A Toast to the Jungle Night
HENRY never ceased to marvel at the care and thought which had gone into the building of the game cottage. The tree on which it was built was a wild fig tree- a softwood variety and it was not strong enough to support the weight of the cottage, admirably as its luxuriant foliage served as camouflage.
The cottage actually rested on a platform propped on a dozen stout logs of sal and toon wood -left untashioned so that they looked like tree trunks.
Henry and Pasupati examined the two ladders, rung by rung, tapping each joint with a wooden mallet, testing the bolts and hooks that kept the rope-ladder tethered to the cross-beam, tugging with purposeful violence at every single part and testing its sound. ness.
The rope-ladder, with heavy, four-inch-wide, coir-covered rungs which led to the first platform, was perhaps easier to climb than the second ladder made of steel and teak. The second ladder, fifteen- foot long, was placed at a slight incline with its feet fixed firmly into sockets cut into the platform; it was secured at the top near the fork of the tree with numerous twists of heavy coir rope.
'You'd have to hack at it with an axe to shift that rope, remarked Henry to Pasupati.
He inspected the covered approach to the foot of the ladder; banged each one of the supporting props, looking for evidence of any white-ant damage; and he even sent Pasupati to sound the flooring of the cottage from below. Then they climbed into the cottage itself, and Henry tested every one of the planks and the joints of the verandah bench and the two bunks in the bedroom. He even examined the primitive bathroom furniture, and finally he tested the pulley arrangement outside the passage window and the entire length of the fifty-pound-strength rope used to pull up food and drink and light luggage to the cottage. Pasupati seemed to have looked after the cottage well; it was in wonderful shape, for General Maclean or the C-in-C or even the Viceroy and his wife. All that needed to be done was to get the cushions on the bench done up again and perhaps give a lick of varnish to the beds and the bathroom furniture; and if they had money to play with, a couple of sponge-rubber mattresses for the bedroom bunks, and perhaps a proper porcelain filter with a tap for drinking water in place of the two-gallon earthenware barrel.
Henry finished his inspection before six o'clock because he wanted to be alone and by himself for the sunset. He sent Pasupati off to bring his dinner from the Club and warned him not to come back before nine. After that, they would test the electric moon.
It was wonderful to be alone, alone with one's thoughts, alone with a bottle of Hennessy brandy waiting solemnly for the sun to go down before the first drink of the day. The jungle was full of its closing-hour sounds, and the shafts of sunlight came slanting through the trees, making sharp geometrical patterns of light and shade. God, how he had ached to be alone!
The sun went down and a hush fell over the jungle, as though for a pause for prayers. Henry poured out his drink, mixed it with water from the earthenware harrel, and drank to the sunset. This was the life God intended for man. He recalled an inscription on the wall of the Dewan Khas in the Red Fort at Delhi, and repeated it to himself. If there be a heaven on earth; it is this, it is this, it is this!"
Within a minute the pause for prayers was over, the myriad sounds of the jungle came on again: the mournful hum of the breeze through the bamboos, the gossip of the monkey in the dis- tance, the metallic chiping of the tree-frogs, the dissent of the did you-do-it birds, the matronly clucking of the jungle hens, the wal of the Himalayan cuckoo, the machine-gun stutter of the wood- pecker a thousand separate sounds making up the composite even-song of the jungle, soothing and mesmeric. The shadows lengthened, the light turned from grey-green to purple, then faded out altogether. The bird noises stopped one by one and a great enveloping silence came on, with the forlorn honk of a sambhar somewhere in the distance to underscure its immensity.
Henry gave himself up to the jungle night, finding a voluptuous pleasure in the act of surrender, and peace poured into his mind. One by one, the ghosts lurking in bis consciousness like dark shadows became paler and paler and vanished: the one-tusked 1ogue, Jugal Kishore, Eddie Trevor, Sudden Dart-all of them went t flitting out of his mind leaving nothing but a towering darkness which mingled with the darkness outside. He was alone with the jungle, completely at home, his mind fully in tune with all creation.
He poured himself another drink, carefully topped the glass with water and drank. He made a face because it was almost neat brandy. He put his head back and drained the glass in one long draught and the brandy went coursing down his throat like liquid fire. He lifted his feet onto the wooden bench and sank back, enjoy. ing its narrowness, the unyielding hardness of the wooden slats. He dozed, forgetting time and place, forgetting life itself.
He opened his eyes with a start and noticed the thin, snake-like camouflaged rope of the luggage pulley dancing up and down in the pale moonlight and making a slight swishing sound. He came wake in the instant and looked at his watch. It was already past nine o'clock. Pasupati had obviously brought his dinner. He went to the passage window and gave a long, low whistle, and heard the answering whistle from below. He gave the rope a cautious, warn- ing jerk and then began to pull up the basket over the pulley. When it was half-way up, he again whistled to Pasupati to come and join him. Henry unhooked the cane basket and carried it into the bedroom. He switched on the tiny, hooded electric light powered by a flash- light battery. From the verandah he brought his bottle of brandy. Then he opened the lid of the basket,
There was a whole cold chicken and a salad and buttered rolls, a big thermos flask of coffee, and six lemon tarts. With a sharp stab of memory, he thought of the tarts R by Miranda had sent him at his bungalow. As he looked at the tarts. nestling snugly in their crimped paper tray, he was assailed by an acute longing for Ruby. His whole system craved for her with a fierce insistence; to rush her into his arms, to feel the hardness of her taut breasts, the nipples burning patches of fire into his chest, to smother her whole smooth honey-coloured body with kisses, became an urgent, almost insane longing. From nowhere at all, an intense, burning thirst had sprung up; it was both physical and emotional, and quite irrepressible. It was the sort of longing that people commit murders for, he told himself. Was this how Eddie Trevor loved her?
