Nizams Daughters

hereabouts that I should very much like to see more.’

‘In that case,’ said Selden, sitting bolt upright and with a glint in his eye, ‘let us ride out across the kadir— the river plain. We shall very probably see pig, and you’ll be able to observe from how they run what manner of sport I speak of. I tell you, Hervey, there’s nothing of its like. Chasing the fox is for dullards when you’ve run after pig!’

Hervey was all attention.

‘And, then, perhaps, before too long, we might get you to carry a spear.’

Now he was all eagerness.

After a half-hour’s respite — so that, in Selden’s words, they would not get the colic — he went to make the arrangements. Hervey watched him stride purposefully across the maidan towards where the syces were taking their ease in the shade of a huge palmyra. That he seemed so well in both body and spirits was a happy thing indeed. In Spain and France he had never looked more than well enough, and there had been times when he was far short of that — Toulouse, notably, after the battle, when the hot and cold remittent fevers, his malaria, from years in the Indies, rendered his diagnoses so unreliable that more than one troop-horse escaped destruction only by the hand of Providence (or, in one case, by Hervey’s own). He was at times the very model of black bile. Yet here in Chintal his humours seemed wholly restored. The irony — that India had been the cause of his original ill humour, and was now the restorative — seemed apt. Concerning the manner of his leaving the Sixth, details of which Hervey knew only through Private Johnson (for no one in the mess seemingly had much stomach for them), he was content to let things lie. It was a pity that Selden’s proclivities in that direction had been further complicated by a specific taste, and it was a cruel temptation, therefore, that in the regiment’s band there should have been a cymbalist from the Ivory Coast who, had he been in skirts, would have passed pleasingly for a young woman. In these parts it was of no particular matter, however: there were no interests of discipline to be attentive to, nor even propriety, and Hervey could simply enjoy the company of a man whose fellowship had sometimes been disdained by the mess but whose knowledge of horses he greatly admired.

Selden returned with two Arab ponies, and two of the same breed built bigger. Hervey had never ridden a pure-bred Arab, though he had ridden many a horse that had profited by Arab blood in its lines. Jessye, indeed, Welsh crossed with thoroughbred, had in consequence such blood on both sides. All the rajah’s hog-hunters were Arabs or Turkomans, explained Selden. The Chintal kadirs were trappy country compared with those in the north, and with a jinking pig, as long as the cover was not too heavy, a pony was a better bet, though if it came to a straight gallop then the pony would naturally lose. Those who could ride under twelve stone, said Selden, were therefore at an advantage, and it was ever to his consternation that the rajah, who rode considerably in excess of that, should find himself so often defeated by even an elderly boar.

Hervey tried one of the two ponies, a flea-bitten grey about thirteen hands and three inches. The saddle was English, as he would have chosen for the hunting field at home, yet never had he felt less secure as he cantered her in a large circle, for even with Jessye he was used to having shoulders in front of him. This little mare — Gita — seemed unusually high on the leg, and narrowchested. But he could feel the power beneath him. She had a good length of rein and her mouth was a deal less hard than he expected: he managed to turn her so sharply at one stage that he was almost parted from her. He expressed much satisfaction, and Selden said he should be pleased with his choice for that was the rajah’s favourite, which no-one as a rule but his own daughter — the raj kumari — rode. Hervey voiced surprise, and then admiration, that the rajah’s daughter should trust so active a horse with a side-saddle. And he admitted even greater surprise when Selden told him she rode astride.

Selden himself rode at a little over thirteen stone, and took the reins of a fiery-looking Turkoman bay almost two full hands higher. He explained that, since he was not hunting, he would prefer the extra height to observe. His own preference with a spear was the other gelding — at fifteen hands, a near-perfect mount for this kadir.

‘He looks uncommonly like an English blood,’ said Hervey, admiringly.

‘The Turkoman’s breeding has much, I think, in common with the thoroughbred,’ Selden conceded. ‘Without doubt, there’s much Arab in him. And I’m convinced that the Byerly Turk — on which you know that much of the thoroughbred’s blood is founded — is in fact from Turkomania. You have only to look close at the paintings of him to see the similarity — the head, principally.’

‘And is he as fast?’

‘Not, perhaps, over so short a distance as would a blood usually race. But I’ll warrant that I could gallop this one most of the day and he would stand it well. Especially since he’s been fed on nahari for over a year.’

‘Nahari?’ asked Hervey.

‘Flour and fat: it means “never get weary”. Now,’ he began, as they left the camp, ‘the first thing on which we must be clear is that we hunt only the boar.’

‘How do I tell him?’

‘Both he and the sow have tushes, so the only way to be sure are his testises — they’ll be prominent enough beneath his tail. Now, a hog will lie concealed until he’s beaten out, and then he’ll run fast for the nearest cover — and I truly mean fast. He can go at a gallop, and you’ll need to go flat out to stay with him. That’s why you must have a horse you can trust, for you yourself will have no time to help it out of trouble. I have had some crashing falls: it’s all part of the sport. And the faster I’ve been going as we tumbled, the less damage has been done.’

Hervey nodded, accepting the proposition, illogical as it might at first have seemed, for it was indeed better sometimes to be put on the ground with no time to flinch than struggling to save oneself.

‘Remember,’ continued Selden, ‘a horse can go where a pig goes. And in this country there’s so much grass and dhak in the season that unless you stay right up with him you’ll lose him as soon as he makes his first cover, and in any case the pig will make a good pilot. Now, if you do lose him the golden rule is to cast well for’ard: do not look for him at the point you lost him. Cast for’ard a mile or so on the line he was running, for believe me, the pig will soon cover that distance. And then find a hillock, or a nullah, or some such feature, and wait for him to break.’

The camp was now a mile or more behind them. In the heat of the afternoon, though Selden warned him that it was not a fraction of what was to come in July just before the monsoon broke, Hervey felt the curious sensation of coming alive, like the basking lizard which manages, just, to crawl onto its warming stone and then, after sunning itself for an hour or so, is suddenly disposed to scuttle off at great speed. And though this heat was not enervating, as sometimes he had found it in Spain, neither was it a burning heat, from which, instinctively, all tried to shelter. It was an invigorating warmth, annealing the muscles of his arms and legs, and he had not felt its like before. Perhaps, he mused, this was the beginning of what Selden had said so often in France — that India sweated out the false civilization in a man (though there was as yet scarce a bead of sweat on his brow).

They picked their way through a patch of untended sugar cane, Selden falling silent and crouching low in the saddle to peer between the dhak for a sight of his quarry. ‘If you come out for pig on your own — “gooming”, we call it, as opposed to on a big hunt — it’s best to try to get on top of him before he breaks, rather than beating him out, otherwise he may get too great a start on you. Beware, mind: you’ll likely enough find a leopard in these places, and that can be tricky.’

Hervey was more and more intrigued by Selden’s transfiguration from the fever-ridden cynic he had known in the regiment. ‘And tiger?’ he asked. ‘Do you find tiger in such patches as these?’

‘Be assured, Hervey,’ said Selden half laughing, ‘if I suspected tiger were here then I should not come within a mile. You may take your chance with a leopard in thick country, but you have none with a tiger. Leopard’s not so intent on killing, merely escaping. Whereas tiger — man-eater or no — is so prodigiously strong that it makes no odds why he attacks, for he’ll crush you instantly.’

Hervey had entertained a notion of killing his own tiger and sending the skin home to Horningsham — just as he had pictured Midshipman Nelson battling with the polar bear so as to send the skin to his father at Burnham Thorpe.

‘If I were you, Hervey,’ said Selden on hearing this, ‘I should put the notion from your mind. I have been on perhaps a dozen tiger hunts and only once did the enterprise come off without mishap. The rajah was almost killed last year when his most practised elephant went must. Now, let us return to the king of sports. If you are gooming, then it does not matter so much, but if you are hunting hog properly then there are certain observances. First, we don’t as a rule hunt pig that is not full-grown — two feet at the shoulder at least — unless the villagers say their crops are being sorely ravaged.’