_I_ could tell tales about him in his first
years. There was very little he hid from _me_. I was his Umr Singh, and
when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him Son. Yes, that
was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on everything--about war, and
women, and money, and advancement, and such all.
We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many box-
wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city
of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the
Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and how big
guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in order; and how
a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest by the Boer-log.
The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes over the earth? There
was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo did not come into Hind in
a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness
has created the _dak_ (the post), and that for an anna or two all things
become known. We of Hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was
a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that
the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us
asked questions and waited for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of
those signs. _Wherefore, Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah_! This
Kurban Sahib knew, and we talked together.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88