He poured himself another drink, this time without any water, and drank to Ruby Muanda, to the Ruby Miranda of a little over a year ago, his Ruby Muanda, not Trevor's, naked and wanton and no longer concerned about the light, lying on the sponge-rubber mattress of the spare-100m, lying on the Mirzapur carpet of the gun-room with the glow of a fire making a halo for her hips and breasts and hair, accentuating the voluptuous contours of the harem favourite with the bold, challenging eyes of the Chandni Chowk whore...
When he opened his eyes, she was there, in the tiny bedroom of the game cottage, standing just within the circle of light and smil- ing at him, wearing a short raincoat with a hood covering her raven hair, looking pale and breathless and expectant.
He stared mutely at her, not saying a word, not asking questions, not believing his eyes, and vet desperately wanting to believe She came and stood over him and pulled him up, and they kissed
They lay on the hard wooden floor of the verandah, locked in each other's arms, and the 1oast chicken and the tarts waited m the next room It was cold but they were naked, taking their warmth from each other's bodies, they were hungry but they had no desire to eat Nothing mattered, nothing, except that they were together, in each other's arms, after more than a year of separation they were in a world of their own high up above the earth, and they wanted each other with a fierceness that knew no barriers
This was love, this was what Jean too was capable of giving and had withheld from him, this was the kind of love that was going to be Eddie Trevor's.
It was when they were plucking the cold chicken, dressed once gain and sober and hungry and telaxed, that she explained. "Pasupati came with me up to the ladde. I told him to go back He's coming for me in two hours'
"That means by to morrow morning everyone in Chinnai will be talking about your coming here'
No. Pasupati's mistress is my maid at the Club. She happens to be married to one of the bar boys Pasupati cannot tell.'
'Are you sure?"
'Don't worry, darling. Pasupati will do anything I tell him. Anything at all "Where have you parked the car?
"At the golf-course annexe."
"Won't someone find out about that?"
I park it there every night."
She had all the answers There was no need to worry about the proprieties. This was a time of taking. not of worrying about con- sequences.
Now that I know the way, the next time I could come by myself," said Ruby.
The next time?"
"Of course, darling.' She drew his face to hers and kissed him on the mouth. "The next and the next and the next.'
'It's quite dangerous."
'It's only about ten minutes walk from the road, and the path is well defined. There's no danger of missing it
'But it isn't safe."
All night. I'll bring Pasupati with me every time.
Then he realized that they were not thinking of the same kind of danger. I wasn't thinking of the danger from wild animals," he explained
"Oh, darling. Life 15 short, and there is a war on, and one by one we are all going to get into it. You will be going soon, and then I want to join too. Don't you.. don't you want me to come here?"
'Of course I do, he assured her, and then, realizing the inadequacy of his words, added, "I want you to more than anything else in the world."
Ruby pulled his head to hers and kissed him again. "Then stop worrying. Nobody thinks of you. Shall we have coffee?"
'We'll have coffee afterwards,' he said. rising to his feet.
'Afterwards?'
'Come,' he said, pulling her up. "We'll 15 into the verandah,
where there is no light." Even in the dim light of the hooded lantern, he thought he saw her blush.
An hour or so later, when they had finished the coffee and were sitting close together on the bench overlooking the salt-lick, he remembered to ask her. "What about... what about your engage- ment?'
He felt her body go rigid under his arm. 'It's all off," she said. "Oh. Can one ask why?"
Ruby turned as though to look at him, peering at his face in the darkness. 'Don't you know?-you, of all people?' she asked.
'No. Why should I? Trevor never talks to me of his... his puvate life.
I bet he doesn't,' sneered Ruby. 'Oh, I bet he doesn't"
That must have been a new expression she had heard someone use in the last few days, thought Henry.
'And if you don't know,' said Ruby clutching his hand and kiss ing it, then you don't deserve to
The wanted to take her into his arms, but the pulley rope was whipping up and down, making a slight frou frou as it swung Pasupati had come to escort Ruby back, and he was announcing his arrival.
We must meet again soon, but we must be very careful,' said
Henry. "Where"
"Here, answered Ruby. This is the safest place." Promise you'll come again, begged Henry
" I shall come here again, she promised, "whenever you want me to.
Henry slept soundly that night, his shep undisturbed by night mates of Indian politicians or wild elephants It was only after the sun had risen that Pasupati woke hini. femy gave the boy a ten rupee note, and although he accepted the lavish up with a suitably low salaam, he neither smiled nor raised his face to meet Henry's eyes.
