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you to know it was just plain hell from the very start, and it got worse all the time. None of it was what you'd call fun; but it was the sun mostly I couldn't stick. I hadn't a hat, or much on me in the way of clothes, as you'll have seen, so I fairly got fried and boiled. And every time the night 'd come I'd be surprised, because, you see, I didn't expect to keep alive that long. And yesterday, I guess, it had got a bit too much, even for me. And if you hadn't turned up like you did, I think by this time I'd have passed in my checks for good. However— hell, here I am, fit and hearty yet. And when I get backBut look here! We're wasting time. Why, here we are, running off to the west'ard, away from the island, and we ought to have had this schooner hard on a wind and beating back as soon as I got aboard her. Turn out the hands, man, right away, and get this old packet close-hauled as soon as you know how. Lord! the way we're going now we're running away from both our fortunes. Put her on the wind quick, and let's get back to the island.

And when we do get back we'll have to start right in

and show those brutes they've got to forget their savage notions and take to decent white man's ways. We'll turn 'em to, all of 'em, diving for our shell. They won't want to at first, I guess, but we'll just have to make them. When you come to think of it, it's doing 'em a kindness after all. They're savage, ignorant, lazy brutes, and so we'll have to teach 'em that sort of thing won't do nowadays. They're just plain savages, you can't deny that, and it's our job to get 'em civilised as soon as we can, and teach 'em to work, like the rest of us have to. The best thing will be to try 'em with the liquor first. You know-the old game. Give 'em some to start with, and then, when they've got the taste for it, if they want any more they'll have to pay for it

with the pearls. And if that doesn't work we'll have to shoot a few to show 'em who's top dog. Perhaps it'd be best to do that first anyway. There's nothing like a little blood-letting for pumping sense into a crowd like that. They need civilising bad. And I feel I'm the right sort to do it. So you leave it to me. I'll soon spread the light.

KINGS WERE FIGHTING.

BY COLONEL AUBREY O'BRIEN, C.I.E., C.B.E.

IN the early days of the War all kinds of rumours flew about India, their improbability being only matched by the credulity of the millions who swallowed them wholesale. When the Kaiser flew to Delhi in an aeroplane, and went off again carrying the Viceroy with him as hostage, no surprise was evinced, and when that canard was scotched by the appearance of Lord Hardinge in public, many others took its place. Most unfortunate for those concerned was the tale got hold of by the Hindus of Jhang and Muzaffargarh that the Germans had reached Karachi, and that the British, having abandoned authority, were leaving by Bombay. The Mahommedan peasantry were slow to believe them, but very quick to act, once they were convinced of the truth of the story. They rose simultaneously over a large area, attacked and killed many Hindus, looted and burned their houses, and ravished in a wholesale manner. They had an unpleasant shock later on when they discovered that the British Government was still functioning, and poured much abuse on the Hindus for having misled them.

This is not the time for consideration of the fact that later on, when India understood, or thought it understood, the

meaning of the Reforms, the Jhang Muzaffargarh affair was repeated from north to south, from east to west, but the tale that follows may help readers to understand why, with the material that exists in rural areas, so many outbreaks of trouble have occurred since 1919. In the District of Hazratabad, under the shadow of the Salt Range, lies the great village of Kalru. Although the Pathan population owns a big expanse of hill and plain, the three thousand inhabitants are huddled in one cluster of houses at the foot of the slopes. Some of the fields are over five miles from the village, but the people all live together at the one spot because man must have water to drink, and when all the great tanks which are fitfully filled by the hill torrents have been drunk from to the last ooze of mud, and the pitiless sun has baked them all dry, there remains one living stream up the ravine above the

village site. Men and women become lithe and supple owing to the distances they are forced to cover daily with plough or water-pot, and in consequence when the champions meet at the fairs for the great running game of Doda, a couple from Kalru usually shows the finest turn of speed. The village is somewhat

neglected by inspecting officials. and cousins followed along into The stony path, cut up by those wonderful corps, and many a torrent, great and made clear to outsiders that small, is not so pleasant to there was no room for them. traverse as those across clay Thus the next great village and soft loam to other claim- was full of pensioned Jemadars, ants for attention. The village Ressaldars, and Ressaldar majors, school exists mainly as a crèche all busily sending off every where the lowest class urchins young man not already in the are kept quiet while all boys ranks to swell the numbers of above the age of toddlers are the old regiments in the days out with the black goats on of their need. Kalru, on the the hillside or with the cattle other hand, with no past access in the stubble of the embanked to such a source of income and fields. The patwari, the revenue glory, remained unmoved and accountant, fairly safe from unperturbed by the claims of troublesome superiors, compiles war because it did not touch his half-yearly record of the its manhood. The inelasticity crops in a surprisingly accurate of the Indian Army persisted manner, seated with the village until the last year of the War, elders in a crowd of nondescript when some new sources were inonlookers at the guest-house deed tapped, but as the material kept up for all comers. Dis- found was never tested, it was tances are tremendous, and soon scrapped again. either a hill torrent ran well once or twice and gave a crop, or it did not, and the patwari and his audience know that the fields dependent upon it are barren this season. Under such circumstances actual inspection would be futile.

