The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
"It's so confoundedly childish," said the Ethnologist, becoming
irritated. "How did you play it off upon them?"
The lieutenant made no answer, but lounged back in his folding-chair,
still smiling.
"Here am I, come four hundred miles out of my way to get what is left
of the folk-lore of these people, before they are utterly demoralised
by missionaries and the military, and all I find are a lot of
impossible legends about a sandy-haired scrub of an infantry
lieutenant. How he is invulnerable--how he can jump over
elephants--how he can fly. That's the toughest nut. One old gentleman
described your wings, said they had black plumage and were not quite
as long as a mule. Said he often saw you by moonlight hovering over
the crests out towards the Shendu country.--Confound it, man!"
The lieutenant laughed cheerfully. "Go on," he said. "Go on."
The Ethnologist did. At last he wearied. "To trade so," he said, "on
these unsophisticated children of the mountains. How could you bring
yourself to do it, man?"
"I'm sorry," said the lieutenant, "but truly the thing was forced upon
me. I can assure you I was driven to it. And at the time I had not the
faintest idea of how the Chin imagination would take it. Or curiosity.
I can only plead it was an indiscretion and not malice that made me
replace the folk-lore by a new legend. But as you seem aggrieved, I
will try and explain the business to you.
"It was in the time of the last Lushai expedition but one, and Walters
thought these people you have been visiting were friendly. So, with an
airy confidence in my capacity for taking care of myself, he sent me
up the gorge--fourteen miles of it--with three of the Derbyshire men
and half a dozen Sepoys, two mules, and his blessing, to see what
popular feeling was like at that village you visited. A force of
ten--not counting the mules--fourteen miles, and during a war! You saw
the road?"
"_Road_!" said the Ethnologist.
"It's better now than it was. When we went up we had to wade in
the river for a mile where the valley narrows, with a smart stream
frothing round our knees and the stones as slippery as ice. There it
was I dropped my rifle. Afterwards the Sappers blasted the cliff with
dynamite and made the convenient way you came by. Then below, where
those very high cliffs come, we had to keep on dodging across the
river--I should say we crossed it a dozen times in a couple of miles.
"We got in sight of the place early the next morning. You know how
it lies, on a spur halfway between the big hills, and as we began to
appreciate how wickedly quiet the village lay under the sunlight, we
came to a stop to consider.
"At that they fired a lump of filed brass idol at us, just by way of a
welcome. It came twanging down the slope to the right of us where the
boulders are, missed my shoulder by an inch or so, and plugged the
mule that carried all the provisions and utensils. I never heard such
a death-rattle before or since. And at that we became aware of a
number of gentlemen carrying matchlocks, and dressed in things like
plaid dusters, dodging about along the neck between the village and
the crest to the east.
"'Right about face,' I said. 'Not too close together.'
"And with that encouragement my expedition of ten men came round and
set off at a smart trot down the valley again hitherward. We did not
wait to save anything our dead had carried, but we kept the second
mule with us--he carried my tent and some other rubbish--out of a
feeling of friendship.
"So ended the battle--ingloriously. Glancing back, I saw the valley
dotted with the victors, shouting and firing at us. But no one was
hit. These Chins and their guns are very little good except at a
sitting shot. They will sit and finick over a boulder for hours taking
aim, and when they fire running it is chiefly for stage effect.
Hooker, one of the Derbyshire men, fancied himself rather with the
rifle, and stopped behind for half a minute to try his luck as we
turned the bend. But he got nothing.
"I'm not a Xenophon to spin much of a yarn about my retreating army.
We had to pull the enemy up twice in the next two miles when he became
a bit pressing, by exchanging shots with him, but it was a fairly
monotonous affair--hard breathing chiefly--until we got near the place
where the hills run in towards the river and pinch the valley into
a gorge. And there we very luckily caught a glimpse of half a dozen
round black heads coming slanting-ways over the hill to the left of
us--the east that is--and almost parallel with us.
"At that I called a halt. 'Look here,' says I to Hooker and the other
Englishmen; 'what are we to do now?' and I pointed to the heads.
"'Headed orf, or I'm a nigger,' said one of the men.
"'We shall be,' said another. 'You know the Chin way, George?'
"'They can pot every one of us at fifty yards,' says Hooker, 'in the
place where the river is narrow. It's just suicide to go on down.'
"I looked at the hill to the right of us. It grew steeper lower down
the valley, but it still seemed climbable. And all the Chins we had
seen hitherto had been on the other side of the stream.
"'It's that or stopping,' says one of the Sepoys.
"So we started slanting up the hill. There was something faintly
suggestive of a road running obliquely up the face of it, and that we
followed. Some Chins presently came into view up the valley, and I
heard some shots. Then I saw one of the Sepoys was sitting down
about thirty yards below us. He had simply sat down without a word,
apparently not wishing to give trouble. At that I called a halt again;
I told Hooker to try another shot, and went back and found the man was
hit in the leg. I took him up, carried him along to put him on the
mule--already pretty well laden with the tent and other things which
we had no time to take off. When I got up to the rest with him, Hooker
had his empty Martini in his hand, and was grinning and pointing to a
motionless black spot up the valley. All the rest of the Chins were
behind boulders or back round the bend. 'Five hundred yards,' says
Hooker, 'if an inch. And I'll swear I hit him in the head.'