Henry drove away without stopping for breakfast at the club He drove fast, and by eleven he was hack at his bungalow at Silent Hill.
The View from Wallach's Folly
THE time had come to exorcise his nightmare. There were only two weeks left in which to kill the elephant if he wanted to be released in time for his military training The fact that it had to be finished to a deadline made the task seem somewhat less difficult. It was almost a relief, doing something positive coining face to face with fear itself.
His throbbing, compulsive urge to kill the one tusker had cor rupted his whole attitude towards hunting He was surprised at the change in himself, surprised and slightly ashamed too He was fully conscious of the fact that a true hunter is not afraid of the thing he wants to kill, nor does he hate it indeed in a sense he loves that which he seeks to destroy What a hunter looks forward to as the chase itself, the matching of wits against an animal of the jungle on its own ground, and then coming face to fare with it; not the actual act of killing- the killing nearly always came as an anti- climax.
All this was no longer true of himself Henry knew that he was secretly afraid of the elephant, and hated it because he was afraid. to destroy it was all important, how he tracked it down, how he shot it, was of little importance If he could have enticed the animal to the salt-lick below the game cottage and shot it from the safety of the thirty feet high perch in the ver ind-h, he would have been fully satisfied. If there were some way of giving it a monstrous dose of poison or of blowing it up with a grenade-tipped harpoon placed in its path, he would have felt no compunction in doing either.
If he could only manage to press down the fear welling within him until he had killed the elephant, then he would have nothing to fear, ever, for that would be like conquering fear itself. The one- tusker had become a symbol, not just a rogue to be hunted down; a symbol and also a deadly and cunning adversary equally deter mined to seek him out and destroy him, an enemy more hateful than Jugal Kishore himself-a private Hitler. For the moment, it was the supreme, all-pervading presence, blotting out the horizons of his mind. Until the elephant was killed, he, Henry Winton, would know no peace.
'Aren't you even going to take a guide with you?' asked Jean as he was cleaning out the four-sixty-five. She was sitting on the gun-room carpet, leaning against his desk, and the dog was curled up beside her, watching him with reproachful eyes.
A guide? Lord no! Not in the Koyna valley.
No more lame shikaris incapable of looking after themselves; no more faulty ammunition, either.
It's always safer to have another man with you."
No, it was not necessarily safer. Jean did not know anything about elephant hunting: Jean, with her pretty, magazine cover face and red-gold hair: Jean, the prancing English-bred filly now sub- dued and bewildered by the combined impact of the jungle and of Anglo-India. She only knew about making love; she did not know anything about rogue-elephants.
She knew even less about the Koyna jungle; the jungle that lay like a pretty green carpet at the bottom of the valley she could look down into from the windows of the spare-room.
"Yes, it's usual to take along a man who knows the jungle,' Henry explained very patiently. But all a guide does is track the animal down for you. When it comes to the actual killing, they're often a damned nuisance. They they can't even look after themselves. Besides, there is no guide, no shikari who knows the Koyna valley. It is unexplored country. Somewhere on the other side is Bhutan, the most isolated country in the world. The boun dary line between ourselves and Bhutan lies somewhere the other side of the river; no one knows where nor does it matter much, for no one ever goes there. On the farther side, there is literally no habitation in a twenty-mile-wide belt- for the simple reason that it's uninhabitable. On our side, there are perhaps half a dozen minute clearings, with a couple of huts in each of them in all perhaps a hundred aborigines in an area of two hundred square mites. I've gone in only once, right down to the river, and it is cer tainy very very forbidding. We were tracking a wounded ghurial. We never found him; he plunged into the river and was washed away right under our eyes. It sounds odd now but I had resolved never to go into the Koyna forest again. It all seems so... so impossible, doesn't it?" said Jean. 'What do you mean to do, Henry?"
I mean to shoot the elephant; I have to shoot him within the next two weeks," said Henry very evenly.
There was no way of telling Jean how he proposed to go about it; he did not know himself. He had no cut-and-dried plan. All he had thought of doing was to go into the Koyna jungle and range through it along whatever game paths he could find till he came upon the tracks of the elephant. After that, he would have to follow the tracks and catch up with it; but much would depend on the kind of jungle the elephant had gone into.
His feelings oscillated between extremes of confidence and despair. At times he could not see why he should not be able to make a neat, clean job of the whole thing. He had the experience and the skill, and he had shot elephants before. At the other extreme, there were moments of sheer panic when he would see himself being attacked by the elephant, the enormous, horny feet bearing down upon him, the single cupper-coloured tusk poised for its plunge it did not bear thinking about..
But taking a shikari with hum would not have made it any easier. He had to do it alone. In the kind of jungle in which he was going to have to take on the elephant, there would be no place to run. and there would be no tree that one could climb in a hurry, and there was no likelihood of seeing the elephant before it was actually charging at you. It had to be done by one man: a combination of a master rifle-shot and shikari-himself. In all honesty, he could not think of any other man in the tea district who could qualify.
