. At sunrise no
new bearers had yet shown themselves. My men belonged to the region we
were in, and I learned from them that the nearest European dwelt only
eight miles distant. I bargained with them to take me to his bungalow.
The unexpected wages which they were promised being liberal, they
trotted off with unwonted briskness. In due course the bungalow loomed
in sight, and as I approached it a burly figure, in shirt-sleeves and
with arms akimbo, appeared in the verandah, his eyes turned in the
direction of his unlooked-for visitor. "God bless you, Hugh Maxwell!
I'm devilish glad to see you," shouted the burly figure, benedictory,
but even in benediction not oblivious of the Old Teaser. "I wish to
Goodness I was Hugh Maxwell!" I returned, stepping to the ground. "Oh,
never mind," rejoined the hearty indigo-planter, perceiving his
mistake and offering me his hand. "There is just time for a bath
before breakfast," he added; and a good tubbing, in sufficient light
to see and evade creeping things by, was far from unacceptable. I
stayed with my good-natured host two days and nights, picking up, in
the mean while, much curious information touching the cultivation and
manufacture in which he was occupied. Like most persons of his
calling, he was an ardent sportsman. The early hours of the morning he
gave almost daily to a stroll with his gun; and the first evening I
passed with him he invited me, in startlingly piebald phraseology, to
accompany him on the morrow. "Be up by _top dage_," said he: "we will
have _chhoti haziri_, and then a _chal_ over the _khets_ for some
_shikar_" Why he did not prefer to say "gun-fire," "tea and toast,"
"run," "fields," and "game," probably he could not have told himself.
His way of peppering his English with Urdu was characteristic of his
class, and till I got accustomed to it I found it somewhat perplexing.
If he had known me all his life he could not have been more friendly.
Yet his kindness and hospitality were not exceptional things in the
India of a quarter of a century ago. All is changed there now--whether
much for the better I am skeptical. Twenty-two hours after they were
due my missing bearers made their appearance. Arrived at Ghazeepore, I
addressed a complaint to the postmaster-general. Thereupon two sides
of a large sheet of paper were spread for me with base official
circumlocution, through the darkness of which I groped out, after some
labor, the audacious libel that the blame,