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www.it-ebooks.info
Learning Internet of Things

Explore and learn about Internet of Things with the

help of engaging and enlightening tutorials designed
for Raspberry Pi

Peter Waher

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

www.it-ebooks.info
Learning Internet of Things

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2015

Production reference: 1210115

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78355-353-2

www.packtpub.com

www.it-ebooks.info
 Credits

Author Project Coordinator

Peter Waher Neha Bhatnagar

Reviewers Proofreaders
Fiore Basile Ameesha Green
Dominique Guinard Amy Johnson
Phodal Huang
Joachim Lindborg Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Ilesh Patel

Graphics
Commissioning Editor
Sheetal Aute
Akram Hussain
Valentina D'silva

Acquisition Editors
Richard Brookes-Bland Production Coordinator
Manu Joseph
Richard Harvey

Cover Work
Content Development Editor
Manu Joseph
Anila Vincent

Technical Editor
Anushree Arun Tendulkar

Copy Editors
Gladson Monteiro
Jasmine Nadar

www.it-ebooks.info
 About the Author

Peter Waher is the cofounder of Clayster, a company with its origin in Scandinavia
but now operates in four continents. Clayster is dedicated to the development of
Internet of Things applications and provides an IoT platform for rapid application
development. Currently, Peter lives and works in Chile where he is the CEO of Clayster
Laboratorios Chile S.A., a subsidiary of Clayster that provides development expertise
to partner companies and promotes the Internet of Things technology to research
institutions. Originally a mathematician, commercial pilot, and computer games
developer, he has worked for 20 years with computers and device communication,
including low-level development in assembler for resource-constrained devices to
high-level system design and architecture. He's currently participating in various
standardization efforts within IEEE, UPnP, and XSF, working on designing standards
for Internet of Things. His work on smart applications for Internet of Things and the
development of the IP-TV application "Energy Saving through Smart Applications"
won the Urban Living Labs global showcase award in the Cultural and Societal
Participation and Collaboration Tools category. Peter Waher can be found on
LinkedIn at http://linkedin.com/in/peterwaher/.

I'd like to thank the founder of Clayster, Rikard Strid, and Packt
Publishing for the opportunity to write this book; Joachim Lindborg
for the many ideas and discussions related to Internet of Things;
Fernando Cruz and Freddy Jimenez for their invaluable help with
many practical details; my eldest daughter, Maria-Lorena, for
accepting to stand model and offer to break into my office at night;
and finally my wife and children for tolerating the many late hours
it took to write this book.

www.it-ebooks.info
 About the Reviewers

Fiore Basile is a programmer, system administrator, creative, entrepreneur and

maker. Since 1996, he has served as project manager, consultant, and technology officer
in industrial and research projects of many sizes across Italy and Europe. He worked
in the fields of cultural heritage, e-health, digital preservation, multimodal interfaces,
web and mobile publishing. During his career, he also founded two IT start-ups,
held workshops at international conferences and events, and has been interviewed
by national and international press. His work experience allowed him to build a
broad expertise in systems, web and mobile software development, open source and
open hardware, embedded programming, and electronics. He's currently conducting
research on wearable technologies, effective computing, and smart connected devices,
and he is working as the coordinator of FabLab Cascina, a digital fabrication laboratory
in the middle of Tuscany.

www.it-ebooks.info
Dominique "Dom" Guinard is the CTO and cofounder of EVRYTHNG, a Web
of Things and Internet of Things software company that makes products smart by
connecting them to the Web. Dom got his PhD from ETH Zurich where he worked
on defining the Web of Things architecture, a worldwide network of interconnected
objects (sensor networks, appliances, machines, and tagged objects). He also
cofounded WebofThings.org and the Web of Things conference series.

Before this, he worked on bringing industrial networks of RFID-tagged objects and

smart things to the Web at the MIT Auto-ID Labs and was a visiting researcher at
the MIT Mobile Experience Lab. He also worked for 4 years with SAP on designing
scalable software architectures and infrastructures to integrate real-world objects
with business systems. Dom was a researcher at the Auto-ID Labs, Zurich, where he
worked on using mobile phones as gateways to Internet of Things (IoT) for Nokia.
Before this, he worked on scalable IoT enterprise software architectures for RFID
and embedded devices in collaboration with Sun Microsystems.

He holds an MSc degree in computer science and a BSc in computer science and
management with a specialization in mobile and ubiquitous computing. In 2011,
Dominique was listed fifth among the world's top 100 IoT thinkers. Early in 2012,
his PhD research on the Web of Things was awarded the ETH Medal.

Phodal Huang has over 4 years of experience in hardware and web

development. He graduated from Xi'an University of Arts and Science.
He currently works at ThoughtWorks as a developer. He is the owner of
the mini IoT project (https://github.com/phodal/iot) and the author
of the eBook, Design IoT (http://designiot.phodal.com, in Chinese).
He loves designing, painting, writing, traveling, and hacking; you can find
out more about him on his personal website at http://www.phodal.com.

www.it-ebooks.info
Joachim Lindborg is a dedicated systems engineer with a long experience of
all the technologies that have been passed through the years, starting from Texas
Instrument TI-16 to deploying Docker components on Core-Os on a distributed
network of Intel NUC machines.

He is deeply into the exploding area of small devices. Electronics has always
been fascinating and Joachim started soldering electronics in seventh grade.
The Raspberry explosion with open hardware and software and MakerSpace
enthusiasm is a revival and reclaim from the big producers.

Joachim's current focus is to combine these different forms of knowledge of large

systems and hardware with meters and actuators to create smart energy services.

Starting in 1993, Joachim was part of the biggest telecom project in Ericsson.
The project aimed at creating the next century telecom platforms, ATM. TCP/IP
seems to be the winner. For his next big project, he was at the Swedish Utility for
several years, building smart home services, which was a pre-millennium shift as
they were using phone lines and modems. This is a dead technology now.

It was really in 2002, when Joachim was one of the founders of homesolutions.
se.loopiadns.com, that his system architect skills were used to create a distributed
Linux system. Today, this system has some 46,000 apartments that measure
electricity, water, and so on, and create advanced building automation.

In his current assignment as the CTO for sustainable innovation, there is a constant
need for IoT-distributed logic and advanced data analyses to gain energy efficiency
and a sustainable society.

He has also contributed to a Swedish IT architect book,

http://www.thearchitectbook.com/.

Ilesh Patel holds a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication and

a master's degree in VLSI and Embedded System Design. He has more than 3
years of experience as an embedded engineer. He has good debugging skills and
command over the high-level C/C++ language, the scripting language Python,
and the hardware language VHDL. He has knowledge and hands-on experience
on how to design and develop an automated test suite framework using Python,
Microcontroller, and an FPGA-based system design development.

