Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads

There were twenty stone, as the tally-man knows,
On the broad of the chest of this best of Bohs.
And twenty stone from a height discharged
Are bad for a Boh with a spleen enlarged.

Oh, short was the struggle – severe was the shock —
He dropped like a bullock – he lay like a block;
And the Babu above him, convulsed with fear,
Heard the labouring life-breath hissed out in his ear.

And thus in a fashion undignified
The princely pest of the Chindwin died.

Turn now to Simoorie where, lapped in his ease,
The Captain is petting the Bride on his knees,
Where the whit of the bullet, the wounded man’s scream
Are mixed as the mist of some devilish dream —
Forgotten, forgotten the sweat of the shambles
Where the hill-daisy blooms and the gray monkey gambols,
From the sword-belt set free and released from the steel,
The Peace of the Lord is with Captain O’Neil.

Up the hill to Simoorie – most patient of drudges —
The bags on his shoulder, the mail-runner trudges.

“For Captain O’Neil, Sahib.  One hundred and ten
Rupees to collect on delivery.”

Then

(Their breakfast was stopped while the screw-jack and hammer
Tore waxcloth, split teak-wood, and chipped out the dammer;)

Open-eyed, open-mouthed, on the napery’s snow,
With a crash and a thud, rolled – the Head of the Boh!

And gummed to the scalp was a letter which ran: —
“IN FIELDING FORCE SERVICE.
“Encampment,
“ – th Jan.

“Dear Sir, – I have honour to send, as you said,
For final approval (see under) Boh’s Head;

“Was took by myself in most bloody affair.

“By High Education brought pressure to bear.

“Now violate Liberty, time being bad,
To mail V.P.P. (rupees hundred)  Please add

“Whatever Your Honour can pass.  Price of Blood
Much cheap at one hundred, and children want food;

“So trusting Your Honour will somewhat retain
True love and affection for Govt. Bullock Train,

“And show awful kindness to satisfy me,
I am,
Graceful Master,
Your
H. MUKERJI.”

As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake’s power,
As the smoker’s eye fills at the opium hour,
As a horse reaches up to the manger above,
As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love,
From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow,
The Captain bent down to the Head of the Boh.

And e’en as he looked on the Thing where It lay
‘Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins’ array,
The freed mind fled back to the long-ago days —
The hand-to-hand scuffle – the smoke and the blaze —
The forced march at night and the quick rush at dawn —
The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn —
The stench of the marshes – the raw, piercing smell
When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell —
The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood
Where the black crosses hung o’er the Kuttamow flood.

As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide
The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,

Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year,
When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.

As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water,
In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter,
And men who had fought with O’Neil for the life
Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife.

For she who had held him so long could not hold him —
Though a four-month Eternity should have controlled him —
But watched the twin Terror – the head turned to head —
The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red —
The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to
Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to.

But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing,