Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/477

McClure's Magazine.

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THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS.

By Rudyard Kipling,

Author of "The Jungle Book," "The Seven Seas," "Captains Courageous," etc.

SOME people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread in all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of saying that certain families serve Indiageneration after generation as dolphins follow in line across the open sea.

To take a small and obscure case. There has always been at least one representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn, his younger brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to 1S13, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834, one John Chinn of the same family—we will call him John Chinn the First—came to light as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a place called Mundesur. He died young, but he left his mark on the new country, and the Honorable the Board of Directors of the Honorable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a stately resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among the Satpura hills.

He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of little, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his father. His son, John, was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, rocky, tigerish country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years before he retired. In the Canal his steamer passed the outward bound troopship, carrying his son eastward to take on the family routine.

The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what they must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad to see him; a dull Chinn enters the Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner or later he, too, appears in Central India, and that is what gave rise to the saying, "Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much alike." The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn tradition. His duty was to abide in his father's regiment for the term of his natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish, clothed in rifle green with black leather trimmings; and friends called them the "Wuddars," which means a race of low-caste people who dig up rats to eat; but the Wuddars did not resent it. They were the only Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:

Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment; secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the rule, but walked at the head of their men. A man who can hold his own with the Wuddars at their quick-step must be sound in wind and limb. Thirdly, they were the most pukka shikarries (out and out

Copyright, 1897, by the S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved.