Between Gentlemen

THIS is the story. Some day I shall know the ending.

I

It is very unusual to find an Indian seaman — and a fireman at that — taking an interest in horses. Indians don’t care for animals as a rule, and unless they are of a race or caste used to horses they are frankly scared by them.

I was traveling by the Domena to Bombay, and I was taking back with me two English hunters. They were in the boxes in which they had been slung on to the fore well deck starboard. The boxes had been secured to ringbolts on the deck, and there the horses would stay to the end of the voyage. They could get no grooming on board, and all I could do was to see that they got the proper feeds.

I found him standing by one of the boxes feeding pieces of bread to Prudence, the chestnut mare, and talking to her in a language of his own which she seemed to understand perfectly. Now Prudence does not take kindly to human beings. She has a nasty temper, and she is as hot as chestnuts can be. She bites a bit sometimes. She seemed, however, to like the big Pathan in singlet and dirty white trousers. He did not see me, for I was behind him, and I could only take in the breadth of back and depth of chest fining down to the loins, and the abnormally high development of the deltoid muscles which comes from shoveling coal. All ships’ firemen have those arms. Then the bell struck for the watch, and as the serang’s pipe shrilled he moved forward and disappeared into the fo’c’sle.

I did not see him again until we were halfway down the Red Sea. We had what the Chief Officer called a ‘Paddy’s breeze,’a following wind, and the smoke from the funnel went straight up into the air. Both horses felt the heat a lot, and the stokeholds were on half watches. I took a look down into the boiler room and found a dripping engineer in nothing but a boiler suit and slippers, shouting bad Hindustani with a Glasgow accent to a fireman serang, and pointing at the wavering needle of a pressure gauge.

This time I met him face to face when I found him rubbing Andy’s nose. He tried to bolt for the fo’c’sle, but I addressed a remark to him in Pushtu, I forget quite what, something about the horses finding it a bit hot. Hearing Pushtu seemed fairly to set him off. It appeared that he had not heard his language in months, that his name was Baz Khan, an Orakzai, and that he came from somewhere up the Tochi Valley.

Now Pathan firemen are not unusual, but they are not of the type of Baz Khan. They usually come from lower down in British India,and I was curious to know more of him. I drew a bow at a venture and asked, ‘Baz Khan, what cavalry regiment were you in?’ It was not really a very blind shot, for, of course, most of those men who come into British India from the Tochi Valley come to join the army, and if he had not been in the cavalry the horses would not have interested him. After I had asked the question, I read what was going on behind those deepset eyes of his as well as if he had told me. He was wondering how much I knew, and if I was worth a good lie. As I watched him I grew convinced that he must have had some trouble to bring him to sea. ’Trouble’ on the border is generally a euphemism for murder — a thing not usually mentioned between gentlemen.

I got his story at last, and at considerable length. He did not tell it as a straightforward narrative, but it all came out in conversation during his watches below at our meeting place by the horse boxes, with Andy nuzzling at his shoulder and Prudence wrinkling her lips when he scratched her nose.

II

It seemed that he had in fact been in the cavalry, in ’Mukwan ki Chaliswan Risala’ — that is to say, the Fortieth Cavalry. The Fortieth when I knew them were a crack regiment, always on the frontier and on semi-active service, which sometimes bloomed into real war. They were raised by a Captain Macklewhame in the Mutiny, but little is known of him beyond his name, which is still preserved by the regiment as ‘Mukwan.’ Indians find it hard to get attached to a bare number, and many a regiment preserves, for sentiment, the name of an obscure first commanding officer. Anyway, everyone knows the Fortieth. People sometimes call them the Forty Thieves, which they consider a compliment, but generally they are just ‘Mukwans.'

His village was Al’Stupr at the top end of the Tochi Valley in the Wana Wazir country. It is not entirely accident that the Hindustani word for a fort and the Pushtu for a village are practically the same, for the Pushtu village is always a fort. In the case of Al’Stupr there was a group of three or four solid blocks of stone buildings standing foursquare to the valley, each with its tower at one corner. The walls were probably fifteen or twenty feet high and the tower another twenty on top of that. The sides would probably have been a hundred feet long or so. Each block was a fort in itself, and in the centre of each would be kept such beasts as the family owned.

