THE GORGE OF SHAME.

Otago Witness, Issue 2370, 3 August 1899, Page 55

THE GORGE OF SHAME.

j (From "On the Edge of the Empire.") ; In their manner of dealing with the wo- ' man question, the Waziris are old-fashioned. With them, above all peoples, chastity is the virtue of woman, courage of the man. There is no place among them for the wanton or the coward; and the expression of public opinion seems to be founded on some such maxim as "The dead sin no more." Ludlow, the doctor, Gordon, my subaltern, and myself- were sitting outside the little fort, smoking after one of the scrubby dinners of the country, and Bakshan Khan, who had been invited to share our cheroots, was smoking with us. Ludlow had spent a thirteen-hour day tramping after elusive Markhor, in the course of which he had climbed to 7000 ft above the sea level, and, tough as he was, was very tired. He showed no wish to tell us of his sport, which had been confined to fleeting glimpses of distant Markhor; but, somewhat wearily, he told us that he had come across the bones of a woman in the soft, sand under the lee of a boulder at the mouth of a very .ugly gorge; bones curiously shattered —skull, arms, legs, ribs, not a bone whole. And the sepoys who were acting as his shikarris had spat on the bones and covered them again, and would tell him nothing, only that the gorge was called " The Gorge of JShame." I looked at the Bakshan Khan. He blew a slow cloud of smoke from his mouth, and said, "Years ago" We pulled ourselves together to listen, for we always listened to Bakshan Khan; and he told us the story of Grierson. Years ago, when the post was first held by the English, there was a sahib in command named Grierson. Perhaps it was 15, perhaps 20, years ago, '" What is time to us who only know day and night, summer and winter?" He was a brave man, but reckless. He loved women too well. He also-drank and smoked very much, but was never a bit weaker for it. In those days the caravans passing down had to fight for it all the way along the Waziri border, and it was out in the broad bed of the Kuch, where the rivers meet, that they lay safest under the rifles of the little post, as it then was —only one-third as big as it is now, and not half as many men in it. Often the party at the post \ised to sally out to fire on raiders, and more often wounded traders used to drop in at the post to be healed of gunshot, sword, and spear wounds. The days were by no means dull. To a man of Grierson's nature a life of hard living, fighting, drinking, and no woman to cheer him was but fuel to fire. Grierson was not a sentimentalist. Many men who mean and do no wrong to women are not sentimentalists, and they do not usually make the worst of husbands. One day there had been a dash on a caravan at early dawn, and a pursuit. Grierson had succeeded in overtaking and shooting a Mahsud Waziri, who bore away a girl upon his camel, and she lay fainting from its fall, for it dropped dead, shot at the same time as its master. Grierson went to her aid and found her beautiful. He brought her back to the caravan, made terms, and was married to her by the Mohammedan law, and for the handsome pi ice of a thousand rupees in money and kind. It was a- difficult -matter to arrange, but iv those days, even more than now, might was. right, and who could say nay to a man who could slay as well as .protect? If it had pleased Grierson to have her abducted for him, the price Would have been less; and, suspicious as all savages are, the caravan of Zillah Khel Waziris saw that they stood .a good chance of a greater security if one of their women was the wife of one of their protectors. Besides, the girl svas of no consequence. She was an orphan, #nd the Malik had the legal right to dis-

