'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised
ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of
us, because - - ' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with
leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the
Bombay foreshore.
'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date.
There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked
lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my
cabin with a candle in a lantern.'
Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because
we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe
February hysterics, lay out like oil.
I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars
are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed
since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family - all sorts
together.
The serang said that, for his part, he had noticed no difference in
twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because
God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern - not by any means all
one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of
ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and
families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it
otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and
long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of
partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian
contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old
stories - a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at
school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain
separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future.
It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that
explains a great deal:
There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the
village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade.
He lived alone among Hindus, and - so ran the charge in the lower
court - he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him
forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken
him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his
Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The
evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should,
and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed
and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case
personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not
much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as
man to man, he might have a run for his money.
Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his
own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret
agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed
to it. Yes, he was that money-lender's agent - a persuader of the
reluctant, if you like - working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many
men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true,
but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for
instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged.
But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing
a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that
feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at
the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the
headman's house. How could he have broken any man's caste when they
were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house
they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger
against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew
what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making
enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying:
'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse,
and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a
jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and I
strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy
ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton,
he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly!
I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again
and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all
there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken
mine over my freely given meats. Now, what'll you do with me?'
In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide.
'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower
court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of
it,'
'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many
respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell
a lie.'
'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?'
'It was a native judge,' was the reply.
If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower
court was absolutely sincere.