I'd like to thank my friend Uchit Vyas for encouraging me to review

this book.

www.it-ebooks.info
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www.it-ebooks.info
 Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Preparing our IoT Projects 11
Creating the sensor project 12
Preparing Raspberry Pi 13
Clayster libraries 14
Hardware 15
Interacting with our hardware 16
Interfacing the hardware 17
Internal representation of sensor values 18
Persisting data 18
External representation of sensor values 19
Exporting sensor data 19
Creating the actuator project 22
Hardware 22
Interfacing the hardware 23
Creating a controller 24
Representing sensor values 25
Parsing sensor data 25
Calculating control states 26
Creating a camera 27
Hardware 27
Accessing the serial port on Raspberry Pi 29
Interfacing the hardware 29
Creating persistent default settings 30
Adding configurable properties 30
Persisting the settings 31
Working with the current settings 32

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Table of Contents

Initializing the camera 32

Summary 33
Chapter 2: The HTTP Protocol 35
HTTP basics 36
Adding HTTP support to the sensor 38
Setting up an HTTP server on the sensor 39
Setting up an HTTPS server on the sensor 41
Adding a root menu 42
Displaying measured information in an HTML page 44
Generating graphics dynamically 46
Creating sensor data resources 51
Interpreting the readout request 52
Testing our data export 53
User authentication 53
Adding events for enhanced network performance 54
Adding HTTP support to the actuator 54
Creating the web services resource 55
Accessing individual outputs 56
Collective access to outputs 57
Accessing the alarm output 57
Using the test form 58
Accessing WSDL 59
Using the REST web service interface 59
Adding HTTP support to the controller 60
Subscribing to events 60
Creating the control thread 62
Controlling the actuator 63
Summary 64
Chapter 3: The UPnP Protocol 65
Introducing UPnP 65
Providing a service architecture 66
Documenting device and service capabilities 66
Creating a device description document 67
Choosing a device type 68
Being friendly 69
Providing the device with an identity 69
Adding icons 69
Adding references to services 70
Topping off with a URL to a web presentation page 71

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 Table of Contents

Creating the service description document 71

Adding actions 72
Adding state variables 72
Adding a unique device name 73
Providing a web interface 73
Creating a UPnP interface 74
Registering UPnP resources 75
Replacing placeholders 76
Adding support for SSDP 77
Notifying the network 78
Responding to searches 79
Implementing the Still Image service 81
Initializing evented state variables 81
Providing web service properties 82
Adding service properties 83
Adding actions 83
Using our camera 84
Setting up UPnP 84
Discovering devices and services 85
Subscribing to events 86
Receiving events 86
Executing actions 87
Summary 88
Chapter 4: The CoAP Protocol 89
Making HTTP binary 90
Finding development tools 91
Adding CoAP to our sensor 91
Defining our first CoAP resources 92
Manually triggering an event notification 93
Registering data readout resources 94
Returning XML 95
Returning JSON 96
Returning plain text 96
Discovering CoAP resources 97
Testing our CoAP resources 98
Adding CoAP to our actuator 98
Defining simple control resources 99
Parsing the URL in CoAP 100
Controlling the output using CoAP 101

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Table of Contents

Using CoAP in our controller 102

Monitoring observable resources 102
Receiving notifications 103
Performing control actions 104
Summary 105
Chapter 5: The MQTT Protocol 107
Publishing and subscribing 108
Adding MQTT support to the sensor 110
Controlling the thread life cycle 110
Flagging significant events 111
Connecting to the MQTT server 112
Publishing the content 113
Adding MQTT support to the actuator 115
Initializing the topic content 115
Subscribing to topics 115
Receiving the published content 116
Decoding and parsing content 117
Adding MQTT support to the controller 118
Handling events from the sensor 118
Decoding and parsing sensor values 119
Subscribing to sensor events 120
Controlling the actuator 120
Controlling the LED output 120
Controlling the alarm output 121
Summary 123
Chapter 6: The XMPP Protocol 125
XMPP basics 126
Federating for global scalability 126
Providing a global identity 127
Authorizing communication 128
Sensing online presence 128
Using XML 129
Communication patterns 129
Extending XMPP 130
Connecting to a server 131
Provisioning for added security 132
Adding XMPP support to a thing 133
Connecting to the XMPP network 133

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 Table of Contents

Monitoring connection state events 134

Notifying your friends 135
Handling HTTP requests over XMPP 135
Providing an additional layer of security 136
The basics of provisioning 136
Initializing the Thing Registry interface 138
Registering a thing 139
Updating a public thing 140
Claiming a thing 140
Removing a thing from the registry 140
Disowning a thing 141
Initializing the provisioning server interface 142
Handling friendship recommendations 142
Handling requests to unfriend somebody 143
Searching for a provisioning server 143
Providing registry information 145
Maintaining a connection 145
Negotiating friendships 146
Handling presence subscription requests 147
Continuing interrupted negotiations 148
Adding XMPP support to the sensor 149
Adding a sensor server interface 149
Updating event subscriptions 149
Publishing contracts 150
Adding XMPP support to the actuator 151
Adding a controller server interface 151
Adding XMPP support to the camera 152
Adding XMPP support to the controller 153
Setting up a sensor client interface 153
Subscribing to sensor data 153
Handling incoming sensor data 154
Setting up a controller client interface 155
Setting up a camera client interface 157
Fetching the camera image over XMPP 157
Identifying peer capabilities 158
Reacting to peer presence 159
Detecting rule changes 160
Connecting it all together 161
Summary 162

[v]

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Table of Contents

Chapter 7: Using an IoT Service Platform 163

Selecting an IoT platform 164
The Clayster platform 164
Downloading the Clayster platform 164
Creating a service project 165
Adding references 165
Making a Clayster module 166
Executing the service 167
Using a package manifest 167
Executing from Visual Studio 168
Configuring the Clayster system 168
Using the management tool 169
Browsing data sources 170
Interfacing our devices using XMPP 171
Creating a class for our sensor 172
Finding the best class 172
Subscribing to sensor data 173
Interpreting incoming sensor data 174
Creating a class for our actuator 175
Customizing control operations 175
Creating a class for our camera 176
Creating our control application 176
Understanding rendering 177
Defining the application class 178
Initializing the controller 178
Adding control rules 179
Understanding application references 180
Defining brieflets 180
Displaying a gauge 181
Displaying a binary signal 182
Pushing updates to the client 184
Completing the application 185
Configuring the application 186
Viewing the 10-foot interface application 186
Summary 188
Chapter 8: Creating Protocol Gateways 189
Understanding protocol bridging 190
Using an abstraction model 191
The basics of the Clayster abstraction model 193
Understanding editable data sources 193

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 Table of Contents

Understanding editable objects 194

Using common data sources 195
Overriding key properties and methods 196
Controlling structure 196
Publishing properties 197
Publishing commands 197
Handling communication with devices 197
Reading devices 198
Configuring devices 198
Understanding the CoAP gateway architecture 198
Summary 200
Chapter 9: Security and Interoperability 201
Understanding the risks 201
Reinventing the wheel, but an inverted one 202
Knowing your neighbor 203
Modes of attack 203
Denial of Service 203
Guessing the credentials 204
Getting access to stored credentials 204
Man in the middle 205
Sniffing network communication 205
Port scanning and web crawling 206
Search features and wildcards 207
Breaking ciphers 207
Tools for achieving security 208
Virtual Private Networks 208
X.509 certificates and encryption 209
Authentication of identities 209
Usernames and passwords 210
Using message brokers and provisioning servers 211
Centralization versus decentralization 211
The need for interoperability 212
Solves complexity 212
Reduces cost 212
Allows new kinds of services and reuse of devices 213
Combining security and interoperability 213
Summary 214
Index 215

[ vii ]

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www.it-ebooks.info
 Preface
Internet of Things is one of the current top tech buzzwords. Large corporations value
its market in tens of trillions of dollars for the upcoming years, investing billions into
research and development. On top of this, there is the plan for the release of tens of
billions of connected devices during the same period. So you can see why it is only
natural that it causes a lot of buzz.

