Soldiers Three - Penn State University

ack to him and, with it, the old hatred against the Government
that had been nearly effaced in far-off Burma. So he
raged up and down the West face of the Fort from morning
till noon and from evening till the night, devising vain things
in his heart, and croaking war-songs when Lalun sang on
the City wall. As he grew more acquainted with the Subaltern
he unburdened his old heart of some of the passions
that had withered it. ‘Sahib,’ he used to say, tapping his stick
against the parapet, ‘when I was a young man I was one of
twenty thousand horsemen who came out of the City and
rode round the plain here. Sahib, I was the leader of a hundred,
then of a thousand, then of five thousand, and now!’—
he pointed to his two servants. ‘But from the beginning to
to-day I would cut the throats of all the Sahibs in the land if
I could. Hold me fast, Sahib, lest I get away and return to
those who would follow me. I forgot them when I was in
Burma, but now that I am in my own country again, I remember
everything.’
‘Do you remember that you have given me your Honour
not to make your tendance a hard matter?’ said the Subaltern.
Rudyard Kipling
239
‘Yes, to you, only to you, Sahib,’ said Khem Singh. ‘To
you because you are of a pleasant countenance. If my turn
comes again, Sahib, I will not hang you nor cut your throat.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Subaltern gravely, as he looked along
the line of guns that could pound the City to powder in half
an hour. ‘Let us go into our own quarters, Khem Singh. Come
and talk with me after dinner.’
Khem Singh would sit on his own cushion at the Subaltern’s
feet, drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps,
and telling strange stories of Fort Amara, which had been a
palace in the old days, of Begums and Ranees tortured to
death—aye, in the very vaulted chamber that now served as
a Mess-room; would tell stories of Sobraon that made the
Subaltern’s cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of
the Kuka rising from which so much was expected and the
foreknowledge of which was shared by a hundred thousand
souls. But he never told tales of ’57 because, as he said, he
was the Subaltern’s guest, and ’57 is a year that no man,
Black or White, cares to speak of. Once only, when the anise-seed
brandy had slightly affected his head, he said: ‘Sahib,
speaking now of a matter which lay between Sobraon and