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THE GREAT BLACK FIGHT AT BOSREEGAUM BETWEEN MANUEL VICTORINE AND LALLA SOORTEE.

The Row.

Yesterday morning, several hundred copper-coloured amateurs of sporting celebrity, who uphold by their patronage the nascent interests of Native Pugilism, proceeded to settle the long chaffed of fight between the abovenamed coveys, Manuel being a Bawurchee from Bandora near that pig-prolific place, Mahim, and Lalla, a milling Mussaulchee of the Mogul Seroy, Surat, for a bottle of rack and a bellyful.

The quarrel which gave rise to this meeting is somewhat singular, and deserves previous mention; it originated in Lalla having, upon a certain afternoon, furtively and feloniously introduced his long bony fingers into a dish of curry just removed from Master's table, with the somewhat improper intention of extracting all or part of its savoury contents, for the benefit, comfort, and consolation of his own personal gastric regions; and which said savoury contents, time out of mind (that is, since he was able to handle a handee in the kitchen, or chase a chicken to death in the compound), had ever been considered by Manuel (agreeable to the usages of his ancestors) as his legitimate property, and had by him been always accordingly appropriated to his own private and peculiar refreshment.

But notwithstanding the hitherto undisputed right which the cook had established to this highseasoned and precious perquisite, (a right which had been acknowledged and conceded to all culinary artists from the period when first the gentlemen of England kindly condescended to take into their

own hands all the toil and trouble of governing India and its amiable inhabitants, up to the date of the present quarrel)-notwithstanding such authority and in defiance of all Bawurchee-khána rules and

regulations, this breach of private confidence and public faith was made, done, and committed by Lalla's illegitimate digits, which were pushed into the curry sans cérémonie.

This atrocious intrusion, although perpetrated while the cook was in the very momentous act of ushering a lemon-custard pudding out from the boiling and bubbling thraldom of the pot, into the placid and more seemly terrepleine of a plate of Queen's ware, did not escape the lynx-eyed vigilance of the injured person, who, having what is commonly called an obliquity of vision, had (whilst his straightforward optic watched the projection of the pudding) kept his Lesbian squinter dancing in zigzags all over the kitchen.

"The cook-boy's eye, in a rum phrenzy rolling,

Glances from pot to pan, from pan to pot,

And as the steamy odours issuing forth Denote their rich contents, the cook-boy's

ladle

Tumbles them forth and gives to hungry subs

A devilish prime blow-out and d--d good feed!"

Manuel thus wary and vigilant, although busied in the mysterious duties of his avocation, heard with surprise the lean and hungry Cassius-looking Lalla as he stealthily stole into the cookroom; he watched him with wonder, ogling the curry-dish; he beheld him with horror lift the lid, and with uncon

trollable indignation he saw him thrust his Day-and-Martin fist slap-dash in the saffron-coloured contents, which with the skill and rapidity of an accomplished purloiner he was conveying to the upper end of his middle garment, when, dashing the custard full into the pilferer's face, the enraged Bawurchee brandished his iron ladle, and with one well-directed blow, he laid Mussaulchee flat!

No sooner had he thus floored him than he applied his foot with scientific force and dexterity to that tender part of poor Lalla's person which I should blush to mention, but which George Colman, in his usual felicitous way, wittily, yet delicately, denominates "The head's Antipodes."

Thus both ends of the intruder's carcase experienced their share of punishment; the upper story from the ladle-thump and the blistering effects of the scalding custard, and the fundamental department from the rat-a-tat application of the cook's unmitigating kicks.

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In vain the wretched man roared and bellowed for mercy; the just and virtuous indignation of the assailant had closed all access to commiseration, and the result of such a devil's-tattooing might have caused "work for the Doctors," had not the big toe of the cook, by coming at last into violent contact with the link-boy's monkey-shaped os coccygis, received so violent and cruel a wrench, that the member was nearly dislocated; as it was, the sprain obliged him to cease operating with his right leg, and the left being an awfully bandy concern, from a fracture in the days of his noviciate, the foot of the parabolic limb struck so feebly, and often so wide of the mark, that it gave the prostrate pilferer an opportunity of regaining his perpendicular, who instantly dart

ed from the scene of his disgrace, well daubed with the yellow fruits of his crime, blent with the hot creamy curds of the custard, and sprinkled with the blood which the blow on his head and the kicks on the opposite sphere had produced from his nasal promontory.

On reaching the muddy precincts of his own hovel, the acting wife and said-to-be sister of the bleeding man immediately yelled out such shouts and shrieks and screams, to prove, by the strength of their lungs, the depth of their affection and affliction, and poured forth such furious and figurative denunciations against the personalities of the assailant's father, mother, sister, brother, relations and friends, accompanied by such resounding knocks on their hairdishevelled heads, and thumps on their pendulous bosoms, that the syces from the stables, and

hamauls from their huts, the Bheestie and Bhungee, the Dhobee and dog-boy, together with their wives and children, kith, kin, and kindred of every kind, tag-rag and bobtail, all rushed to the spot and evinced their sympathy and sorrow for the custard-covered, curry-coated, blood-bedaubed and blubbering Lalla by the loud, long, and simultaneous explosion of their delightfully national wah! wah!

It were in vain to attempt any account of the recital made by the Mussaulchee to the sympathizing group, of the cause of his lamentable plight. The reader must fancy a rapid recitativo of "the song that made the King's stomach ache," with innumerable variations, deviations, alterations, and fabrications. Even so the sad tale sounded, but it nevertheless succeeded in making every one believe he was the most innocent and the most injured mortal of all Mussaulchees, and that his foe

was the most cruel, cowardly, brutal, bloodthirsty, blackguard b-n-ch-t of all Bawurchees !! How long the male sympathizers would have continued their wahwahs, or the female their ululations, it were impossible to guess. The crowd was at length dispersed by the sudden approach of no less awful a personage than the Commander-in-Chief of both in and out door domestics-it was the BOOTREL (Anglice, Butler), who appeared in the shape of a portly, pot-bellied, pock-faced Parsee, fully aware of his own importance in the establishment, and determined to impress a due sense of it on the minds of all beneath him. As Walter Scott said in ROKEBY, "All scattered backward as he came, For all knew Bertram Risingham; or, as the whimsical author of the Tales of the Tinkers would parody it,

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"All box'd their trotters with great joy, For all funk'd Dhunjee Dadabhoy."

The Bootrel Shate having dispersed all the other vagabonds with his awe-inspiring look, now listened to the Mussaulchee's story, who having the very material advantage of a first hearing was, of course, believed and absolved from all blame, while the cook, though he produced the remains of both curry and custard in corroboration of the correctness of his statement, was pronounced to be a liar and reported as such and more to his master, who of course, on the Bootrel's verdict, ordered him into the house and licked him on the spot.

This secondhand sort of justice from the hands of the Sahib did not satisfy the gnawings of revenge which the Mussaulchee felt in his bosom, and the beating which the cook had so unjustly received made him also impatient to return the same with interest

on the skin and bones of the violator of his rights. Both being so ready and so willing, a meeting was arranged by their mutual friends, and it was agreed (at the suggestion of some incipient pugilists) that they should box it out, Englis fassun, and that day fortnight was fixed for the fight.

The Preparations.

The day dawned as days usually dawn in the Deccan; first a faint, greyish light glimmered in the East, then off went the morning gun, and on to parade marched the Military, and out for their constitutionals toddled the Civil and the Sick; a tint of crimson flushed the horizon and up rose the golden sun; then back to their barracks bundled the red jackets, and home to their cribs cantered the black.

The intelligence of a fight with fists having been widely spread, and the office having been given for Bosreegaum, a half ruined village about seven miles from Poona, the roads leading to it by the Sungum, Kirkee, or Bhopekail were crowded with all the native lads of the Fancy in camp, from the peculating Parsee rumbling in his cow cart or rattling on his brokenkneed and broken-winded prad, to the pariah outcast, who, for the love of fun and the novelty of a fight, had for once forsaken the necessary duties of his brush and basket and left his matutinal stores, like unseen flowers, "to waste their sweetness in the desert air."

In one continuous line, like a procession of black ants, were seen the Sênor partisans of the cook; the first-circle sort dandily done up in true Monmouth Street toggery, with faded green coats, sky blue waistcoats, and yellowochre tights, their tout ensemble something Europeanized by the

frilled shirts of their masters borrowed from the Dhobee, and their dogs' ears bound up to their cheekbones by dingy silk fogles most of these kiddies might have quoted the facetious Hood and said,

"I have a hat which is not all a hat, Part of the brim is gone,"

The riff-raff coves of this party were principally countrymen also, joined by others of "Master's caste "-coatless, hatless, shoeless, shirtless, almost breechless rogues, who kept up the of courage and spirits their champion by shouting those well known rhymes of reproach to the sons of Surat

and

"Soortee be moortee," &c.,

"Soorut shair Kustooree

Ghur Dharree, ghur Dharree
Jooroo dustooree !!"

The Mussaulchee was escorted by the cadgers, costermongers, prime slavey swells, and nothingto-do lootchas of every sect in Camp, Hindoo, Purwarree, Mussulmaun, Dhare, high caste, low caste, and no caste, all with noise, uproar, shouts, threats, oaths and abuse, all in dust and confusion

toddled on all agog for the fray, all ripe for fun and all brimful of rack, and mowrah, and opium, and "that veed of all veeds, boys, the backee."

