FROM THE OUTPOSTS.

RAMMU.

RAMMU was an aboriginal one ear in his left hand and

of the Vindhyan Sandstone hills in Central India, He entered my life one night in the rains, when all the world had turned to blue lightning and running water, and even the frogs were battered into silence. Asleep in the verandah, I was awakened by some one gently pulling at my right toe, which is the correct Indian method of rousing a heavy sleeper. Anticipating no more urgent news than that the bungalow thatch had at last fallen in, I inquired, not too politely, what the trouble was. Then there stole up from the foot of the bed to the pillow end a deplorable sample of brown humanity, and realising that something was seriously the matter, I sat sideways on the bed to get a better view of him.

stands on one leg, in token of abject penitence. Speech failing him, the little man made desperate efforts to put himself into the position demanded, as he evidently considered, by the occasion, but he was stiff and stupid and shivering. First he dropped his axe, which he promptly retrieved with his toes; then he hesitated between a choice of ears, and when, finally, he selected one, even his splay aboriginal foot proved a pediment inadequate to his rocking body, and he fell with a clatter on the flags. I helped him to his feet and into the office, where there was a lantern burning. A rug and a tot of whisky put life into him, and he told me his story.

He was a Bhoi Gond from the teak forests on the eastern He was about five feet high, border, and had come to tell and stark naked, except for a me that he had killed his wife dirty rag round his temples. the morning before. The elders The steady flicker of the light of the village, his caste fellows, ning lit up his dripping body, had said that the Sarkar inbut even if his face had been sisted on full and early inforinvisible, the pattern of the mation of such happenings, axe he carried showed that in the absence of which they he was from the jungles. His would His would be put to grievous teeth were chattering so vio- troubles. So he had started lently with cold and exposure for headquarters at once, that he could not utter a word trusting to cover the thirty in answer to my questions. odd miles before nightfall. He was in grave mental But heavy rain came down trouble also. An uneducated and all the streams rose. He Indian confessing to a mis- had swum three rivers and demeanour seizes the lobe of lost his waist - cloth in one

(but not, I observed, his axe!). A week after his release Then he had been overtaken he appeared in my verandah by a colic. All these things with an appropriate testimonial had delayed him, and he had of his gratitude. Not for him been obliged to wake me up, to offer the "dolly" of pinefor he had been given to apples and guavas, melons understand the matter was and graft mangoes, that the urgent. His wife had per- civilised Hindu on high days sisted in burning his bread, and holidays deposits at the and no man could could put up District Officer's doorway. But with that for ever, though he had his axe, which cost only he had been long-suffering fourpence, and his eyes, and and beaten her patiently for some hundreds of miles of weeks. On the latest occa- jungle to ransack, and the sion, however, instead of tak- pile of uncanny eatables that ing her beating quietly, she he poured on the verandah had called him two shameful flags would have stocked a names and run out of the hut. small greengrocer's shop. After a short pursuit he had There were yams, horribly thrown his axe at her. He resembling scalded puppies could not tell where the with their legs lopped off, and weapon had struck her, be- contorted roots like knotted cause he had not looked, but ropes which, he explained, she fell and never rose again, must be scraped and soaked and she was certainly dead, for a whole night in running and he had brought the axe water to steep the poison out as ordered by the village head- of them. Otherwise the eater man. His story told, he curled would become violently insane. up in a corner of the office There were green and golden and went to sleep. fruits of agonising sourness or astringency, and sometimes of both, many varieties of indigestible-looking seeds, and a heap of sickly yellow flowers with fleshy petals that smelt like hair-wash. These last were to give flavour to the yams. When I had sufficiently admired his present he stood on one leg, put his palms together, looked me cheerfully in the face, and said in a loud voice, "Hé, Dadda, make me your servant!"

The sessions judge who in due time tried him, found himself in a dilemma. To begin with, by the time the police had waded to the village, the corpse had disappeared. Then there were no witnesses of the offence, and while he was compelled to accept the accused's version of the facts, he was equally bound to believe his statement that he had no intention of killing the woman. The axe was scarcely heavier than a toy. Eventually Rammu was convicted of causing hurt with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to three three months' rigorous imprisonment.

