Then a pile of heads be laid--
Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
Where the Oxus ripples by.
Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
Where the Oxus ripples by.
Kipling - Poems
Here is her score as it was
picked off:--
Gold. Red. Blue. Black. White. Total Hits. Total Score Miss Beighton
1 1 0 0 5 7 21
Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven into
his legs instead of the target's, and the deep stillness was broken by
a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of
triumph: "Then I'VE won! "
Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence of
the people. No training could help her through such a disappointment.
Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place,
while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed snapping
the bracelet on the snubby girl's raw, red wrist. It was an awkward
scene--most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty
to the mercy of her Mamma.
But Cubbon took her away instead, and--the rest isn't worth printing.
HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.
Then a pile of heads be laid--
Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
Where the Oxus ripples by.
Grimly spake Atulla Khan:--
"Love hath made this thing a Man. "
--Oatta's Story.
If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past
Trades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your
respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line where the last
drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would be
easier to talk to a new-made Duchess on the spur of the moment than
to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or
hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in
their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish
pride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes the Black
in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and
strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this
people--understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the
man who imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and
then we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime,
any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or
inference.
Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children
who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.
The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It
never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own
affairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important
things in the world to Miss Vezzis.
Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as
black as a boot, and to our standard of taste, hideously ugly.
She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and when she lost her
temper with the children, she abused them in the language of the
Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese, and part Native.
She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she preferred being
called "Miss Vezzis.
picked off:--
Gold. Red. Blue. Black. White. Total Hits. Total Score Miss Beighton
1 1 0 0 5 7 21
Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven into
his legs instead of the target's, and the deep stillness was broken by
a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of
triumph: "Then I'VE won! "
Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence of
the people. No training could help her through such a disappointment.
Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place,
while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed snapping
the bracelet on the snubby girl's raw, red wrist. It was an awkward
scene--most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty
to the mercy of her Mamma.
But Cubbon took her away instead, and--the rest isn't worth printing.
HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.
Then a pile of heads be laid--
Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
Where the Oxus ripples by.
Grimly spake Atulla Khan:--
"Love hath made this thing a Man. "
--Oatta's Story.
If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past
Trades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your
respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line where the last
drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would be
easier to talk to a new-made Duchess on the spur of the moment than
to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or
hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in
their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish
pride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes the Black
in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and
strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this
people--understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the
man who imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and
then we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime,
any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or
inference.
Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children
who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.
The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It
never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own
affairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important
things in the world to Miss Vezzis.
Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as
black as a boot, and to our standard of taste, hideously ugly.
She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and when she lost her
temper with the children, she abused them in the language of the
Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese, and part Native.
She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she preferred being
called "Miss Vezzis.
