Chapter 1

Incident on the Cog Train

The Indian servant went first, loaded down with an assortment of baggage. Fourteen-year-old John Knight followed him out of the station, then stared at the strange train puffing at the edge of the platform. "Father!" he called back over his shoulder.

"What kind of a train is this?

It’s so small—almost like a miniature train. And look!" John pointed. "The engine’s on backward!"

John’s mother and father emerged from the station doorway, each wearing a topee, or sun helmet, to protect themselves from the intense Indian sun. Sanford Knight smiled at his son’s confusion. The tall English government official had only been in India for six months himself and understood how different everything must seem to his wife and son.

"This is a cog train," he said, "the only way to get up the steep hills to Ootacamund. The engine is placed at the back of the train so it can push the cars up the hills. And look between the tracks."

John squinted as he focused on the shiny tracks. A row of spikes ran like a third rail between them.

"A wheel beneath the engine grabs those cogs and helps pull the train. Now, come on, Leslie," he said to his wife. "In you go." Mr. Knight opened the door to the first-class car and assisted his wife into the train. Azim, their Indian servant, followed with the bags, stowing them in the overhead racks.

Laughter and girlish shouts caught John’s attention. A flock of young Indian girls dressed in brightly colored long skirts were climbing into the third class car, along with a woman dressed in a pale blue sari. That’s strange, he thought. That woman looks Eng-lish—or white, anyway. I wonder why she’s wearing Indian clothing?

The conductor, dressed in a blue coat and white turban, was calling "All aboard!" and the steam engine let out a mighty whoosh. There was a flurry of doors opening and people scrambling onto the cog train. John leaned an arm out the open window as the train jerked and made its way slowly out of the station. The Nilgiri hills rolled brown and dry on every side. His father said it was greener and cooler at Ooty—as Ootacamund was usually called—a resort town called a "hill station" nestled in the foothills of the Western Ghats.

The Knights were heading for Ooty to enroll John in the British school there. As the train lurched and groaned up the hills, he wondered what the school would be like. "All the English families come to Ooty for their holidays in the hot season," his father had explained. "It’s a good place for a school. You’ll feel right at home; the town is very British."

John wasn’t sure he wanted to feel at home—not if that meant England. India was the most exciting place he had ever been. He and his mother had recently arrived from England to join his father, the new junior magistrate in the Tinnevelly District of south India. The senior magistrate was scheduled to retire in 1910, and the British government was giving his father one year of preparation to take over the civil duties of judge and magistrate.

From the moment John walked down the gangplank of the ship, India shouted adventure. Crowds of people swarmed in the streets, competing with bicycles, horse-and-buggies, and ox carts for the right of way. Donkeys loaded with bundles plodded slowly between village markets. Majestic banyan trees provided some shade and relief from the dry heat in Palamcottah, the large town where the Tinnevelly District Court was located. Temple elephants paraded in the streets; monkeys scolded from the tall grasses in the countryside. John had been warned that sometimes leopards came down from the hills, though he hadn’t seen any.

John sighed. Just the thought of entering the spit-and-polish corridors of an English boarding school, even if it was in India, was enough to bore him to tears. There was so much to see and do here.

Nevertheless, after a week of settling into their new home in Palamcottah, Sanford Knight decided they must get John into school without delay, and combine it with a short holiday in Ooty. They had already taken the regular train as far as it would go, traveling in the relative comfort of a first-class car with their Indian servant. The cog train was the last leg of their journey.

As John leaned on the window ledge, a movement toward the back of the train caught his eye. He leaned farther out. "I can’t believe it!" he exclaimed. "There are people on the roof of the train!"

Mrs. Knight peered out the window and looked up. "Oh, my word. Someone could get hurt!"

Mr. Knight glanced up from the newspaper he was reading. "Mmm, yes. The lower castes are hopping a free ride. It’s not legal, but tolerated."

Just then the cog train pitched as it rounded a curve, shaking the railroad cars severely. John glanced up just in time to see a poorly dressed Indian man slip and fall from the top of the train, landing soundlessly in the brush and rocks beside the tracks.