I did not accept his offer. To put a wild Bhoi to housework would have been sheer cruelty, and though his prehensile toes were eminently

were very large, and useful to him as an extra pair of hands. A dirty rag, from which fluttered a long elf - lock bleached to a rusty brown, round his scalp, and a similar, but if possible, dirtier, waist-cloth, were his attire in all seasons. In short, he was a sufficiently typical specimen of the pre- Aryan races of India, whom the Hindu invader of the plains still regards with mingled contempt and dread, abhorring their indifference to ceremonial ablution, but crediting them with knowledge of the blackest magic and unconquerable spells.

fitted to recover my shirt-stud feet
from its frequent escapings as
under the dressing - table, I
could not afford to keep a man
exclusively for this function.
I thought of making him a
grass-cut, but, like all his
people, he was far more afraid
of a horse than of a tiger,
and this career was obviously
closed to him. In the end we
compromised to this effect,
namely, that whenever my
tours fell in the jungly tracts
of the district, he, Rammu,
on receipt of due notice, was
to accompany me on a wage
of fourpence per diem, help
me in shikar and enlighten my
ignorance on the subject of
trees, birds, animals, and jungle
life in general. I never made
a better bargain in my life,
and now that he is dead,-

"" gone,' as his own people express it, "to the far folk,' a more than transient regret for the loss of a loyal friend and delightful companion suggests this humble tribute to his memory.

"They know the secret of the hills

And the oldest kind of song."

8

Now, to extract information of any kind from the aboriginal of the Vindhyan hills is generally a heartbreaking affair. Centuries of furtive existence and, whenever he could be caught, of maltreatment, at the hands of stronger races, have made him as suspicious as a carp. He scents hook in every question. "Why," he reasons, "does the Sahib ask me about flying squirrels? If I tell him, he will order me to show him one. He will walk a long way, get thirsty, and perhaps we may not see a single squirrel. Then he will get angry, and in any case his servants will put me on to do unpleasant jobs about his camp." a Accord

There was nothing of the noble savage in his appearance, which was that of an undersized elderly gnome carved in chocolate. Arms, legs, and body were, considering his powers of endurance, astonishingly lacking in muscle, his shoulders were rounded, and he walked with a slight limp, due to the bite of a wild sow on whose litter he had, as boy, inadvertently stumbled. The scars of this were conspicuous on the back of one thigh, where the muscle seemed permanently shrunken. His

ingly, he answers that he himself has never seen such an animal-but, yes! he hears that they abound in the jungles of the next range, forty miles

attempts to "draw" these jungle people on matters concerning their daily lives I had experienced to the full

"The sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled brings ;"

and now that Providence had, so to speak, delivered into my hands a wild Bhoi, body and soul, I proceeded with a caution born of many disheartening failures to make the most of him. The initial difficulty of winning his confidence had already been surmounted. The rest, when one had grasped the fact that the question direct was the least promising method of inducing him to talk, was comparatively plain sailing.

dazzling blue and white sky. Rammu had just chopped a dishevelled hen hornbill out of her nest in a hollow trunk, where her husband, after the manner of hornbills, had walled her in with mud until such time as her maternal duties should be completed. After this exploit a rest in the shade and a smoke were imperative, and our talk slid from birds to snakes in general, and, finally, to my objective, that magnificent rarity, the great rock python.

"I have heard,” I said airily, "that crocodiles, when they attain a certain age, crawl up from rivers into caves of the mountains. Then their hands and feet drop off, their hide, by much rubbing against the stones, becomes thin, and they turn into 'azhgars'-pythons. (This interesting item of natural history had been imparted to me, in the best of faith, by a Bengali pleader.)

The bait was swallowed. "That is false," he replied earnestly. "God made the two creatures distinct from birth. I have seen a python once in my life, when I was a boy, on my way down to the wheat harvest. I heard a snoring sound from a nullah, and peeping over the bank, saw an 'azhgar' with a dog jackal half way down her throat. She was about as long as three men and as thick as my thigh. Then I carried the news to the gentry and landowners of the villages round about, and they gave me free victuals and came and

He was, as I have said, a delightful companion, and the charm of his conversation lay as much in the manner as in the subject of it. Bilingual from childhood, he spoke in a Dravidian tongue among his fellow-tribesmen, but to me in a pure, deliberate, vivid Hindi, choosing his words carefully, much as certain Gaelic-speaking Highlanders venture upon the English language. He was, I believe, physically incapable of telling an intentional falsehood. I have in my mind a blowing March morning, when the tall cotton-trees were in full blossom, each tree a tower of crimson against a held a council, sitting on both