Despite this, nobody seems to agree on what Internet of Things (IoT) actually is.
The only thing people agree on is that whatever it is, it is worth a lot of money.
And where there is a lot of money, there is a lot of competition, which in reality
means a lot of confusion. To be able to stand out as a superior player, companies
invent new buzz words in an attempt to highlight their superior knowledge. In
this battle of gaining the reader's attention, the world is now seeing a plethora of
new definitions, one better than the other, such as "Internet of Everything," "Web of
Things," "Internet of People and Things," and so on. To pour gasoline on fire, there
is a constant overlap and confusion of ideas from related terms, such as "Big Data,"
"Machine-to-Machine," and "Cyber-Physical Systems" to mention a few.

This lack of consensus on what IoT actually is and what it means makes it
somewhat difficult to write a book on the subject. Not because the technical aspects
are difficult—they are not—but because you need to define what it is you are going
to talk about and also what you are not going to talk about. You need to define IoT
in a way that is simple, valid, and constructive, while at the same time it should
minimize controversy.

www.it-ebooks.info
Preface

A definition for Internet of Things

To be able to define IoT, let's first look at how the term was coined. Kevin Ashton
noted that most data on the Internet was at the time originally entered or captured
into the system by human beings. From a system point of view, a human is nothing
more than a slow, error-prone, and inefficient router of data that puts limits on
quality and quantity of data available and sometimes even dares to interpret data
or correct it. As an alternative, it would be more efficient if these systems could
connect to sensors that measure these real-world events or properties directly.
So, in this vision, systems bypass human intermediaries and connect directly to
sensors connected to the Internet to capture real-world data.

The problem with this definition is that it is not a definition at all but a vision, albeit
with an important point. If systems can access data captured by sensors directly,
of course, the data will be both more abundant and more correct. This was known
decades ago and is a field of study in its own right, labeled "sensor networks". What
is the real difference between these two? What is the difference between IoT and Big
Data, where the efficient storage of huge volumes of data is handled? How does IoT
differ from machine-to-machine (M2M) or device-to-device (D2D) communication,
where communication between Things is discussed? Or, how does it differ from
cyber-physical systems (CPS) that concerns itself with systems that interact with the
real world through sensors and actuators? What is the real difference between IoT
and the just mentioned fields of study?

Let's, therefore, have a very simple definition and see where it leads us:

The IoT is what we get when we connect Things, which are

not operated by humans, to the Internet.

Competing definitions
IoT is not the same as sensor networks since Things neither need to be sensors, nor do
sensor networks need to be connected to the Internet. Also, IoT is not the same as big
data since neither Things are required to capture or generate data, nor do applications
need to store the data centrally (in the Cloud) in big data stores. IoT is not part M2M
since being on the Internet implies humans can (and want to) access these Things
directly too. Furthermore, the latter, as well as CPS, also concern themselves with
non-Internet protocols, transport of messages between machines and/or devices in
the network, as well as automation, often in closed and controlled environments.

[2]

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 Preface

Being connected to the Internet is much more than simple connectivity and message
transport. The Internet is open, meaning anybody can add Things to it. It also means
they will want Things to interoperate in a loosely coupled manner. The Internet is
not only open, but it also is the largest network in the world. It is also the foulest
cesspit in the world. Connect something to the Internet, and you can be rest assured
that somebody will try to take advantage of it or destroy it if they can, just for the
sheer fun of it. Comparing IoT to M2M communication is like assuming that an
experiment in a controlled laboratory environment will continue to work even when
you let a bunch of 3-year-old kids high on caffeinated beverages enter the laboratory,
equipped with hammers and a playful attitude, and promised ice cream if they
destroy everything they could see.

While some are concerned that IoT is too limited to include people in the equation,
and it invents new terminologies such as Internet of People and Things, this is
already included in the definition we just saw where we noted that people are
already connected to the Internet via computers when we connect Things. Such a
definition is therefore not necessary. Others discuss a Web of Things (WoT), which is
a subset of IoT, where communication is limited to web technologies, such as HTTP,
browsers, scripting, and so on. This view might stem from equaling the Internet
with the World Wide Web (WWW), where access to the Internet is made through
browsers and URLs. Even though we will discuss web technologies in this book,
we consider web technologies alone too limiting.

There are also misleading definitions that act more like commercial buzz words
rather than technological terminology, such as Internet of Everything, promoting
the idea of being something more than IoT. But what is included in Internet of
Everything that is not already included in IoT? All connectable Things are already
included in IoT. Things that cannot be connected directly (air or water), or indirectly
(vacuum or happiness) cannot be accessed in Internet of Everything either, just
because the name says so. Everything needs a Thing or a Person to connect to
the Internet. There are claims that the Internet of Everything includes processes,
and such, and would differ in that sense. But, in the definition we just saw, such
processes would be simple corollaries and require no new definition.

Direct consequences
Now that we have a clear definition of IoT, as something we get when we connect
Things, not operated by humans, to the Internet, we are ready to begin our study
of the subject. The definition includes four important components:

• Connection, which relates to the study of communication protocols

[3]

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “Bosh!” said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. “May I cut in?
It’s dew. I’ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are
in a mess though!

“And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,

And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
He shall walk the quarter-deck—”

“Yellow on blue—green next player,” said the marker

monotonously.
“‘He shall walk the quarter-deck,’—Am I green, marker? ‘He shall
walk the quarter-deck,’—eh! that’s a bad shot,—‘As his daddy used
to do!’”
“I don’t see that you have anything to crow about,” said a zealous
junior civilian acidly. “The Government is not exactly pleased with
your work when you relieved Sanders.”
“Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?” said Holden with
an abstracted smile. “I think I can stand it.”
The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man’s work,
and steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty
bungalow, where his butler received him as one who knew all his
affairs. Holden remained awake for the greater part of the night, and
his dreams were pleasant ones.
 II
“How old is he now?”
“Ya illah! What a man’s question! He is all but six weeks old; and
on this night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the
stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the
sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us
both and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved?”
“There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt
count the stars—but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.”
“The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season.
Come, before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.”
“Thou hast forgotten the best of all.”
“Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.”
Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The
child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm,
gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head.
Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that
takes the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the
curve of the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead
studded with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy
circlet of beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the
softness of the pure metal, and the chinking curb-patterned silver
anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in
jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from
shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with
floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the
slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had
no part in her country’s ornaments but, since they were Holden’s gift
and fastened with a cunning European snap, delighted her
immensely.
They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking
the city and its lights.
 “They are happy down there,” said Ameera. “But I do not think
that they are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are
as happy. And thou?”
“I know they are not.”
“How dost thou know?”
“They give their children over to the nurses.”
“I have never seen that,” said Ameera with a sigh, “nor do I wish
to see. Ahi!”—she dropped her head on Holden’s shoulder—“I have
counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life,
he is counting too.”
The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens.
Ameera placed him in Holden’s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
“What shall we call him among ourselves?” she said. “Look! Art
thou ever tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth
——”
“Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?”
“’Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart
between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.”
“Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.”
“When he cries thou wilt give him back—eh? What a man of
mankind thou art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But,
my life, what little name shall we give him?”
The small body lay close to Holden’s heart. It was utterly helpless
and very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it.
The caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit
in most native households moved on its perch and fluttered a
drowsy wing.
“There is the answer,” said Holden. “Mian Mittu has spoken. He
shall be the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run
about. Mian Mittu is the parrot in thy—in the Mussulman tongue, is it
not?”
“Why put me so far off?” said Ameera fretfully. “Let it be like unto
some English name—but not wholly. For he is mine.”
“Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.”
“Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a
minute ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian
Mittu for name. He shall be Tota—our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O
small one? Littlest, thou art Tota.” She touched the child’s cheek, and
he waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother,
who soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Aré koko, Jaré koko!
which says:

Oh crow! Go crow! Baby’s sleeping sound,

And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.

Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota

cuddled himself down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in
the courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal;
old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden’s horse, his police sabre
across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked
like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera’s mother sat spinning in the lower
verandah, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of
a marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the
city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon.
“I have prayed,” said Ameera after a long pause, “I have prayed
for two things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is
demanded, and in the second that I may die in the place of the
child. I have prayed to the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin
Mary]. Thinkest thou either will hear?”
“From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?”
“I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will
my prayers be heard?”
“How can I say? God is very good.”
“Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies,
what is thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log,
for kind calls to kind.”
“Not always.”
“With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this
life, later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure,
for I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away
to a strange place and a paradise that I do not know.”
 “Will it be paradise?”
“Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two—I and the child—
shall be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou
come to us. In the old days, before the child was born, I did not
think of these things; but now I think of them always. It is very hard
talk.”
“It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day
and love we know well. Surely we are happy now.”
“So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And
thy Beebee Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But
then she would envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a
woman.”
Holden laughed aloud at Ameera’s little spasm of jealousy.
“Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of
thee, then?”
“Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words,
well I know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under
thy feet. And I would not have it otherwise. See!”
Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched
his feet; recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer
to her bosom. Then, almost savagely——
“Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the
length of my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not
before they are old women?”
“They marry as do others—when they are women.”
“That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that
true?”
“That is true.”
“Ya illah! At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife
even of eighteen? She is a woman—aging every hour. Twenty-five! I
shall be an old woman at that age, and——Those mem-log remain
young for ever. How I hate them!”
“What have they to do with us?”
“I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this
earth a woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and
take thy love ten years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and
the nurse of Tota’s son. That is unjust and evil. They should die too.”
“Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and
carried down the staircase.”
“Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish as
any babe!” Ameera tucked Tota out of harm’s way in the hollow of
her neck, and was carried downstairs laughing in Holden’s arms,
while Tota opened his eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser
angels.
He was a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise
that he was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little
god and unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city.
Those were months of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera—
happiness withdrawn from the world, shut in behind the wooden
gate that Pir Khan guarded. By day Holden did his work with an
immense pity for such as were not so fortunate as himself, and a
sympathy for small children that amazed and amused many mothers
at the little station-gatherings. At nightfall he returned to Ameera,—
Ameera, full of the wondrous doings of Tota; how he had been seen
to clap his hands together and move his fingers with intention and
purpose—which was manifestly a miracle—how later, he had of his
own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor and
swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths.
“And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight,”
said Ameera.
Then Tota took the beasts into his councils—the well-bullocks, the
little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well,
and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously
pulled, and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
“O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the house-top!
Tobah, tobah! Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise as
Suleiman and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,” said
Ameera. She drew from an embroidered bag a handful of almonds.
“See! we count seven. In the name of God!”
She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his
cage, and seating herself between the babe and the bird she
cracked and peeled an almond less white than her teeth. “This is a
true charm, my life, and do not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half
and Tota the other.” Mian Mittu with careful beak took his share from
between Ameera’s lips, and she kissed the other half into the mouth
of the child, who ate it slowly with wondering eyes. “This I will do
each day of seven, and without doubt he who is ours will be a bold
speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be when thou art a man
and I am gray-headed?” Tota tucked his fat legs into adorable
creases. He could crawl, but he was not going to waste the spring of
his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu’s tail to tweak.
When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt—which, with
a magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made
up the greater part of his clothing—he staggered on a perilous
journey down the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels
in exchange for one little ride on Holden’s horse, having seen his
mother’s mother chaffering with pedlars in the verandah. Pir Khan
wept and set the untried feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty,
and brought the bold adventurer to his mother’s arms, vowing that
Tota would be a leader of men ere his beard was grown.
One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and
mother watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city
boys flew, he demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it,
because he had a fear of dealing with anything larger than himself
and when Holden called him a “spark,” he rose to his feet and
answered slowly in defence of his new-found individuality, “Hum
’park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am no spark, but a man].”
The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously
to a consideration of Tota’s future. He need hardly have taken the
trouble. The delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore
it was taken away as many things are taken away in India—suddenly
and without warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called
him, grew sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known
the meaning of pain. Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through
the night, and in the dawning of the second day the life was shaken
out of him by fever—the seasonal autumn fever. It seemed
altogether impossible that he could die, and neither Ameera nor
Holden at first believed the evidence of the little body on the
bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head against the wall and would
have flung herself down the well in the garden had Holden not
restrained her by main force.
One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in
broad daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that
demanded concentrated attention and hard work. He was not,
however, alive to this kindness of the gods.
 III
The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The
wrecked body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or
fifteen seconds later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he
had realised his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity
for hiding all trace of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had
been a loss, and that Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with
her head on her knees shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top
called Tota! Tota! Tota! Later all his world and the daily life of it rose
up to hurt him. It was an outrage that any one of the children at the
band-stand in the evening should be alive and clamorous, when his
own child lay dead. It was more than mere pain when one of them
touched him, and stories told by over-fond fathers of their children’s
latest performances cut him to the quick. He could not declare his
pain. He had neither help, comfort, nor sympathy; and Ameera at
the end of each weary day would lead him through the hell of self-
questioning reproach which is reserved for those who have lost a
child, and believe that with a little—just a little—more care it might
have been saved.
“Perhaps,” Ameera would say, “I did not take sufficient heed. Did
I, or did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long
alone and I was—ahi! braiding my hair—it may be that the sun then
bred the fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have
lived. But, oh my life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I
loved him as I love thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall
die—I shall die!”
“There is no blame,—before God, none. It was written and how
could we do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go,
beloved.”
“He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when
my arm tells me every night that he is not here? Ahi! Ahi! O Tota,
come back to me—come back again, and let us be all together as it
was before!”
“Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou
lovest me—rest.”
“By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The
white men have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had
married a man of mine own people—though he beat me—and had
never eaten the bread of an alien!”
“Am I an alien—mother of my son?”
“What else—Sahib?... Oh, forgive me—forgive! The death has
driven me mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my
eyes, and the breath of my life, and—and I have put thee from me,
though it was but for a moment. If thou goest away to whom shall I
look for help? Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke
and not thy slave.”
“I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need
therefore that we should be one.”
They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm
one in early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon
to a broken tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in
Holden’s arms.
“The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I—I am afraid.
It was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me
as much as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!”
“I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that
we have eaten together, and that thou knowest.”
“Yea, I knew,” said Ameera in a very small whisper. “But it is good
to hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a
child no more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my
sitar and I will sing bravely.”
She took the light silver-studded sitar and began a song of the
great hero Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune
halted, checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little
nursery-rhyme about the wicked crow—
 And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
Only a penny a pound, baba—only....

Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear
of the body as though it protected something that was not there. It
was after this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The
ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work
repaid him by filling up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera
sat alone in the house and brooded, but grew happier when she
understood that Holden was more at ease, according to the custom
of women. They touched happiness again, but this time with
caution.
“It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God
was upon us,” said Ameera. “I have hung up a large black jar before
our window to turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no
protestations of delight, but go softly underneath the stars, lest God
find us out. Is that not good talk, worthless one?”
She had shifted the accent on the word that means “beloved,” in
proof of the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the
new christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They
went about henceforward saying, “It is naught, it is naught;” and
hoping that all the Powers heard.
The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty
million people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the
crops were certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts
reported a purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred
to two thousand to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and
the Member for Lower Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and
frock-coat, talked largely of the benefits of British rule and
suggested as the one thing needful the establishment of a duly
qualified electoral system and a general bestowal of the franchise.
His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him welcome, and when
he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of the
blood-red dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign of what
was coming, they smiled more than ever.
 It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the
club for a day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden’s blood run
cold as he overheard the end.
“He won’t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so
astonished in my life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question
in the House about it. Fellow-passenger in his ship—dined next him
—bowled over by cholera and died in eighteen hours. You needn’t
laugh, you fellows. The Member for Lower Tooting is awfully angry
about it; but he’s more scared. I think he’s going to take his
enlightened self out of India.”
“I’d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what’s this about
cholera? It’s full early for anything of that kind,” said the warden of
an unprofitable salt-lick.
“Don’t know,” said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. “We’ve
got locusts with us. There’s sporadic cholera all along the north—at
least we’re calling it sporadic for decency’s sake. The spring crops
are short in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the
rains are. It’s nearly March now. I don’t want to scare anybody, but
it seems to me that Nature’s going to audit her accounts with a big
red pencil this summer.”
“Just when I wanted to take leave, too!” said a voice across the
room.
“There won’t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a
great deal of promotion. I’ve come in to persuade the Government
to put my pet canal on the list of famine-relief works. It’s an ill wind
that blows no good. I shall get that canal finished at last.”
“Is it the old programme then,” said Holden; “famine, fever, and
cholera?”
“Oh, no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
sickness. You’ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year. You’re
a lucky chap. You haven’t got a wife to send out of harm’s way. The
hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.”
“I think you’re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars,” said a
young civilian in the Secretariat. “Now I have observed——”
 “I daresay you have,” said the Deputy Commissioner, “but you’ve a
great deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to
observe to you——” and he drew him aside to discuss the
construction of the canal that was so dear to his heart. Holden went
to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in
the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another—
which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.
Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to
audit her accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-
reapings came a cry for bread, and the Government, which had
decreed that no man should die of want, sent wheat. Then came the
cholera from all four quarters of the compass. It struck a pilgrim-
gathering of half a million at a sacred shrine. Many died at the feet
of their god; the others broke and ran over the face of the land,
carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a walled city and killed
two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains, hanging on to
the footboards and squatting on the roofs of the carriages, and the
cholera followed them, for at each station they dragged out the dead
and the dying. They died by the roadside, and the horses of the
Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains did not
come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape death by
hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills and went
about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the
gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest
treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away
with her mother to the Himalayas.
“Why should I go?” said she one evening on the roof.
“There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-
log have gone.”
“All of them?”
“All—unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes
her husband’s heart by running risk of death.”
“Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I
will be a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.”
“Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see
to it that thou goest like a queen’s daughter. Think, child. In a red-
lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks
upon the pole and red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for
guard, and——”
“Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those
toys to me? He would have patted the bullocks and played with the
housings. For his sake, perhaps,—thou hast made me very English—
I might have gone. Now, I will not. Let the mem-log run.”
“Their husbands are sending them, beloved.”
“Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell
me what to do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the
desire of my soul to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil
befall thee by the breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail—is
that not small?—I should be aware of it though I were in paradise.
And here, this summer thou mayest die—ai, janee, die!—and in
dying they might call to tend thee a white woman, and she would
rob me in the last of thy love!”
“But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!”
“What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy
thanks at least, and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the
mother of thy Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my
love, let there be no more foolish talk of going away. Where thou
art, I am. It is enough.” She put an arm round his neck and a hand
on his mouth.
There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are
snatched under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and
laughed, calling each other openly by every pet name that could
move the wrath of the gods. The city below them was locked up in
its own torments. Sulphur fires blazed in the streets; the conches in
the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were
inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great
Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was
almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead,
and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling
for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out
through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of
mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
 It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and
needed a little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should
flood it anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped
mothers made no resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting
till the sword should be sheathed in November if it were so willed.
There were gaps among the English, but the gaps were filled. The
work of superintending famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-
distribution, and what little sanitation was possible, went forward
because it was so ordered.
Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to
replace the next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in
each day when he could not see Ameera, and she might die in three.
He was considering what his pain would be if he could not see her
for three months, or if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely
certain that her death would be demanded—so certain that when he
looked up from the telegram and saw Pir Khan breathless in the
doorway, he laughed aloud. “And?” said he,——
“When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the
throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-
born! It is the black cholera.”
Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for
the long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling.
Ameera’s mother met him in the courtyard, whimpering, “She is
dying. She is nursing herself into death. She is all but dead. What
shall I do, Sahib?”
Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She
made no sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a
very lonely thing, and, when it is getting ready to go away, hides
itself in a misty borderland where the living may not follow. The
black cholera does its work quietly and without explanation. Ameera
was being thrust out of life as though the Angel of Death had
himself put his hand upon her. The quick breathing seemed to show
that she was either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor mouth
gave any answer to Holden’s kisses. There was nothing to be said or
done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain
began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of joy in the
parched city.
The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down
to listen. “Keep nothing of mine,” said Ameera. “Take no hair from
my head. She would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should
feel. Lower! Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore
thee a son. Though thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the
pleasure of receiving in thy arms thy first son is taken from thee for
ever. Remember me when thy son is born—the one that shall carry
thy name before all men. His misfortunes be on my head. I bear
witness—I bear witness”—the lips were forming the words on his ear
—“that there is no God but—thee, beloved!”
Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from
him,—till he heard Ameera’s mother lift the curtain.
“Is she dead, Sahib?”
“She is dead.”
“Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the
furniture in this house. For that will be mine. The Sahib does not
mean to resume it? It is so little, so very little, Sahib, and I am an
old woman. I would like to lie softly.”
“For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where
I cannot hear.”
“Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.”
“I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter
is in thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which—on which she lies
——”
“Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired——”
“That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in
the house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and
before sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I
have ordered thee to respect.”
“I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of
mourning, and the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?”
“What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house
gear is worth a thousand rupees, and my orderly shall bring thee a
hundred rupees to-night.”
 “That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.”
“It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman,
get hence and leave me with my dead!”
The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take
stock of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by
Ameera’s side and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think
connectedly by reason of the noise, though he made many attempts
to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room
and stared at him through their veils. They were the washers of the
dead. Holden left the room and went out to his horse. He had come
in a dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He found the
courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs; a torrent of yellow
water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the
rain like buckshot against the mud walls. Pir Khan was shivering in
his little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the
water.
“I have been told the Sahib’s order,” said Pir Khan. “It is well. This
house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a
reminder of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring
that to thy house yonder in the morning; but remember, Sahib, it will
be to thee a knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage,
and I will take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the
Presence whose sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his
stirrup.”
He touched Holden’s foot with both hands and the horse sprang
out into the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the
sky, and all the frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the
rain in his face. He put his hands before his eyes and muttered—
“Oh, you brute! You utter brute!”
The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the
knowledge in his butler’s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food,
and for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master’s
shoulder, saying, “Eat, Sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I
also have known. Moreover, the shadows come and go, Sahib; the
shadows come and go. These be curried eggs.”
 Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight
inches of rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters
tore down walls, broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves
on the Mahomedan burying-ground. All next day it rained, and
Holden sat still in his house considering his sorrow. On the morning
of the third day he received a telegram which said only, “Ricketts,
Myndonie. Dying. Holden relieve. Immediate.” Then he thought that
before he departed he would look at the house wherein he had been
master and lord. There was a break in the weather, and the rank
earth steamed with vapour.
He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the
gateway, and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung
lazily from one hinge. There was grass three inches high in the
courtyard; Pir Khan’s lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch
sagged between the beams. A gray squirrel was in possession of the
verandah, as if the house had been untenanted for thirty years
instead of three days. Ameera’s mother had removed everything
except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the little scorpions as
they hurried across the floor was the only sound in the house.
Ameera’s room and the other one where Tota had lived were heavy
with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was
streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these
things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his
landlord,—portly, affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee-
spring buggy. He was overlooking his property to see how the roofs
stood the stress of the first rains.
“I have heard,” said he, “you will not take this place any more,
Sahib?”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Perhaps I shall let it again.”
“Then I will keep it on while I am away.”
Durga Dass was silent for some time. “You shall not take it on,
Sahib,” he said. “When I was a young man I also——, but to-day I
am a member of the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have
gone what need to keep the nest? I will have it pulled down—the
timber will sell for something always. It shall be pulled down, and
the Municipality shall make a road across, as they desire, from the
burning-ghaut to the city wall, so that no man may say where this
house stood.”
 NABOTH

Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan & Co.

This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of

Empire.
I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his
head, and an unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property
to which Naboth had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He
opened our acquaintance by begging. He was very thin and showed
nearly as many ribs as his basket; and he told me a long story about
fever and a lawsuit, and an iron cauldron that had been seized by
the court in execution of a decree. I put my hand into my pocket to
help Naboth, as kings of the East have helped alien adventurers to
the loss of their kingdoms. A rupee had hidden in my waistcoat
lining. I never knew it was there, and gave the trove to Naboth as a
direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I was the only legitimate
Protector of the Poor he had ever known.
Next morning he reappeared, a little fatter in the round, and
curled himself into knots in the front verandah. He said I was his
father and his mother, and the direct descendant of all the gods in
his Pantheon, besides controlling the destinies of the universe. He
himself was but a sweetmeat-seller, and much less important than
the dirt under my feet. I had heard this sort of thing before, so I
asked him what he wanted. My rupee, quoth Naboth, had raised him
to the everlasting heavens, and he wished to prefer a request. He
wished to establish a sweetmeat-pitch near the house of his
benefactor, to gaze on my revered countenance as I went to and fro
illumining the world. I was graciously pleased to give permission,
and he went away with his head between his knees.
Now at the far end of my garden the ground slopes toward the
public road, and the slope is crowned with a thick shrubbery. There
is a short carriage-road from the house to the Mall, which passes
close to the shrubbery. Next afternoon I saw that Naboth had seated
himself at the bottom of the slope, down in the dust of the public
road, and in the full glare of the sun, with a starved basket of greasy
sweets in front of him. He had gone into trade once more on the
strength of my munificent donation, and the ground was as Paradise
by my honoured favour. Remember, there was only Naboth, his
basket, the sunshine, and the gray dust when the sap of my Empire
first began.
Next day he had moved himself up the slope nearer to my
shrubbery, and waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies off the
sweets. So I judged that he must have done a fair trade.
Four days later I noticed that he had backed himself and his
basket under the shadow of the shrubbery, and had tied an Isabella-
coloured rag between two branches in order to make more shade.
There were plenty of sweets in his basket. I thought that trade must
certainly be looking up.
Seven weeks later the Government took up a plot of ground for a
Chief Court close to the end of my compound, and employed nearly
four hundred coolies on the foundations. Naboth bought a blue and
white striped blanket, a brass lamp-stand, and a small boy to cope
with the rush of trade, which was tremendous.
Five days later he bought a huge, fat, red-backed account-book
and a glass inkstand. Thus I saw that the coolies had been getting
into his debt, and that commerce was increasing on legitimate lines
of credit. Also I saw that the one basket had grown into three, and
that Naboth had backed and hacked into the shrubbery, and made
himself a nice little clearing for the proper display of the basket, the
blanket, the books, and the boy.
One week and five days later he had built a mud fireplace in the
clearing, and the fat account-book was overflowing. He said that
God created few Englishmen of my kind, and that I was the
incarnation of all human virtues. He offered me some of his sweets
as tribute, and by accepting these I acknowledged him as my
feudatory under the skirt of my protection.
Three weeks later I noticed that the boy was in the habit of
cooking Naboth’s mid-day meal for him, and Naboth was beginning
to grow a stomach. He had hacked away more of my shrubbery, and
owned another and a fatter account-book.
Eleven weeks later Naboth had eaten his way nearly through that
shrubbery, and there was a reed hut with a bedstead outside it,
standing in the little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby
slept on the bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said
that he had, by my favour, done this thing, and that I was several
times finer than Krishna.
Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the
back of the hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The
Municipal Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming in the public
road from the drainage of my compound, and that I must take steps
to clear it away. I spoke to Naboth. He said I was Lord Paramount of
his earthly concerns, and the garden was all my own property, and
sent me some more sweets in a second-hand duster.
Two months later a coolie bricklayer was killed in a scuffle that
took place opposite Naboth’s Vineyard. The Inspector of Police said it
was a serious case; went into my servants’ quarters; insulted my
butler’s wife, and wanted to arrest my butler. The curious thing
about the murder was that most of the coolies were drunk at the
time. Naboth pointed out that my name was a strong shield between
him and his enemies, and he expected that another baby would be
born to him shortly.
Four months later the hut was all mud walls, very solidly built, and
Naboth had used most of my shrubbery for his five goats. A silver
watch and an aluminium chain shone upon his very round stomach.
My servants were alarmingly drunk several times, and used to waste
the day with Naboth when they got the chance. I spoke to Naboth.
He said, by my favour and the glory of my countenance, he would
make all his women-folk ladies, and that if any one hinted that he
was running an illicit still under the shadow of the tamarisks, why, I,
his Suzerain, was to prosecute.
A week later he hired a man to make several dozen square yards
of trellis-work to put round the back of his hut, that his women-folk
might be screened from the public gaze. The man went away in the
evening, and left his day’s work to pave the short cut from the public
road to my house. I was driving home in the dusk, and turned the
corner by Naboth’s Vineyard quickly. The next thing I knew was that
the horses of the phaeton were stamping and plunging in the
strongest sort of bamboo net-work. Both beasts came down. One
rose with nothing more than chipped knees. The other was so badly
kicked that I was forced to shoot him.
Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud
with sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed.
I have built a summer-house to overlook the end of the garden, and
it is as a fort on my frontier whence I guard my Empire.
I know exactly how Ahab felt. He has been shamefully
misrepresented in the Scriptures.
 THE SENDING OF DANA DA

When the Devil rides on your chest remember the chamar.

—Native Proverb.

Once upon a time, some people in India made a new Heaven and
a new Earth out of broken tea-cups, a missing brooch or two, and a
hair-brush. These were hidden under bushes, or stuffed into holes in
the hillside, and an entire Civil Service of subordinate Gods used to
find or mend them again; and every one said: “There are more
things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
Several other things happened also, but the Religion never seemed
to get much beyond its first manifestations; though it added an air-
line postal service, and orchestral effects in order to keep abreast of
the times and choke off competition.
This Religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself
and embraced pieces of everything that the medicine-men of all
ages have manufactured. It approved of and stole from
Freemasonry; looted the Latter-day Rosicrucians of half their pet
words; took any fragments of Egyptian philosophy that it found in
the “Encyclopædia Britannica”; annexed as many of the Vedas as
had been translated into French or English, and talked of all the rest;
built in the German versions of what is left of the Zend Avesta;
encouraged White, Gray and Black Magic, including spiritualism,
palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double-kernelled
nuts and tallow-droppings; would have adopted Voodoo and Oboe
had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in every way,
one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been
invented since the birth of the Sea.
When it was in thorough working order, with all the machinery,
down to the subscriptions, complete, Dana Da came from nowhere,
with nothing in his hands, and wrote a chapter in its history which
has hitherto been unpublished. He said that his first name was
Dana, and his second was Da. Now, setting aside Dana of the New
York “Sun,” Dana is a Bhil name, and Da fits no native of India
unless you accept the Bengali Dé as the original spelling. Da is Lap
or Finnish; and Dana Da was neither Finn, Chin, Bhil, Bengali, Lap,
Nair, Gond, Romaney, Magh, Bokhariot, Kurd, Armenian, Levantine,
Jew, Persian, Punjabi, Madrasi, Parsee, nor anything else known to
ethnologists. He was simply Dana Da, and declined to give further
information. For the sake of brevity and as roughly indicating his
origin, he was called “The Native.” He might have been the original
Old Man of the Mountains, who is said to be the only authorized
head of the Tea-cup Creed. Some people said that he was; but Dana
Da used to smile and deny any connection with the cult; explaining
that he was an “Independent Experimenter.”
As I have said, he came from nowhere, with his hands behind his
back, and studied the Creed for three weeks; sitting at the feet of
those best competent to explain its mysteries. Then he laughed
aloud and went away, but the laugh might have been either of
devotion or derision.
When he returned he was without money, but his pride was
unabated. He declared that he knew more about the Things in
Heaven and Earth than those who taught him, and for this
contumacy was abandoned altogether.
His next appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in
Upper India, and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three
leaden dice, a very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills.
He told better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of
whiskey; but the things which he invented on the opium were quite
worth the money. He was in reduced circumstances. Among other
people’s he told the fortune of an Englishman who had once been
interested in the Simla Creed, but who, later on, had married and
forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies and things.
The Englishman allowed Dana Da to tell a fortune for charity’s sake,
and gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. When he
had eaten, Dana Da professed gratitude, and asked if there were
anything he could do for his host—in the esoteric line.
“Is there any one that you love?” said Dana Da. The Englishman
loved his wife, but had no desire to drag her name into the
conversation. He therefore shook his head.
“Is there any one that you hate?” said Dana Da. The Englishman
said that there were several men whom he hated deeply.
“Very good,” said Dana Da, upon whom the whiskey and the
opium were beginning to tell. “Only give me their names, and I will
despatch a Sending to them and kill them.”
Now a Sending is a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say,
in Iceland. It is a Thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form,
but, most generally, wanders about the land in the shape of a little
purple cloud till it finds the Sendee, and him it kills by changing into
the form of a horse, or a cat, or a man without a face. It is not
strictly a native patent, though chamars of the skin and hide castes
can, if irritated, despatch a Sending which sits on the breast of their
enemy by night and nearly kills him. Very few natives care to irritate
chamars for this reason.
“Let me despatch a Sending,” said Dana Da; “I am nearly dead
now with want, and drink, and opium; but I should like to kill a man
before I die. I can send a Sending anywhere you choose, and in any
form except in the shape of a man.”
The Englishman had no friends that he wished to kill, but partly to
soothe Dana Da, whose eyes were rolling, and partly to see what
would be done, he asked whether a modified Sending could not be
arranged for—such a Sending as should make a man’s life a burden
to him, and yet do him no harm. If this were possible, he notified his
willingness to give Dana Da ten rupees for the job.
“I am not what I was once,” said Dana Da, “and I must take the
money because I am poor. To what Englishman shall I send it?”
“Send a Sending to Lone Sahib,” said the Englishman, naming a
man who had been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from
the Tea-cup Creed. Dana Da laughed and nodded.
“I could have chosen no better man myself,” said he. “I will see
that he finds the Sending about his path and about his bed.”
He lay down on the hearth-rug, turned up the whites of his eyes,
shivered all over and began to snort. This was Magic, or Opium, or
the Sending, or all three. When he opened his eyes he vowed that
the Sending had started upon the war-path, and was at that
moment flying up to the town where Lone Sahib lives.
“Give me my ten rupees,” said Dana Da wearily, “and write a letter
to Lone Sahib, telling him, and all who believe with him, that you
and a friend are using a power greater than theirs. They will see that
you are speaking the truth.”
He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if
anything came of the Sending.
The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he
remembered of the terminology of the Creed. He wrote: “I also, in
the days of what you held to be my backsliding, have obtained
Enlightenment, and with Enlightenment has come Power.” Then he
grew so deeply mysterious that the recipient of the letter could make
neither head nor tail of it, and was proportionately impressed; for he
fancied that his friend had become a “fifth-rounder.” When a man is
a “fifth-rounder” he can do more than Slade and Houdin combined.
Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was
beginning a sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the
news that there was a cat on the bed. Now if there was one thing
