hardly adapted to statistics, and many a time he had to find new forms of politeness in which to regret his inability to supply the rubbish demanded of him, what time he raged inwardly.

The next fit was a passion for ethnology. The Political knew all about his people, but was no word-monger to draw verbal pictures of them; and, when asked to search his files for past reports, could find nothing but one scrawl from an officer whom he had once sent on a distant reconnaissance among an unknown section of

His informant reported, sans phrases, that "the country is

and so are the people."

As a study in hæmatics it might have been of use, but as an ethnological report it was frankly valueless. So, once more, Pardon-Howe had the honour to regret, &c., and, to his surprise, the correspondence came to an abrupt stop. For weeks, great soggy chunks of silence filled the incoming dâk-bag. Pardon-Howe wiped his brow, grabbed wood, and told himself that all was well.

Was it? No fear.

The Doomworm sat on a camp-stool in the verandah of the mess hut, and burbled away to himself like a pensive kettle, communing in a querulous undertone with the circumambient moist world. The stockade was wrapped in a dense mist, as usual. Everything was wet, and the moist baccy in his pipe tasted sour. Macmillan was writing home letters. There was nothing doing.

The look-out sentry in the raised crow's - nest over the main gate whumped twice, briskly, on his hand-gong. The Doomworm brightened at once. "Who's coming?" For answer, two soaked but cheerful riflemen were let in through the gate; a search inside a hat, and an oiled silk wrapper was produced and handed. D. retired under shelter and read

the message-a courteous suggestion from Pardon-Howe that his presence was wanted at Base headquarters, and would he mind rolling up the marches into two days? Mind? Not he. It took half an hour to have a meal, load up the everready trek-kit, and tell Macmillan to carry on for a while.

The evening of the next day found him slopping up the steps of the well-known guestroom at the back of the Political's bungalow; whence, dryclothed, he strolled into the verandah, and was met by the wide grin of the Burra Sahib, who looked up from a sheaf of papers, lifted a simultaneous eyebrow and thumb in query, and was answered by a smile and a shake of the head. The unversed might have gathered the offer of a

he would not have gathered from these two economical conversationalists was that PardonHowe was glad to see old Dooms again, and that the Doomworm found the sight of the cherished bald head more attractive than beer, as it bent once more to its work.

Presently Pardon-Howe swivelled round in his chair, reached for pipe and baccy, and became articulate. "Dooms," said he, "listen, and be patient while I tell you. I brought you down here because I'm in a bit of a fix. I'll tell it you all, and then we needn't comment on it, but just do as we're told. After all, temporary or permanent, the Chief's the Chief, and we'll leave it at that. You'll understand. Now, you remember our old man Pascoe went home on leave, and the present man unstuck himself from the fleshpots and acquired our frontier? Well, it seems he is rather interested in the new toy. He has been writing me letters, in sentences as long and shiny as a torchlight procession, and the file is, in all senses of the word, a bit thick. Imprimis, he disapproves of our unconventional ways of doing things. He thinks the junglis backward, and in need of improvement. And, finally, he is up against the fact that our geology, geography, and, above all, ethnology, have never been reduced to classroom lecture form. So-and I gather this from Billy the Scribe-he has dug out an acquaintance

clever stuff on the origin of highly classical Buddhist remains in Ceylon and the Madras side, and who may therefore be considered the right person to investigate the history of monkey-folk like ours, and is sending him up. We are to give him every facility when he arrives, and he is to be allowed to roam the country as he wishes; and gams and others are to flock to him and sit at his feet and speak him fair and give him polysyllabic information about their manners and customs, and what they can remember of the peculiar and personal private habits of their ancestors. Our gams! Yes, you may stare. Never mind; we've got to do it.

When will the new man be coming? Dunno. Anyhow, we'll play up to it all; and I sent for you to ask if you'd put him up at Labêk and prevent him doing anything rash. Also, the junglis must give him what information you can devise, and at the same time mustn't be allowed to think we've got a mad sahib, or panic, or do anything sudden or final. Understand? Think you can manage? It won't be for long, I hope. Anyhow, we've got to see it through. But the essential is that the jungli isn't to panic. You don't trust 'em? No; no more do I. But we've had worse jobs than this. . . .'

Pardon-Howe's clear unhurried articulation rolled and boomed about in the great airpassages behind his bony face,

Squawk! from under the verandah, and sker-WAWK! followed by a rattling of heavy wings and a crow like a cornet solo. What have you got there? "Oh Lor', I suppose you've got to know about that too. Come and see," and they passed under the raised chang which supported the bungalow to where a massive crate lay among the empty packing-cases and litter. In the crate were four immense fowls, russet, very tall and heavy of body, and muscular. They apparently weighed fifteen pounds apiece. And, while the two watched, one of them reached out and dealt the crate a resounding hatchet blow with his beak, raised his great head and neck through the top, and once more let out a deafening crow.

