FullReads

We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many box- wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness has created the dak (the post), and that for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. Wherefore, Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we talked together. He said, “There is no haste. Presently we shall fight, and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh. Here he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True–true– true!”

So did matters ripen–a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I think–and the Sahib sees this, too?–that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of the Tochi–the men of the Tirah–the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand times. We could have done it all so gently–so gently.

Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, “Ho, Dada, I am sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.” And he winked, and I said, “I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I bring my uniform?” He said, “Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis” (niggers). Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But he was clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am–I was–of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the Colonel) I said, “My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and sick also.”

And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue, said, “Yes, thou art truly Sikh”; and he called me an old devil– jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again–aie me!

So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, “What is one Mussulman pig more or less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white shirts for dinner.” Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib, that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war. He said, “They have taken men afoot to fight men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log because it is believed that they are white.” He said, “There is but one fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed us, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.” True talk–true talk! It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.