pose of her. Her relations were few and poor. Four guns, 20 rounds of ammunition a gun, and a substantial sum in cash, to say nothing of the influence and security, was a good price for a "locherless lassie." So Grierson got his way and his wife. Now, she was his wife in English law, though he did not know it ; but, to do him justice, he mean honestly by her, and treated her Lindly and well. I At first a warm bath every morning would scarcely seem a change for the better to Mrs Grierson. Sand and fat in a cold river by chilly night, once or twice in the year, had been all she had hitherto known. Clean clothes, the iise of the fork and a decent table must have tried a poor little savage, used to eating the leavings of halfraw goats' flesh and slabs of dough, cooked on a camel's dung fire at nightfall, after the men had been gorged. But with a woman's adaptability she rose to the change, and even added something of grace to Grierson's surroundings. ! At last there came a day when the old | game of '" trailing the tail of my coat " was played by the Government of India. Officially, this is known as "testing the temper of the tribes " ; and it is done by sending parties, more or less armed, to "visit" various tribes in a friendly way. The "tribes" have the same objections to being called upon in a friendly way — with a gun in your j hand— that Englishmen have. They also | get alarmed, then they begin to shoot out j of funk, whereupon they are said to be "uncertain"; an expedition goes forth, and a little more red paint is added to the map tof our Indian Empire. It was during one of these episodes that Grierson's menage came to the notice of an official of the aus1 tere kind, and Grierson was sent off abruptly to a remote part of the interior ot Panjab. He took his wife with him, and found himself at once in troubled waters. He was harried and squeezed ; the English women urged on their men to make his life a burden to him; but he held out manfully till the charms of an English girl set ! waning his affections for his savage wife. < He made a trip up the frontier, and there gave her a writing of divorce, and handed j over to her tribe again. He gave her j ! also clothes, money, and jeweilry, and the j head man a rifle, and refused the return of | his purchase-money. Then he rode away, I leaving the forsaken woman sitting forlorn | on the sand and stones from which he had taken her two years oefore. He did not think he was acting unkindly. ; He had found her poor, and he had left her ! rich. No doubt, too, he felt a pang at . parting. But as soon as he was gone the j women of the tribe fell on her. She retaliated on them, scoffing at their dirt and savagely, and refused to do the old menial offices. She refused, too, to marry any one of the men, who would, have been quite content to take her for her wealth. Then 1 the men turned, too. The women began to ; teach them to regard her as a spy in the ! camp, and the inevitable Mullah quickly let ! it be known that she was a heretic from the j faith — whatever that was in their eyes. I As she was wealthy, her existence was a I shame, a danger, and a reproach. It was j not long before she was doomed an outcast, a defiled infidel, a rebellious woman. They came quickly to the point of passing sentence of death on her; and they came to it the quicker that the news was Brought to them that Grierson was married according to the English religion to one of his own race. What the poor tortured girl did or said in her rage is nob known, but it sealed her fate. It also cast the hatred of the entire tribe on Grierson. He had debauched one of their women, and for two years had cast shame on them. On a gloomy winter morning, between dark and dawn, they led her to the place of I execution in the Gorge of Shame. No women were near. They stripped her, and 1 left her standing naked in the midst of a • ring of cruel men, pitiless and heedless of her beauty. The Mullah worked himself and his hearers into a religious frenzy, and then, at the height of it, sprang on her with his keen, heavy sabre, and cut her through the spine. She reeled with a scream and fell on her hands' and knees. He struck her again, and she fell on her i side in a torrent of blood, with a strangling cry for mercy. A shower of big stones crashed on her, battering the shape out of hei body and piling a mound above her. Hardly had her dying groans ceased when sand and earth and pebbles completed the | tomb, and effectually wiped out every trace ' of her existence. j The men lounged slowly off to join the caravan, which was lurching and straggling away two or three miles ahead toward their native mountains. And her relations divided between them her property. But the atonement was not complete. It was needful that every trace of Grierson and his race should be wiped out. The blood of the murdered woman was on him, and the shame of the tribe. Year by year the traders passed through Hindustan, and sought always Grierson ; sought him for years ; sought him till his hair, which they had known black, was iron-grey ; sought him until many years later two men of the Zillah Khel passed a native regiment camping on the line of march, while moving in relief, and learned that Grierson was in command. They left their servants and comrades to journey on with their merchandise, and took to the jungle, following the regiment. Grierson was a keen sportsman, and they looked to seeing him alone some day out shooting. At last their chance came. Two days' march from the destined cantonment Mrs Grierson came out to meet her husband, and brought her three little boys i with her. She was to stay in camp that ( night, and go ahead into cantonment next j day, a double march. Grierson took his gun, and said he would go and shoot some | game for her ; and he went with only his orderly. All unseen and unsuspected, his two enemies dogged him, until some two hours later he came "to a duck-jheel, and sent his orderly round to a point a mile away to drive the duck towards him, where he crouched in mud and water behind a heap of weeds. As soon as he was alone the two men dashed for him. Grierson turned at the noise they made in splashing fchrouirh

the water. He recognised the dress of their tribe. "What do you want?" he shouted. " Vengeance !" they cried, and rushed at him with their knives drawn. For answer he fired both barrels at them. He knew what they meant, and in his flurry one man took both charges, and dropped dying. Grierson clubbed his gun. The second man took a- smashing blow on his left arm, but got home with his knife, and Grierson went down. The man dispatched him and fled, leaving gun and cartridges and his dead comrade. The orderly thought nothing of the shots, supposing it was something his master saw fit to fire at, and intent on obeying his orders. So the avenger got clear away and rejoined his friends after many days' privation and wandering in the jungle.