’Within that next hour they hired a large and
strong mota-kahar for the journey from the
Temple to Wanidza, which is twenty koss or more,
and they promised expedition. But he who took
their guards said, “It is not seemly that we
should for any cause appear to be in haste. There
are eighteen medals with eleven clasps and three Orders
to consider. Go at leisure. I can endure.”
’So the three with the offerings were absent
three hours and a half, and having delivered the offering
at Wanidza in the correct manner they returned and
found the lad on guard, and they did not break his
guard till his full hour was ended. So he
endured four hours in the Presence, not stirring one
hair, his eyes abased, and the river of feet, from
the knee down, passing continually before his eyes.
When he was relieved, it was seen that his eyeballs
worked like weavers’ shuttles.
’And so it was done—not in hot blood,
not for a little while, nor yet with the smell of
slaughter and the noise of shouting to sustain, but
in silence, for a very long time, rooted to one place
before the Presence among the most terrible feet of
the multitude.’
‘Correct!’ the Chaplain chuckled.
‘But the Goorkhas had the honour,’ said
the Subadar-Major sadly.
‘Theirs was the Honour of His Armies in Hind,
and that was Our Honour,’ the nephew replied.
’Yet I would one Sikh had been concerned in
it—even one low-caste Sikh. And after?’
’They endured the burden until the end—until
It went out of the Temple to be laid among the older
kings at Wanidza. When all was accomplished and
It was withdrawn under the earth, Forsyth Sahib said
to the four, “The King gives command that you
be fed here on meat cooked by your own cooks.
Eat and take ease, my fathers.”
’So they loosed their belts and ate. They
had not eaten food except by snatches for some long
time; and when the meat had given them strength they
slept for very many hours; and it was told me that
the procession of the unendurable feet ceased to pass
before their eyes any more.’
He threw out one hand palm upward to show that the
tale was ended.
‘We came well and cleanly out of it,’
said the Subadar-Major.
‘Correct! Correct! Correct!’
said the Regimental Chaplain. ’In an evil
age it is good to hear such things, and there is certainly
no doubt that this is a very evil age.’
’Blessed be the
English and all their ways and works.
Cursed be the Infidels,
Hereticks, and Turks!’
‘Amen,’
quo’ Jobson, ’but where I used to lie
Was neither Candle,
Bell nor Book to curse my brethren by:
’But a palm-tree
in full bearing, bowing down, bowing down,
To a surf that drove
unsparing at the brown-walled town—
Conches in a temple,
oil-lamps in a dome—
And a low moon out of
Africa said: “This way home!"’
