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XX
Next morning there was great excitement in Kyauktada, for the long-rumoured rebellion had at last
broken out. Flory heard only a vague report of it at the time. He had gone back to camp as soon as he
felt fit to march after the drunken night, and it was not until several days later that he learned the true
history of the rebellion, in a long, indignant letter from Dr Veraswami.
The doctor’s epistolary style was queer. His syntax was shaky and he was as free with capital
letters as a seventeenth-century divine, while in the use of italics he rivalled Queen Victoria. There
were eight pages of his small but sprawling handwriting.
MY DEAR FRIEND (the letter ran),–You will much regret to hear that the wiles of the crocodile have matured. The
rebellion–the so-called rebellion–is all over and finished. And it has been, alas! a more Bloody affair than I had hoped should
have been the case.
All has fallen out as I have prophesied to you it would be. On the day when you came back to Kyauktada U Po Kyin’s
spies have informed him that the poor unfortunate men whom he have Deluded are assembling in the jungle near Thongwa.
The same night he sets out secretly with U Lugale, the Police Inspector, who is as great a Rogue as he, if that could be, and
twelve constables. They make a swift raid upon Thongwa and surprise the rebels, of whom there are only Seven!! in a
ruined field hut in the jungle. Also Mr Maxwell, who have heard rumours of the rebellion, came across from his camp
bringing his Rifle and was in time to join UPo Kyin and the police in their attack on the hut. The next morning the clerk Ba
Sein, who is U Po Kyin’s jackall and dirty worker, have orders to raise the cry of rebellion as Sensationally as possible,
which was done, and Mr Macgregor, Mr Westfield and Lieutenant Verrall all rush out to Thongwa carrying fifty sepoys
armed with rifles besides Civil Police. But they arrive to find it is all over and U Po Kyin was sitting under a big teak tree in
the middle of the village and putting on airs and lecturing the villagers, whereat they are all bowing very frightened and
touching the ground with their foreheads and swearing they will be forever loyal to the Government, and the rebellion is
already at an end. The so-called weiksa, who is no other man a circus conjurer and the minion of U Po Kyin, have
vanished for parts unknown, but six rebels have been Caught. So there is an end.
Also I should inform you that there was most regrettably a Death. Mr Maxwell was I think too anxious to use his Rifle
and when one of the rebels try to run away he fired and shoot him in the abdomen, at which he died. I think the villagers
have some bad feeling towards Mr Maxwell because of it. But from the point of view legal all is well for Mr Maxwell,
because the men were undoubtedly conspiring against the Government.
Ah, but, my Friend, I trust that you understand how disastrous may all this be for me! You will realise, I think, what is its
bearing upon the Contest between U Po Kyin and myself, and the supreme leg-up it must give to him. It is the triumph of
the crocodile. U Po Kyin is now the Hero of the district. He is the pet of me Europeans. I am told that even Mr Ellis has
praised his conduct. If you could witness the abominable Conceitedness and the lies he is now telling as to how mere were
not seven rebels but Two Hundred!! and how he rushed uponthem revolver in hand–he who was only directing operations
from a safe distance while the police and Mr Maxwell creep up upon the hut–you would find it veritably Nauseous I assure
you. He has had the effrontery to send in an official report of the matter which started, ‘By my loyal promptitude and
reckless daring’, and I hear that positively he had had this Conglomeration of lies written out in readiness days before the
occunence. It is Disgusting. And to think that now when he is at the Height of his triumph he will again begin to calumniate
me with all the venom at his disposal etc. etc.