Mowgli was speaking as he would speak to an impatient child. Gisborne, puzzled, baffled, and a great deal annoyed,
said nothing, but stared on the ground and thought. When he looked up the man of the woods had gone.
‘It is not good,’ said a level voice from the thicket, ‘for friends to be angry. Wait till the evening, Sahib, when the air
cools.’
Left to himself thus, dropped as it were in the heart of the rukh, Gisborne swore, then laughed, remounted his pony,
and rode on. He visited a ranger’s hut, overlooked a couple of new plantations, left some orders as to the burning of a patch
of dry grass, and set out for a camping-ground of his own choice, a pile of splintered rocks roughly roofed over with
branches and leaves, not far from the banks of the Kanye stream. It was twilight when he came in sight of his resting-place,
and the rukh was waking to the hushed ravenous life of the night.
A camp-fire flickered on the knoll, and there was the smell of a very good dinner in the wind.
‘Um,’ said Gisborne, ‘that’s better than cold meat at any rate. Now the only man who’d be likely to be here’d be Muller,
and, officially, he ought to be looking over the Changamanga rukh. I suppose that’s why he’s on my ground.’
The gigantic German who was the head of the Woods and Forests of all India, Head Ranger from Burma to Bombay,
had a habit of flitting batlike without warning from one place to another, and turning up exactly where he was least looked
for. His theory was that sudden visitations, the discovery of shortcomings and a word-of-mouth upbraiding of a
subordinate were infinitely better than the slow processes of correspondence, which might end in a written and official
reprimand — a thing in after years to be counted against a Forest Officer’s record. As he explained it: ‘If I only talk to my
boys like a Dutch uncle, dey say, “It was only dot damned old Muller,’’ and dey do better next dime. But if my fat-head clerk
he write and say dot Muller der Inspecdor-General fail to onderstand and is much annoyed, first dot does no goot because
I am not dere, and, second, der fool dot comes after me he may say to my best boys: “Look here, you haf been wigged by my
bredecessor.” I tell you der big brass-hat pizness does not make der trees grow.’
Muller’s deep voice was coming out of the darkness behind the firelight as he bent over the shoulders of his pet cook.
‘Not so much sauce, you son of Belial! Worcester sauce he is a gondiment and not a fluid. Ah, Gisborne, you haf come to a
very bad dinner. Where is your camp?’ and he walked up to shake hands.
‘I’m the camp, sir,’ said Gisborne. ‘I didn’t know you were about here.’
Muller looked at the young man’s trim figure. ‘Goot! That is very goot! One horse and some cold things to eat. When I
was young I did my camp so. Now you shall dine with me. I went into Headquarters to make up my rebort last month. I haf
written half — ho! ho! — and der rest I haf leaved to my glerks and come out for a walk. Der Government is mad about dose
reborts. I dold der Viceroy so at Simla.’
Gisborne chuckled, remembering the many tales that were told of Muller’s conflicts with the Supreme Government.
He was the chartered libertine of all the offices, for as a Forest Officer he had no equal.
‘If I find you, Gisborne, sitting in your bungalow and hatching reborts to me about der blantations instead of riding
der blantations, I will dransfer you to der middle of der Bikaneer Desert to reforest him. I am sick of reborts and chewing
paper when we should do our work.’
‘There’s not much danger of my wasting time over my annuals. I hate them as much as you do, sir.’
The talk went over at this point to professional matters. Muller had some questions to ask, and Gisborne orders and
hints to receive, till dinner was ready. It was the most civilised meal Gisborne had eaten for months. No distance from the
base of supplies was allowed to interfere with the work of Muller’s cook; and that table spread in the wilderness began with
devilled small fresh-water fish, and ended with coffee and cognac.
‘Ah!’ said Muller at the end, with a sigh of satisfaction as he lighted a cheroot and dropped into his much worn
campchair. ‘When I am making reborts I am Freethinker und Atheist, but here in der rukh I am more than Christian. I am
Bagan also.’ He rolled the cheroot-butt luxuriously under his tongue, dropped his hands on his knees, and stared before
him into the dim shifting heart of the rukh, full of stealthy noises; the snapping of twigs like the snapping of the fire behind
him; the sigh and rustle of a heat-bended branch recovering her straightness in the cool night; the incessant mutter of the
Kanye stream, and the undernote of the many-peopled grass uplands out of sight beyond a swell of hill. He blew out a thick