Chapter XII: The Hadji

'The world is a small place, after all!' thought Colville, as he left the Colonel's bungalow behind him. 'Think of hearing here that anecdote of dear Mary's father from that old subadar! Well, well, "life," as some one says, "is a perpetual enigma, to which no theological system offers a satisfactory solution--against the reefs of which all philosophies break into foam and empty bubbles." But here are more than bubbles, by Jove! Now what is all this deuced row about?' he added, drawing his sword, on seeing before him the authors of the noise he had heard, engaged still in a wild and fierce _mêlée_.

This was in a sequestered part of the town, and near some of the ruins of houses shaken down by the earthquakes some forty years ago. One man was contending single-handed against no less than five, and in the clear starlight Colville could see the flash of their gleaming eyes, their set teeth, their dark and infuriated faces. The man assaulted wore an Afghan costume, a cloak, a kind of blouse with loose sleeves, and on his head a _loonjee_. The others had flowing garments and large turbans, and were armed with heavily-loaded clubs, against which the stranger was defending himself with no small dexterity with only a pilgrim's staff; for, by his wallet, gourd, and beads, he was evidently a hadji, who had become involved in a quarrel with some Wahabis, who, it seemed afterwards, had been mocking him for praying at the tomb of a Santon, and told him he should call on God, and on no imaginary saint, on which, he had proceeded at once to lay about him with his pilgrim's staff.

'To call a man a Wahabi,' says Sterndale, 'is, to nine-tenths of Englishmen in India, to call him a fanatic, a rebel, a sort of Mahometan fenian, one whom the police should take under special surveillance, and whose every action is open to suspicion.'

Like the English Puritans, they--in addition to deriding the intercession of saints--despoiled the mosques of their lamps and decorations, broke down all shrines, prohibited music and dancing, and smoking was denounced as a mortal sin; and now those whom Colville found himself opposed to would undoubtedly--but for his sword and revolver--have made short work of it with the unfortunate hadji.

He drove them back a few paces, and the hadji, while panting for breath, and streaming with blood from more than one contused wound, continued to revile them bitterly.

'Wahabis--accursed Wahabis!' he exclaimed, 'dare they speak to me? I am a Soonee, not a dog! I am not a Shiah, the follower of Ali, but an orthodox Soonee, like my forefathers, blessed be God and His Prophet! Wretches,' he added, with all the ferocious rancour of religion and race, 'your souls will yet defile hell!'

'Begone, and leave the man to go on his way,' said Colville, authoritatively, as he waved his sword, for he knew enough of Arabic and Hindostanee to understand what was said and the nature of the brawl.

'Dogs!' resumed the irate hadji, encouraged by his presence and succour; 'know ye not that the time is coming when the Wahabis shall be judged according to their deserts, and each in passing a dead man's grave shall say, "Would to God that I lay there!"'

'Dog of a Soonee, when will that time come to pass?' asked one, jeeringly.

'When the sun rises in the west,' shrieked the hadji, frantic with rage; 'when the beast shall rise out of the earth near Mecca; when a smoke shall cover the earth, and the Mahdi shall come to everyone and fill the earth with righteousness.'

And much more to this effect did he vow with singular force and fluency, for the hadji was an Afghan, and, so far as regards the external forms of their religion, the Afghans are wonderfully devout, and so much of their conversation, whatever the subject, is so tinged with their religion and the Koran that one would imagine the whole people, from the Ameer to the humblest camel-driver, were engaged in holy reflections, and scarcely is a sentence uttered by them without some reference to the Deity.

One of the Wahabis now seemed to lose what little remains of sense or temper he had left, and, uttering a savage yell, swung aloft his ponderous _lohbunda_ or staff, which was heavily shod with iron--a weapon one well-directed stroke from which would have spattered the brains of the hadji on the street--but Colville, quick as lightning, warded off the blow with his sword, in the process of which his right arm tingled to the shoulder; and as at that moment the tramp of a patrol from an inlying picquet was heard approaching, the brawlers took to flight, and Colville was left face to face with the man whose life he had saved.

'Sahib, I have to thank you gratefully for this prompt and courageous succour, but for which these dogs would no doubt have slain me,' said the pilgrim in English; 'as it is, they have handled me so roughly that I am barely able to stand.'

'You speak English very fluently,' said Colville, with genuine surprise. 'How is this?'

