And Gallio, the Assistant Collector of the country side, 'cared for none
of these things.' He had been long in the district, and the Buria Kol
loved him and brought him offerings of speared fish, orchids from the
dim moist heart of the forests, and as much game as he could eat. In
return, he gave them quinine, and with Athon Daze, the High Priest,
controlled their simple policies.
'When you have been some years in the country,' said Gallio at the
Krenks' table, 'you grow to find one creed as good as another. I'll give
you all the assistance in my power, of course, but don't hurt my Buria
Kol. They are a good people and they trust me.'
'I will them the Word of the Lord teach,' said Justus, his round face
beaming with enthusiasm, 'and I will assuredly to their prejudices no
wrong hastily without thinking make. But, O my friend, this in the mind
impartiality-of-creed-judgment-be-looking is very bad.'
'Heigh-ho!' said Gallio, 'I have their bodies and the district to see
to, but you can try what you can do for their souls. Only don't behave
as your predecessor did, or I'm afraid that I can't guarantee your
life.'
'And that?' said Lotta sturdily, handing him a cup of tea.
'He went up to the Temple of Dungara--to be sure he was new to the
country--and began hammering old Dungara over the head with an umbrella;
so the Buria Kol turned out and hammered HIM rather savagely. I was in
the district, and he sent a runner to me with a note saying: “Persecuted
for the Lord's sake. Send wing of regiment.” The nearest troops were
about two hundred miles off, but I guessed what he had been doing. I
rode to Panth and talked to old Athon Daze like a father, telling
him that a man of his wisdom ought to have known that the Sahib had
sunstroke and was mad. You never saw a people more sorry in your life.
Athon Daze apologised, sent wood and milk and fowls and all sorts of
things; and I gave five rupees to the shrine and told Macnamara that
he had been injudicious. He said that I had bowed down in the House
of Rimmon; but if he had only just gone over the brow of the hill
and insulted Palin Deo, the idol of the Suria Kol, he would have been
impaled on a charred bamboo long before I could have done anything, and
then I should have had to have hanged some of the poor brutes. Be gentle
with them, Padri--but I don't think you'll do much.'
'Not I,' said Justus, 'but my Master. We will with the little children
begin. Many of them will be sick--that is so. After the children the
mothers; and then the men. But I would greatly that you were in internal
sympathies with us prefer.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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