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Herne, I rode out to inspect the Biyu Gora or Night-running Water. After advancing about ten miles in a south-east direction from Berberah, we entered rough and broken ground, and suddenly came upon a Fiumara about 250 yards broad.
On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton.
The sign is not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of night-running. He has said it." The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered. "He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said it to me." "But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?"
"Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life." "And what if they do not?" "He did not say." The light went out in Chinn's quarters. "Look," said Bukta. "Now he goes away. None the less it is a good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a man?
"Listen, Uli," said the master, "you're in a bad temper still, and I oughtn't to have said anything to you. But I'm sorry for you, for you've been a fine lad and used to be able to work. For awhile I thought you'd turn out well, and I was glad. But since you began this idling and night-running, you've become a different fellow.
The sign is not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of night-running. He has said it." The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered. "He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said it to me." "But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?"
"Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life." "And what if they do not?" "He did not say." The light went out in Chinn's quarters. "Look," said Bukta. "Now he goes away. None the less it is a good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a man?
But he was out of doors. He had escaped from the house at dusk; he knew that. He had run away, through the hedge and down the back side of the hill, torn between the two, the death, warm and red like life, and the birth, pale, chill, and inexorable as death. Most of that daft night-running will always be blank in Christopher's mind; moments and moments, like islands of clarity, remain.
While it was true that he thus quite tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than he had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark.
In Norway, where it is called night-running, on account of the long distance between the homesteads, I am told that it is generally practiced, though the clergy preach against it; the young girl puts on several extra skirts and goes to bed, and the young man enters by door or window and goes to bed with her; they talk all night, and are not bound to marry unless it should happen that the girl becomes pregnant.
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