'My uncle was a _muhafez dufter_, or keeper of the records, in the office of the district magistrate, near Peshawur, who educated me to work in his office; but at his death I went back to the hills and became an Afghan soldier under Shere Ali.'

'And now----'

'I am a poor harmless hadji, Mahommed Shah, seeking but to save his soul,' said he, lowering his keen and glittering eyes, as he looked steadily around him. 'In saving me you have done a good action, and what says the fourth chapter of the Koran? "Verily, God will not wrong anyone, even the weight of an ant, and, if it be a good action, He will double it, and recompense it in His sight with a great and just reward." But these thrice accursed Wahabis,' he added, grinding his teeth with rage, and making thereby a very unpleasant sound, 'may be swallowed up by the earth as the accuser of Moses was.'

Colville looked around him warily. In the dark, unlighted, and tortuous streets of the city this poor man might easily be overtaken and murdered by these fanatics, if they were--as Colville did not doubt--still lurking watchfully about, so he said,

'Come with me to the Balla Hissar; I am quartered there, and can keep you in safety for the night; besides, your wounds must be dressed, and in the morning I would advise your instantly quitting Jellalabad.'

'As-taffur-ullah! that will I, sahib; and by the five keys of knowledge, I will never forget your kindness.'

The citadel was close by. There Colville took his new acquaintance past the sentries to the rooms assigned as his quarters, quaint and lofty apartments with marble floors, and walls covered with beautiful arabesques, splendid but comfortless, and, summoning the soldier who acted as his servant, with lights, some wine and bandages, he desired him to bathe and bind up the wounds of the old Afghan wanderer, who was on the point of sinking, and would have done so, but for some water which he took, dashed with brandy, despite the precepts of the Koran.

'You have had a narrow escape!' said Colville, looking at some of his bruises.

'It is perhaps useless to bind these wounds.'

'Why?'

'Because if a man is to die he will die.'

'But if a man is ailing surely he may be cured?'

'Yes,' replied the hadji, 'through the Koran.'

'Koran again!' thought Colville. 'You mean by faith in it?'

'Yes; by writing therefrom some holy sentences on paper, and drinking the water wherein that paper has been washed clean.'

'You have heard, I suppose, that the Ameer has gone over to the Russians?' said Colville to change the subject.

'Yes, sahib,' replied the hadji, in whose eyes a strange light now appeared, 'but he is dying of mortal disease, and will never reach Tashkend.'

'Then Yakoub Khan will succeed.'

'Yes; the man who has already aspired to sit on a _musnud_ (throne) is little likely to content himself with a carpet, especially if supported by the bayonets of the _Ghora logue_. By the Prophet, no!' added the hadji, referring to what was well known--that Yakoub Khan had conspired against his father, who, in consequence, had kept him for years imprisoned in a dungeon without light.

The hadji seemed a genuine Afghan, and considerably past middle-age. He was tall, spare, and muscular, with aquiline--almost Jewish--features; high cheek bones, and strong, black, glittering eyes, with an intensity and keenness in their expression that reminded Colville of those of a mountain eagle. He was fairer complexioned than most of his people, among whom even red hair is sometimes met with; but his face had been cleft from temple to chin by a tulwar stroke in some past battle or brawl; and now the livid mark of that terrible slash could be seen distinctly as altering, and in some measure distorting, features that were naturally very regular.

After partaking of a little food of the plainest kind, he performed the ablutions enjoined by his faith, spread a white cloth over his kneeling-carpet, and, turning his face in the direction of Mecca, said his _salat al Moghreb_, or evening prayer, while Colville took himself off to the mess-room; and when he returned the hadji was lying on the verandah outside, fast asleep, and cosily muffled up in his dark-coloured choga, or camel-hair cloak.

In the morning he had left the Bala Hissar, and gone, none knew where, save that he had been seen going towards Cabul by the way of the Ali Musjid Pass.

It never occurred to Leslie Colville, in performing the acts of kindness he had done to this stranger, whether there might be peril or evil evolved from them in the future; or whether the man was--as he ultimately proved to be--a keen and observant spy, come to watch and note the strength, preparations, and object of Sir Samuel Browne's column; and, poor though the hadji looked, Colville's servant--a more than usually sharp example of Private Thomas Atkins--had found him in the early morning reckoning over a quantity of gold in his wallet, and one of these which he dropped was found to be of the last Russian mintage.