The War did not touch Kalru! Though the young men were Pathans, and magnificent figures of Pathans at that, none of their ancestors had happened to be in the way of Cureton or Lind, Coke or Rattray, when those heroes of the past were making up their contingents away back in the 'fifties. Those who in the early days obtained a connection with the limited number of Punjab regiments saw to it that their sons and nephews

The District Officer, who is accessible to every class of visitor, great and small, gains much more than he loses. Overburdened with masses of miscellaneous work, it is not easy for him to find the time to receive daily visitors, especially as many do but come to weary with empty words. Nevertheless, much news can be picked up in this way, and there is the double gain, because men refrain from doubtful deeds lest news of them should reach the ears of authority. Thus, a bluff old squire from across the river Indus, after a long chat partly on the sport of pigdriving in the riverain jungles, and partly on a new hawk which he had purchased young from Chitral and intended to

train, suddenly came out with the information that the Pathans of Kalru had been seen constantly crossing and recrossing the ferry of the great river. Their reason for doing so was unknown to the old man, but the information that he had given led to further inquiries elsewhere, and finally it came out that the men of Kalru had been away among the independent tribes and had brought back with them, in small batches or one by one, arms of different kinds. Obviously this was a matter to be treated seriously, but by the time the fact had come to notice the stream of Kalru passengers across the mile wide ferry had ceased, and there was no one to be caught redhanded. The War was still in full swing, troops even in the garrison towns were fewer than ever in India, and there was little backing for the ordinary police if trouble arose owing to the example of Kalru being taken up by other villages. With the arms in their possession, even if nothing hostile to the British might, as represented by two white men, was likely to occur, robberies and dacoities might start, and once begun might lead to a great outbreak of crime. There seemed no chance of recovery of such arms by search within the village. Kalru, on the highest inhabitable spot below the steep Salt Range slopes, commanded every path of access, and a stranger could be seen for miles away.

The Head of the District puzzled over the problem, and finally decided to summon the five headmen of the village to appear before him. He did not make their visit to him an easy one, but fixed upon a date when he would be forty miles away from headquarters, across the river at the town of Sabzkiari. As often happened to litigants, their appearance before him was preluded by the tremendous tale of work already allotted to the day. On the day following he had to dispose of business two thousand feet up among the rugged Musazai Hills, and, tough as Kalru Pathans might be, the climb up the torrent bed to the plateau above was not attractive. When called in the afternoon, they were none too jaunty. However, on being taxed with having arms in the village, they stoutly denied one and all.

A holy shrine of some departed saint happened to be in existence near the site of the next camp a dozen miles away, and it seemed natural to invite them to repeat their asseverations of denial by the tomb of the saintly dead. It was equally not surprising that they were unprepared to repeat there the answers considered sufficient for secular authority. They had to admit that some of the villagers had indeed laid in a store of arms from the frontier. Their own share in the matter was not pressed, but they were asked for an explanation of this extraordinary conduct on the part of the villagers. The

keen-eyed men looked from any petty Maharajah or Nawab, the peasants in a village under the Salt Range saw no visible sign of its majesty.

one to the other, each scanning the aquiline features of his associate to get help in framing an answer. Finally the youngest blurted out

"The truth is, that we heard that Kings were fighting, and did not know what might be the result, so in case you English gave up the country I got a gun to shoot Fatteh Khan, and Fatteh Khan has got a gun to shoot me!"

However, the admission that arms had been imported into the village had now been made, and the next step was to obtain from the five headmen a joint list, compiled at the holy premises of the shrine, of such villagers as, all agreed, had imported arms. The village was divided into two main It was at that very moment factions; two headmen belonged that bright politicians at home, to one, and two to the other, on the strength of meeting a while the fifth stood aloof from few Western educated Indians, all quarrels. Consequently, were working out a system of while one party would have Reforms which premised among gladly lodged false accusations other things that India was one against some and left out the united nation. Seventy years, names of others, a list to which however, is not long in the all agreed was likely to be history of mankind, and there accurate. Sitting in conclave, were many in the village of the five headmen produced a Kalru who had heard from their list of twenty-three names of elders of the days before 1848 those who had to their knowwhen Sikh fought with Sikh ledge imported various arms, for supremacy after the death after which they were allowed of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, to return to their homes. Then and before that when the Sikhs a Hindu Inspector of Police fought in those parts with the was sent to Kalru to call on Nawab of Dera Ismail Khan, the twenty-three persons to and finally defeated him in give up the arms under promise the desert fort of Mankera. of non-prosecution, but the They knew, too, that the Nawab minds that could believe that had not held sway for any when Kings were fighting the great length of time, and that British would clear out of before him ruler after ruler India were reluctant to believe had appeared and passed away, in promises of forgiveness. each after a very brief spell. They knew that in the past The strength of the British heavy sentences had been inGovernment does not loom very flicted on individuals caught in large in a District without a illegal possession of arms. They Cantonment, and although the assumed that any one who did initiated know that such produce a weapon would be strength far exceeds that of immediately pounced upon and

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