'On no account must they eat the feathers. Farag in the barge will tell thee how they are to live.'
There is no instance of any default on the Governor's personal and unauthorized loans, for which they called him the Father of Waterwheels. But the first puppyshow at the capital needed enormous tact and the presence of a black battalion ostentatiously drilling in the barrack square to prevent trouble after the prize-giving.
But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon Hunt--or their shames? Who remembers the kill in the market- place, when the Governor bade the assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the hounds would instantly devour the body of Abu Hussein; but how, when he had scientifically broken it up, the weary pack turned from it in loathing, and Farag wept because he said the world's face had been blackened? What men who have not yet ridden beyond the sound of any horn recall the midnight run which ended--Beagleboy leading--among tombs; the hasty whip-off, and the oath, taken Abo e bones, to forget the worry? The desert run, when Abu Hussein forsook the cultivation, and made a six-mile point to earth in a desolate khor--when strange armed riders on camels swooped out of a ravine, and instead of giving battle, offered to take the tired hounds home on their beasts. Which they did, and vanished.
Above all, who remembers the death of Royal, when a certain Sheikh wept above the body of the stainless hound as it might have been his son's--and that day the Hunt rode no more? The badly-kept log-book says little of this, but at the end of their second season (forty-nine brace) appears the dark entry: 'New blood badly wanted. They are beginning to listen to beagle-boy.'
* * * * *
The Inspector attended to the matter when his leave fell due.
'Remember,' said the Governor, 'you must get us the best blood in England--real, dainty hounds--expense no object, but don't trust your own judgment. Present my letters of introduction, and take what they give you.
The Inspector presented his letters in a society where they make much of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can ride. They passed him from house to house, mounted him according to his merits, and fed him, after five years of goat chop and Worcester sauce, perhaps a thought too richly.
The seat or castle where he made his great coup does not much matter. Four Masters of Foxhounds were at table, and in a mellow hour the Inspector told them stories of the Gihon Hunt. He ended: 'Ben said I wasn't to trust my own judgment about hounds, but I think there ought to be a special tariff for Empire-makers.'
As soon as his hosts could speak, they reassured him on this point.
'And now tell us about your first puppy-show all over again,' said one.
'And about the earth-stoppin'. Was that all Ben's own invention?' said another.
'Wait a moment,' said a large, clean-shaven man--not an M.F.H.--at the end of the table. 'Are your villagers habitually beaten by your Governor when they fail to stop foxes' holes?'
The tone and the phrase were enough even if, as the Inspector confessed afterwards, the big, blue double- chinned man had not looked so like Beagle-boy. He took him on for the honour of Ethiopia.
'We only hunt twice a week--sometimes three times. I've never known a man chastised more than four times a week unless there's a bye.'
The large loose-lipped man flung his napkin down, came round the table, cast himself into the chair next the Inspector, and leaned forward earnestly, so that he breathed in the Inspector's face.
'Chastised with what?' he said.
'With the kourbash--on the feet. A kourbash is a strip of old hippo-hide with a sort of keel on it, like the cutting edge of a boar's tusk. But we use the rounded side for a first offender.'
'And do any consequences follow this sort of thing? For the victim, I mean--not for you?'
Ve-ry rarely. Let me be fair. I've never seen a man die under the lash, but gangrene may set up if the kourbash has been pickled.'
'Pickled in what?' All the table was still and interested.
'In copperas, of course. Didn't you know that' said the Inspector.
'Thank God I didn't.' The large man sputtered visibly.
The Inspector wiped his face and grew bolder.
'You mustn't think we're careless about our earthstoppers. We've a Hunt fund for hot tar. Tar's a splendid dressing if the toe-nails aren't beaten off. But huntin' as large a country as we do, we mayn't be back at that village for a month, and if the dressings ain't renewed, and gangrene sets in, often as not you find your man pegging about on his stumps. We've a well-known local name for 'em down the river. We call 'em the Mudir's Cranes. You see, I persuaded the Governor only to bastinado on one foot.'
'On one foot? The Mudir's Cranes!' The large man turned purple to the top of his bald head. ' Would you mind giving me the local word for Mudir's Cranes?'
From a too well-stocked memory the Inspector drew one short adhesive word which surprises by itself even unblushing Ethiopia. He spelt it out, saw the large man write it down on his cuff and withdraw. Then the Inspector translated a few of its significations and implications to the four Masters of Foxhounds. He left three days later with eight couple of the best hounds in England--a free and a friendly and an ample gift from four packs to the Gihon Hunt. He had honestly meant to undeceive the large blue mottled man, but somehow forgot about it.
The new draft marks a new chapter in the Hunt's history. From an isolated phenomenon in a barge it became a permanent institution with brick-built kennels ashore, and an influence social, political, and administrative, co- terminous with the boundaries of the province. Ben, the Governor, departed to England, where he kept a pack of real dainty hounds, but never ceased to long for the old lawless lot. His successors were ex-officio Masters of the Gihon Hunt, as all Inspectors were Whips. For one reason; Farag, the kennel huntsman, in khaki and puttees, would obey nothing under the rank of an Excellency, and the hounds would obey no one but Farag; for another, the best way of estimating crop returns and revenue was by riding straight to hounds; for a third, though Judges down the river issued signed and sealed land-titles to all lawful owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title valid till it had been confirmed, according to precedent, by the Governor's hunting crop in the hunting field, above the wilfully neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere taps on the shoulder, but Governors who tried to evade that much found themselves and their office compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits and, worse still, neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs, indeed,
