Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/412

404 subtilty and powers of disguising himself are something akin to magic. We are told, as to the relations between master and man, that:

Sir Edward and Nizam were so accustomed to live together and think together, that they could have dispensed with the aid of language in communicating their ideas to each other. They had raised themselves by efforts of marvellous perspicacity to the height of intelligence of the great Indian quadrupeds! which in moments of danger act with an admirable concert without requiring the letters of the alphabet. Even signs, the language of the dumb, were suppressed between them.

Of course Nizam, or Tauly, as he is called, is the good genius of the tale. He is a constant spy on the Thugs, from whose machinations he eventually delivers his master and his allies. These Thugs are by no means the secret society of thieves who used to strangle unsuspicious travellers for their gold, and were under a vow to attack no European, because of the risk of discovery (a breach of which vow led to their detection), but an army of fanatics, headed by a chief called the “Vieux Sing,” and sworn to destroy the English invaders of their country. They always attacked the English at night (hence M. Mery styles them Fantômes de nuit). They strangled their foes with their arms and hands, as well as with the noose, and the combats which took place between them and the English were studiously concealed and kept secret—everybody being assured that there were no longer any Thugs, at the very time that nightly encounters were taking place between them and the Sepoys.

We will relate the first of these combats as a specimen of a most singular style of warfare unknown to our own Indian experience, translating (with occasional abbreviations) from M. Mery.

A ladder of rope was fastened to the balcony—[the English gentlemen are quartered in the house of an Indian nabob]—Douglas and Sir Edward descended with the promptitude and audacity of men accustomed to climb to the summits of palm trees or the masts of vessels. Everywhere the high grass deadened the sound of their footsteps After two hours of furious walking they stopped on the borders of a lake skirting a forest.

“The Star of Leby has not risen on Mount Lérich,” said he to Edward. “The Thugs are still in their caves. The Thugs march only by the light of that star.”

He glanced round the country, solemnly lighted by the great Indian constellations, and said:

“My orders have been executed; Captain Moss is yonder. This palm tree, partly stripped of its leaves, tells me so; the palms are our telegraphs. We choose always the most lofty.”

The old pagoda of Miessour exhibits its honours on the borders of this lake. It is a hill of ruins, the stones of which are veiled with moss, broom, and aloes; at intervals gigantic heads of Indian gods rise from the herbage preserving still beneath the stars the hideous stillness given them by the Mahratta architect of Aurengzebe  This awful spot is often enlivened by black tigers, who seek a pedestal of their own colour and extend themselves on it like a sphynx  In“In [sic] this war,” said the Colonel, in a whisper, “everything serves as a signal. The wild beasts even are our assistants. Your eyes are excellent, Edward; you have a cat-like perception of the mysteries of the night. Look earnestly at those ruins; what do you behold there?”

Sir Edward, with the nonchalance of his character, declares that he sees fine ruins in the style of a Japanese temple, and starts off into a disquisition on Oriental architecture, which would be signally out of place, if it did not prove how utterly indifferent the brave Englishman is to Thugs and tigers. Colonel Douglas interrupts him with very pardonable impatience, and directing his attention more closely to the ruins, he perceives a tiger, “making his evening toilette,” which, after admiring, Sir Edward proposes to shoot.

“Beware of doing so!” replied his friend. “That tiger is my spy.”

“Ah! that is fabulous.”

“Wait, and you will see.”

The tiger continued his toilette with a care of detail and a débonnaire composure which proved a conscience void of offence Suddenly he shuddered the whole length of his body, and sparks darted from his fur. The caressing paw with which he was smoothing his coat stopped suddenly over his right eye. His ears bent down to his temples; his open nostrils sniffed the breeze; a booming noise was heard, prolonged and dull like the sound of an organ, the keys of which are stirred by a storm at night. If the ruins had trembled under the sudden eruption of a volcano, the tiger could not have been more startled. He rose, bounded over the ruins, and disappeared in the wood.

“Let us advance now,” said the Colonel. “Captain Moss is arriving from the other side.”

“Let us advance,” said Edward.

A strange spectacle soon fixed the attention of Edward. All along the crevices of the ruins, the tops of the tall grass trembled, as if shaken by an invasion of reptiles,—an army of boas Several detachments of Sepoys were arriving in the ruins of the pagoda. At their head crawled Captain Moss, a young man of twenty-two, already grown old in this war, and who had twice escaped the noose of the Thugs by gliding through their hands like a slippery snake. From this moment words, whispers, even gestures were forbidden. Nevertheless the troup acted in concert wonderfully. Each soldier divined the order of his chief, or followed the sudden and infallible inspiration which fell from heaven upon the head of all.

This marvellous unity of thought impels the Sepoys to range themselves in two ranks on the earth on their faces, leaving a lane between their crouching forms, which are concealed by the high grass. At the rising of the star Leby—which was not, we confess, in our Indian astronomy—the Thugs issue from their caves, and advance towards the ruined pagoda, led by a fakir called Souniacy—a hideous savage, a skeleton in form, with waving black locks (the other Thugs are bald skeletons) and a long white beard—

Though the splendour of his eyes, the angular vigour of his temples, the convulsive agitation of his nostrils and the muscles of his throat, belied the colour of his beard, and betrayed the young man in his full strength.

His forehead and arms were painted with white bands, and he was altogether a most grotesque and unsightly devotee. He, alone, walked erect;

“thethe [sic] formidable pack of Thugs rolling along through the grass like reptiles led by a phantom.

As soon as the fakir “smells the breath of an