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No aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people he had betrayed. Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with lust of man-hunting and eager expectation of to-morrow's sacrifice. Nothing of this excitement disturbed Mattingley.
He smoked a cigar and stared at the view, as if be were off to the mountains for a month's sport with dependable shikarris whom he knew. Nobody could have looked at him and guessed he was not enjoying himself. "That man," mumbled Ismail behind him, "is not as other sahibs I have known. He is a man, this one! He will do unexpected things!" "Forward!"
'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur, said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more. 'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs not merry-minded men like Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners they cannot speak Angrezi as do Sahibs.
For the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The Worm," although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair on his face, and with a waist like a girl's, when he came out to the Second "Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways.
The "Shikarris" are a high-caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well play a banjo, or ride more than little, or sing, or act to get on with them. The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of gate posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time.
They were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and shikarris of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives.
They judged India and its Government solely from their experience of wandering Sahibs who had employed them or their friends as shikarris. Kim heard tales of shots missed upon ibex, serow, or markhor, by Sahibs twenty years in their graves every detail lighted from behind like twigs on tree-tops seen against lightning.
He objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four of these five things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how subalterns are, by brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to be ferocious.
It is good and wholesome, and does no one any harm, unless tempers are lost; and then there is trouble. There was a man once but that is another story. The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore everything without winking.
Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc., on the bed. He came over as he was, and the "Shikarris" shouted till the Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun.
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