The brown bare bills rise high all round, but wherever there is any level ground patches of cultivation are put in. In this country the men go out to plough with a rifle slung over one shoulder, and there is never a time when someone is not looking out from the tower, which can be climbed only by a ladder from the outside.

Baz Khan as soon as he was old enough went into the army as a matter of course, and, equally as a matter of course, into ‘Mukwans.’ His father was then Dafadar Major of the regiment, a rank which corresponds to that of sergeant major.

His grandfather, who had been one of the first to join on its formation, had been Rissaldar Major, the highest Indian commissioned rank in a cavalry regiment. The grandfather was still alive, a pensioner with a long string of medals and decorations, with an eye as keen as ever and a wrist as strong.

In those days, about 1907, as everyone knows, all the cavalry in the Indian army was silladar. That is to say, the recruit had to pay for his own horse, saddlery, and clothing, which were provided under regimental arrangements. All that he was provided with free were his arms, which, in the case of Mukwans, consisted of lance and rifle. These terms, one would think, would discourage anyone. The pay was nothing, only about seven rupees a month, and there was no attraction in that. The terms of service had, however, the opposite effect, for each silladar regiment could command an unending supply of recruits, and it was not everyone, even though he had the physique and money, who was allowed to join. Most recruits had some connection with the regiment, and influence of some kind was required to got a man in.

And so he left home. Old Zaffer Khan, the grandfather, gave Baz Khan his blessing and pushed him off down the valley to join. Faiz Ullah, another lad of his own age, from the house a few hundred yards away, went with him. Faiz Ullah was going to join the same regiment if he could.

They were probably dressed in their best — baggy white trousers caught in at the ankle and embroidered velvet waistcoats. Their hair would be worn long enough to frame the face, and well oiled. They would be wearing the blue and white striped puggree wound turban fashion around the goldthread kullah, the pointed cap of the hills.

I need not repeat to you all that Baz Khan told me of joining the regiment at Risalpur, of learning the drill and how to ride. Weapons, of course, would come easily to his hand, and I have no doubt that he spoke truth when he said that from the start he could shoot better than the stout Sikh musketry dafadar who taught the recruits. Those fellows from the Tochi Valley take to soldiering like ducks to water. Faiz Ullah, however, was not, apparently, much of a success and would have been in trouble frequently if Baz Khan had not taken him in hand and big-brothered him generally. He could not keep either himself or his horse clean, and Baz Khan once even stood a guard for him because he had not taken steps to get ready.

III

Baz Khan’s first taste of service, he told me, was when a wing of his regiment — consisting of two squadrons — was ordered up from Nowshera for a show in the Black Mountains. Some of you may remember the one I mean; it was about 1911. It was only an affair of a couple of infantry battalions and two squadrons of cavalry, but it was the first time that he had reason to suspect Faiz Ullah, who was in the same section, of cowardice. I can see what happened. The squadron was forming the advanced guard to the force, — the spearhead, in fact, — and out in front their section had been pushed along the road at the point of the spear. Away ahead again, the tip of the point, were Baz Khan and Faiz Ullah. You can imagine how they would move — the one with his rifle, the other with his lance across the saddle, one of the two ready for instant action in any event. The lance would have a khaki cap over the head to prevent the glint of the sun on the burnished metal, and the red and white pennon would be rolled and tied. The rifle would be loaded with a full magazine, cocked, and with the safety catch forward. Faiz Ullah was leading with the lance, Baz Khan following a horse’s length or two behind and somewhat to one side. Baz Khan was, from what he told me, a deadly shot and loved his rifle.

As it happened, they ran into nothing, but there was no doubt that Faiz Ullah hung back. The two were pushing on at a trot, and continually Baz Khan, who rode five or six pounds heavier and had the lighter horse, would come level with Faiz Ullah.

Now in war time there are as few opportunities for superlative cowardice as there are for superlative courage. Generally speaking, it is all amazingly dull, with a few moments of excitement thrown in. You don’t usually have a chance to judge a man’s courage by more than a succession of tiny incidents coupled with your instinct. Baz Khan told me that, though he knew that Faiz Ullah was not a good soldier, it had never before occurred to him that he had not the normal amount of courage.

