The word of a scout-a march by night A rush through the mist-a scattering fight— A volley from cover-a corpse in the clearing- The flare of a village-the tally of slain And . the Boh was abroad "on the raid" again! They cursed their luck, as the Irish will, They buried their dead, they bolted their beef, Till, in place of the "Kalends of Greece," men said, "When Crook and his darlings come back with the head." They had hunted the Boh from the hills to the plain He doubled and broke for the hills again: They had crippled his power for rapine and raid, And at last, they came, when the Day Star tired, A black cross blistered the Morning-gold, The wind of the dawn went merrily past, The high grass bowed her plumes to the blast. And out of the grass, on a sudden, broke And Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone (Now a slug that is hammered from telegraph-wire Is a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire.) The shot-wound festered-as shot-wounds may In a steaming barrack at Mandalay. The left arm throbbed, and the Captain swore, "I'd like to be after the Boh once more!" The fever held him-the Captain said, The Hospital punkahs creaked and whirred, He thought of the cane-brake, green and dank, He thought of his wife and his High School son, He thought-but abandoned the thought-of a gun. His sleep was broken by visions dread Of a shining Boh with a silver head. He kept his counsel and went his way, And swindled the cartmen of half their pay. And the months went on, as the worst must do, And the Boh returned to the raid anew. But the Captain had quitted the long-drawn strife, And in far Simoorie had taken a wife. And she was a damsel of delicate mould, And little she knew the arms that embraced And little she knew that the loving lips And the eye that lit at her lightest breath (For these be matters a man would hide, As a general rule, from an innocent Bride.) And little the Captain thought of the past, But slow, in the sludge of the Kathun road, Speckless and spotless and shining with ghee, And ever a phantom before him fled Of a scowling Boh with a silver head. Then the lead-cart stuck, though the coolies slaved, And the cartmen flogged and the escort raved; And out of the jungle, with yells and squeals, Pranced Boh Da Thone, and his gang at his heels! Then belching blunderbuss answered back And the blithe revolver began to sing To the blade that twanged on the locking-ring, And the brown flesh blued where the bay'net kissed, As the steel shot back with a wrench and a twist, And the great white bullocks with onyx eyes And over the smoke of the fusillade Oh, gayest of scrimmages man may see The Babu shook at the horrible sight, But Fate had ordained that the Boh should start And out of that cart, with a bellow of woe, For years had Harendra served the State, There were twenty stone, as the tally-man knows, And twenty stone from a height discharged Oh, short was the struggle-severe was the shockHe 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, 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, |