He eased the barrel on the stock and pressed down the fore-end below the barrel. He broke open the breech and put in two dummy cartridges with spring caps. He pressed the riggers and broke the rifle again and the two cartridges flew out with a resounding 'ping of the ejector mechanism and fell with a thud on the thick pile of the Mirzapur carpet which still smelt faintly of Chanel.
He picked up the two cartridges and wiped them with an oily rag, conscious that his wife and his dog were following his move- ments with their eyes. But he did not feel vritated; he was a man doing a man's job with smooth efficiency, a man preparing himself to face danger. The cook was saying that to-morrow is not a good day to go out hunting, said Jean.
'Really! Why not?"
"Something to do with some festival. It is called Sankranti; the night belongs to the goddess of destruction."
What did she know about the meshes of Hindu superstition? Wasn't then life already complicated enough without having to pay heed to that sort of nonsense from the servants? He must speak to the cook about it.
'I'm not going to hunt at night," said Henry, laughing in order to conceal his annoyance. Even in broad daylight it's going to be pretty difficult to kill this elephant, I can assure you in that sort of jungle. I wouldn't think of going after him at night.
But what is wrong with starting the day after Why start on a day they say is particularly inauspicious?
Every day matters, answered Henry. The sooner I start track- ng the elephant, the better 1 have only two weeks in which to get him He opened his desk and took out his bunch of keys He went up to the steel ammunition cupboard which no servant was permitted to open He fitted the key and threw open the door
Ammunition was more precious than ever now, because of the war. Whatever cartridges he had would have to last him for the duration The cupboard had three shelves, all neatly stacked with different kinds of ammunition On the top shelf were the Mauser and the two two cartridges, flat, red, and yellow boxes with Reming ton and BSA labels The centre shelf was crammed full with boxes of shotgun shell There were forty two boxes each of twenty five hells and in a comer a dozen or so loose cartridges just over a thousand in all On the lowest shelf were the hewy fle catrudges As always. ahenever he opened the ammunition cupboard. Henry's eyes flickered momentarily towards the right hand corner where the suhtary boy of his old cartridges wis kept, still with the sixteen shells in it, all looking deceptively fresh and bonew-like Thrie wis no point in keeping them any more, of course though at the time it had seemed important to preserve the evidence of the car- tridges which had failed to go off only as a last resort, of course. and only if the need ever arose That need had never arisen, thanks to Cockburn and now the faulty cartridges merely served as a reminder of a vanishing nightmare. Whatever remnant of guilt those cartridges were capable of bringing back was going to be washed away within the next few days. That would be the time to get nd of the cartridges, Henry reminded himself-after he had killed the one-tusker.
In the left-hand corner of the lowest shelf were the five new boxes of the four-sixty-five shells; all opened, each box tested, all firing beautifully.
Henry picked up two boxes of the fresh cartridges and put them in his haversack.
Will you be taking tea with you or coffee? Jean wanted to know.
Neither, don't want to add to my load Just a packet of sand- wiches and the water bottle.
No cigarettes, I suppose."
'Not when I go out hunting"
He went to bed early and instantly fell into a dreaniless sleep And he came awake refreshed and with a delightful feeling of ex- pectancy and adventure on thas first day of the hunt He was shaved and dressed and ready at six, just as the number-one boy brought out his breakfast
It was good to be eating an early morning hunting breakfast once again. He tackled the cold tm peaches soft boiled eggs, toast and ted with relish It was a bitterly cold and clear January morning and although he knew that it would make him feel too hot later in the day he put on his short silk lined leather jacket over his khaki drill bush shirt and wrapped his warf with the Mill Hill colours round his neck
He tiptoed into the bedroom and saw that Jean was already awake. curled tightly in the blankets He bent down to kiss her on the theek and unexpectedly she offer him her mouth Her kiss lingered, warm and sleep ridden, and he was reluctant to draw away from it When he went out, he walked with a light step, still feeling the pressure of her lips upon his. On the tall waist-high table on the verandah were his rifle and haversack the binoculars the kukri, and his double-Tera Gurkha hat. The number one boy was waiting with the water-bottle and the packet of sandwiches wrapped in grease proof paper. The boy salamed as Henry stepped out into a cold winter dawn Henry left the mule-track soon after skirting Wallach's Folly and struck off down the hill-path going down into the valley. He knew the path right up to the river, it was clear and well-defined till it reached the floor of the valley. After that it became an in- distinct, spidery game-trail. But then there was no danger of miss- ing it if you were a trained jungle man.
He went scrambling down the hill-side, his pace quickened by the steep slope It was nearly eight o'clock before he reached the floor of the valley and the end of the path From now on, it would be elephant grass and bamboo right up to the river where it lunged through its fifty-foot deep gorge, still more than three miles away. He sat down for a huef rest before entering the jungle
He pad come to a small clearing about fifty yards by a hundred, nearly as arge as a football field A clump of tall trees stood in the middle, forbidding any kind of growth in their shadow except the humblest bushes and the coarsest, most stunted grass Near the edge of the cleaning was a fallen tree, the dead king of the tribe, looking majestu even in its decay. The patch was perhaps the only piece of relatively open ground within miles Henrys on the trunk of the dead tree feeling hot round the rollar and staring blankly at the wall of jungle facing hum
This was no ordinary Him dayan forest It was a mixture of bambo and pure elephant graw fifteen feet high It was by no means im uetiable, for you could force your way almost anywhere arough the tall, swishing grass, but all the time it was like groping in the dark It was not clean and bright like the jungle surrounding the game cottage, it that jungle was God's own jungle, this surely had a touch of the devil about it There were no paths through it. no bird sounds, only the occasional grating screech of some startled tree frog wis as though it bore some kind of a cuise
And once again, Henry was confronted with the immensity of the task that faced him It was certainly no jungle to go hunting dangerous animals in it was a veritable death trap
He felt suddenly disheartened and weary as though the curse of the jungle was in sanie way infecting his own spirit He could not hope to cover even a square mile of this kind of jungle in a whole day How did one go looking for an elephant in grass higher than any clephant? The beast could be five yards away from you and yet invisible, and completely soundless too, because of the incessant rustling sounds of your own passage through the grass and undergrowth. The elephant, on the other hand, could scent you out and come for you unerringly, as though you were standing in an open field, waiting to be attacked. The grass which blinded you and obstructed you was no hindrance to an elephant.
Henry opened his water-bottle and drank a couple of mouthfuls. It tasted foul and heavy, like cold oil. There were drops of per spiration on the back of his hands and the sweat had begun to trickle down his armpits. He was already nearly a thousand feet below the level of Silent Hill, and it was breathless and huraid in the valley. For the first time on a hunting day, he wished he had brought cigarettes with him.
Henry shook his frame, uttered an unaccustomed Hindi oath, and rose to his feet. He took off his zipper jacket, stuck it on a broken bamboo shoot and strode into the jungle, feeling just a little lighter and cooler.
He did not see the one-tusker that day, nor on the next day or the next five days. He went out every morning, starting at six, carrying a heavy, useless gun and an even more useless pair of binoculars. The only place where he could use the binoculars was when he got to the edge of the river, to scan the forest on both banks. He had found plenty of use for his kukri, however. Five years earlier, his Gurkha chowkidar had taught him how to wield a kukri, and he had practised the vanous strokes with diligence, passing the final test of severing the head of a full-grown ram at one sweeping, slanting stroke. Now he used the kukri a hundred times a day, blazing a patch on some e to mark his path, hacking a passage through a tangle of weeds, chopping down countless thorny creepers tearing at his clothes. But the elephant was there, on the southern bank of the Koyna; of that there was not the slightest doubt. Henry had come across it's droppings on the very first day, and had also seen evidence of it's lordly passage through the bamboos and reeds: but that trail had been at least two weeks old. The heaps of dung had almost disintegrated, and the bamboos it had broken and torn while feed- ing had dried up.
Nor could there be any doubt that the elephant in the valley was none other than the one-tusked rogue; for along the trail of destruction through the forest there was enough conclusive evidence of the special damage caused by the single powerful tusk, like indiscriminate sword-cuts in the forest, always to the right of the trail-just the one tusk to help the animal rip open the palm-trees, shift awkward branches out of the way; the one tusk to thrust joy- fully into anthills, to be rubbed in sheer ecstasy against some specially favoured tree.
There was, of course, no question of taking up the old trail. What Henry had decided to do was to range the game-path every day, beginning from the clearing in the forest right up to the nver, and hope that the elephant would have crossed the path some where during the past few hours. Only then would there be a chance of being able to follow it and come to grips with it, and then only if the jungle were a little less dense than the reed and bamboo growth surrounding the clearing, and if the clephant was going at a reasonably slow pace, and if the elephant didn't get his own scent first so many formidable 'fs'.
Every day, twice a day, Henry went up and down that three- mile stretch of the game-track as far as the river, banking on the wandering habits of elephants, knowing that some day he would have to cross the track.
The river was the boundary line, the sharply-drawn, uncrossable chasm cleaving through the black forest, like a deep sword-cut in the landscape, and every time he came upon the waters rushing through the great black and white rocks worn into smooth animal shapes with erosion, he could not help wondering how the elephant could have accomplished the crossing of the Rakow gorge.
Towards four o'clock he would set out back for his bungalow, pausing briefly in the open patch in the jungle where the foot- path from the hill came into the floor of the valley, and he would sit on the dead tree for a rest before beginning the last grinding three-mile climb back to Silent Hill. Every day, he looked at the zipper leather jacket hanging forlornly on the hent bamboo where he had left it on the first morning. He had not taken it back that day, not wishing to add an extra three pounds to his load. From the second day onwards, it had somehow become a symbol of his quest. He would take it back only on the last day, after he had killed the elephant. It was good to be thinking of a time after he had killed the elephant.
On Sunday, as he returned to the clearing on his way home, he felt more than noticed that the elephant had already been there. And then he saw that his jacket was no longer hanging on the broken bamboo. He found it lying near the edge of the field, and it was crushed and mud-stained and in tatters, having been trampled upon and dragged through the thorns and stabbed once, just once, by a single tusk.
Henry examined the ground carefully, refusing to jump to con- clusions, just as Kistulal would have done, he told himself; and he decided that the elephant had come into the clearing some time quite early in the morning, possibly just as he had left it. Now it was too late to follow its trail: he had certainly no wish to come face to face with the elephant in the dark.
