my own proverbial good luck! Come away up to the house and
give account of yourself. Where are the pictures? We'll take 'em along."

Cadman presented Skag to Doctor Murdock of the University, explained that
it was imperative for them to do some general outfitting, but promised to
bring his friend in the afternoon.

"Doctor Murdock is an extraordinary man, Skag," said Cadman, as the
Englishman hurried away. "Beside his chair in the University, he is said
to be top surgeon of Bombay. Barring none, he has more of different
kinds of knowledge than any man I know; becomes master of whatever he
takes up--authority, past question."

"I wondered why you promised to take me along," Skag put in.

"You'll be glad to have met him. He'll be interested in you," Cadman
answered. "He's quite likely to take us to see some of the Indian
nautch-girls. They're one of his fads--for their beauty. He has
specialties in art as well as in science; but he's clean stuff--nothing
rotten in him."

They forgot time in the Bombay bazaars; first looking for bags, to be
easily carried on their own persons; and then giving themselves to
quality and workmanship in things designed for their special uses. There
was no hurry. All life stretched before them, in widening vistas.

Doctor Murdock's house was high on Malabar Hill. Their hired carriage
came in behind his trim little brougham, as it turned on the driveway
into his compound.

"My fortune again!" the Doctor called. "I've been detained by a case and
properly sweating for fear you'd reach my den first."

Tea was served on a verandah entirely foreign and tropical and strange
looking to Skag. A field of palm-tops stretched away from their feet to
the sea. They told him the city of Bombay was hidden under those fronds.

"And now you understand, Cadman," the Doctor was saying, "there's your
own room and one next for your friend Hantee. Your traps will be up
before you sleep, which may not be early, for I've a tamasha on for you
this night--you remember, I enjoy dinner in the morning?"

That tamasha was a maze of strange colour, strange motion and stranger
perfume to Skag; not penetrating his conscious nature at all--feeling
unreal to him.

"I've been watching you without shame this night, young man," the Doctor
said to him, as they finished the after-midnight meal. "My entertainment
fell dead with you. Sir. You've been 'way off somewhere else. I'm
simply consumed to know what you have found in life, to make your eyes
blind and your ears deaf to the lure of human beauty. You're not to be
distressed by my impudence--it's innocent."

"If I may answer for my friend, I belive [Transcriber's note: believe?] I
can tell you, Doctor." Cadman saw consent in Skag's eye and went on: "He
has found the lure of creatures. He has entered into the spell of a
young tigress playing with her kittens, in her own place. He has watched
another tigress fight her mate to a finish, defending her little ones
from their sire. He has listened to the symphonies of night and seen the
drama of the wild. He lives in the clean glamour of the primeval jungle."

The Doctor's eyes widened for seconds; then they gloomed as he spoke:

"Between you, you challenge modern manhood. We have not conceived that
'clean glamour' since men were young--forgotten ages past. No, there was
no human beauty to-night to make a man forget those tigresses. . . . She
was not there. I am one of many who miss her, but I would give--" The
Doctor broke off, searching their faces before he spoke again: "There is
no hope you will know the depth of the calamity; the bitterness of the
loss. Speaking of clean things--"

"Who was she?" Cadman asked.

"She was the most beautiful thing on earth. She was indeed the most
marvellous thing on earth, being a Bombay singing nautch-girl--undefamed.
There has been no one else, these ages."

The Doctor sat smoking, apparently oblivious of his guests.

"The Spartan Helen?" Cadman suggested.

"Hah! The Spartan Helen was not invincible!"

"The Noor Mahal?"

"The Noor Mahal was always in seclusion."

"Her name?" Skag questioned.

"She had no name," the Doctor answered, "but she was called 'Dhoop Ki
Dhil'--Heart-of-the-Sun; possibly on account of her voice. There has
been none like it. The master-mahouts of High Himalaya, their voices
pass those of all other men for splendour; but I tell you there was none
other in the world, beside hers. Rich men in Bombay would give fortunes
to anyone who would find her."