In the course of a few days he was convinced of the true state of affairs. Their troop was ordered out on patrol. There was a good deal of risk attached to the duty, although actually, I gathered, nothing much did eventually happen. Anyway, Faiz Ullah’s horse unaccountably dropped a shoe. It may have been coincidence, but Baz Khan thought not, and it was only then that he realized that Faiz Ullah had up till that time escaped most of the more risky duties in one way or another. At all events, the show ended, and they went back to barracks with nothing more for Baz Khan to go on than that. He kept his own counsel, did his duties, and helped Faiz Ullah when he could. In fact, he carried on as usual.

IV

At this stage I had to fill in a lot for myself. Women are seldom mentioned by North Indian Mahomedans, and if any of you have had anything to do with pensioners and next of kin you will know how impossible it is to get them to mention even their womenfolks’ names.

The pay office requires the name of the next of kin, generally mother or wife. Occasionally you fail to get the information required, but if it is given to you it is whispered under promise of secrecy, or the name is written on a dirty slip in scrawly Urdu and passed across the table. You have to fill it in and then comfort yourself with the reflection that the Pay Office Babus will file the papers as mechanically as machines, with never a thought as to who Nisa Bibi of the village of Pir Pial may be. We should never get the names if they thought that they would ever be even read by Hindu Babus in Command Headquarters.

I gathered that Baz Khan went home and got married. He was then a junior noncommissioned officer, and that, I suppose, must have been 1913, because in the hot weather of 1914, say about April, Faiz Ullah went on leave back to the Tochi Valley and Al’Stupr. The next thing Baz Khan heard was that Faiz Ullah had stolen his wife.

Baz Khan’s first feeling would have been one of absolute shame. He may or may not have loved his wife, but here was proof that he was not man enough to keep her. His father, the Dafadar Major, probably tried to comfort him with the Pathan proverb, ‘Trust a snake before a Brahmin, and a Brahmin before a woman,’ but the main thing to be done was to keep the affair absolutely secret, for two reasons. The first was, of course, to save the family honor in the regiment, the second to keep the news from the ears of any British officer. A native officer would have been sympathetic, but if it once got beyond to British ears any chance of getting leave to go home to deal with Faiz Ullah would be gone. Never would either Baz Khan or his father be allowed away at the same time as Faiz Ullah. In the regiment he was safe, for that is Pathan custom. Wherever there are Pathan companies there are men serving in them amicably who, once over the border, would cheerfully carry on the family feud. After all, with people like that some convention of the kind is the only possible one.

The secret was well kept, and both Baz Khan and his father applied for leave. The latter’s position got his almost immediately and he left for the Tochi two days ahead of Baz Khan. Before they left they made arrangements to pick up good service rifles and a supply of ammunition over the border. It would have seemed odd to no one in those parts who might have known that those same rifles had been stolen a few weeks before, and had belonged to a British infantry regiment newly arrived in Rawalpindi.

Baz Khan got away early in July, 1914. He followed his father as fast as he could. As luck would have it, the father had been delayed in getting his rifle, and Baz Khan overtook him at sunset, only a mile or so from home and in sight of Faiz Ullah’s house. They should have been careful, but hearts were heavy, and they embraced Mahomedan fashion, hands on shoulders, and stood a moment like that in the dusk.

Baz Khan was facing up the valley, and as his father removed his hands from his shoulders Faiz Ullah stepped into the path from behind a rock not twenty yards away. He raised his rifle and deliberately shot the Dafadar Major through the back. Faiz Ullah snapped the bolt to reload as Baz Khan unslung his rifle. They must have fired at each other simultaneously, Baz Khan shooting from the hip. Faiz Ullah missed, and Baz Khan’s rifle clicked harmlessly. The cartridge had misfired. He did not get a chance for a second shot, for Faiz Ullah dodged back behind the rock, and when Baz Khan saw him again he was a flying white figure, too vaguely seen in the dusk to justify a shot. Cartridges on the frontier at a rupee a time are not to be wasted. Faiz Ullah had done his best to make sure that neither father nor son got home.

Taking his father’s rifle and ammunition, Baz Khan made his way home and told his news to old Zaffer Khan, who, having heard the shooting, must have been prepared for something.

There was no cover within some hundreds of yards of Faiz Ullah’s father’s tower, and even if there had been, no one was likely to venture out by day while Baz Khan was known to be in the Tochi Valley. Nor could they move at night, for Baz Khan would be sure to come in close to watch the only gate. There was only one thing to be done — to make it appear that Baz Khan had fled to his house and dared not show his nose abroad.

Between them — old Zaffer Khan, now nearly eighty, and Baz Khan — they lifted the Dafadar Major and carried him home. Then Baz Khan took his place. As I told you, the place was within sight of Faiz Ullah’s house, and though the range was long, about eight hundred yards, Baz Khan knew he could shoot. On the next day Faiz Ullah would look out from his tower and see the corpse apparently still there and would think from that that Baz Khan and his grandfather were afraid. Then perhaps he would move.

Dawn came up over the brown hills and Baz Khan watched, but nothing stirred. It was July, and Baz Khan lay in the open. The Tochi Valley in July is hot. Probably the thermometer, if there had been one, would have stood at over 125 degrees in the shade of the houses, and the rocks in those valleys radiate the heat. The houses would begin to dance and shimmer and the grease would run from under the rifle barrel, which would be far too hot to touch. The pool of his father’s blood turned brown and cracked. Then Baz Khan got thirsty. By eleven o’clock he wondered if he could stand it, but the memory of his shame and of his father kept him to it. He wanted only to kill Faiz Ullah. By noon nothing had stirred, and Baz Khan still watched.

When sunset came mercifully to Baz Khan, light-headed and worn, Zaffer Khan sent word to tell him that last night Faiz Ullah had fled back to the regiment for safety. Frontier honor would have been satisfied with any other males of the family, but there was only Faiz Ullah’s aged grandfather left at home, and Baz Khan scorned him. It was Faiz Ullah he wanted.

He got back to his regiment almost simultaneously with orders for mobilization, and explained that his father had died from an ‘accident.’ This was accepted without question or request for explanation, as is usual, which saved Baz Khan from bothering to invent a story.

V

The regiment was ordered to France, and they entrained themselves and their horses for Karachi. At the station at Nawabshah on the line to Karachi and just before you get to Kotri Junction, Faiz Ullah, who was standing picket in a freight car loaded with horses, got down to fill a canvas bucket with water at the stand pipe, and there he tried, in broad daylight, to desert. Baz Khan, however, was too quick for him, and pulled him on board as the train was gathering speed. Faiz Ullah was not going to escape as easily as that, and he spent the rest of the journey on his knees at Baz Khan’s feet begging for mercy, with only the horses in the car to see.

It was at Neuve-Chapelle that Baz Khan brought Faiz Ullah in wounded. The cavalry had been employed dismounted, and they had pushed their attack home with a fury that overshot the mark. Thus it happened that Faiz Ullah lay out in front of the line with a shell splinter in his leg. Baz Khan, now a Dafadar, the equivalent of sergeant, noticed his absence and went in search of him.

He found him eventually in a ruined barn, and Faiz Ullah begged him to let him be. Baz Khan dressed his wound and carried him in under heavy fire, not forgetting his good frontier training and bringing back both rifles and sets of equipment with him. Baz Khan was not going to leave Faiz Ullah to anyone else; he wanted him himself. While bringing in Faiz Ullah he got a bullet through the arm. They gave him a medal for it.

They lay in neighboring beds in the Indian hospital at Brighton, and the nearest thing I ever saw to a laugh on his face was when Baz Khan described the way they commended him for his care of his friend. When they took Faiz Ullah away for a small operation he waited outside the theatre and must have been a nuisance to everyone.

They went back together to their regiment, which eventually was sent to Mesopotamia. They disembarked at Basra at the end of 1916, and it was here that Faiz Ullah finally gave Baz Khan the slip. He deserted and got clear away.

Baz Khan took his discharge in 1920, and when he got home he heard that Faiz Ullah had gone to sea as a fireman in a British India liner. Baz Khan followed. He did not intend to give up Faiz Ullah now, and only this thought could have sent him, Squadron Dafadar Major, Distinguished Conduct Medal and all, to do work like that. He joined a British India steamer, the Godra, in Bombay in 1924 and thought he had found Faiz Ullah in Penang about six months later. Whoever it was, it was not Faiz Ullah. Then, acting on impulse, he joined the Domena, and two months before I met him he had missed Faiz Ullah by a day, in London. There could be no doubt about him, for the superintendent of the Indian Seamen’s Home in East India Dock Road described him even down to his scar.

Baz Khan is still looking for Faiz Ullah, and I think that some day he will find him.