"Stop!" John yelled. "A man just fell from the top of the train!"

"Sanford, how do we stop the train?" cried Mrs. Knight. "He fell head first!"

Mr. Knight jumped up and pulled on the emergency brake chain. Nothing seemed to happen at first. "John!" Sanford Knight yelled, and John pulled on the chain with his father. A few moments later the cog train groaned and stopped, the steam engine belching smoke in protest. The Indian conductor came running to their car, obviously upset with John’s father. "You stop the train? What is the matter, sahib?"

John pointed. "Back there! I saw him! A man fell off!"

The conductor turned and hurried back along the track. Other doors were opening in the other cars and people peered out. John scrambled after the conductor, with his father and mother following.

The train had gone several lengths beyond where the man had fallen. He was motionless and appeared to be unconscious. Dirty rags barely covered his gaunt body; he had no hat or turban. The conductor pushed aside the noisy crowd that was gathering and looked the man over closely; then he began waving and shouting at the other passengers in an unfamiliar language. It was obvious to John that he was telling everyone to get back on the train.

"What is it, conductor?" said John’s father, who came up just then with Mrs. Knight and Azim.

"Nothing, nothing. We can do nothing. He is pariah—untouchable."

"I see," said Mr. Knight.

"What do you mean?" demanded Mrs. Knight. "We can’t just leave an injured man lying beside the railroad tracks."

Mr. Knight pulled his wife aside. "Leslie, my dear, you don’t understand. The Indian caste system is very complex—we mustn’t interfere with their beliefs. Hindu religion, you know."

"I don’t know!" protested John’s mother. "But I do know that as a Christian and an Englishwoman, we must—"

"You are entirely right, madam," said a calm woman’s voice. "Would you help me?"

To John’s astonishment, the white woman in the pale blue sari walked right past the conductor and bent down beside the injured man. Her hands felt over his body gently. "Nothing broken," she said. "But he has hit his head. We must get him into the train."

"Miss Carmichael!" protested the conductor. "It is not done!"

The woman ignored him. "Would you help me?" she said again, looking at the Knights.

John wasn’t sure what was going on, but he liked the woman’s gutsy attitude. "Yes, ma’am!" he grinned. His mother also stepped forward. Azim looked shocked and backed away. Reluctantly, Sanford Knight assisted his wife and son and the woman in the sari as they picked up the injured man and carefully placed him inside the third-class car. John tried to ignore the smell of the dirty body.

A loud cheer went up from the freeloaders on the roof of the train, and John waved to them in response.

Once back in their first-class compartment, John’s father looked displeased. "I say, I will not have my wife and son getting involved in the messy little affairs among the Indian social classes. You cannot solve their problems with misguided sympathy. My job as an official of the British government is to rule and bring order to the country, while letting the natives take care of their own social affairs."

"Oh, Sanford," said his wife. "Don’t look so dark. It was the Christian thing to do. We couldn’t let the man die, could we? I wonder . . . who is that Carmichael woman?"

Mr. Knight sighed. "I have heard about her—a troublemaker, they say. She is an Irish missionary, I am told, who refuses to follow the customary missionary methods. Instead she has gone about ‘rescuing’ girls, of all things, who belong to the temples, or something like that. All I know is that she has made a lot of Hindu holy men very angry."

"Don’t those girls have families?" John asked, not understanding again.

"I don’t know. It’s really none of our business," said his father. Mr. Knight snapped open his newspaper. He had heard quite enough of Miss Carmichael.

"Hmm," mused Mrs. Knight. "I’d like to meet her properly. My curiosity is up. It’s unthinkable that those young girls might have belonged to a temple."

I’d like to meet her, too, thought John. He’d especially like to meet some Indian young people. Boys would be nice, but even Indian girls would be better than getting stuck in an English boarding school.

A whistle blew. The brown grasses had given way to rich green trees and brush on the hillsides. Then the first red-tiled roofs of Ooty appeared.