To-morrow, he would take up the trail from here. By this time to-morrow, he would either have killed the elephant or died in the attempt.
He looked at the state of his strong, silk-lined, English-made jacket, and shuddered in spite of himself."
And once again the thought of death came on like a tempest, sweeping aside everything else and swamping his mind with an immense, dark fear. He did not want to die, duelling with a crafty elephant on its own chosen ground.
He did not want to die, he wanted to live; he had everything to live for, and he had nothing to die for except the venom of a black man who had become a minister and the face-saving compulsions of a pompous fool straight out of Kipling. He had a wonderful job in God's own country, and a lovely story-book wite waiting for him with a warm kiss in a lovely story-book bungalow; a fire lit and crackling, music, whisky, a hot bath, roast pheasant for dinner. He was the man they referred to in the advertisements as the man who had everything he even had a mistress.
Henry looked at his watch. It was already half-past five. By this time to-morrow he would either have killed the one-tusker or be dead himself, he thought again, and shuddered. He had to get away from this place, tear himself away from the mood it provoked. It was already late; Jean would begin to worry if he did not return hefore dark. He got up, sinoothed out his jacket, and put it on another broken bamboo close by. Then he turned for home.
The fire was there, when he returned, and the whisky and the scalding hot bath and the pheasant and the story-book wife anxiously inquiring why he was late.
He did not tell Jean why he was late, nor that he was hoping to run into the elephant the next day, nor could he bring himself to eat a single morsel of food.
He went to bed early but he could not sleep; although his limbs were tired, his brain was feverish. A fear, cold and unreasoning. had been building up within him: the horror of the evening when Kistulal had been trampled down by the elephant, its gait looking lop-sided because of that single tusk, trampled down while he Henry, had stood by watching as though spellbound, powerless to help, came rushing back at hum from all sides. It was hours before he dropped off into an uneasy sleep; and he must have been moan- ing and talking in his sleep, for he woke with a start to find Jean leaning over him looking anxious and asking if he was all night. He was sweating heavily in spite of the bitterly cold night.
It was long past seven before he came awake the next morning, and cursed the boy for not bringing his tea sooner. He felt tight- eyed and dopey and shrank away from the thought of breakfast. He drank three cups of weak tea, waved to his wife from the bed- room door, and set out for the big day.
He had intended to reach the clearing earlier than usual so that he could pick up the previous day's trail with as little loss of time as possible. As it was, it was already past nine o'clock when he came to the clearing.
'Oh damn Damn the bloody elephant god" Henry cursed aloud
The elephant had already come and gone, and he had once again attacked Henry's jacket hanging on the bamboo. The sight of his tattered jacket brought on a prickly feeling in his scalp It was un- canny it was almost as though the elephant too was searching hun out, challenging him, all the while getting inexorably nearer
Henry sat down on the dead tree, and cursed his luck. If he had been just an hour earlier, he might have come upon the elephant while it was still busy with his jacket By now it would have been all over.
He imagined himself taking the shot, standing behind the great fallen tree, secure as a fortress, and firing at the elephant as it was bending over the jacket, killing it cleanly and at leisure and enjoy. ing the process, hitting it in the hollow between the eyes and the ear again and again.....
And now he would have to venture into that impenetrable jungle, a jungle in which he would be working almost blind-fold, clumsily tearing through the thorns, a jungle where the elephant god was waiting for him, rocking its great body from side to side, wriggling its trunk to catch the hated man-scent.
Henry felt almost paralysed with fear, unable to move his limbs. He stretched out on the broad, double-bed sized trunk of the fallen tree, his mind refusing to come to grips with reality; all he wanted to do was to lie back and do nothing, nothing at all. He shook his head and sat up with a jerk. He was not going to walk into a trap; he was not going blindly into the elephant's own chosen killing ground, offering himself to be broken up like a reed by a single lash of the trunk.
I must exercise all possible caution,' he said to himself, feeling all the while that a year earlier he would not have held back at this stage. I will not be caught in the elephant's trap,' he resolved, knowing deep within himself that he was only giving in to fear. 'I shall not do what a hunter, crafty and wise to the ways of the jungle, would not do.' he said to himself, knowing that he was only finding excuses to avoid what he should be doing. He felt limp and hungry, as though he had not eaten a square meal for days; he felt sleepy; his whole body was sweating in spite of the cool morning air and his heart thumped like a hammer; there was again that prickly feeling at the back of his head and he had to fight down a tendency to yawn and gasp for breath, and his lumbs ached.
If there was a day on which a hunter should not venture to go after a killer-elephant in a matted jungle of reeds and thorn, it was certainly this day, when he felt tired and sleepless, when his mental and physical capacities were at their lowest. he told himself, and he knew he was right.
He almost laughed with relief. It was good to be night; it was good to be doing something for the right reason instead of for a thousand wrong reasons.
And with that thought Henry Winton stretched back again on the dead tree, pillowing his head on the leather jacket battered by the elephant and smelling of grass and earth, and within a few minutes fell into a deep sleep.
