The Hepta7'chy of the Cats. 33 



charge of the cattle. It then becomes, as a " man-eater," a 

 criminal against humanity — and death cannot overtake it 

 too soon. 



But it is only those who know the Hindoos thoroughly 

 who can credit their amazing apathy, even when in immi- 

 nent danger. So long as it is not actually visible they 

 refuse to take precaution against peril, and I remember 

 during the Afghan War ha\ing to thrash some lazy camp- 

 followers in order to arouse them to a proper sense of the 

 necessity of saving their own lives. They had squatted down 

 to smoke by the roadside in the Khyber Pass, though they 

 knew the enemy was lurking both in the rocks above them, 

 and in the grass-jungle behind them, and though they had 

 with their own eyes seen the corpses of camp-followers lying 

 where they had been murdered — when, like themselves, they 

 had sate down contrary to orders to smoke. In the very 

 same way, the herdsman comes loafing home in the twilight, 

 shouting out a song at the top of his voice as he goes (to 

 let the beast know that he is coming probably), and sud- 

 denly the tiger flashes out of the sugar-canes, and there is 

 an end of that herdsman. But the next man will probably 

 do the very same thing. He will take another road of 

 course on his way home, but he will lag behind his cattle 

 and sing to himself in the same ridiculous way, and out from 

 under the bair-tree springs the same old tiger. 



Indeed, it is one of the problems of Indian administra- 

 tion how to keep the natives from suicide. They prefer to 

 have half the village down with small-pox and then to carry 

 a dead chicken round the stricken hamlet on the end of a 

 pole, than to be vaccinated. They prefer to lose a pro- 

 digious number of their acquaintances by drowning rather 

 than protect their open wells. They prefer to have tens of 

 thousands of men and women bitten by snakes in the toes 

 and thumbs, and die therefrom, than to let enough light into 

 a hut to see the difference between a f::iggot and cobra. 



c 