"Where did you get them?" "He sent them; calls them Rhode Island Reds; thinks our jungle fowls want improving, and I'm to hand these out to the villages to improve the stock, and I'm to report on the result. Our puir wee jungli hens! ... And look here, too," and he led the way on to another slightly smaller crate; "did you ever see anything like it?' This crate contained

as if they had stood too long tail-to-wind. All their feathers grew the wrong way, pointing forwards instead of backwards, and fluffed out into a kind of untidy fur. You never saw anything so grotesque. "Yes, they're real; special breed, he says: Frizzles, or some name like that. Says that if they cross with the local breed, the result will be unmistakable. I shouldn't wonder! But I'm blessed if I'll issue these; the junglis would panic straight away.

Talk about the evil eye. . . . There were some fantailed pigeons and a brindled bull-terrier on the invoice, too, but the boatmen say they were never handed over. Lost them overboard, likely as not.

"Well, you see how it is; we're in for a cycle of improvement on scientific lines. And it's up to you and me and the rest of us to see it through, strictly and accurately. You can trust your lads, I know. Well, just tell 'em we're all in the same boat. You needn't tell 'em I'm worried about it. And you'll make it easy for the junglis, won't you? Right. Let's eat."

The Doomworm strode back to his stockade next day. He neither groused nor grumbled; but a subdued glint of battle shone in his eye, as always when something difficult and ominous portended. A mile behind his long strides, his kit and his orderly toiled along. From the tail of the small procession, where swung a crate between

ated noises of the clarionet, cockatoo noises, noises like chopping wood, and occasionally an ear-splitting crow....

66

A sahib

A week later, Crooke and Macmillan returned to the stockade from a visit to neighbours. They were met at the gate by the old Subadar. “A "A sahib has come.' Wha's that, Subadar Sahib ? " has come. He is a strange sahib, talking only Angrézi, and brings a Madrassi servant, very sick, who will answer no questions. The sahib is in the Mess-kôt." They exchanged glances fraught with weighty understanding. Subadar Sahib, this was foreseen. I will attend to it." And to Macmillan, "He's arrived. Never mind. Pull up your socks. Here beginneth the first lesson," and he strode in under the gateway.

nothing was to be lacking in the induction of Athene to the land of Boeotia.

Crooke and Macmillan, wise in their all-weather knowledge of men, took the whole thing with a grave courtesy. For all their grimy and unbuttoned daily existence, and this utterly unusual responsibility which had been thrown upon them, they rose to the occasion. The meeting might have been that of diplomats on a Persian carpet, with a ramrod-backed footman standing by the door, instead of three soaked and sodden officers forgathering in the dingiest and most recently mapped corner of the Indian Empire. Besides, the man was obviously clean-bred, a fact not even obscured by the unnecessarily polysyllabic phrases in which he explained his arrival ; and to one, at least, of them he was a fellow-countryman. Also, he looked damned tired, poor chap. Wonder when he last had a meal?

Crooke, in chosen phrases and a punctilious hospitality, began to inquire as to his creature comforts. In five minutes all pretence and any pretentiousness broke down. The grand seigneur manner thawed under the pressure of admitting that he had come lamentably ill-equipped for jungle travel; that his Madrassi bearer was worse than useless; that he had marched too far and too fast; had lain awake all the previous night with a bad dose of fever and no quinine; and

at him.

I

"Look here, old thing. don't want to be rude and all that; but we've been talking like Boston schoolmarms while you ought to have been in bed. Come along."

He took him firmly by the upper arm and led him gently down the verandah to the sleeping quarters. Here he literally stripped him, put him in a warm bath, and examined him all over for leeches, Grant submitting with gradually weakening protests. Thereafter, clean pyjamas lent for the occasion, a comprehensive wrap in a woolly blanket (the poor devil was shivering and be

Here or hereabouts let us take leave to digress, and see the scope of the Problem-the muddy pool which the stick of Inquiry was to stir, and the results to be hoped from the stirring.

grains of quinine, both watched to destination, and, "Now then, don't you bother about anything else; we'll look after you," as the shaking hand passed out the empty basin and he whispered a half-finished thanks into the pillow.

"Sacr-r-ré aristo! Be blowed to his magniloquence! What he wants is a nurse. Rotten shame to send a chap like that to a country like this.'

The junglis, as found in the part of the world with which we deal, are those who fell by the way when the big Tibetan Drift, countless unrecorded ages ago, oozed southward, the outermost waves of the drift reaching Borneo by way of Assam, Burma, and Siam. Their ancestors must, even then, have carried in them the seeds of a

VOL. CCXXIII.-NO. MCCCXLVII.

He slept a straight fourteen hours, and woke to further ministrations. Thereafter rose, and, a day later, he began a chapter in our history, the end of which none of us could possibly have foreseen.

laziness apparent to this day, and have failed to keep the virile impulses of the Main Drift, thereafter getting bogged in the dense jungles and adapting themselves to submersion by their surroundings. The laziness must have been moral rather than physical, in that it produced that most unvirile state of affairs-a thoroughgoing democracy in which all discipline and leadership were lost and the habit of massed chinwag was allowed to harden into an institution. The entire vocabulary consists of some three hundred words, wherein,

A 2