UTAM SINGE.
ASOLEMN stillness came with the fading of the sunset, and into the starry haze of the Eastern night there rose the vcice of prayer. This and the Monsoon's cool, soft breath and the fairy fiddling of a thousand unseen (wickets inteneified the vast peace that shrivels the world at eventide. The Moslems- ore wise in their generation, for if. thoughts of God and the Beyond. eon reach a man at any time, they will do so at the dying of the day ; and lost is he whose soul does not respond to the magic of I hese tensely silent moments. The spell I speak of fell upon me as I stood by the open window of the Orderly Officer's room, gazing westwards at a silhouette of palms that the swift-advancing gloom would soon engulf. Had the inmates of the hospital hard by shared in my feelings ? I wondered vaguely. Some had, no doubt, but not all ; for men in pain are dead to all but pain, and only forty yards of sandy maiden lay between me and a ward of wounded sepoys. They were suffering for the benefit of another race, in a war that was not of their choosing.
Roused suddenly from introspection by the shuffle of a sandalled foot upon the staircase, I heard front the inky depths below the sortie I dreaded "Salem, Sahib. Bahut khun atta." They secant that Utam Singh, a Sikh desperately wounded in the crossing of the Tigris, had taken secondary haemorrhage and was bleeding to death. It was but a moment's work to clatter out into the night, coma the slip of maidan in a few swift bounds, and reach the patient's bedside. He lay there, moaning slightly with fear and weakness, and through the bandages that concealed a ragged shell-wound welled the thick red blood that was his life. "Fear not, sick one," I muttered, twisting a tourniquet round his thigh ; but he recognized my anxiety and shook his head. All that could do for him I did ; strapping the injured limb to a cross-beam' overhead, injecting morphia, packing the wound with gauze, and flooding his veins with saline to replace the blood that once had filled them. Which done, I sought conso- lation in a pipe and rested my tired body on a wicker chair, Likewise, I gazed at Utasit Singh and decided that he had the face of a good man. The features were finely chiselled ; the cheek- bones high and prominent, the lips ascetic, and the nose of strongly Roman type. The glistening, silky waves of a jet-black. beard concealed the contour of his chin and flowed well down upon his bosom ; while hair of exactly similar type was brushed straight back from off a lofty forehead and collected into a little knob or boss on the summit of the head. Such was Utam Singh, and my heart went out to him as he lay there, so near to the End of Things.
He was not in a panic ; for, while the "noble Red Man" is a myth, the noble Sikh is a great reality. "Why seek to prolong my life, Sahib?" he questioned, somewhat wistfully. "Lo I the hour is come, and I sun ready. I shall. die this night" And, with my fingers searching vainly for a pulse that was not there, I felt oonvinced that he would never see the coming sunrise.
Yet Utam Singh did not die ; though it ie seldom that your sepoy misconstrues Fate's warning. Greatly to his own surprise and mine, he commenced a slow recovery. Of worm he had his "ups and downs "—days of comparative strength and bright- ness, alternating with days of dreadful weakness and sickening suspense. When he was ailing, I was saddened as by ill news from the front. When he showed improvement, I exulted as in victory ; for the poor fellow's desperate condition and his plucky light for a life that was sweet to him had moved me not a little. His was an illness that dragged through many weary months ; and it was in the sultry afternoons alone that I found time to visit him and carry on a jerky conversation in imperfect Hinduetani. Of all the wounded in that ward, he alone had fought on the Western Front ; and when he talked of France and the strange things seen there—the snow, the ice, the cafes, and the wondrous towns—the voicee of his fellow-sufferers were hushed and they would listen enviously. Why, he even knew a little French, and this he would air proudly : "Sahib Bolts, ' Good-day ' ; ham log bolte, French log bolts, Bhung Jhoor,'"; and so on. Yee, lie liked France, despite the cold and the wounds he had received there. It was a much better place than Mesopotamia to soldier in. Soon he would get well and fight again, he thought. Also, he would see his father soon ; witness, the telegram he lead received, and which, translated, read "Were your health other- wise; coming to see you." So the poor old father was about to quit his plough anti spend his bard-earned money on a eeawarda journey from the North, to embrace the. non whose welfare meant far more to him than the ultimate victory of the British.
And one afternoon I saw by the Sikh's bedside an aged, long' robed figure with snowy board and sunken eyes. Utam Singh introduced me to the old fellow gravely enough ; but in his eyes I saw the light of long-sought joy. Father and son were greatly similar in many ways; but the former's nose had lost Mr clean-out outline and was somewhat bulbous. Likewise, his eyebrows were close-set and very bushy, while the loss of teeth had left deep hollows in his cheeks. But for the turban and outlandish dress, he might readily have passed as a farmer from the Scottish Highlands.
During the time the old man stayed there he hardly left his eon's side for a moment. All day long he would sit with him in well-nigh perfect silence, which is the deepest form of speech ; and when the day of departure threatened, I photographed Gm pair of them and gave to each a copy. Boundless was their childish delight in these crude productions, at which they still were gazing when I came back on the following day. Such men go straight to my heart. Brave, simple, unaffected, untainted by the hateful pose and artificiality that speak of towns and education, they stir within me memories of soy own beloved lochs and moorlands. and the homely folk that dwell amidst them. I think of fireside chats, in a farmer's cottage, nestling tight beneath the bulk of. Ben Venue. I use the wildfire playing on the hills and the starlight gleaming in the cold, dark loch. I hear the sough of the biting wind and the moaning of it in the bleak, bare trees....
And thus it was that the simple talk of Utam Singh refreshed- me like the tingling blasts of air upon a mountain.top ; and it hurt me to think that the brave young lad was permanently crippled. But it was so. His wounds were healed, but the shell that caused them had smashed his thigh-bone beyond repair, and the plough and rifle were for him no more. I can picture very clearly now his bent and. wasted figure, mutcicaupported, hobbling slowly to the ambulance train that would take him to the loved country of his birth and to tho silent patriarch who lived for him alone. "May God be with you, Sahib!" he had said on parting, "I go. to my country, where I shall have much honour."
That is all I know of Utam Singh ; but there are many bravo- souls like him—some fighting for us amid the blistering wastes of Mesopotamia, yet others enduring the agony of cruel wounds with noble, silent fortitude. And we hear little or nothing of. their valeur—they who defied and balked the might of the all- conquering Muesulman in days gone by, and who are proving to. him once again the glory of their martial prowess. But when the longed-for Day of Peace has come and trumpets blare throughout. the land, then let ue remember the debt we owe to Utam Singh..
W. Kraut Colorms., Capt. R.A.M.C.
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