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And as the mugger moved leisurely on, in the wrong direction, breaking up the gold network of reflections, she had her answer or no answer. The lamp was neither wrecked nor shattered; but it would never, now, reach the farther shore.
Later, my Fate sent me the boatman who had desired to cut off my tail with an axe. His boat grounded upon an old shoal which you would not remember." "We are not ALL jackals here," said the Adjutant. "Was it the shoal made where the stone-boats sank in the year of the great drouth a long shoal that lasted three floods?" "There were two," said the Mugger; "an upper and a lower shoal."
They have killed and made new towns on my banks," said the Mugger. "It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt if it pleases the dirt," answered the Elephant. "But afterwards?" said the Tiger. "Afterwards they will see that Mother Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and later from us all, one by one.
"But surely I saw Marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the Ghaut only this noon," said the Adjutant. Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all India over. "An error an error. It was the wife of the sweetmeat-seller. She loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me the Mugger of the Ghaut.
The Mugger must have been grateful for the interruption, because he went on, with a rush: "By the Right and Left of Gunga! when I came there never did I see such waters!" "Were they better, then, than the big flood of last season?" said the Jackal. "Better!
"No," said Little Black Mingo, "but the Mugger will eat me all by himself I am afraid." "No he won't," said the Mongoose, "for we will sail away together in the big chatty before he comes back."
The night had been oppressively hot, with many insects flying about; amongst which I noticed earwigs, a genus erroneously supposed rarely to take to the wing in Britain. Near Chanchee we passed an alligator, just killed by two men, a foul beast, about nine feet long, of the mugger kind.
Half-past-ten and she had forgotten his bottle! When she carried it over to him, he was wide awake, his face sober, his aureole of bright hair damp with the heat. But at the sight of his playfellow his four new teeth came suddenly into sight. Here was "Mugger," the unfailing solace and cheer of his life. He gave her a beatific smile, and seized the bottle with a rapturous "glug."
When he comes back the dispute is settled, as the iron-bound bamboo of the loser witnesses. Yet they are not grateful to the Mugger. No, they cry 'Murder! and their families fight with sticks, twenty a-side. My people are good people upland Jats Malwais of the Bet.
It clanked away into the dark again; but the Mugger and the Jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. "Is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut?" said the bird, looking up. "I saw that built, child. After the first pier was made they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn. There, again, I saved much trouble.
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