Supping With Panthers Read Free

goes by the name of John Eliot. He’s been working amongst the tribesmen up there for a couple of years now – setting up a hospital, that sort of thing. Won’t usually have anything to do with the colonial authorities – bit of a maverick, don’t you know? – but in this case he’s aware of your mission, Captain, and he’s game to help you if he can. Might be worth your while picking his brains. Got a lot of local knowledge. Speaks the lingo like a native, I’m told.’
    I nodded, and made a jotting on the cover of the file. Then I rose, for I could see that my briefing was at an end. Before I left, though, Colonel Rawlinson shook my hand. ‘Good God, Moorfield,’ he said, ‘but duty is a stem thing.’
    I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I shall try to do my best, sir,’ I replied. But even as I said this I was remembering the agent who had shot himself, the unknown terror which had led him to crack, and I wondered if my best would prove to be enough.
    Such forebodings only made me the keener to set out, of course, for no one cares to sit around and frowst when there’s a bad business up ahead. Pumper Paxton, as an old hand himself, must have known how I was feeling, for he did me the great kindness of inviting me over to his bungalow that night, where we downed the old chota peg and yarned about old times. His wife was with him too, and his boy, young Timothy, a splendid chap who soon had me marching for him up and down the house. He was as promising a drill master as I had ever come across! We had a rare old time of it, for I had always been a favourite of young master Timothy’s, and I was not a little bucked that he still remembered me. When the time came for him to retire to bed, I sat reading him yams from some adventure book and I thought, watching him, how one day Timothy would do his father proud.
    ‘That’s a fine boy you have,’ I told Pumper afterwards. ‘He reminds me of why I wear this uniform.’
    Pumper pressed my arm. ‘Nonsense, old man,’ he said, ‘you have never needed reminding of that’
    I retired to bed in good spirits that night When I woke up next morning at the crack of dawn, it was as though my dark imaginings had never been. I was ready for the fray.
    We journeyed from Simla along the great mountain road. My soldiers, as Colonel Rawlinson had promised they would be, were good men, and we made rapid speed. For almost a month, as we travelled, I could well believe what has often been claimed – that there is nowhere more lovely in all the world, for the air was fresh, the vegetation glorious, and the Himalayas above us seemed to reach up to the sky. I remembered that these mountains were worshipped by the Hindoos as the home of the gods – passing below the stupendous peaks, I could well see why, for they seemed charged with a sense of great mystery and power.
    At length, though, the scenery began to change. As we drew nearer to Kalikshutra it grew harsher and steadily more desolate, yet at the same time it was none the less sublime, so that the bleakness of the landscape served only to fill my thoughts. One evening, quite late, we reached the junction with the Kalikshutra road. A village straggled away from it, mean and poor, but still with the promise of human life, something we had not met with now for almost a week. When we entered the village, however, we found it deserted, and not even a dog was there to welcome us. My men were reluctant to bivouac there – said it gave them a bad feeling – and your soldier’s second-sense is often pretty good. I too was keen to press on to our goal and so that same evening, though the sun had almost set, we began our march up the Kalikshutra road. Around the first steep comer, we passed a statue painted black. The stone had been worn away and had scarcely any features at all, but I could recognise the trace of skulls around the neck and knew whose image the statue represented. Flowers had been laid at the goddess’s feet.
    The