"I told him to go and do it again, and with that we went on again.
"Now the hillside kept getting steeper as we pushed on, and the road
we were following more and more of a shelf. At last it was mere cliff
above and below us. 'It's the best road I have seen yet in Chin Lushai
land,' said I to encourage the men, though I had a fear of what was
coming.
"And in a few minutes the way bent round a corner of the cliff. Then,
finis! the ledge came to an end.
"As soon as he grasped the position one of the Derbyshire men fell
a-swearing at the trap we had fallen into. The Sepoys halted quietly.
Hooker grunted and reloaded, and went back to the bend.
"Then two of the Sepoy chaps helped their comrade down and began to
unload the mule.
"Now, when I came to look about me, I began to think we had not been
so very unfortunate after all. We were on a shelf perhaps ten yards
across it at widest. Above it the cliff projected so that we could not
be shot down upon, and below was an almost sheer precipice of perhaps
two or three hundred feet. Lying down we were invisible to anyone
across the ravine. The only approach was along the ledge, and on that
one man was as good as a host. We were in a natural stronghold, with
only one disadvantage, our sole provision against hunger and thirst
was one live mule. Still we were at most eight or nine miles from the
main expedition, and no doubt, after a day or so, they would send up
after us if we did not return.
"After a day or so ..."
The lieutenant paused. "Ever been thirsty, Graham?"
"Not that kind," said the Ethnologist.
"H'm. We had the whole of that day, the night, and the next day of it,
and only a trifle of dew we wrung out of our clothes and the tent.
And below us was the river going giggle, giggle, round a rock in mid
stream. I never knew such a barrenness of incident, or such a quantity
of sensation. The sun might have had Joshua's command still upon it
for all the motion one could see; and it blazed like a near furnace.
Towards the evening of the first day one of the Derbyshire men said
something--nobody heard what--and went off round the bend of the
cliff. We heard shots, and when Hooker looked round the corner he was
gone. And in the morning the Sepoy whose leg was shot was in delirium,
and jumped or fell over the cliff. Then we took the mule and shot
it, and that must needs go over the cliff too in its last struggles,
leaving eight of us.
"We could see the body of the Sepoy down below, with the head in the
water. He was lying face downwards, and so far as I could make out was
scarcely smashed at all. Badly as the Chins might covet his head, they
had the sense to leave it alone until the darkness came.
"At first we talked of all the chances there were of the main body
hearing the firing, and reckoned whether they would begin to miss us,
and all that kind of thing, but we dried up as the evening came on.
The Sepoys played games with bits of stone among themselves, and
afterwards told stories. The night was rather chilly. The second day
nobody spoke. Our lips were black and our throats afire, and we lay
about on the ledge and glared at one another. Perhaps it's as well
we kept our thoughts to ourselves. One of the British soldiers began
writing some blasphemous rot on the rock with a bit of pipeclay, about
his last dying will, until I stopped it. As I looked over the edge
down into the valley and saw the river rippling I was nearly tempted
to go after the Sepoy. It seemed a pleasant and desirable thing to
go rushing down through the air with something to drink--or no more
thirst at any rate--at the bottom. I remembered in time, though, that
I was the officer in command, and my duty to set a good example, and
that kept me from any such foolishness.
"Yet, thinking of that, put an idea into my head. I got up and looked
at the tent and tent ropes, and wondered why I had not thought of it
before. Then I came and peered over the cliff again. This time the
height seemed greater and the pose of the Sepoy rather more painful.
But it was that or nothing. And to cut it short, I parachuted.
"I got a big circle of canvas out of the tent, about three times the
size of that table-cover, and plugged the hole in the centre, and I
tied eight ropes round it to meet in the middle and make a parachute.
The other chaps lay about and watched me as though they thought it was
a new kind of delirium. Then I explained my notion to the two British
soldiers and how I meant to do it, and as soon as the short dusk had
darkened into night, I risked it. They held the thing high up, and I
took a run the whole length of the ledge. The thing filled with air
like a sail, but at the edge I will confess I funked and pulled up.
"As soon as I stopped I was ashamed of myself--as well I might be in
front of privates--and went back and started again. Off I jumped this
time--with a kind of sob, I remember--clean into the air, with the big
white sail bellying out above me.
"I must have thought at a frightful pace. It seemed a long time before
I was sure that the thing meant to keep steady. At first it heeled
sideways. Then I noticed the face of the rock which seemed to be
streaming up past me, and me motionless. Then I looked down and saw in
the darkness the river and the dead Sepoy rushing up towards me. But
in the indistinct light I also saw three Chins, seemingly aghast at
the sight of me, and that the Sepoy was decapitated. At that I wanted
to go back again.
"Then my boot was in the mouth of one, and in a moment he and I were
in a heap with the canvas fluttering down on the top of us. I fancy I