Appearance of the Men.

At half-past seven Manuel, attired in a sky-blue (something tarnished) coat garnished with brass buttons, with the flaps warming his hips and the skirts dallying with his heels, in a red waistcoat that looked like infantry shell, and nankeen fy-forshames that reached to his calves, entered the centre of the gentlemanly crowd, attended by his two intimate friends Antone and Gabriel, the latter as little re

an

sembled his angel namesake, as the former did his patron saint. On shelling, Manuel appeared in good condition; a squinting swarthy, long-backed covey, with a straight leg and a bandy one, a half woolly head of hair, deep-set dark eyes, a Blackfriar's bridge kind of a konk, and a particularly pendulous nether lip.

Lalla arrived and peeled at the same time, and never was there seen so splendid a specimen of anatomy; he was a facsimile of the living skeleton indeed, so little flesh and muscle did he exhibit that his bones rattled as he walked. He was pewter-blind of his dexter ogle, and his sinister as protrusive as a lobster's; between those lay his sneezer, a three-cornered looking feature like the button of a privy door ; his nostrils extending equal to the corners of his lips, which were both skinny and

one was

scruffy.

The Fight.

were

Round 1st. Both men over lushy, and consequently not over leary. Manuel's fists were elevated over his head at arms'

In

length, as though he would pound his adversary into powder. Lalla's right mauley was doubled up to his right ear, whilst his left, stiff and straight, pointed smack at his opponent's navel depôt. these attitudes they stood for some seconds and bespattered each other's relatives with dreadful abuse, till roused by an indelicate allusion to his mother, the cook let fall his fists whack on the Mussaulchee's canister and down he went. Shouts of Shâ-bâsh for the Bawurchee.

Round 2nd. Lalla, without waiting for useless sparring, rushed in, striking right and left, and missing all, dashed his head into the pit of Manuel's granary, who

instantly favoured Mussaulchee with the whole of its curious contents and fell.

Round 3rd. Lalla stood up quite fresh, and Manuel faint and puking; the former again made his rush, but the other, though weakly, was wary, and seizing him by the right ear with one hand continued to shove the thumb of the other into the only ogle in Lalla's unfortunate phiz, who in great agony fastened his teeth in Manuel's ear and brought him down.

Round 4th. Lalla came to the scratch, bellowing and blind; Manuel still catting and crafty; but before Lalla's sight would enable him to see the blow, the cook's foot fell dab on his ivories, which rattled like the loose keys of a harpsichord, "He's loze all his tooths," cried a Parsheeman. "That dam lie," said a Sênor, "he not loze them all, him only knockee out two," another dig on his rice grinders settled the round by a struggle on the soft rocks.

Round 5th. Manuel's friends had now whispered him to try Lalla's early mode of skirmishing by ramming his pimple into Lalla's bowel-box, which

ma

nœuvre he accordingly attempted to put into practice, but as his opponent happened also to do the same, their brain-pots came together with a shock that sent both, staggering and stunned, down to mother muttee.

Round 6th and last. Both seemed bothered; the Mussaulchee bled at the nose and mouth, and

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

re

the cook looked like a tiger-cat, and seizing hold of Lalla's lean legs, he lifted him from the ground and threw him over his shoulders; but Lalla, fixing on the softest and lowest part of his back, bit him there till his teeth met. Manuel roared out with pain, and taliated on the Mussaulchee's caffless limbs; both in agony rolled on the ground, keeping their hold like bull-dogs, till Manuel's friends rushed in to part them and Lalla's partisans attempted to prevent any interference, so a general row took place, blows resounded, stones flew about, and sticks rattled against the bones of the skirmishers, till after much bloodshed and more bruises both parties separated, each carrying off their champion as the conqueror, and each side of course claiming the victory.

Remarks.

In this fight, the first of the kind ever recorded in Indian annals, it was flesh and bandy-leg, against Bones and a pewter-eye; both men were more bit than beat, and we trust that the very respectable native Amateurs of this science who patronised this battle will endeavour to make their fighters make, in future, more use of their knuckles and less of their grinders. Manuel went home and soon got beastly with arrack, while Lalla, not satisfied with his à la beating, bang'd himself Soortee.

Poonah, October 17.

S. Y. S.

RETURNED TO A FRIEND

FOR A BRACE OF WOODCOCKS.

My thanks I'll no longer delay

For Birds which you've shot with such skill;
And though there was nothing to pay,

Yet each of them brought in a Bill!

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