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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Can ye find and follow it for me?" "By daylight if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near by." "I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does not ride any more." The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.
It is supposed to be a clouded animal not stripy, but blotchy, like a tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or pestilence or or something. There's a nice family legend for you." "What's the origin of it, d' you suppose?" said Chinn. "Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
It occurred, so they said at home, in alternate generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine years after birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn inheritance, would not be considered pretty. He hurried ashore, dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who promptly fell on their faces. "My people," grunted Bukta, not condescending to notice them.
We will hunt together, I and he and your young men, and the others shall eat and lie still. This is my order." There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The young Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be put straight.
It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together with many other matters not fit for print, that through five days, after the day that he had put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the First hunted for his people; and on the five nights of those days the tribe was gloriously and entirely drunk.
But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew jealous of their marked comrades, and came near to blows about it. Then Chinn declared himself a court of justice, no longer a medical board, and made formal inquiry into the late robberies. "We are the thieves of Mahadeo," said the Bhils, simply. "It is our fate, and we were frightened. When we are frightened we always steal."
Say only one little word, and we will be content." "We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do with drilled men?" "When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet." "But he has not waked, Bukta." "Sahib "-the old man's eyes were full of tender reproof-" if he does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight?
The least excitement would stampede them, plundering, at random, and now and then killing; but if they were handled discreetly they grieved like children, and promised never to do it again. The Bhils of the regiment the uniformed men were virtuous in many ways, but they needed humouring.
They believed that the protection of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils. His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their god.
But John Chinn the First, father of Lionel, grandfather of our John, went into his country, lived with him, learned his language, shot the deer that stole his poor crops, and won his confidence, so that some Bhils learned to plough and sow, while others were coaxed into the Company's service to police their friends.
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