It may be that I shall find Daoud Shah in this city going northward,
since a Hillman will ever head back to his Hills when the spring warns.
And shall he see those hills of our country? Surely I shall overtake
him! Surely my vengeance is safe! Surely God hath him in the hollow of
His hand against my claiming. There shall no harm befall Daoud Shah till
I come; for I would fain kill him quick and whole with the life sticking
firm in his body. A pomegranate is sweetest when the cloves break away
unwilling from the rind. Let it be in the daytime, that I may see his
face, and my delight may be crowned.
And when I have accomplished the matter and my Honour is made clean, I
shall return thanks unto God, the Holder of the Scale of the Law, and I
shall sleep. From the night, through the day, and into the night again I
shall sleep; and no dream shall trouble me.
And now, O my brother, the tale is all told. AHI! AHI! ALGHIAS! AHI!
THE JUDGMENT OF DUNGARA
See the pale martyr with his shirt on fire.--_PRINTER'S ERROR._
THEY tell the tale even now among the groves of the Berbulda Hill, and
for corroboration point to the roofless and windowless Mission-house.
The great God Dungara, the God of Things as They Are, Most Terrible,
One-eyed, Bearing the Red Elephant Tusk, did it all; and he who refuses
to believe in Dungara will assuredly be smitten by the Madness of
Yat--the madness that fell upon the sons and the daughters of the Buria
Kol when they turned aside from Dungara and put on clothes. So says
Athon Daze*, who is High Priest of the shrine and Warden of the Red
Elephant Tusk. But if you ask the Assistant Collector and Agent in
Charge of the Buria Kol, he will laugh--not because he bears any malice
against missions, but because he himself saw the vengeance of Dungara
executed upon the spiritual children of the Reverend Justus Krenk,
Pastor of the Tubingen Mission, and upon Lotta, his virtuous wife.
[*Transcriber's Note: The “e” in Athon Daze has an acute accent.]
Yet if ever a man merited good treatment of the Gods it was the Reverend
Justus, one time of Heidelberg, who, on the faith of a call, went into
the wilderness and took the blonde, blue-eyed Lotta with him. 'We will
these Heathen now by idolatrous practices so darkened better make,' said
Justus in the early days of his career. 'Yes,' he added with conviction,
'they shall be good and shall with their hands to work learn. For all
good Christians must work.' And upon a stipend more modest even than
that of an English lay-reader, Justus Krenk kept house beyond Kamala and
the gorge of Malair, beyond the Berbulda River close to the foot of the
blue hill of Panth on whose summit stands the Temple of Dungara--in the
heart of the country of the Buria Kol--the naked, good-tempered, timid,
shameless, lazy Buria Kol.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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