another wills. Whereas with Jimgrim—”
“Oh, shut up!” I growled. “I’m not here to be preached at.”
“In an army, sahib, there would be much damning and very little preaching,” he answered. “Whereas with Jimgrim, though he tells us precious little, we are free like hounds to draw the coverts for him, and there is neither leash nor whip. Il hamdul’illah!as these heathen say; that Jimgrim is a prince of huntsmen, who knows when a good hound bays on a true scent. But an army has too many huntsmen, who talk among themselves, saying: ‘Yes, sir, no sir,’ and then command the pack with a ‘Lo! the General Staff decrees that the scent lies yonder in that direction; therefore make haste to find it and bark aloud!’ This Jimgrim would have been a king if his mother had borne him on this side of the Atlantic. Are there others like him in America?”
Well, I grew good-tempered gradually, if for no other reason than because it was absurd to find fault with a man who could arouse such enthusiasm in a follower. Besides, I like Grim; and it’s one of my fundamental articles of marrow-bone religion that if I’m a man’s friend he may get away with anything except black treason.
But leaving all that out of the reckoning, I defy any man to start off in the morning on a camel alongside Narayan Singh, with friends behind and the unknown just beyond the shimmering horizon, and retain a grouch for twenty minutes.
The hot wind wasn’t due for an hour or two. The wound made by Ayisha’s dagger in my leg didn’t hurt more than was tolerable. The camels were feeling the effects of good corn and thorn-twigs, and went swinging along as if their legs were hung on springs. As long as you haven’t got to spend your whole life in the desert, it’s about the easiest of all earth’s wonders to admire; and the secret of contentment lies in everlastingly admiring something —or so I’ve found it.
The Sikh began singing a sort of hymn set to minor music; and though singing in the Jat-Punjabi dialect is one of those accomplishments that were omitted when my kit was tossed out of the Great Quartermaster’s store, I’ve always found a curious satisfaction, akin to inspiration, in listening to songs in the vernacular of other lands. Indian lyrics always seem to lose the note of plaintiveness when you translate them, just as Homer’s verses lose their roll done into English, and the Odes of Horace forced into another tongue come through without their humor.
In the hot night my mother bore me,
Knowing not who I am!
Into the dawn I came, a man-child
Knowing not the life before me,
Stranger to the folk about me.
None knew who I am!
Out of the book of signs and wonders,
Knowing not who I am,
Soothsayers read this and that thing.
There is lightning when it thunders;
Do they know the lightning’s karma?
None knew who I am!
Out of her heart my mother taught me
(Stranger, nevertheless!)
Fear and faith and law and legend,
Weeping when my karma caught me
Willing yet unwilling tore me
Loose from her caress.
Smiled the Powers then at the stripling
Facing first duress,
Making boast of all that might be,
Choosing pleasant ways and crippling
Choice for sake of this or that one
(Strangers nevertheless!)
Thrice and again my karma took me
(None knew who I am!)
Rolling me in red disaster
Till the light o’ loves forsook me
And I cried to careless heavens,
Asking who I am!
Long were the nights I spent in anguish,
Thinking gods would care,
Vowing I myself would hardly
Leave a thing I made to languish.
If I perished who would profit,
How, and when, and where?
Then I struck a rock demanding
Why it towered there,
And, as if the rock made answer,
Dawned upon my understanding
“That is His affair!”
Then I looked from rock and river
To horizon far
Eyeing with a new contentment,
Seeing gifts but not the Giver,
Sun and moon and star,
Stream and forest, time and season,
Fish and bird and beast and man;
None could look into their reason,
None knew what they are!
So there burst illumination
Dissipating fears,
And I sang a song of manhood,
And I laughed at the negation
That is affluent of tears,
Is the sun too long aborning?
Are the planets in arrears?
Who am I?
Whoever knows me
Is the Monarch of the Morning,
Is the Lord of love and laughter,
Is the Owner of the years!
You hardly expect a sporadically dissolute enlisted Sikh to sing that kind of song. But, as the missionaries say, the Sikhs are heathen, and on their way to hell, so we, who don’t believe that laughter and religion and the morning are all one, and who think we know exactly who we are, mustn’t judge them too harshly. Personally I’m not much of a dogmatist. Having pitched my tent in hell a lot of times, I’m not so scared as I used to be. And if there’s a worse hell than I’ve camped in yet, as long as there are Sikhs there like Narayan Singh I don’t believe I’m going to worry much. They’ll sing songs, and we’ll find a way out somehow.
I have only told part of Narayan Singh’s song, that he trolled that morning in a rather nasal baritone,