"Then she is not dead?" Skag spoke startled.

"We do not know that she is dead," the Doctor answered. "We would
suppose so, but for a curious happening four days before she disappeared.
Down in the silk-market a dealer was buying silk from an up-country
native--a man from the Grass Jungle. The native was exceptionally good
to look upon. Dhoop Ki Dhil came into the place to make some purchase.
Her eye fell on the jungle man and she stood back. She was a valuable
customer, so the silk-merchant made haste to signal her forward. But she
shook her head and moved further back."

The Doctor stopped to smoke.

"After a while Dhoop Ki Dhil came forward, moving like one in a trance,
and said to the jungle man, 'Are you a god?' and the jungle man answered
her with shame, 'No, I am a common man.'

"Now that silk-merchant will tell no more. One doesn't blame him. The
natives are not patient with such a tale of her. To hear that any man
had taken her eye, maddened them. She had passed the snares of
desire--immune. She had turned away from fabulous wealth. She had
denied princes and kings. She smiled on all men alike--with that smile
mothers have for little children."

"She was a mother-thing," murmured Cadman.

The Doctor turned, questioning:

"A mother-thing? Yes, probably. But she led the singing women like a
super-being incarnate. She led the dancing women like a living flame.
They sing and dance yet, but the fire of life is gone out!"

"Where is the Grass Jungle?" Cadman asked.

"Nobody seems to know. As for me, I never heard of it--till this. The
silk-merchants say that once in several years some strange man--one or
another--in strange garments, comes down with a peculiar kind of silk, to
exchange for cotton cloth. He won't take money for it and he's easily
cheated. He won't talk--only that he's from the great Grass Jungle. He
usually calls it 'great.'"

"It must be possible to find," said Cadman, glancing at Skag. "What do
you say?"

"I'm with you," Skag answered.

"Now am I gone quite mad, or do I understand you?" the Doctor enquired.

"I think you understand us," Cadman answered.

The Doctor sprang up, exclaiming:

"I've often told you, Cadman, you Americans develop most extraordinary
surprises. Most remarkable men on earth for--for developing at the--at
the very moment, you understand!"

"Do you know anyone who might give us something on the locality?" Skag
asked Cadman.

"That's the point. I think I do," Cadman nodded. "But we'll have to go
and find out."

"My resources are at your disposal," the Doctor put in.

"Your resources have accomplished the first half," smiled Cadman. "It's
fair that the rest of it should be ours."

"Then what's to do?" the Doctor questioned.

"A few things to purchase first, easily done to-day," Cadman answered,
glancing out at the faint dawn. "Then, I know Dickson of the grain-foods
department, at Hurda--Central Provinces. He ought to be familiar with
the topography of all the inside country. We'll risk nothing by going to
him."

"Then away with you to bed and get one good sleep. The boy will bring
you a substantial choti-hazri when you're out of your bath at six. I
have a couple of small elephant-skin bags--you'll not find the like in
shops--they're made for the interior medical service."


So Cadman and Skag went up from Bombay that night on the Calcutta-bound
train, facing the far interior of India. The boy in Skag found joy in
every detail of his outfit; especially the elephant-skin bag, stocked
with necessary personal requirements and nothing more. But somewhere,
far out before him, lost in this mystery-land--was a woman. That woman
must be found.

"What's the secret about the Doctor?" he asked Cadman, after they had
been rolling through the night some hours.

"Nobody knows, unless it's a woman he didn't get," Cadman answered.

"What's the grip this wonder-woman has on him?"

"Beauty and music and life, in the superlative degree; when it all
happens together, in one woman--she grips."

After that they both dreamed vague man-dreams of Dhoop Ki Dhil.

"There stands Dickson Sahib himself!" Cadman exclaimed, at Hurda station;
and Skag saw the two meet, perceiving at once that it was a friendship
between men of very different type.

