’He a Sahib! He’s a kala admi—a
black man—unfit to run at the tail of a
potter’s donkey. All the peoples of the
earth have harried Bengal. It is written.
Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or plunder
whither went we? To Bengal—where else?
What child’s talk is this of Sahibdom—after
Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah was
right.’
‘What of him?’ asked Tallantire uneasily.
He mistrusted that old man with his dead eyes and
his deadly tongue.
’Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware
to Orde Sahib when we watched him die by the river
yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is it
true that the English have set the heel of the Bengali
on their own neck, and that there is no more English
rule in the land?’
‘I am here,’ said Tallantire, ‘and
I serve the Maharanee of England.’
’The Mullah said otherwise, and further that
because we loved Orde Sahib the Government sent us
a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now have
been held by the strong hand. Also that they were
taking away the white soldiers, that more Hindustanis
might come, and that all was changing.’
This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a
very large country. What looks so feasible in
Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable in Madras,
is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes
its complexion on the banks of the Indus. Khoda
Dad Khan explained as clearly as he could that, though
he himself intended to be good, he really could not
answer for the more reckless members of his tribe under
the leadership of the Blind Mullah. They might
or they might not give trouble, but they certainly
had no intention whatever of obeying the new Deputy
Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that
in the event of any systematic border-raiding the
force in the district could put it down promptly?
‘Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool’s
talk,’ said Tallantire curtly, ’that he
takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But
why do I talk to one who no longer carries weight
in the counsels of the tribe?’
Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned
something that he much wanted to know, and returned
to his hills to be sarcastically complimented by the
Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was
deadlier flame than ever dung-cake fed.
Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown
district of Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways
by the Indus under the line of the Khusru hills—ramparts
of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was seventy
miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population
of something less than two hundred thousand, and paid
taxes to the extent of forty thousand pounds a year
on an area that was by rather more than half sheer,
hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle
people, the miners for salt were less gentle still,