that Lone Sahib hated more than another, it was a cat. He scolded
the bearer for not turning it out of the house. The bearer said that
he was afraid. All the doors of the bedroom had been shut
throughout the morning, and no real cat could possibly have entered
the room. He would prefer not to meddle with the creature.
Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of
his bed, sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten; not a
jumpsome, frisky little beast, but a slug-like crawler with its eyes
barely opened and its paws lacking strength or direction,—a kitten
that ought to have been in a basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib
caught it by the scruff of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper to
be drowned, and fined the bearer four annas.
That evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he
saw something moving about on the hearth-rug, outside the circle of
light from his reading-lamp. When the thing began to myowl, he
realised that it was a kitten—a wee white kitten, nearly blind and
very miserable. He was seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his
bearer, who said that there was no kitten in the room when he
brought in the lamp, and real kittens of tender age generally had
mother-cats in attendance.
“If the Presence will go out into the verandah and listen,” said the
bearer, “he will hear no cats. How, therefore, can the kitten on the
bed and the kitten on the hearth-rug be real kittens?”
Lone Sahib went out to listen, and the bearer followed him, but
there was no sound of any one mewing for her children. He returned
to his room, having hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote
out the incidents of the day for the benefit of his co-religionists.
Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they
ascribed anything a little out of the common to Agencies. As it was
their business to know all about the Agencies, they were on terms of
almost indecent familiarity with Manifestations of every kind. Their
letters dropped from the ceiling—un-stamped—and Spirits used to
squatter up and down their staircases all night; but they had never
come into contact with kittens. Lone Sahib wrote out the facts,
noting the hour and the minute, as every Psychical Observer is
bound to do, and appending the Englishman’s letter because it was
the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing upon
anything in this world or the next. An outsider would have translated
all the tangle thus: “Look out! You laughed at me once, and now I
am going to make you sit up.”
Lone Sahib’s co-religionists found that meaning in it; but their
translation was refined and full of four-syllable words. They held a
sederunt, and were filled with tremulous joy, for, in spite of their
familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a very
human awe of things sent from Ghost-land. They met in Lone
Sahib’s room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave
was broken up by a clinking among the photo-frames on the
mantelpiece. A wee white kitten, nearly blind, was looping and
writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. That stopped
all investigations or doubtings. Here was the Manifestation in the
flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was
a Manifestation of undoubted authenticity.
They drafted a Round Robin to the Englishman, the backslider of
old days, adjuring him in the interests of the Creed to explain
whether there was any connection between the embodiment of
some Egyptian God or other (I have forgotten the name) and his
communication. They called the kitten Ra, or Toth, or Tum, or
something; and when Lone Sahib confessed that the first one had,
at his most misguided instance, been drowned by the sweeper, they
said consolingly that in his next life he would be a “bounder,” and
not even a “rounder” of the lowest grade. These words may not be
quite correct, but they accurately express the sense of the house.
When the Englishman received the Round Robin—it came by post
—he was startled and bewildered. He sent into the bazar for Dana
Da, who read the letter and laughed. “That is my Sending,” said he.
“I told you I would work well. Now give me another ten rupees.”
“But what in the world is this gibberish about Egyptian Gods?”
asked the Englishman.
“Cats,” said Dana Da with a hiccough, for he had discovered the
Englishman’s whiskey-bottle. “Cats, and cats, and cats! Never was
such a Sending. A hundred of cats. Now give me ten more rupees
and write as I dictate.”
Dana Da’s letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman’s
signature, and hinted at cats—at a Sending of Cats. The mere words
on paper were creepy and uncanny to behold.
“What have you done, though?” said the Englishman. “I am as
much in the dark as ever. Do you mean to say that you can actually
send this absurd Sending you talk about?”
“Judge for yourself,” said Dana Da. “What does that letter mean?
In a little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and I—O Glory!
—will be drugged or drunk all day long.”
Dana Da knew his people.
 When a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a
little squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hand into his ulster-
pocket and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be,
or opens his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress-shirts, or
goes for a long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow
and shakes a little squawling kitten from its folds when he opens it,
or goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or
stays at home and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or
wriggling among his boots, or hanging, head downwards, in his
tobacco-jar, or being mangled by his terrier in the verandah,—when
such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor less, once a day in a
place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he is naturally
upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove because he believes
it to be a Manifestation, an Emissary, an Embodiment, and half a
dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more
than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lone Sahib’s co-
religionists thought that he was a highly favoured individual; but
many said that if he had treated the first kitten with proper respect—
as suited a Toth-Ra-Tum-Sennacherib Embodiment—all this trouble
would have been averted. They compared him to the Ancient
Mariner, but none the less they were proud of him and proud of the
Englishman who had sent the Manifestation. They did not call it a
Sending because Icelandic magic was not in their programme.
After sixteen kittens, that is to say after one fortnight, for there
were three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of the
Sending, the whole camp was uplifted by a letter—it came flying
through a window—from the Old Man of the Mountains—the Head of
all the Creed—explaining the Manifestation in the most beautiful
language and soaking up all the credit for it himself. The
Englishman, said the letter, was not there at all. He was a backslider
without Power or Asceticism, who couldn’t even raise a table by
force of volition, much less project an army of kittens through space.
The entire arrangement, said the letter, was strictly orthodox,
worked and sanctioned by the highest authorities within the pale of
the Creed. There was great joy at this, for some of the weaker
brethren seeing, that an outsider who had been working on