The sun was directly overhead when he woke up. He looked at his watch. It was just past twelve; he must have been asleep for nearly three hours. He felt rested but still limp and drowsy and his clothes hung damp from his sweat. He put his water-bottle to his mouth and drank, and the water tasted foul and warm. He ate his sandwiches, realizing that this was the first solid food he had eaten in twenty-four hours. He ate hungrily, picking up the very last crumb from the paper.
By the time he had finished his sandwiches, he had made his plans. He would set up his jacket as a scarecrow again and go home early and get some sleep. To-morrow morning, he would come here at dawn and wait for the one-tusker to arrive. He would take up his position on top of the fallen tree just where he was sitting now. having set up his scarecrow so that he would get an unrestricted field of fire. He would shoot smoothly and cleanly, without jerking or flinching, and he would kill the one-tusker. It couldn't have been easier; almost as safe as shooting it from the verandah of the game cottage. That was the way to shoot a rogue-elephant, on the hunter's own ground, not the elephant's; it couldn't be simpler, it couldn't be safer.
To-morrow then was the day; but if the elephant did not appear in the clearing to-morrow, there were more to-morrows, exactly nine of them, Henry reminded himself, counting until the end of the month.
He was going to make a neat job of the scarecrow this time; put up a proper, upright figure made to look like a hunter. He hacked out a bamboo pole, with his kukri and pulled a length of kumbia bark. He tied two stout cross-arms to the bamboo pole and planted it on his chosen spot, exactly thirty paces away from the fallen tree and clear of all obstruction. He draped his jacket on the sticks and stuffed it with grass. He made a head by tying the grease-proof paper in which his sandwiches had been packed round a sheaf of grass. For good measure, he placed his Gurkha hat on the head at a rakish angle.
He blew a kiss at the scarecrow and turned for home and rest and sleep. It was still only twenty minutes to two. He walked with a light step, knowing that he had found the answer, knowing that he had won.
Here, at last, was the heady, arrogant awareness of being master of the situation. It was the same feeling he had known on the day of the strike at Silent Hill. Then he had known he would break the strike, break it without resorting to extremes; using what he had always prided himself was the very minimum of force administered with the most telling effect, like bringing down an animal with just one well-placed bullet. And he had broken the strike, by God, he had broken the stuke all on his own although Sudden and Arkell between them had drained away the glory from his triumph by going and bribing Jugal Kishore afterwards.
He headed for home, walking with a springy step, supremely confident of success; the fact that he was going to kill the one- tusker was now clearer to him than anything else had ever been in his life. He was going to shoot him from a proper hiding place, getting his shots in before the elephant could be aware of his pre- sence He had the experience and the skill. He had killed elephants before three tuskers and a makna, and he had shot them when the conditions were by no means as favourable as they were now. There was no need to go tracking the creature into that ungodly, matted hell of reeds and thorn; now the ground was of his own choosing. Just before the foot-path from the valley joined the mule-track higher up the slope. it passed between two magnificent deodar Liees standing close together and making a narrow, absurdly high archway. When Henry came within sight of it he stopped. Stand- ing in the middle of the archway, blocking his path, was a woman in a yellow san. It was Gauri.
"What do you want?" asked Henry.
Gauri threw back her head and laughed The sound of her stac cato laughter made a weird gash in the afternoon silence of the forest. The laughter stopped abruptly, an the same pitch as it had started.
'Get out of my way ordered Henry.
'Come and push me! Come and push me it you dare" challenged Gauri.
'If you don t get out of the way. I shall just have to push you... What's your game?"
'You're so brave, aren't you. Winton sahib, when you're dealing with women and little boys Indian women and Indian boys What happens to your courage when you meet your own kind- your own women? You are quite powerless betore them, like a scorpion before a lizard."
What do you want?"
Do you remember I once told you I would kill you?--that time you hit me in the face in front of all your cooles?"
Is that what you have in mind?-to kill me?"
"No, I am not going to kill you. Henry Winton. There are otheis who have sworn to do that. I want to do something to you which will make you wish I had killed you-something far worse than death itself.
"Stop raving, you black harlot! I'll... His words were drowned in the sound of her shrieking, hysterical laughter, short and abrupt, without beginning or end."
He came up to her menacingly, his rifle clutched tightly in his left hand, his right fist clenched, his face red with anger
Yes that's all you can do hit a woman. That's all you English- men are capable of-hitting women, when they are themselves being hit by the Germans and their own womenfolk! Then they come here and take it out on the Indians Indian women and children and think how very brave they are"
Henry stopped within hitting distance of her. Was she conceal ing a knife or something? He would have to jump hack if she suddenly lashed out.
Why have you stopped. Winton? Not afraid, are you?
"What do you want asked Henry agam
"I want you to come with me
'Where
'Wherever I choose to take you."
"And if I refuse?"
Then I shall know that you really are frightened of me You have refused to see me once already, told your sepoy to send me away You can't hide behind a sepoy now What are you frightened of? You have your gun with you, your big elephant gun"
"You're mad'
I am not mad, not now. But I was mad. That was when you hit me then I wanted to kill you Now I don't want to kill you, not 1 any more, knowing that you are already as good as dead-worse than dead Knowing that a fate far worse than death awaits you.
'I cannot go with you
'How long can you go on putting it off? You cannot put off fate. Mr. Winton. You refused to see me that day when I came to see you at your office. Now you are too frightened to come and see see what you are fated to see." How far do you want me to go?"
'Only ten minutes walk from here."
'Come on, then,' said Henry.
They walked in silence, Gauri leading the way, walking faster and faster, beckoning to him every now and then with her hand; Henry found it difficult to keep pace with her. After going along the mule-path for a while, she suddenly turned left and began to climb the hill.
Are you going up Wallach's Folly?"
'Yes. Hurry, hurry!"
What did she want? Did she mean to push him over the edge? But there was no possibility of his being killed by such a minor fall -barely fifteen feet. Gauri must know that. Was there someone else waiting for them on the hill-top? Henry found himself in the grip of an inner compulsion to find out.
Gauri went scrambling up the steps, and he followed her clumsily, panting as he went up, nursing his rifle and his bino- culars. She went over to the opposite edge and began peering down the hill-side to their night, and he stood cautiously back, keeping away from the edge, wondering what she could be up to.
"There, she said, clutching his arm. "Look!"
He flung away her hand, recoiling as though touched by some thing unclean, but his eyes followed her pointing finger. Then he saw it: Eddie Trevor's motor-cycle leaning at an awkward angle on the slope of the hill.
"The motor-cycle?"
No: no! You fool, you she hissed, spitting out an obscene Hindustani word. 'Hi, her up, to the left of the motor- cycle, under the thick black tree... just in line with the edge of the cliff. See?'
Yes, he saw; and his eyes refused to be seve what they saw. He pulled out his binoculars and looked.
Eddie Trevor and his wife were lying side by side on a small blue rug spread under the branches of a tree. They were lying as though they had been there for a long time. As Henry watched. Jean rose to her elbows, shook her gold hair, and laughed. Then she leaned over Eddie Trevor and covered his face with hers. Eddie flung an arm round her, caressing her back; with his other hand he caressed her head. 'Now you have seen?' asked Gauri, and her voice was low.
He did not say anything.
It was here they used to come, to Wallach's Folly. That day when I had come to see you in your office, they were here, and the dog was barking because he could not climb the steps. But you did not come, and did not want to see what your wife was doing behind your back because you were afraid to know the truth. You. the white scorpion, frightened of the white, pink-bellied lizard, your wife! You can hit a woman like me, and you can hit small boys. never hit a woman like your wife. Nor a man like Eddie Trevor; he would break you like a twig!"
'Shut up, shut up, shut up! You dirty-minded black sow! exclaimed Henry.
"Yes, go on abusing me. That's all you can do. Abuse and hit the Indians and their women, because you are impotent to punish a man who is taking your wife right before your eyes, and every coolie on the garden knows it. Look! Look! If I am dirty-minded. take a good look at that clean white wife of yours!"
Henry put up his binoculars again. He could not bear to see what he saw, and yet he went on looking, as though spell-bound; just as he had gone on looking at the elephant trampling down Kistulal.
And what he saw now was far more horrible than the death scene of his shikari. Something in his bram was going to explode, some nerve, deep inside his head, which had begun throbbing in an insane rhythm of its own: what kind of pain was it going to bung, he found him self thinking, paralysis?-death?
Without being conscious of it, he had brought the rifle to his shoulder. Over the sights, he looked at his wife and her lover, cal culating the distance. He had never fired the four-sixty-five at that range. What was it, four hundred yards? He would have to allow at least two feet for the bullet to drop: and then would it hit him or her, or both?
Gauri's harsh, incessant chatter was tugging away at his con- sciousness. A strong wind was blowing past his head, drying up the beads of sweat as they formed. He felt a sudden, nervous shiver run down his body, and the sight of the rifle begun to wobble. It was not the right kind of weapon, Henry thought. With the Mat ser, he could have picked off Trevor clean even at that range. Almost against his will, he brought the rifle down. For a moment, the long. ing for his accurate, high-velocity 265 Mauser dominated his thoughts, and as though he was confronted with a problem in marksmanship, he found himself working out the allowances for wind and distance. Yes he could do it, if only he had his Mauser handy....
That's the punishment God has given you, the elephant god whom you are seeking to kill Gaun's words came whipping through his hypnows Your wife will have half-black, quarter- black sons, and you will proudly claim them as your own... and she will go on cheating you and cheating you, with Trevor whom you detest and with anyone else she can find.....
Henry turned upon her in a blind rage and brought the back of his hand crashing against her mouth with a resounding smack. feeling the sting of her teeth against his own knuckles as the skin broke. But all she did was to throw her head back and laugh, laugh with the drops of blood spurting out of lips in a thin red line, and this time her laughter went spiralling higher and higher, cutting like a knife into the dead silence of Wallach's Folly
"Stop it, stop it Stop it" he roared, and lunged viciously at her again, but this time she side-stepped to avoid the hlow. He missed his balance and came staggering to the edge of the cliff, flinging out his arms wildly and grabbing at nothingness And then he went slithering down the rock face of Wallach's Folly.