Then Dickson Sahib promptly gathered them both into that Anglo-Indian
hospitality which is never forgotten by those who have found it. Skag
was made to feel as much at home as the evidently much-loved Cadman; not
by word or gesture, but by a kindly atmosphere about everything. He met
a slender lad of twelve years, presented to him by Dickson Sahib as "My
son Horace," whose clear grey eyes attracted him much.

After dinner Cadman told the story of Dhoop Ki Dhil. There was perfect
silence for minutes when he finished. Skag was groping on and on--his
quest already begun. Dickson was smoking hard, till he startled them
both:

"Of course, it's altogether right; I'd like to be with you."

"Then will you direct us?" Cadman asked.

"As an officer in a land-department, you understand--" Dickson answered
slowly, "I'm not supposed to send men into a place like that, to their
death. But I want you to know that my responsibility has nothing
whatever to do with my concern. Because I value your lives as men--I
want to be careful. You must let me think it out loud. It's a maze. I
may place you, as I get on."

"We appreciate your care," Cadman said earnestly.

"The 'great' Grass Jungle is the proper name for vast territory--not all
in one piece," Dickson Sahib began. "It comes in rifts between parallel
rivers among the mountains. Seepage back and forth between the streams,
gives the moisture necessary for such growth--year round.

"When white men come to the edge of one of those rifts, they turn back.
It's pestilential with wild beasts. Natives call it the Place-of-Fear.
White men don't challenge it--they go round. Government has named one
part of it--over toward the eastern end of the Vindhas--the Bund el
Khand, the closed country; that name tells its own story."

Dickson Sahib stopped, frowning.

"The native with silks to exchange goes down to Bombay?" he went on.
"That means, not Calcutta-way. It also means, not anywhere in the
Deccan--which clears us away from large tracts. Yet he usually calls it
'great'--that should mean, the Bund el Khand. No one knows how far in;
but you'll best approach it from this side. I'm not dissuading you; I'd
like to be along. I'm offering you choice of my assortment of
firing-pieces. I'll work you out some running lines--they'll be ready by
late-breakfast time. But I'm certain your best place to leave the tracks
will be Sehora."

Dickson Sahib was worrying with a match, his face troubled, as he
muttered:

"Now if Hand-of-a-God--"

"What is that?" Skag asked quietly, of Cadman.

"That," smiled Dickson Sahib, "is a Scotchman. This civil station of
Hurda is famous because he lives here. He is an absolutely perfect shot.
Years ago he took all the medals and cups at the great shooting
tournaments. He took 'em all, till for shame's sake he withdrew from
contesting. He goes to the tournaments just the same--the crackshotmen
wouldn't be without him--but he doesn't enter for the trophies any more."

"He is called the avenger of the people, Skag," Cadman put in, "because
he goes out and gets the man-eaters; never sights for anything but the
eye or the heart, and never misses."

"As I was saying," Dickson Sahib went on, "if Hand-of-a-God were here,
he'd go without asking. Or even if the Rose-pearl's brother Ian were
here, he's quick enough. But he plays with situations, rather."

"Don't let this situation trouble you, Dickson," said Cadman.

There fell a moment of curious silence. Cadman was a bit pale, but
Skag's face looked serene, as he questioned innocently:

"Rose-pearl?"

"Yes," Dickson Sahib began absently, "she's here when she's not visiting
one of her numerous brothers; just now it's Billium in Bombay. Her
degree is from London University and the medical service recognises her
work among the people. She's a holy thing to them; indeed, she never
rests when there's much sickness among them. But one wouldn't ask a
favour of one of her brothers."

"Hold on, Dickson, I protest!" Cadman interrupted laughingly. "I'm not
such a bad shot myself, you know!"

"The Grass Jungle is crowded--I say crowded--with the worst kinds of
blood-eaters. You may want an extra good shot; at the very top notch of
practice, what's more."

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