I cried to careless heavens,
Asking who I am!
Long were the nights I spent in anguish,
Thinking gods would care,
Vowing I myself would hardly
Leave a thing I made to languish;
If I perished who would profit,
How, and when, and where?
Then I struck a rock, demanding
Why it towered there,
And, as if the rock made answer,
Dawned upon my understanding
“That is His affair!”
Then I looked from rock and river
To horizon far,
Eying with a new contentment,
Seeing gifts but not the Giver,
Sun and moon and star,
Stream and forest, time and season,
Fish and bird and beast and man;
None could look into their reason,
None knew what they are!
So there burst illumination
Dissipating fears,
And I sang a song of manhood,
And I laughed at the negation
That is affluent of tears,
Is the sun too long a-borning?
Are the planets in arrears?
Who am I? Whoever knows me
Is the Monarch of the Morning,
Is the Lord of love and laughter,
Is the Owner of the years!
You hardly expect a sporadically dissolute enlisted Sikh to sing that kind of song. But, as the missionaries say, the Sikhs are heathen, and on their way to Hell; so we, who don’t believe that laughter and religion and the morning are all one, and who think we know exactly who we are, mustn’t judge them too harshly.
Personally I’m not much of a dogmatist. Having pitched my tent in Hades a lot of times, I’m not so scared as I used to be. And if there’s a worse Hell than I’ve camped in yet, as long as there are Sikhs there like Narayan Singh I don’t believe I’m going to worry much. They’ll sing songs, and we’ll find a way out somehow.
I have told only part of Narayan Singh’s song that he trolled that morning in a rather nasal baritone, because the censor would object to about two-thirds of it. The East is peculiarly frank in some matters that the West prefers to keep behind a veil of mystery, and there were details concerning lights o’ love that were interesting, whatever else they might be.
I got to thinking about India, and the fact, admitting of no dispute, that during all the uncontrollable deviltry of the Indian Mutiny of ’57 there wasn’t a single instance of mistreatment of an Englishwoman by the sepoys. So I asked him about Ayisha, wondering just how far he proposed to go with his mock love-making.
“Would she make a good wife for a soldier?” I suggested.
To my surprise, instead of laughing he meditated for several minutes before answering. Then: “The world has this marriage business upside down,” he said at last. “A woman is either ambitious, and drives a man as Jael drives the Lion of Petra; or else she is a parasite, who halves his joys and multiplies his sorrows. Single, she is sometimes a delight; married, she is torment.
“As for men: Well, sahib, our Jimgrim and you and I are single men. I have not heard him or you complain of it. Nor you me. I have nine piasters and my freedom; show me the woman that can rob me of either!”
But I was still curious. He had not told me yet what I wanted to know.
“She’s in an awkward position,” I said. “What do you suppose is in store for her?”
“Awkward? How so?” he answered. “At the mercy of our seventeen thieves, she would be a baggage to be bought and sold. But there are three of us who would not see her brought to a bad end. Ayisha is like all women; she thinks she has me at her feet, and so despises me, to my no small comfort. She despairs of Jimgrim, and therefore idolizes him, to his discomfort. And she has a woman’s luck; for if I know anything, it is that Jimgrim will contrive good fortune for her.”
“You think he’s the executive of destiny?”
“All men are weapons in the hand of destiny. I am a sepoy—a number on a muster-roll; yet, counting all, I have slain in my day seven-and-thirty men with cold steel. Was that not destiny?
“I was born on the bank of the Jumna. I have killed men near the Ganges, near the Kabul River, near the Irrawaddy, near the Seine, near the Marne, near the Rhine—Pathans, Afghans, Hindus, Burmese, Prussians, Saxons, Austrians—having no personal quarrel with any one of them. And here, near the Jordan, I have slain two Syrians and an Egyptian—all with cold steel. Was that not destiny?
“And am I alone the tool of destiny? Each of us is like a pebble, sahib, dropped into a pool, causing rings of ripples that we can not check. I am not in the secret of destiny, but I know this: That our Jimgrim is causing a ripple that will set Ayisha on her feet.”
“So you don’t plan to make a ripple in her life?” I asked him.
“There is no need,” he answered. “Besides, I am a man of few plans. My trade is obedience to orders; and as for amusement I ask no better than a day like this one, with not too many orders, and the unknown waiting to be considered, fifty or a hundred yards ahead.”
Well, I don’t want to be a, Sikh, but I can’t beat that for philosophy.
The hot wind started and made further talk impossible with any degree of comfort, for we had to cover our faces. But he had given me plenty to think about, and the man who can’t find entertainment in his own thoughts is in a bad way.
I suppose we rode three miles in silence—making eight or nine from our starting-point—before anything happened to break the desert spell. Then, in proof that reflection did not limit our faculties, we both spoke suddenly at once.
“Dekko!” said he.
“Shuf!” said I.
And we both meant the same thing—
“Look!”
MORE than a score of mounted camels were standing in a group on the horizon, cut off from us by a deep ravine that looked impassable. It seemed as if the men who rode them were holding a consultation; it was a fair guess that they had only just reached the spot. We halted and watched them.
After a minute or two they spread out into a long line, and began to come forward at a walk toward the ravine, constantly increasing the distance between them fanwise, as if scouting. But some of them were not very good scouts, or else the sun was too strong in their eyes, for it was quite a while before most of them saw us.
The first to spot us was a man near the middle of the line, but he made no signal to the others. I knew he had seen us, because he put on speed and slightly changed direction. He rode a nearly white camel—it looked all white at that distance.
“I would know that beast in a hundred thousand!” said Narayan Singh.
That was maybe an exaggeration. We have most of us known men who could pick one horse out of a mob infallibly at the first glance. I have seen cow-men do the same thing with a steer. But camels? Nevertheless, it did look like the Syrian beast that Ali Baba rode, and the action of its rider, forcing the pace, as he did, alone, did not quite suggest an enemy.
It became obvious presently that whoever he was he did not know the lie of the land very intimately. He had to halt at the edge of the ravine and stare under his hand to left and