United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
>From Chinn's point of view the stalk was nothing more than an ordinary one down-hill, through split and crannied rocks, unsafe, perhaps, if a man did not keep his wits by him, but no worse than twenty others he had undertaken. Yet his men they refused absolutely to beat, and would only trail dripped sweat at every move.
He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish country.
He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish country.
Let Jan Chinn comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn's presence.
They showed the marks of enormous pugs that ran, always down-hill, to a few hundred feet below Jan Chinn's tomb, and disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave. It was an insolently open road, a domestic highway, beaten without thought of concealment. "The beggar might be paying rent and taxes," Chinn muttered ere he asked whether his friend's taste ran to cattle or man. "Cattle," was the answer.
It was slow, unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India to-day; and though John Chinn's only reward came, as I have said, in the shape of a grave at Government expense, the little people of the hills never forgot him. Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended.
It happened to be the old answer of his childhood, when Bukta in jest called him the little General Sahib. The Major's quarters were opposite Chinn's, and when he heard his servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room.
Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn's mess-boots. Chinn's eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys. "Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again.
Word Of The Day