There's a widow in sleepy Chester who weeps for her
only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River, a grave that
the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri who tells how the
work was done.
A Snider squibbed in the jungle, somebody laughed
and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris picked up their
Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead and the back
blown out of his head.
Subadar Prag Tewarri, Jemadar Hira
Lal,
Took command of the party, twenty rifles in
all,
Marched them down to the river as the day was
beginning to fall.
They buried the boy by the river, a blanket over
his face—
They wept for their dead Lieutenant, the men of an
alien race—
They made a samadh in his
honour, a mark for his resting-place.
For they swore by the Holy Water, they swore by
the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib should go
to his God in state;
With fifty file of Burman to open him Heaven's
gate.
The men of the First Shikaris marched till the
break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village, the village of
Pabengmay—
A jingal covered the
clearing, caltrops hampered the way.
Subadar Prag Tewarri, bidding them load with
ball,
Halted a dozen rifles under the village
wall;
Sent out a flanking-party with Jemadar Hira
Lal.
The men of the First Shikaris shouted and smote
and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
on to the howling crew.
The Jemadar's flanking-party butchered the folk who
flew.
Long was the morn of slaughter, long was the list
of slain,
Five score heads were taken, five score heads and
twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris went back to
their grave again,
Each man bearing a basket red as his palms that
day,
Red as the blazing village—the village of
Pabengmay,
And the drip-drip-drip
from the
baskets reddened the grass by the way.
They made a pile of their trophies high as a tall
man's chin,
Head upon head distorted, set in a sightless
grin,
Anger and pain and terror stamped on the
smoke-scorched skin.
Subadar Prag Tewarri put the head of the
Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph, the head of his
son below,
With the sword and the peacock-banner that the world
might behold and know.
Thus the samadh was
perfect, thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris—the price
of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris went back into
camp again.
Then a silence came to the river, a hush fell
over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed, and Sniders
squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads five score.
There's a widow in sleepy Chester who weeps
for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River, a grave that
the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri who tells how the
work was done.