Driftwood Spars | Page 3

not
darkly brown.
[3] Baby.
"So my father began to make journeys to Kot Ghazi to visit the woman
his first wife, and the boy his first-born. And she, who loved him much,
and whom he loved, prevailed upon him to name my brother after her
father as well as after himself, the child's father (as is our custom) and
so my brother was rightly called Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim
Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan."
"And what part of that is the name of his mother's father?" I asked, for
the Subedar-Major's rapid utterance of the name conveyed nothing of

familiar English or Scottish names to my mind.
"Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan," replied Mir Daoud Khan; "that was her
father's name, Sahib."
"Say it again, slowly."
"Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan."
"I have it! Yes, but what?--John Robin Ross-Ellison? Good God! But I
knew a John Robin Ross-Ellison when I was a Captain. He was
Colonel of the Corps of which I was Adjutant, in fact--the Gungapur
Volunteer Rifles.... By Jove! That explains a lot. John Robin
Ross-Ellison!"
I was too incredulous to be astounded. It could not be.
"Han[4] Sahib, bé shak![5] Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim Dost
Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan was his name. And his mother
called him Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan and his father, Mir Hafiz Ullah
Khan, called him Ilderim Dost Mahommed."
[4] Yes. [5] Without doubt.
"H'm! A Scotch Pathan, brought up by an Australian girl in India,
would be a rare bird--and of rare possibilities naturally," I murmured,
while my mind worked quickly backward.
"My brother was unlike us in some things, Sahib. He was fond of the
sharab called 'Whisky' and of dogs; he drank smoke from the cheroot
after the fashion of the Sahib-log and not from the hookah nor the
bidi;[6] he wore boots; he struck with the clenched fist when angered;
and never did he squat down upon his heels nor sit cross-legged upon
the ground. Yet he was true Pathan in many ways during his life, and
he died as a Pathan should, concerning his honour (and a woman).
Yea--and in his last fight, ere he was hanged, he killed more men with
his long Khyber knife, single-handed against a mob, than ever did lone
man before with cold steel in fair fight."

[6] Native cigarette.
Then it was so. And the Subedar-Major was John Robin Ross-Ellison's
brother!
"He may have been foolishly kind to women, servants and dogs, and of
a foolish type of honour that taketh not every possible advantage of the
foe--but he was very brave, Huzoor, a strong enemy, and when he
began he made an end, and if that same honour were affronted he killed
his man. And yet he did not kill Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper, who
surely earned his death twice, and who tried to kill him in a manner
most terrible to think of. No, he did not--but it shall be told.... And the
white woman prevailed upon our father to make her man-child a Sahib
and to let him go to the maktab[7] and madressah-tul-Islam[8] at Kot
Ghazi, to learn the clerkly lore that gives no grip to the hand on the
sword-hilt and lance-shaft nor to the thighs in the saddle, no skill to the
fingers on the reins, no length of sight to the eye, no steadiness to the
rifle and the lance, no understanding of the world and men and things.
But our father corrected all this, that the learning might do him no harm,
for oft-times he brought him to Mekran Kot (where my mother tried to
poison him), and he took him across the Black Water and to Kabul and
Calcutta and showed him the world. Also he taught him all he knew of
the horse, the rifle, the sword, and the lance--which was no small
matter. Thus, much of the time wasted at school was harmless, and
what the boy lost through the folly of his mother was redeemed by the
wisdom of his father. Truly are our mothers our best friends and worst
enemies. Why, when I was but a child my mother gave me money and
bade me go prove--but I digress. Well, thus my brother grew up not
ignorant of the things a man should know if he is to be a man and not a
babu, but the woman, his mother, wept sore whenever he was taken
from her, and gave my father trouble and annoyance as women ever do.
And when, at last, she begged that the boy might enter the service of
the Sirkar as a wielder of the pen in an office in Kot Ghazi, and strive
to become a leading munshi[9] and then a Deputy-Saheb, a babu in
very fact, my father was wroth, and said the boy would