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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Told in the East, by Talbot Mundy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Told in the East
+
+Author: Talbot Mundy
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5315]
+Posting Date: June 10, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOLD IN THE EAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jake Jaqua
+
+
+
+
+
+TOLD IN THE EAST
+
+By Talbot Mundy
+
+
+[[Original Book edition published by Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1920.
+Source of the following edition is the omnibus "Romances of India" which
+was a reprint of three of Talbot Mundy's novels.]]
+
+
+Romances of India
+
+
+By Talbot Mundy - King of the Khyber Rifles
+ - Guns of the Gods
+ - Told in the East
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+Hookum Hai.............1 For The Salt Which He Had Eaten............129
+Machassan Ah............235
+
+
+
+
+
+TOLD IN THE EAST
+
+
+
+
+HOOKUM HAI
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A Blood-red sun rested its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested
+a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight
+apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the
+faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and
+a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering in
+search of food that was not there.
+
+A coppersmith was about the only living thing that seemed to care
+whether the sun went down or not. He seemed in a hurry to get a job
+done, and his reiterated "Bong-bong-bong!"--that had never ceased since
+sunrise, and had driven nearly mad the few humans who were there to hear
+it--quickened and grew louder. At last Brown came out of a square mud
+house, to see about the sunset.
+
+He was nobody but plain Bill Brown--or Sergeant William Brown, to give
+him his full name and entitlements--and the price of him was two rupees
+per day.
+
+He stared straight at the dull red disk of the sun, and spat with
+eloquence. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and scratched a
+place where the prickly heat was bothering him. Next, he buttoned up
+his tunic, and brushed it down neatly and precisely. There was official
+business to be done, and a man did that with due formality, heat or no
+heat.
+
+"Guard, turn out!" he ordered.
+
+Twelve men filed out, one behind the other, from the hut that he had
+left. They seemed to feel the heat more than Brown did, as they fell in
+line before Brown's sword. There was no flag, and no flag-pole in that
+nameless health-resort, so the sword, without its scabbard, was doing
+duty, point downward in the ground, as a totem-pole of Empire. Brown had
+stuck it there, like Boanerges' boots, and there it stayed from sunrise
+until sunset, to be displaced by whoever dared to do it, at his peril.
+
+They had no clock. They had nothing, except the uniforms and arms of
+the Honorable East India Company, as issued in this year of Our
+Lord, 1857--a cooking-pot or two, a kettle, a little money and a
+butcher-knife. Their supper bleated miserably some twenty yards away,
+tied to a tree, and a lean. Punjabi squatted near it in readiness to buy
+the skin. It was a big goat, but it was mangy, so he held only two annas
+in his hand. The other anna (in case that Brown should prove adamant)
+was twisted in the folds of his pugree, but he was prepared to perjure
+himself a dozen times, and take the names of all his female ancestors in
+vain, before he produced it.
+
+The sun flattened a little more at the bottom, and began to move
+quickly, as it does in India--anxious apparently to get away from the
+day's ill deeds.
+
+"Shoulder umms!" commanded Brown. "General salute! Present-umms!"
+
+The red sun slid below the sky-line, and the night was on them, as
+though somebody had shut the lid. Brown stepped to the sword, jerked it
+out of the ground and returned it to his scabbard in three motions.
+
+"Shoulder-umms! Order-umms! Dismiss!" The men filed back into the hut
+again, disconsolately, without swearing and without mirth. They had
+put the sun to bed with proper military decency. They would have seen
+humor--perhaps--or an excuse for blasphemy in the omission of such a
+detail, but it was much too hot to swear at the execution of it.
+
+Besides, Brown was a strange individual who detested swearing, and it
+was a very useful thing, and wise, to humor him. He had a way of his
+own, and usually got it.
+
+Brown posted a sentry at the hut-door, and another at the crossroads
+which he was to guard, then went round behind the but to bargain with
+the goatskin-merchant. But he stopped before he reached the tree.
+
+"Boy!" he called, and a low-caste native servant came toward him at a
+run.
+
+"Is that fakir there still?"
+
+"Ha, sahib!"
+
+"Ha? Can't you learn to say 'yes,' like a human being?"
+
+"Yes, sahib!"
+
+"All right. I'm going to have a talk with him. Kill the goat, and tell
+the Punjabi to wait, if he wants to buy the skin."
+
+"Ha, sahib!"
+
+Brown spun round on his heel, and the servant wilted.
+
+"Yes, sahib!" he corrected.
+
+Brown left him then, with a nod that conveyed remission of cardinal sin,
+and a warning not to repeat the offence. As the native ran off to get
+the butcher-knife and sharpen it, it was noticeable that he wore a
+chastened look.
+
+"Send Sidiki after me!" Brown shouted after him, and a minute later a
+nearly naked Beluchi struck a match and emerged from the darkness, with
+the light of a lantern gleaming on his skin. He followed like a snake,
+and only Brown's sharp, authority-conveying footfalls could be heard as
+he trudged sturdily--straight-backed, eyes straight in front of him--to
+where an age-old baobab loomed like a phantom in the night. He marched
+like a man in armor. Not even the terrific heat of a Central-Indian
+night could take the stiffening out of him.
+
+The Beluchi ran ahead, just before they reached the tree. He stopped and
+held the lantern up to let its light fall on some object that was close
+against the tree-trunk. At a good ten-pace distance from the object
+Brown stopped and stared. The lamplight fell on two little dots that
+gleamed. Brown stepped two paces nearer. Two deadly, malicious human
+eyes blinked once, and then stared back at him.
+
+"Does he never sleep?" asked Brown.
+
+The Beluchi said something or other in a language that was full of harsh
+hard gutturals, and the owner of the eyes chuckled. His voice seemed
+to be coming from the tree itself, and there was nothing of him visible
+except the cruel keen eyes that had not blinked once since Brown drew
+nearer.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Sahib, he does not answer."
+
+"Tell him I'm tired of his not answering. Tell him that if he can't
+learn to give a civil answer to a civilly put question I'll exercise my
+authority on him!"
+
+The Beluchi translated, or pretended to. Brown was not sure which, for
+he was rewarded with nothing but another chuckle, which sounded like
+water gurgling down a drain.
+
+"Does he still say nothing?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing, sahib."
+
+Brown stepped up closer yet, and peered into the blackness, looking
+straight into the eyes that glared at him, and from them down at the
+body of the owner of them. The Beluchi shrank away.
+
+"Have a care, sahib! It is dangerous! This very holy--most holy--most
+religious man!"
+
+"Bring that lantern back."
+
+"He will curse you, sahib!"
+
+"Do you hear me?"
+
+The Beluchi came nearer again, trembling with fright. Brown snatched the
+lamp away from him, and pushed it forward toward the fakir, moving it
+up and down to get a view of the whole of him. There was nothing that
+he saw that would reassure or comfort or please a devil even. It was
+ultradevilish; both by design and accident--conceived and calculated
+ghastliness, peculiar to India. Brown shuddered as he looked, and it
+took more than the merely horrible to make him betray emotion.
+
+"What god do you say he worships?"
+
+"Sahib, I know not. I am a Mussulman. These Hindus worship many gods."
+
+The fakir chuckled again, and Brown held the lantern yet nearer to him
+to get a better view. The fakir's skin was not oily, and for all the
+blanket-heat it did not glisten, so his form was barely outlined against
+the blackness that was all but tangible behind him.
+
+Brown spat again, as he drew away a step. He could contrive to express
+more disgust and more grim determination in that one rudimentary act
+than even a Stamboul Softa can.
+
+"So he's holy, is he?"
+
+"Very, very holy, sahib!"
+
+Again the fakir chuckled, and again Brown held his breath and pushed the
+lantern closer to him.
+
+"I believe the brute understands the Queen's English!"
+
+"He understanding all things, sahib! He knowing all things what will
+happen! Mind, sahib! He may curse you!"
+
+But Brown appeared indifferent to the danger that he ran. To the fakir's
+unconcealed discomfort, he proceeded to examine him minutely, going over
+him with the aid of the lantern inch by inch, from the toe-nails upward.
+
+"Well," he commented aloud, "if the army's got an opposite, here's it!
+I'd give a month's pay for the privilege of washing this brute, just as
+a beginning!"
+
+The man's toe-nails--for he really was a man!--were at least two inches
+long. They were twisted spirally, and some of them were curled back on
+themselves into disgusting-looking knots. What walking he had ever done
+had been on his heels. His feet were bent upward, and fixed upward, by a
+deliberately cultivated cramp.
+
+His legs, twisted one above the other in a squatting attitude, were lean
+and hairy, and covered with open sores which were kept open by the swarm
+of insects that infested him. His loin-cloth was rotting from him. His
+emaciated body--powdered and smeared with ashes and dust and worse--was
+perched bolt-up-right on a flat earth dais that had once on a time been
+the throne of a crossroads idol. One arm, his right one, hung by
+his side in an almost normal attitude, and his right fingers moved
+incessantly like a man's who is kneading clay. But his other arm was
+rigid--straight up in the air above his head; set, fixed, cramped,
+paralyzed in that position, with the fist clenched. And through the back
+of the closed fist the fakir's nails were growing.
+
+But, worse than the horror of the arm was the creature's face, with
+the evidence of torture on it, and fiendish delight in torture for the
+torture's sake. His eyes were his only organs that really lived still,
+and they expressed the steely hate and cruelty, the mad fanaticism,
+the greedy self-love--self-immolating for the sake of self--that is the
+thoroughgoing fakir's stock in trade. And his lips were like the
+graven lips of a Hindu temple god, self-satisfied, self-worshiping,
+contemptuous and cruel. He chuckled again, as Brown finished his
+inspection.
+
+"So that crittur's holy, is he? Well, tell him that I'm set here to
+watch these crossroads. Tell him I'm supposed to question every one who
+comes, and find out what his business is, and arrest him if he can't
+give a proper account of himself. Say he's been here three days now, and
+that that's long enough for any one to find his tongue in. Tell him if I
+don't get an answer from him here and now I'll put him in the clink!"
+
+"But, sahib--"
+
+"You tell him what I say, d'you hear?"
+
+The Beluchi made haste to translate, trembling as he spoke, and wilting
+visibly when the baleful eyes of the fakir rested on him for a second.
+The fakir answered something in a guttural undertone.
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"That he will curse you, sahib!"
+
+"Sentry!" shouted Brown.
+
+"Sir!" came the ready answer, and the sling-swivels of a rifle clicked
+as the man on guard at the crossroads shouldered it. There are some men
+who are called "sir" without any title to it, just as there are some
+sergeants who receive a colonel's share of deference when out on a
+non-commissioned officer's command. Bill Brown was one of them.
+
+"Come here, will you!"
+
+There came the sound of heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt
+descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell
+on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention--like a jinnee
+formed suddenly from empty blackness.
+
+"Arrest this fakir. Cram him in the clink."
+
+"Very good, sir!"
+
+The sentry took one step forward, with his fixed bayonet at the
+"charge," and the fakir sat still and eyed him.
+
+"Oh, have a care, sahib!" wailed the Beluchi. "This is very holy man!"
+
+"Silence!" ordered Brown. "Here. Hold the lamp."
+
+The bayonet-point pressed against the fakir's ribs, and he drew back an
+inch or two to get away from it. He was evidently able to feel pain when
+it was inflicted by any other than himself.
+
+"Come on," growled the sentry. "Forward. Quick march. If you don't want
+two inches in you!"
+
+"Don't use the point!" commanded Brown. "You might do him an injury.
+Treat him to a sample of the butt!"
+
+The sentry swung his rifle round with an under-handed motion that all
+riflemen used to practise in the short-range-rifle days. The fakir
+winced, and gabbled something in a hurry to the man who held the lamp.
+
+"He says that he will speak, sahib!"
+
+"Halt, then," commanded Brown. "Order arms. Tell him to hurry up!"
+
+The Beluchi translated, and the fakir answered him, in a voice that
+sounded hard and distant and emotionless.
+
+"He says that he, too, is here to watch the crossroads, sahib! He says
+that he will curse you if you touch him!"
+
+"Tell him to curse away!"
+
+"He says not unless you touch him, sahib."
+
+"Prog him off his perch!" commanded Brown.
+
+The rifle leaped up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the
+fakir's ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not
+upsetting him completely. He recovered his poise with quite astonishing
+activity, and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais. His
+eyes blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp
+gasps that sounded like escaping steam. He needed no further invitation
+to commence his cursing. It burst out with a rush, and paused for better
+effect, and burst out again in a torrent. The Beluchi hid his face
+between his hands.
+
+"Now translate that!" commanded Brown, when the fakir stopped for lack
+of breath.
+
+"Sahib, I dare not! Sahib--"
+
+Brown took a threatening step toward him, and the Beluchi changed his
+mind. Brown's disciplining methods were a too recently encountered fact
+to be outdone by a fakir's promise of any kind of not-yet-met damnation.
+
+"Sahib, he says that because your man has touched him, both you and
+your man shall lie within a week helpless upon an anthill, still living,
+while the ants run in and out among your wounds. He says that the ants
+shall eat your eyes, sahib, and that you shall cry for water, and there
+shall be no water within reach--only the sound of water just beyond you.
+He says that first you shall be beaten, both of you, until your backs
+and the soles of your feet run blood, in order that the ants may have an
+entrance!"
+
+"Is he going to do all this?"
+
+The Beluchi passed the question on, and the fakir tossed him an answer
+to it.
+
+"He says, sahib, that the gods will see to it."
+
+"So the gods obey his orders, do they. Well, they've a queer sense of
+duty! What else does he prophesy?"
+
+"About your soul, sahib, and the sentry's soul."
+
+"That's interesting! Translate!"
+
+"He says, sahib, that for countless centuries you and your man shall
+inhabit the carcasses of snakes, to eat dirt and be trodden on and
+crushed, until you learn to have respect for very holy persons!"
+
+"Is he going to have the ordering of that?"
+
+"He says that the gods have already ordered it."
+
+"It won't make much difference, then, what I do now. If that's in store
+for me in any case, I may as well get my money's worth before the fun
+begins! Tell him that unless he can give me a satisfactory reason for
+being here I shall treat him to a little more rifle-butt, and something
+else afterward that he will like even less!"
+
+"He says," explained the Beluchi, after a moment's conversation with the
+fakir, "that he is here to see what the gods have prophesied. He says
+that India will presently be whelmed in blood!"
+
+"Whose blood?"
+
+"Yours and that of others. He says, did you not see the sunset?"
+
+"What of the sunset?"
+
+Brown looked about him and, save where the lantern cast a fitful light
+on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint
+relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes
+failed to pierce the gloom. The sunset was a memory. In that heavy,
+death-darkness silence it seemed almost as though there had never been a
+sun.
+
+"'A blot of blood,' he says. He says the order has been given. He says
+that half of India shall run blood within a day, and the whole of it
+within a week!"
+
+"Who gave the order?"
+
+"He answers 'Hookum hai!'--which means 'It is an order!' Nothing more
+does the holy fakir say."
+
+"To the clink with him!" commanded Brown. "I'm tired of these Old Mother
+Shipton babblings. That's the third useless Hindu fanatic within a week
+who has talked about India being drenched in blood. Let him go in to the
+depot under guard, and do his prophesying there! Bring him along."
+
+The sentry's rifle-butt rose again and threatened business. The Beluchi
+gave a warning cry, and the fakir tumbled off his dais. Then, with the
+trembling Beluchi walking on ahead with the lantern, and Brown and the
+sentry urging from behind, the fakir jumped and squirmed and wabbled
+on his all but useless feet toward the guardroom. When they reached the
+tree where the goat had bleated, the Punjabi skin-buyer rose up, took
+one long look at the fakir and ran.
+
+"Well, I'll be!" exclaimed the sentry.
+
+"You'll be worse than that," said Brown, "if you use that language
+anywhere where I'm about! I'll not have it, d'you hear? Get on ahead,
+and open the door of the clink!"
+
+The sentry obeyed him, and a moment later the fakir was thrust into a
+four-square mud-walled room, and the door was locked on him.
+
+"Back to your post," commanded Brown. "And next time I hear you
+swearing, I'll treat you to a double-trick, my man! About turn. Quick
+march."
+
+The sentry trudged off without daring to answer him, and Brown took a
+good look at the fakir through the iron bars that protected the top
+half of the door. Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly
+slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee. His soul revolted
+at the thought of it, but it was his duty to eat it and set an example
+to the men; and duty was the only thing that mattered in Bill Brown's
+scheme of things.
+
+"Maybe it's true," he muttered, "and maybe it's all lies; there's no
+knowing. Maybe India's going to run blood, as these fakirs seem to
+think, and maybe it isn't. There'll be more blood shed than mine in that
+case! 'Hookum hai'--'It is orders,' heh? Well--there's more than one
+sort of 'Hookum hai!' I've got my orders too!"
+
+He doubled the guard, when supper bad been eaten and the guardroom had
+been swept and the pots and kettle had been burnished until they shone.
+Then he tossed a chupatty to the imprisoned fakir, spat again from sheer
+disgust, lit his pipe and went and sat where he could hear the footbeats
+of the sentries.
+
+"They can't help their religion," he muttered. "The poor infidels don't
+know no better. And they've got a right to think what they please 'about
+me or the Company. But I've no patience with uncleanliness! That's wrong
+any way you look at it. That critter can't see straight for the dirt on
+him, nor think straight for that matter. He's a disgrace to humanity.
+Priest or fakir or whatever he is, if I live to see tomorrow's sun I'll
+hand him over to the guard and have him washed!"
+
+Having formed that resolution, Brown dismissed all thoughts of the
+fakir. His memory went back to home--the clean white cottage on the
+Sussex Downs, and the clean white girl who once on a time had waited for
+him there. For the next few hours, until the guard was changed, the only
+signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the steady
+footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the hell-hot
+guard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly discomfort.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Bill Brown, with his twelve, had not been set to watch a lonely
+crossroad for the fun of it. One road was a well-made highway, and led
+from a walled city, where three thousand men sweated and thought
+of England, to another city, where five thousand armed natives drew
+England's pay, and wore English uniforms.
+
+The other road was a snake-like trail, nearly as wide but not nearly
+so well kept. It twisted here and there amid countless swarming native
+villages, and was used almost exclusively by natives, whose rightful
+business was neither war nor peace nor the contriving of either of them.
+It had been a trade-road when history was being born, and the laden
+ox-carts creaked along it still, as they had always done and always will
+do until India awakes.
+
+But there are few men in the world who attend to nothing but their
+rightful business, and there are even more in India than elsewhere
+who are prone to neglect their own affairs and stir up sedition among
+others. There are few fighting-men among that host. They are priests
+for the most part or fakirs or make-believe pedlers or confessed and
+shameless mendicants; and they have no liking for the trunk roads,
+where the tangible evidence of Might and Majesty may be seen marching in
+eight-hundred-man battalions. They prefer to dream along the byways, and
+set other people dreaming. They lead, when the crash comes, from behind.
+
+Though the men who made the policies of the Honorable East India Company
+were mostly blind to the moving finger on the wall, and chose to imagine
+themselves secure against a rising of the millions they controlled; and
+though most of their military officers were blinder yet, and failed to
+read the temper of the native troops in their immediate command, still,
+there were other men who found themselves groping, at least two years
+before the Mutiny of '57. They were groping for something intangible and
+noiseless and threatening which they felt was there in a darkness, but
+which one could not see.
+
+Baines was one of them--Lieutenant-General Baines, commanding at
+Bholat. His troops were in the center of a spider's web of roads that
+criss-crossed and drained a province. There were big trunk arteries,
+which took the flow of life from city to walled city, and a mass of
+winding veins in the shape of grass-grown country tracks. He could feel,
+if any man could, the first faint signs of fever rising, and he was
+placed where he could move swiftly, and cut deep in the right spot,
+should the knife be needed.
+
+He was like a surgeon, though, who holds a lancet and can use it, but
+who lacks permission. The poison in India's system lay deep, and the
+fever was slow in showing itself. And meanwhile the men who had the
+ordering of things could see neither necessity nor excuse for so much as
+a parade of strength. They refused, point-blank and absolutely, to admit
+that there was, or, could be, any symptom of unrest.
+
+He dared not make new posts for officers, for officers would grumble at
+enforced exile in the country districts, and the Government would get to
+hear of it, and countermand. But there were non-commissioned officers
+in plenty, and it was not difficult to choose the best of them--three
+men--and send them, with minute detachments, to three different points
+of vantage. Non-commissioned officers don't grumble, or if they do no
+one gets to hear of it, or minds. And they are just as good as officers
+at watching crossroads and reporting what they see and hear.
+
+So where a little cluster of mud huts ached in the heat of a right
+angle where the trunk road crossed a native road some seventy miles from
+Bholat, Bill Brown--swordsman and sergeant and strictest of martinets,
+as well as sentimentalist--had been set to watch and listen and report.
+
+There were many cleverer men in the non-commissioned ranks of Baine's
+command, many who knew more of the native languages, and who had
+more imagination. But there was none who knew better how to win the
+unqualified respect and the obedience of British and native alike,
+or who could be better counted on to obey an order, when it came,
+literally, promptly and in the teeth of anything.
+
+Brown's theories on religion were a thing to marvel at, and walk
+singularly wide of, for he was a preacher with a pair of fists when
+thoroughly aroused. And his devotion to a girl in England whom no one
+in his regiment had ever seen, and of whom he did not even possess a
+likeness, was next door to being pitiable. His voice was like a raven's,
+with something rather less than a raven's sense of melody; he was very
+prone to sing, and his songs were mournful ones. He was not a social
+acquisition in any generally accepted sense, although his language was
+completely free from blasphemy or coarseness. His ideas were too cut
+and dried to make conversation even interesting. But his loyalty and his
+sense of duty were as adamant.
+
+He had changed the double guard at the crossroads; and had posted two
+fresh men by the mud-walled guardroom door. He had lit his pipe for the
+dozenth time, and had let it go out again while he hummed a verse of a
+Covenanters' hymn. And he had just started up to wall over to the cell
+and make a cursory inspection of his prisoner, when his ears caught a
+distant sound that was different from any of the night sounds, though
+scarcely louder.
+
+Prompt as a rifle in answer to the trigger, he threw himself down on
+all fours, and laid his ear to the ground. A second later, he was on his
+feet again.
+
+"Guard!" he yelled. "Turn out!"
+
+Cots squeaked and jumped, and there came a rush of hurrying feet. The
+eight men not on watch ran out in single file, still buttoning their
+uniforms, and lined up beside the two who watched the guardroom door.
+
+"Stand easy!" commanded Brown. Then he marched off to the crossroads,
+finding his way in the blackness more by instinct and sense of direction
+than from any landmark, for even the road beneath his feet was barely
+visible.
+
+"D'you mean to tell me that neither of you men can hear that sound?" he
+asked the sentries.
+
+Both men listened intently, and presently one of them made out a very
+faint and distant noise, that did not seem to blend in with the other
+night-sounds.
+
+"Might be a native drum?" he hazarded.
+
+"No, 'tain't!" said the other. "I got it now. It's a horse galloping.
+Tired horse, by the sound of him, and coming this way. All right,
+Sergeant."
+
+"One of you go two hundred yards along the road, and form an
+advance-post, so to speak. Challenge him the minute he's within
+ear-shot, and shoot him if he won't halt. If he halts, pass him along to
+Number Two. Number Two, pass him along to the guardroom, where
+I'll deal with him! Which of you's Number One? Number One,
+then--forward--quick--march!"
+
+The sentry trudged off in one direction, and Bill Brown in another. The
+sentry concealed itself behind a rock that flanked the road, and
+Brown spent the next few minutes in making the guard "port arms," and
+carefully inspecting their weapons with the aid of a lantern. He had
+already inspected there once since supper, but he knew the effect that
+another inspection would be likely to produce. Nothing goes further
+toward making men careful and ready at the word than incessant and
+unexpected but quite quietly performed inspection of minutest details.
+
+He produced the effect of setting the men on the qui vive without
+alarming them.
+
+Suddenly, the farthest advanced sentry's challenge rang out.
+
+"Frie-e-e-e-nd!" came the answer, in nasal, high-pitched wail, but the
+galloping continued.
+
+"Halt, I tell you!" A breech-bolt clicked, and then another one. They
+were little sounds, but they were different, and the guard could hear
+them plainly. The galloping horse came on.
+
+"Cra-a-a-a-ack!" went the sentry's rifle, and the flash of it spurted
+for an instant across the road, like a sheet of lightning. And, just
+as lightning might, it showed an instantaneous vision of a tired
+gray horse, foam-flecked and furiously ridden, pounding down the road
+head-on. The vision was blotted by the night again before any one could
+see who rode the horse, or what his weapons were--if any--or form a
+theory as to why he rode.
+
+But the winging bullet did what the sentry's voice had failed to do.
+There came a clatter of spasmodic hoof-beats, an erratic shower of
+sparks, a curse in clean-lipped decent Urdu; a grunt, a struggle, more
+sparks again, and then a thud, followed by a devoutly worded prayer
+that Allah, the all-wise provider of just penalties, might blast the
+universe.
+
+"Stop talkin'!" said the sentry, and a black-bearded Rajput rolled free,
+and looked up to find a bayonet-point within three inches of his eye.
+
+"Poggul!" snarled the Mohammedan.
+
+"Poggul's no password!" said the sentry. "Neither to my good-nature nor
+to nothing else. Put up your 'ands, and get on your feet, and march!
+Look alive, now! Call me a fool, would yer? Wait till the sergeant's
+through with yer, and see!"
+
+The Rajput chose to consider a retort beneath his dignity. He rose, and
+took one quick look at the horse, which was still breathing.
+
+"Your bayonet just there," he said, "and press. So he will die quickly."
+
+The sentry placed his bayonet-point exactly where directed, and leaned
+his weight above it. The horse gave a little shudder, and lay still.
+
+"Poggul!" said the Rajput once again. And this time the sentry looked
+and saw cold steel within three inches of his eye!
+
+"Your rifle!" said the Rajput. "Hand it here!"
+
+And, to save his eyesight, the sentry complied, while the Rajput's
+ivory-white teeth grinned at him pleasantly.
+
+"Now, hands to your sides! Attention! March!" the Rajput ordered, and
+with his own bayonet at his back the sentry had to march, whether
+he wanted to or not, by the route that the other chose, toward the
+guardroom. The Rajput seemed to know by instinct where the second sentry
+stood although the man's shape was quite invisible against the night. He
+called out, "Friend!" again as he passed him, and the sentry hearing the
+first sentry's footsteps, imagined that the real situation was reversed.
+
+So, out of a pall of blackness, to the accompanying sound of rifles
+being brought up to the shoulder, a British sentry--feeling and looking
+precisely like a fool--marched up to his own guardroom, with a man who
+should have been his prisoner in charge of him.
+
+"Halt!" commanded Brown. "Who or what have you got there, Stanley?"
+
+"Stanley is my prisoner at present!" said a voice that Brown vaguely
+recognized.
+
+He stepped up closer, to make sure.
+
+"What, you? Juggut Khan!"
+
+"Aye, Brown sahib! Juggut Khan--with tidings, and a dead gray horse on
+which to bear them! If this fool could only use his bayonet as he can
+shoot, I think I would be dead too. His brains, though, are all behind
+his right eye. Tie him up, where no little child can come and make him
+prisoner!"
+
+"Arrest that man!" commanded Brown, and two men detached themselves from
+the end of the guard, and stood him between them, behind the line.
+
+"Here's his rifle!" smiled Juggut Khan, and Brown received it with an
+ill grace.
+
+"How did you get past the other sentry?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, easily! You English are only brave; you have no brains. Sometimes
+one part of the rule is broken, but the other never. You are not always
+brave!"
+
+"I suppose you're angry because he killed your horse?"
+
+"I am angry, Brown sahib, for greater happenings than that! The man
+conceivably was right, since I did not halt for him, and I suppose he
+had his orders. I am angry because the standard of rebellion is raised,
+and because of what it means to me!"
+
+"Are you drunk, Juggut Khan?"
+
+"Your honor is pleased to be humorous? No, I am not drunk. Nor have I
+eaten opium. I have eaten of the bread of bitterness this day, and drunk
+of the cup of gall. I have seen British officers--good, brave fools,
+some of whom I knew and loved--killed by the men they were supposed
+to lead. I have seen a barracks burning, and a city given over to be
+looted. I have seen white women--nay, sahib, steady!--I have seen them
+run before a howling mob, and I have seen certain of them shot by their
+own husbands!"
+
+"Quietly!" ordered Brown. "Don't let the men hear!"
+
+"One of them I slew myself, because her husband, who was wounded, sent
+me to her and bade me kill her. She died bravely. And certain others
+I have hidden where the mutineers are not likely to discover them at
+present. I ride now for succor--or, I rode, rather, until your expert
+marksman interfered with me! I now need another horse."
+
+"You mean that the native troops have mutinied?" "I mean rather more
+than that, sahib. Mohammedans and Hindus are as one, and the crowd is
+with them. This is probably the end of the powder-train, for, from what
+I heard shouted by the mutineers, almost the whole of India is in revolt
+already!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"God knows, sahib! The reason given is that the cartridges supplied are
+greased with the blended fat of pigs and cows, thus defiling both Hindu
+and Mohammedan alike. But, if you ask me, the cause lies deeper. In the
+meantime, the rebels have looted Jailpore and burned their barracks, and
+within an hour or two they will start along this road for Bholat, which
+they have a mind to loot likewise. My advice to you is retire at once.
+Get me another horse from somewhere, that I may carry warning. Then
+follow me as fast as you and your men can move."
+
+"Bah!" said Brown. "They'll find General Baines to deal with them at
+Bholat."
+
+"Who knows yet how many in Bholat have not risen? Are you positive that
+the garrison there has not already been surrounded by rebels? I am not!
+I would not be at all surprised to learn that General Baines is so busy
+defending himself that he can not move in any direction. And--does your
+honor mean to hold this guardroom here against five thousand?"
+
+"I mean to obey my orders!" answered Brown.
+
+"And your orders are?"
+
+"My orders!"
+
+"Would they preclude the provision of another horse for me?"
+
+"There's a village about a mile away, down over yonder, where I think
+you'll find a decent horse--along that road there."
+
+"And your honor's orders would possibly permit a certain payment for the
+horse?"
+
+"Positively not!" said Brown.
+
+"Then--'
+
+"To seize a horse, for military use, under the spur of necessity, and
+after giving a receipt for it, would be in order."
+
+"So I am to spend the night wandering around the countryside, in a vain
+endeavor to--"
+
+But Brown was doing mathematics in his head. Two men to guard prisoners,
+two on guard at the crossroads, two at the guardroom door--six from
+twelve left six, and six were not enough to rape a countryside.
+
+"Guard!" he ordered. "Release that prisoner. Now, you Stanley, let this
+be a lesson to you, and remember that I only set you free because I'd
+have been short-handed otherwise. Number One! Stand guard between the
+clink and the guardroom door. Keep an eye on both. The remainder--form
+two-deep. Right turn! By the left, quick-march! Left wheel!... Now,"
+he said, turning to Juggut Khan, "if you'll come along I'll soon get a
+horse for you!"
+
+The Rajput strode along beside him, and gave him some additional
+information as they went, Brown taking very good care all the time to
+keep out of earshot of the men and to speak to Juggut Khan in low tones.
+He learned, among other things, that Juggut Khan had lost every anna
+that he owned, and had only escaped with his life by dint of luck and
+swordship and most terrific riding.
+
+"Are all of you Rajputs loyal?" asked Brown.
+
+"I know not. I know that I myself shall stay loyal until the end!"
+
+"Well--the end is not in doubt. There can only be one end!" commented
+Brown.
+
+"Of a truth, sahib, I believe that you are right. There can only be one
+end. This night is not more black, this horizon is no shorter, than the
+outlook!"
+
+"Then, you mean--"
+
+"I mean, sahib, that this uprising is more serious than you--or any
+other Englishman--is likely to believe. I believe that the side I fight
+for will be the losing side."
+
+"And yet, you stay loyal?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"All the same, Juggut Khan--I'm not emotional, or a man of many words. I
+don't trust Indians as a rule! I--but--here--will you shake hands?"
+
+"Certainly, sahib!" said the Rajput. "We be two men, you and I! Why
+should the one be loyal and the other not?"
+
+"When this is over," said Brown, "if it ends the way we want, and we're
+both alive, I'd like to call myself your friend!"
+
+"I have always been your friend, sahib, and you mine, since the day when
+you bandaged up a boy and gave him your own drinking-water and carried
+him in to Bholat on your shoulder, twenty miles or more."
+
+"Oh, as for that--any other man would have done the same thing. That was
+nothing!"
+
+"Strange that when a white man does an honorable deed he lies about it!"
+said Juggut Khan. "That was not nothing, sahib, and you know it was not
+nothing! You know that from the heat and the exertion you were ill for
+more than a month afterward. And you know that there were others there,
+of my own people, who might have done what you did, and did not!"
+
+"But, hang it all! Why drag up a little thing like this?"
+
+"Because, sahib, I might have no other opportunity, and--"
+
+"Well? And what?"
+
+"And the Rajput boy whom you carried was my son!"
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The finding of a remount for Juggut Khan was not so troublesome as might
+have been supposed. The rumors and plans and whispered orders for the
+coming struggle had been passed around the countryside for months past,
+and every man who owned a horse had it stalled safely near him, for use
+when the hour should come.
+
+There were country-ponies and Arabs and Kathiawaris and Khaubulis among
+which to pick, and though the average run of them was worse than merely
+bad, and though both best and worst were hidden away whenever possible,
+good horses were discoverable. Within an hour, Bill Brown; with the aid
+of his men, had routed out a Khaubuji stallion for Juggut Khan, one fit
+to carry him against time the whole of the way to Bholat.
+
+The Rajput mounted him where Brown unearthed him, and watched the
+signing of a scribbled-out receipt with a cynical smile.
+
+"If he comes to claim his money for the horse," said Juggut Khan,
+"I--even I, who am penniless--will pay him. Good-by, Brown sahib!" He
+leaned over and grasped the sergeant by the hand. "Take my advice, now.
+I know what is happening and what has happened. Fall back on Bholat
+at once. Hurry! Seize horses or even asses for your men, and ride in
+hotfoot. Salaam!"
+
+He drove his right spur in, wheeled the horse and started across country
+in the direction of Bholat at a hand-gallop, guiding himself solely
+by the soldier's sixth sense of direction, and leaving the problem of
+possible pitfalls to the horse.
+
+"If what he says is true," said Brown, as the clattering hoof-beats died
+away, "and I'm game to take my oath he wouldn't lie to me, I'd give more
+than a little to have him with me for the next few hours!"
+
+The men came clustering round him now, anxious for an explanation.
+They had held their tongues while Juggut Khan was there, because they
+happened to know Brown too well to do otherwise. He would have snubbed
+any man who dared to question him before the Indian. But, now that the
+Indian was gone, curiosity could stay no longer within bounds.
+
+"What is it, Sergeant? Anything been happening? What's the news? What's
+that I heard him say about rebellion? They're a rum lot, them Rajputs.
+D'you think he's square? Tell us, Sergeant!"
+
+"Listen, then. Rebellion has broken out. The native barracks at Jailpore
+have been burned, and all the English officers are killed--or so says
+Juggut Khan. He's riding on, to carry the news to General Baines. He
+says that the mutineers are planning to come along this way some time
+within the next few hours!"
+
+"What are we going to do, then?"
+
+"That's my business! I'm in command here!"
+
+"Yes, but, Sergeant--aren't you going back to Bholat? Aren't you going
+to follow him? Are you going to stay here and get cut up? We'll get
+caught here like rats in a trap!"
+
+"Are you giving orders here?" asked Brown acidly. "Fall in! Come on,
+now! Hurry! 'Tshun--eyes right--ri'--dress. Eyes--front. Ri'--turn. By
+the left--quick--march! Silence, now! Left! Left! Left!"
+
+He marched them back toward the crossroads without giving them any
+further opportunity to remonstrate or ask for information.
+
+It was not until he reached the crossroads, without being challenged,
+that he showed any sign of being in any way disturbed.
+
+"Sentry!" he shouted. "Sentry!"
+
+But there was no answer.
+
+"Halt!" he ordered, and he himself went forward to investigate. The
+blackness swallowed him, but the men could hear him move, and they heard
+him fall. They heard him muttering, too, within ten paces of them. Then
+they heard his order.
+
+"Bring a light here, some one."
+
+One man produced a piece of candle, struck a match and lit it. A moment
+later they had all broken order, and were standing huddled up together
+like a frightened flock of sheep, peering through dancing, candle-lit
+shadows at something horrible that Brown was handling.
+
+"What is it, Sergeant?"
+
+"What in hell's happened?"
+
+"Who was that swearing?" inquired Brown, with a sudden look up across
+his shoulder. "You, Taylor? You again? Swearing in the presence of
+death? Talking of hell, with your two comrades lying dead at the
+crossroads, and you like to follow both o' them at any minute?"
+
+Both of the guards lay dead. They lay quite neatly, side by side,
+without a sign about them to show that they had met with violence. Brown
+rolled one body over, though, and then the cause of death became more
+obvious. A stream of blood welled out of the man's back, from between
+the shoulder-blades--warm blood, that had not even started to coagulate.
+
+"They've been dead about three minutes!" commented Brown, rising, and
+wiping his hands in the road-dust to get the blood off them. "Pick 'em
+up. Carefully, now! Frog-march 'em, face-downwards. That's better! Now,
+forward. Quick, march!"
+
+The procession advanced toward the guardhouse in grim silence, and once
+again there was no challenge when there should have been. The lamp was
+still burning in the guardroom, for they could see it plainly as they
+drew nearer, but there was no noise of a sentry's footfalls, or hoarse
+"Halt!" and "Who comes there?"
+
+Nor was there any sign yet of the man whom Brown had left to guard both
+"clink" and guardroom. Brown let them take their dead comrades into the
+guardroom first, then set two fresh guards at the door, and covered up
+the bodies with a sheet before commencing to investigate.
+
+He started off toward the cell where he had imprisoned the fakir. He
+went by himself, and no one volunteered to go with him.
+
+He had gone five yards when the second explanation met his eyes. This
+time there was no need to stoop down, nor to turn any body over. The
+sentry whom he had left to guard both cell and guardroom stood bolt
+upright, with his mouth and his eyes wide open; skewered to the wall of
+the guardhouse by an iron spike, which pierced his chest.
+
+"A lamp and four men here!" ordered Brown, without waiting to let the
+horror of the sight sink in. "Take that poor chap down, and lay him in
+the guardroom beside the others. How? How should I know? Pull it out, or
+break it off--I don't care which; don't leave him there, that's all."
+
+He walked on toward the cell-door, while they labored, and fingered
+gingerly around the spike, which must have been driven through the
+sentry's chest with a hammer.
+
+"I thought as much!" he muttered. And, though he had not thought as
+much, he might have done so. "I knew that a man who could maim his own
+body in that way was capable of any crime in the calendar!"
+
+The door of the cell stood open, and there was no sign of any fakir, or
+of any one who might have helped him go--nothing but an empty cell, with
+the haunting smell of the fakir still abiding in it.
+
+Bill Brown spat, and closed the cell-door.
+
+"I'm thinking that Juggut Khan told nothing but the truth," he muttered.
+"Things look right, don't they, if that's so! Obey, Obey! I'd have liked
+to see England just once again--I would indeed. If I could only see her
+just once. If I'd a letter from her, or her picture. This is a rotten,
+rat-in-a-hole, lonely, uncreditable way to die! I wish Juggut Khan
+were here. I'd have somebody to help me keep my good courage up in that
+case."
+
+The lock on the cell-door was broken, so he only closed it, then started
+back toward the guardroom.
+
+"Three rifles, and three ammunition pouches gone!" he muttered. "That's
+three weapons they've got, in any case. A hornet's nest'd be better
+stopping in than this place."
+
+He overtook the men who were carrying in the nail-killed sentry, and he
+saw that their faces were drawn and white. So were those of the other
+men, who were clustered in the guardroom door.
+
+"What next, Sergeant? Hadn't we better be quick? Why not burn the place?
+That'd do instead o' buryin' the dead ones, and it'd give us a light to
+get away by. Might serve as a beacon, too. Might fetch assistance!"
+
+It was evident that panic had set in.
+
+"Fall in!" commanded Brown, and his straight back took on a curve that
+meant straightness to the nth power.
+
+"'Tshun! Ri'--dress! Eyes--front!"
+
+He glared at them for just about one minute before he spoke, and during
+that minute each man there realized that what was coming would be quite
+irrevocable.
+
+"I'm sergeant here. My orders are to hold this post until relieved.
+Therefore--and I hope there's no man here holds any other notion; I hope
+it for his own sake!--until we are relieved, we're going to hold it!
+Moreover, this command is going to be a real command, from now on. It's
+going to buck up. I'm going to put some ginger in it. There are three
+dead men here to be avenged, and I'm going to avenge 'em, or make you
+do it! And if any man imagines he's going to help himself by feeling
+afraid, let me assure him that the only thing he needs to fear is me!
+I've a right to command men--I know how--I intend to do it. And if I've
+got to make men first out of whey-faced cowards, why, I'm game to do it,
+and this is just where I begin! Now! Anybody got a word to say?"
+
+There was grim silence.
+
+"Good! I'll assume, then, until I'm contradicted, that you're all brave
+men. Into the guardroom with you!"
+
+"Sahib! Sahib!" said a voice beside him.
+
+"Well? What?"
+
+It was the Beluchi interpreter who had carried the lamp for him that
+evening when he arrested the fakir.
+
+"Run, sahib! It is time to run away!"
+
+"Go on, then! Why don't you run?"
+
+"I am afraid, sahib."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of the men who slew the soldiers. Sahib! Remember what the fakir said.
+You will be pegged out on an anthill, sahib, when you have been beaten.
+Run, while there is yet time!"
+
+"Did you see them kill my men?"
+
+"Nay, sahib!"
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"I ran away and hid, sahib."
+
+"How many were there?"
+
+"Very many. The Punjabi skin-buyer brought them."
+
+"He did, did he? Very well! Did he go off with the fakir?"
+
+"I think he did. I did not see."
+
+"Well, we'll suppose he did, then. And when the day breaks; we'll
+suppose that we can find him, and we'll go in search of him, and I
+wouldn't like to be that Punjabi when I do find him! Get into the
+guard-room, and wait in there until I give you leave to stir."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+An Indian city that has yet to have its mysterie's laid bare and
+banished by electric light is a stage deliberately set for massacre. The
+bazaars run criss-crosswise; any way at all save parallel, and anyhow
+but straight. Between them lies always a maze of passages, and alleys,
+deep sided, narrow, overhung by trellised windows and loopholed walls
+and guarded stairways.
+
+For every square inch where the sun can shine there are a hundred where
+a man could hide unseen. Through century piled on suspicious century, no
+designer, no architect, no builder has neglected to provide a means of
+secret ingress, and still more secret egress, to each new house. And the
+newest house is built on secret passages that hid conspirators against
+the kings of men who lived before the oldest house was thought of.
+
+After the Mutiny of '57 came broader roads--so that a cannon might be
+trained along them.
+
+But in '57, Jailpore was a nest of winding alley-ways and blind bat
+and rat holes, where weird smells and strange unlisted poisons and
+prophecies were born. In its midst, tight-packed in a roaring babel-din
+of many-colored markets, stood a stone-walled palace, built once by a
+Hindu king to commemorate a victory over Moslems, added to by a Moslem
+Nizam, to celebrate his conquest of the Hindus and added to once again
+by the Honorable East India Company, to make a suitable barracks for its
+native troops.
+
+From the rat-infested slums, from the hot shadows and the mazy
+back-bazaars, from temples, store-houses, shops, and from the
+sin-steeped underworld, there screamed and surged and swept the
+many-graded, many-minded polyglot rebellion-spume. A quarter of a
+million underdogs had turned against their masters. A hundred factions
+and as many more religions, all had one common end in view--to loot. All
+were agreed on one thing--that the first stage of the game must be to
+turn Jailpore and, after Jailpore, India, into a charnel-house.
+
+Around and around the burning palace the mob screamed and swept
+uncontrolled. Moslem looted Hindu, and Hindu Moslem. Armed sepoys,
+with the blood of their British officers fresh-soaked on their British
+uniforms, and the unspent pay of "John Company" still jingling in their
+pockets, danced weird, wild devil-dances through the streets, clearing
+their way, when they saw fit, with cold steel or wanton volleys. Women
+screamed. Caste looted caste. Loose horses galloped madly through the
+streets. Here and there a pitched battle raged, where a merchant who had
+wealth had also courage, and apprentices and friends to help him defend
+his store.
+
+And through all the din and clamor, under and above the howling and
+the volleys and the roar of flames, sounded the steady thumping of
+the sacred war-drums. The whole sky glowed red. The Indian night was
+scorched and smoked and lit by arson. Hell screamed with the cooking of
+red mutiny, and throbbed with the thunder of the sacred temple-drums.
+And that was only one of the hells, and a small one. India glowed red
+that night from end to end!
+
+Juggut Khan, free-lance Rajput and gentleman of fortune, had ridden out
+of that caldron of Jailpore. His house was a heap of glowing ashes, and
+his goods were tossed for and distributed among a company. But his mark
+lay indelibly impressed upon the town. There were three European women
+and a child who were nowhere to be found; and there was a trail that led
+from somewhere near the palace to the western gate. It was a red trail.
+
+In one spot lay a sepoy pierced through by a lance, and with half of the
+lance-shaft still standing upright in him. That had been bad art--sheer
+playing to the gallery! Juggut Khan had run him through and tried to
+lift him on the lance-end for a trophy. It was luck that saved the day
+for him that time, not swordsmanship.
+
+But a man who has done what he had done that day may be forgiven. There
+lay nine other men behind him where his lance was left, and each of them
+lay face upward with a round red hole in his anatomy where the lance had
+entered.
+
+And from the point where he had broken his lance and left it, up to
+where a self-appointed guard had refused at first to open the city gate
+for him, there was a trail that did honor to the man who taught him
+swordsmanship. One man lay headless, and another's head was only part of
+him, because the sword had split it down the middle and the two halves
+were still joined together at the neck.
+
+There were men who claimed afterward that of the twenty-three who lay
+between his lance-shaft and the city gate, some five or six had been
+slain in brawls and looting forays. And Juggut Khan was never known
+to discuss the matter. But the fact remains that every man of them was
+killed by the blade or point of a cavalry-saber, and that Juggut Khan
+broke out of the place untouched.
+
+And another fact worthy of record is, that underneath a stone floor, in
+a building that was partly powder-magazine-surrounded at every end and
+side by mutineers who searched for them, and very nearly stifled by the
+dust of decaying ages--there lay three women and a child, with a jar of
+water close beside them and a sack of hastily collected things to eat.
+They lay there in all but furnace-heat, close-huddled in the darkness,
+and they shuddered and sobbed and blessed Juggut Khan alternately.
+Below them the whispering echoes sighed mysteriously through a maze of
+tunnels. Around them, and around their sack of food, the rats scampered.
+Above them, where a ten-ton stone trapdoor lay closed over their heads,
+black powder stood in heaps and sacks and barrels. Closing the trapdoor
+had been easy. One pushed it and it fell. Not all the mutineers in
+Jailpore nor Juggut Khan nor any one could open it again without the
+secret. And no man living knew the secret. The three women and the child
+were safe from immediate intrusion!
+
+Those three women and that child were not so exceptionally placed for
+India, of that date. Two of the women had seen their husbands slain
+that afternoon, before their eyes. They were mother and daughter and
+grandson; and the fourth was an English nurse, red-cheeked still from
+the kiss of English Channel breezes.
+
+"If only Bill were here!" the nurse wailed. "I know he'd find a way out.
+There wasn't never nothing nowhere that beat Bill. Bill wouldn't
+ha' left us! Bill'd ha' took us out o' here, an' saved our lives.
+Bill--snnff, snnff--Bill wouldn't ha'--snnff, snnff--shoved us in a
+rat-hole and took hisself off!"
+
+She had not yet lost her English point of view. She still believed that
+the strong right arm of an English lover could play ducks and drakes
+with Destiny. One-half of the world, at least, still swears that she
+was wrong, and her mistress and the other woman thought her despicable,
+ridiculous, unenlightened. It was a hardship to them, to be endured with
+dignity and patience, but none the less a hardship, that they should be
+left and should have to die with this woman of the Ranks Below to keep
+them company. She was an honest woman, or they would never have engaged
+her and paid her passage all the way to India. But she was not of their
+jat, and she was a fool. It happens, however, that her point of view
+saved England for the English, and that the other point of view had
+brought England to the brink of utter ruin.
+
+"If you'd leave off talking about your truly tiresome lover, and would
+pray to God, Jane," said Mrs. Leslie, "the rest of us might have a
+chance to pray to God too! This isn't the time, let me tell you, to be
+thinking of carnal love-affairs. Recall your sins, one by one, and ask
+forgiveness for them."
+
+In the gloom of the vault, poor Jane was quite invisible. The sound
+of her snuffling and sobs was the only clue to her direction. But her
+bridling was a thing that could be felt through the stuffy blackness,
+and there was a ring in her retort that gave the lie to the tears that
+she was shedding.
+
+"The only sin I ask forgiveness for," she answered in a level voice, "is
+having let Bill come to India alone. Pray to God, is it? Go on! Pray!
+If Bill was here, he'd start on that stone door without no words
+nor argument, unless some one tried to stop him. Then there'd be an
+argument! And he'd get it open too. Bill's the kind that does his
+prayin' afterward, and God helps men like Bill!"
+
+"Well--I'm afraid that your Bill isn't here, and can't get here. So the
+best thing that you can do is to pray and let us pray."
+
+"I'll pray for Bill!" said Jane defiantly. "Bill don't know that I'm in
+India, and he surely doesn't know I'm here. But if he knew--Oh, God! Let
+him know! Tell him! He'd come so quick. He'd--snnff, snnff--he'd--why,
+he'd ha' been here long ago! Dear God, tell Bill I'm here, that's all!"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+General Baines was in a position to be envied. No soldier worthy of his
+salt is other than elated at the thought of war. Now for the proving
+of his theories. Now for the fruit of all his tireless preaching and
+inspection and preparing--the planned, pegged-out swoop to victory!
+
+He knew--as few men in India knew--the length and the breadth of what
+was coming. And when two of his non-commissioned officers sent in word
+that the whole country was ablaze, he realized, as few other men did
+in that minute, that this was no local outbreak. The long-threatened
+holocaust had come, and he had to act, to smite, to strike sure and
+swift at the festering root of things, or Central India was lost.
+
+But his hands were tied still. He knew. He could see. He could feel.
+He could hear. But he had his orders. That very morning they had been
+repeated to him, and with emphasis. In a letter from the Council he had
+been told that "slight disturbances, of a purely local character, were
+not without the bounds of possibility, due partly to religious unrest
+and partly to local causes. Under no circumstances were any extended
+reprisals to be undertaken until further orders, and generals commanding
+districts were required to keep the bulk of their commands within
+cantonments."
+
+The countryside was up. All India probably was up. His own men, set by
+himself to watch with one definite idea, had confirmed his worst fears.
+And he was under orders to stay with the bulk of his command in Bholat!
+Corked up in cantonments, with three thousand first-class fighting-men
+squealing for trouble, and red rebellion running riot all around him
+though it might be quelled by instant action!
+
+And then worse happened. Juggut Khan clattered in to Bholat, spurring
+a horse that was so spent it could barely keep its feet. It fell in a
+woeful heap outside the general's quarters, and Juggut Khan--all but as
+weary as the horse--swung himself free, staggered past the sentry at the
+door and rapped with his hilt on the tough teak panel. They had to give
+him brandy and feed him before he could summon strength enough to tell
+what he had seen and heard and done.
+
+"And Brown stayed on at the crossroads?"
+
+"Aye, General sahib! He stayed!"
+
+The general sat back and drummed his heels together on the floor in a
+way that his aides had come to recognize as meaning trouble.
+
+"You say that all of the European officers in Jailpore have been
+killed?"
+
+"I did not count. I did not even know them all by mine or sight. I
+think, though, that all were killed. I heard men among the mutineers
+declare that all had been accounted for, save only three women and a
+child, and me. Those four I myself had hidden, and as for myself--I too
+was accounted for, and not without credit to the Raj for whom I fight!"
+
+"I believe you, Juggut Khan! Did you have to cut your way out?"
+
+The Rajput smiled.
+
+"There was a message to deliver, sahib! What would you? Should I have
+waited while they arrested me?"
+
+"Oh! You managed to evade them, did you?"
+
+"At least I am here, sahib!"
+
+The general chewed at his mustache, leaned his chair back against the
+wall and tapped at his boot with a riding-cane.
+
+"Tell me, Juggut Khan," he said after another minute's thought, "what
+is your idea? Is this sporadic? Is this a local outbreak? Will this die
+down, if left to burn itself out?"
+
+The Rajput laughed aloud.
+
+"'Sporadic,"' he answered, "is a word of which I have yet to learn
+the meaning. If 'sporadic' means rebellion from Peshawur to Cape
+Cormorin--revolution, rape, massacre, arson, high treason, torture,
+death to every European and every half-breed and every loyal native
+north, south, east and west--then, yes, General sahib, 'sporadic' would
+be the proper word. If your Honor should mean less than that, then some
+other word is needed!"
+
+"Then you confirm my own opinion. You are inclined to think that this is
+an organized and country-wide rebellion?"
+
+"I know of what I speak, sahib!"
+
+"You don't think that you are being influenced in your opinion by the
+fact that you have seen a massacre, and have lost everything you had?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! This is no hour for joking, or for bearing of false
+tidings. I tell you, up, sahib! Boots and saddles! Strike!"
+
+The general chewed at his mustache another minute.
+
+"You know this province well?" he asked.
+
+"None better than I. I have traversed every yard of it, attending to my
+business."
+
+"And your business is?"
+
+"Each to his trade, sahib. My trade is honorable."
+
+"I have good reasons for asking, and no impertinence is meant. Be
+good enough to tell me. I wish to know what value I may place on your
+opinion."
+
+"Sahib, I am a full sergeant of the Rajput Horse retired. I bear one
+medal."
+
+"And--"
+
+"I sell charms, sahib."
+
+"What sort of charms?"
+
+"All sorts. But principally charms against the evil eye, and the red
+sickness, and death by violence. But, also love-charms now and then,
+and now and then a death-charm to a man who has an enemy and lacks
+swordsmanship or courage. I trade with each and every man, sahib, and
+listen to the talk of each, and hold my tongue!"
+
+"Strange trade for a soldier, isn't it?"
+
+"Would you have me a robber, sahib? Or shall I sweep the streets--I, who
+have led a troop before now? Nay, sahib! A soldier can fight, and can do
+little else. When the day comes that the Raj has no more need of him--or
+thinks that it has no more need of him--he must either starve or become
+a prophet. And his own home is no place for a prophet who would turn his
+prophesying into silver coin!"
+
+"Ah! Well-now, tell me! What is your opinion, without reference to what
+anybody else may think? You have just seen the massacre at Jailpore,
+and you know how many men I have here. And you know the condition of
+the road and the number of the mutineers. Would you, if you were in my
+place, strike at Jailpore immediately?"
+
+"Nay, sahib. That I would not. I would strike north. And I would strike
+so swiftly that the mutineers would wonder whence I came. In Jailpore,
+all is over. They have done the harm, and they are in charge there. They
+have the powder-magazine in their possession, and the stands of arms,
+and the first advantage. Leave them there, then, sahib, and strike where
+you are not expected. In Jailpore you would be out of touch. You would
+have just that many more miles to march when the time comes--and it has
+come, sahib!--to join forces with the next command, and hit hard at the
+heart of things."
+
+"And the heart of things is--"
+
+"Delhi!"
+
+"You display a quite amazing knowledge of the game."
+
+"I am a soldier, sahib!"
+
+"You would leave Jailpore, then, to its fate?"
+
+"Jailpore has already met its fate, sahib. The barracks are afire, and
+the city has been given over to be looted. Reckon no more with Jailpore!
+Reckon only of the others. Listen, sahib! Has any message come from the
+next command? No? Then why? Think you that even a local outbreak could
+occur without some message being sent to you, and to the next division
+south of you? Why has no message come? Where is the next command? The
+next command north? Harumpore? Then why is there no news from Harumpore?
+I will tell you, sahib."
+
+"You mean, I suppose, that the country is up, in between?"
+
+"You know that it is up, sahib!"
+
+"You think that no message could get through to me?"
+
+"I know that it could not! Else had one already come. My advice to you,
+sahib, as one soldier to another and tendered with all respect, is to
+up and leave this Bholat. Here, of what use are you? Here you can hold a
+small city, until the countryside has time to rise and lay siege to you
+and hem you in! Outside of here, you can be a hornet-storm! They will
+burn Bholat behind you. Let them! Let them, too, pay the price. Swoop
+down on Harumpore, sahib--join there with Kendrick sahib's command.
+There make a fresh plan, and swoop down on some other place. But move,
+quickly, and keep on moving! And waste no time on places that are
+already lost."
+
+"Then you would have me leave those women and that child, that you tell
+me of to their fate?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! I am not of your command. I have done my duty to the Raj,
+and I now go about my own business."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"To repay a debt that I owe the Raj, sahib!"
+
+"Your answers are rather unnecessarily evasive, Juggut Khan. Be good
+enough to explain yourself!"
+
+"I ride back to Jailpore, sahib. I would have stayed there, but it
+seemed right and soldierly to bring through the news first. Now, I
+return to do what I may to rescue those whom I hid there. I owe that to
+the Raj!"
+
+"You mean that you will ride alone?"
+
+"At least half of the distance, sahib. I had a favor to ask."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Are you marching north, sahib?"
+
+"I have not determined yet."
+
+"Determined, sahib! This is no hour for dallying! Give orders now! Up!
+Strike, sahib! Listen! Should you march on Jailpore, the mutineers, who
+far outnumber you, will learn beforehand of your coming, and will put
+the place in a state of defense. It may take you weeks to fight your way
+in! Leave Jailpore, and those who are left in it to me, and lend me that
+non-commissioned officer of yours who guards the crossroads, and his
+twelve men. With a few, we can manage what a whole division might fail
+to do. And you march north, sahib, and burn and harry and slay! Strike
+quickly, where the trouble is yet brewing, and not where the day is lost
+already!"
+
+It was case of the British power in India on one side of the scale,
+against three women and a child on the other; sentiment in the balance
+against strategy. And strategy must win, especially since this Rajput
+was offering his services.
+
+"What are their names, you say?"
+
+"Mrs. Leslie, wife of Captain Leslie; Mrs. Standish, wife of Colonel
+Standish and mother of Mrs. Leslie; Mrs. Leslie's child--I know not his
+name, he is but a child in arms--and the child's nurse."
+
+The general still found it difficult to make up his mind.
+
+"What proof have I of you?" he asked.
+
+"Sahib, my honor is in question! I have a debt to pay!"
+
+"What debt?"
+
+"To the Raj."
+
+"To the Raj?"
+
+"Aye, Sahib! I have but one son, and his life was saved for me by a
+British soldier. A life for a life. Four lives for a life. I ride! I
+need, though, a fresh horse. And I ask for the loan of that sergeant,
+and those twelve men."
+
+"I wonder whether a man such as you can realize exactly what it means
+to us to know that white women are in Jailpore, at the mercy of black
+mutineers? I mean, are you sufficiently aware of the extreme horror of
+the situation?"
+
+"Knew you Captain Collins Sahib, of the Jailpore command?"
+
+"Know him well."
+
+"Knew you his memsahib?"
+
+"She was a niece of mine."
+
+"I slew her myself, with this sword!"
+
+"When? Why?"
+
+"Yesterday. Because her husband could not get to her himself, and since
+he and I knew each other, and he trusted me. I said to her, 'Memsahib! I
+have your husband's orders!' She asked me 'What orders, Juggut Khan?'
+I said, 'Why ask me, memsahib? Is my task easier, or yours?' She said
+'Obey your orders, Juggut Khan, and accept my thanks now, since I shall
+be unable to thank you afterward!' And then she looked me bravely in the
+face, and met her death, sahib. Of a truth I know! I am to be trusted!"
+
+"I believe you, Juggut Khan. And, incidentally, I beg your pardon for
+having doubted you. Have you slept?"
+
+"Nay, Sahib. And I sleep not on this side of the crossroads!"
+
+"I don't place Sergeant Brown under your command--you'll understand
+that's impossible--but, it's quite impossible for him to catch me up.
+He may as well cooperate with you. Wait." He paused, and wrote, then
+continued, "Here is a note to him, in which I order him to work with
+you, and to take your advice whenever possible. Go to the stables, and
+choose any horse you like except my first charger. Here--here is money;
+you may need some. Count that, will you. How much is it? Four hundred
+rupees? Write out a receipt for it. Now, good luck to you, Juggut Khan.
+And if you should get through alive--I'll pay you the compliment of
+admitting that you won't come through without the women, and I know that
+Brown won't--if you should have luck, and should happen to get through,
+why, look for me at Harumpore, or elsewhere to the northward of it. I
+start with my division in an hour."
+
+"Salaam, sahib!" said Rajput, rising and standing at the salute.
+
+"Salaam, Juggut Khan! Take any food, or drink, or clothing that you
+want. Good-by, and your good luck ride with you. I feel like a murderer,
+but I know I've done the best that can be done!"
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Now if Sergeant Brown possessed a sweetheart, and the sweetheart lived
+in England, and if Brown still loved her--as has already been more
+than hinted at--it is not at all unreasonable to wonder why he had no
+likeness of her, no news of her, nothing but her memory around which
+to weave the woof of sentiment--at least, it's not unreasonable so to
+wonder in this late year of grace.
+
+Then, though, in 1857, when a newspaper cost threepence or thereabouts,
+and schools were so far from being free that only the sons of gentlemen
+(and seldom the daughters of even gentlemen, remember) attended them,
+the art of reading was not so common as it now is. Writing was still
+more uncommon. And it has not been pretended that Brown was other than a
+commoner. He was a stiff-backed man, and honest. And the pride that had
+raised him to the rank of sergeant was even stiffer than his stock. But
+he came from the ranks that owned no vote, nor little else, in those
+days, and he owned a sweetheart of the same rank as himself, who could
+neither read nor write. And when people whose somewhat primitive ideas
+on right and wrong lead them to look on daguerreotypes as works of the
+devil happen too to be living more than five thousand miles apart, when
+one of the two can not write, nor readily afford the cost of postage,
+and when the other is nearly always on the move from post to post, it is
+not exactly to be wondered at that memory of each other was all they had
+to dwell upon.
+
+A journey to India in '57 meant, to the rank and file, oblivion and
+worse. There were men then, of course, just as there are now, who would
+leave a girl behind them tied fast by a promise of futile and endless
+devotion; men who knew what the girls did not know--that India was all
+but inaccessible to any one outside of government employ, and that a
+common soldier's chance of sending for his girl, or of coming home
+again to claim her, was something in the neighborhood of one in thirty
+thousand.
+
+But there were other men, like William Brown, who were a shade too
+honest and too stiff-chinned to buckle under to the social conditions
+of England in those days, and who were consequently not exactly pestered
+with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference
+between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and
+saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving
+an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in
+England. So he told his girl to get a better man, swung his canvas bag
+across his shoulder and marched away.
+
+"What kind of a man is a better man than Bill?" she had wondered. Men
+like Bill seem to have a knack of judging character, and of picking
+girls who are as steadfast as themselves. So it is not to be wondered at
+that almost before her tears were dry she had set about attempting what
+few women of her type and time would have dreamed of. If Bill had set
+her free, she reasoned, Bill had no more authority over her, and she
+might do exactly what she chose. Bill could release, but he could not
+make her take another man. So, for all that the local yeomen, and local
+tradesmen even, haunted the little cottage on the Downs, and pestered
+her with their attentions, no one supplanted Bill.
+
+Bill could tell her--and had told her--that India was no country for a
+white woman; that there were snakes there, and black men and tigers and
+even worse. But, since he had set her free, if she could manage it
+she was quite at liberty to brave the tigers and the snakes. And, once
+there, she would see whether she was free or not, and whether Bill was,
+either!
+
+It took Bill Brown six years of constant honest effort to become a
+sergeant. It took Jane Emmett six weeks of pride-consuming and vexatious
+vigilance to procure for herself a job as nurse in a soldier-family. And
+it took her six more years of unremitting diligence, sweetened by all
+the attributes that seem desirable when nursing other people's children
+and embittered by the shame of grudging patronage, before she was
+considered dependable enough to be recommended for the service of a
+family just leaving for Bengal. Then, however, her world was a real
+world again!
+
+Five months on a sailing-ship around the Cape--deep-laden, gunwales
+awash in a beam--on Bay-of-Biscay "snorer," hove-to for a week off Cape
+Agul--has, while the clumsy brigantine rolled the masts loose in her,
+all but dismasted in a typhoon come astray from the China Sea, fed on
+moldy bread, and even moldier pork, with a fretful child to nurse, and
+an exacting mother to be pleased! Jane Emmett laughed at it. Bill had
+been there before her, and had done more on his way, and worse Bengal
+did not frighten her. Nor did the knowledge, when she reached it, that
+Bill was very likely still some hundreds of miles away. She, who had
+come five thousand miles as the crows are said to fly and nine thousand
+by the map, could manage the odd hundreds. And she could wait. She had
+waited six long years. What was another month or two?
+
+She had not even a notion where Bill was, beyond a vague one that he
+belonged to another province. For when the Honorable East India Company
+was muddling the affairs of India, the honors and emoluments and
+privileges--such as they were!--were reserved for the benefit of the
+commissioned ranks.
+
+So a transfer to Jailpore did not mean to Jane Emmett ten extra degrees
+of heat, the neighborhood of jungle-fever and a brand-new breed of
+smells. Those disadvantages, which weighted down the souls of her
+employers, were completely overshadowed, so far as she was concerned, by
+the knowledge that she was traveling nearer by a hundred leagues or so
+to where her Bill was stationed. She was going west; and somewhere
+to the west was Bill. Anything was good--fever, and prickly heat, and
+smells included--that brought her any nearer him.
+
+There would be no sense in endeavoring to analyze her sensations when
+the sudden outburst overwhelmed the inner-guard at Jailpore. The sight
+of white women being butchered, and of white men with the blood of their
+own women on their hands, selling their lives as dearly as the God
+of War would let them in a holocaust of flames, blinded her. It was
+probably just a splurge of fire and noise and smoke and blood in her
+memory, with one or two details standing out. The only real sensation
+that she felt--even when a tall, lean Rajput flung her across his
+shoulder, ran with her and dropped her down through a square hole into
+stifling darkness--was a longing for Bill Brown, her Bill, the one man
+in the world who could surely stop the butchery.
+
+The others prayed. But she refused to pray. She felt angry--not
+prayerful! Had she come nine thousand miles, and sacrificed six good
+years of youth and youth's heritage, to be cast into a reeking dungeon
+and left to die there in the dark? Not if Bill should know of it! And
+so she changed her argument, and prayed for Bill. If only Bill
+knew--straight-backed, honest, stiff-chinned, uncompromising, plain Bill
+Brown. He would change things!
+
+"Oh, Bill! Bill! Bill!" she sobbed. "Dear God, bring Bill to me!"
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+When a man knows what is out against him, and from which direction he
+may look to meet death, he only needs to be a very ordinary man to
+make at least a gallant showing. Gallery or no gallery to watch, given
+responsibility and trained men under hire, not one man in a thousand
+will fail to face death with dignity.
+
+But Brown knew practically nothing, and understood still less, of what
+was happening. He had Juggut Khan's word for it that Jailpore was in
+flames, and that all save four of its European population had been
+killed. He believed that to be a probably exaggerated statement of
+affairs, but he did not blink the fact that he might expect to be
+overwhelmed almost without notice, and at any minute. That was a fact
+which he accepted, for the sake of argument and as a working-basis on
+which to build a plan of some kind--His orders were to hold that post,
+and he would hold it until relieved by General Baines or death. But
+there are several ways of holding a hot coal besides the rather obvious
+one of sitting on it.
+
+It would have been a fine chance to be theatrical, had play-acting been
+in his line. Many and many a full-blown general has risen to authority
+and fame by means of absolutely useless gallery-play. He believed that
+he would presently be relieved by General Baines, who he felt sure would
+march at once on Jailpore; and had he chosen to he could have addressed
+the men, have set them to throwing up defenses and have made a nice
+theatrical redoubt that he could have held quite easily with the help
+of nine men for a day or two. And since the really worthwhile things go
+often unrewarded, but the gallery-plays never, nobody would have blamed
+him had he chosen some such course as that.
+
+But Brown's idea of holding down a place was to make that place a thorn
+in the side of the enemy. And since he did not know who was the enemy,
+or where he was, nor why he was an enemy, nor when he would attack, he
+proposed to find out these things for himself preparatory to making the
+said enemy as uncomfortable as his meager resources would permit, when
+eked out by an honest "dogged-does-it" brain.
+
+He buried the three men whom Fate had seemed to value at the price of a
+fakir's freedom. And, being a religious man, to whom religion was a fact
+and the rest of the universe a theory, he was able to say a full funeral
+service over them from memory. He said it at the grave-end, with a
+lantern in his hand and one man facing him across the grave--as the
+English used to drink when the Danes had landed, each watching for the
+glint of steel beyond the other's shoulder.
+
+And, four on each side of the trench that they had dug, the remainder
+knelt and faced the night each way--partly from enforced piety, and
+partly because eight men back to back, with their bayonets outward
+and their butts against their knees, are an awkward proposition for an
+enemy. They mumbled the responses because Brown made them do it, and
+they kept their eyes skinned because the night seemed full of other
+eyes, and sounds.
+
+"And now, you men," said Brown, changing his voice to suit the nature of
+his task, "you can get your sleep by fours. I don't care which four of
+you goes to sleep first, but there are only two watches of us left, and
+there are about four hours left to sleep in, by my reckoning. That's two
+hours' sleep for each man. And we'll keep clear of the guardroom. As
+I understand my orders, the important point's the cross-roads. I'm
+supposed to halt every one who comes, and to ask him his business. And
+that'd be impossible to do from the guardroom here. Let this be a lesson
+to you men, now. In interpretin' orders, when a point's in doubt, always
+look for the meaning of the orders rather than the letter of them,
+obeying the letter only when the meaning and the letter are the same
+thing. The letter of our orders says the guardroom. The meaning's clear.
+We're here to guard the cross-roads. We take the meaning, and let the
+letter hang!
+
+"Besides! The way it seems to me, if there's any more trouble cooking
+in this neighborhood, it's going to cook pretty fast, and it's going
+to boil around that guardroom; and if we're not in the guardroom, why,
+that's point number one for us! Leave the guardroom lantern lighted, and
+bring out nothing but your cartridge-pouches and the box of ammunition.
+Leave everything else where it lies. Quick, now."
+
+They obeyed him on the run, afraid to be out of his sight for a moment
+even, trusting him as little children trust a nurse, and ready to do
+anything so long as he would only keep them up and doing, and not make
+them stay by the scene of the murders. Brown knew their state of mind
+as accurately as he knew the range of their service rifles, and he knew
+just how he could best keep panic from them. He knew too, if not what
+was best to do, at least what he intended doing, and he knew how he
+could best get them in a state to do it.
+
+Behind his own mind lay all the while a sense of loneliness and
+hopelessness. He did not entertain the thought of failure to hold the
+crossroads, and he was so certain that General Baines would come with
+his division that he could almost see the advance-guard trotting toward
+him down the trunk road. But there is no accounting for a soldier's
+moods, and something told him--something deep down inside him that he
+could neither name nor understand--that he was out now on the adventure
+of a lifetime, and that the heart-cord which had held him tight to
+England all these years had been cut. He felt gloomy and dispirited, but
+not a man of the nine who followed him had the slightest inkling of it.
+
+He halted them outside the guardroom, and bullydamned two of them
+because some unimportant part of their accouterments was missing; and
+he "'Tshuned" them, and stood them at ease, and "'Tshuned" them again,
+until he had them jumping at the word. Then he marched them two abreast
+in and out among the huts in search of any sign of native servants. They
+found no sign of any one at all. Though in that black darkness it would
+have been quite possible for half a hundred men to lie undetected. Brown
+decided that the camp was empty. He thought it probable that any one
+concealed there would have tried his luck on somebody at least, at close
+range as he passed.
+
+So he marched them back to the guard-room once again, and sent two
+of them in to drag out the shivering Beluchi, who had taken cover
+underneath a cot and refused to come out until he was dragged out by the
+leg. The native's terror served to pull the men together quite a little,
+for Tommy Atkins always does and always did behave himself with pride
+when what he is pleased to consider his inferiors are anywhere about.
+They showed that unfortunate Beluchi how white men marched into the
+darkness--best foot foremost; without halt or hesitation, when ghosts or
+murderers or unseen marksmen were close at hand.
+
+The Beluchi let himself be dragged, trembling, between two of them. It
+was he who first saw something move, or heard some one breathe. For he
+was absolutely on edge, and had nothing to attend to but his own fear.
+The others had to keep both eyes and ears lifting, to please Brown the
+exacting. The Beluchi struggled and held back, almost breaking loose,
+and actually tearing his loin-cloth.
+
+"Sahib!" he whispered hoarsely. "Sahib!"
+
+"What is it?" demanded Brown, scarcely waiting for an answer, though.
+Something told him what it was that moved, and his own skin felt
+goose-fleshy from neck to heel.
+
+"The fakir, sahib!"
+
+There was a murmur through the ranks, a sibilant indrawing of the
+breath.
+
+"Did I hear anybody swear?" asked Brown.
+
+Nobody answered him. All nine men stood stock-still, leaning on their
+rifles, their heads craned forward and their eyes strained in the
+direction of the gloomy baobab.
+
+"Form single rank!" commanded Brown.
+
+There was no response. They stood there fixed like a row of chickens
+staring at a snake!
+
+"Form single rank!"
+
+He leaped at them, and broke the first rule of the service--as a man may
+when he is man enough, and the alternative would be black shame.
+
+His fist was a hard one and heavy, and they felt the weight of it.
+
+"Form single rank! Take one pace open order! Extend! Now, forward--by
+the right! Right dress, there!"
+
+He marched in front of them, and they followed him for very shame, now
+that he had broken their paralysis.
+
+"Halt! Port-arms! Charge bayonets!"
+
+He was peering at something in the dark, something that chuckled and
+smelled horrible, and sat unusually still for anything that lived.
+
+"Numbers One, Two, Three--left wheel--forward! Halt! Numbers Seven,
+Eight, Nine--right wheel--forward! Halt!"
+
+They were standing now on three sides of a square. The fourth side
+was the trunk of the baobab. Between them and the trunk, the streaming
+tendrils swayed and swung, bats flitted and something still invisible
+sat still and chuckled.
+
+"One pace forward--march!"
+
+They could see now. The fakir sat and stared at them and grinned. Brown
+raised the lamp and let its rays fall on him. The light glinted off his
+eyes, and off the only other part of him that shone--the long, curved,
+ghastly fingernails that had grown through the palm of his upstretched
+hand.
+
+"How did you get here?" demanded Brown, not afraid to speak, for fear
+that fright would take possession of himself as well as of his men, but
+quite well aware that the fakir would not answer him. Then he remembered
+the Beluchi.
+
+"Ask him, you! Ask him how he came here."
+
+The Beluchi found his tongue, and stammered out a question. The fakir
+chuckled, and following his chuckle let a guttural remark escape him.
+
+"He says, sahib, that he flew!"
+
+"Ask him, could he fly with nine fixed bayonets in him!"
+
+There was a little laughter from the men at that sally. It takes
+very little in the way of humor to dispel a sense of the uncanny or
+mysterious.
+
+"He answers, sahib, that you have seen what comes of striking him. He
+asks how many dead there be."
+
+"Does he want me to hold him answerable for those men's lives?"
+
+"He says he cares not, sahib! He says that he has promised what shall
+befall you, sahib, before a day is past--you and one other!"
+
+"Ask him, where is the Punjabi skin-buyer?"
+
+The fakir chuckled at that question, and let out suddenly a long, low,
+hollow-sounding howl, like a she-wolf's just at sundown. He was answered
+by another howl from near the guardroom, and every soldier faced about
+as though a wasp had stung him.
+
+"Front!" commanded Brown. "Now, one of you, about turn! Keep watch that
+way! Is that the Punjabi?--ask him."
+
+"He says 'Yes!' sahib. He and others!"
+
+"Very well. Now tell him that unless he obeys my orders on the jump,
+word for word as I give them, I'll hang him as high as Haman by
+that withered arm of his, and have him beaten on the toenails with
+a cleaning-rod before I fill him so full of bayonet-holes that the
+vultures'll take him for a sponge! Say I'm a man of my word, and don't
+exaggerate."
+
+The Beluchi translated.
+
+"He says you dare not, sahib!"
+
+"Advise him to talk sense."
+
+"He says, sahib, 'You have had one lesson!"'
+
+"Now it's my turn to give him one. Men! We'll have to give up that
+sleep I talked about. This limping dummy of a fakir thinks he's got us
+frightened, and we've got to teach him different. There's some reason
+why we're not being attacked as yet. There's something fishy going on,
+and this swab's at the bottom of it! We want him, too, on a charge of
+murder, or instigating murder, and the guardroom's the best place for
+him. To the guardroom with him. He'll do for a hostage anyhow. And where
+he is, I've a notion that the control of this treachery won't be
+far away! Grab him below the arms and by the legs. One of you hold
+a bayonet-point against his ribs. The rest, face each way on guard.
+Now--all together, forward to the guardroom--march!"
+
+The fakir howled. Ululating howls replied from the surrounding night,
+and once a red light showed for a second and disappeared in front of
+them. Then the fakir howled again.
+
+"Look, sahib! See! The guardroom!"
+
+It was the Beluchi who saw it first--the one who was most afraid of
+things in general and the least afraid of Sergeant Brown. A little flame
+had started in the thatch.
+
+"Halt!" ordered Brown. "Two of you hold the fakir! The
+remainder--volley-firing--kneeling--point-blank-range. Ready--as you
+were--independent firing--ready! Now, wait till you see 'em in the
+firelight, then blaze away all you like!"
+
+His last words were cut off short by the sound of rifle-fire. Each rifle
+in turn barked out, and three rifles answered from the night.
+
+"Let that fakir feel a bayonet-point, somebody!"
+
+The fakir cursed between his teeth, in proof of prompt obedience by one
+of the men who held him.
+
+"Tell him to order his crowd to cease fire!"
+
+The Beluchi translated, and the fakir howled again. The flames leaped
+through the thatch, and in a minute more the countryside was lit for
+half a mile or more by the glare of the burning guardroom.
+
+The flames betrayed more than a hundred turbaned men, who hugged the
+shadows.
+
+"Keep that bayonet-point against his ribs. See? That comes o' moving
+instead o' sitting still! If we'd shut ourselves in the guardroom there,
+we'd have been merrily roasting in there now! We stole a march on them.
+Beauty here was sitting on his throne to see the fun. Didn't expect us.
+Thought we'd be all hiding under the beds, like Sidiki here! Goes to
+prove the worst thing that a soldier can do is to sit still when there's
+trouble. We're better off than ever. We're free and they won't dare do
+much to us as long as we've got Sacred-Smells-and-Stinks in charge. Form
+up round him, men, and keep your eyes skinned till morning!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Of course, discussing matters in the light of history, with full and
+intimate knowledge of everything that had a bearing on the Mutiny, there
+are plenty of club-armchair critics who maintain that England could not
+do otherwise than win in '57. They always do say that afterward of the
+side that won the day.
+
+But then, with history yet to make, things looked very different, and
+nobody pretended that there was any certainty of anything except a
+victory for the mutineers. All that either side recognized as likely to
+reverse conditions was the notorious ability that a beaten and cornered
+British army has for upsetting certainties. So the rebels had more
+than a little argument as to what steps should be taken next, once the
+initial butchery and loot had taken place.
+
+For instance, in Jailpore
+
+More than a hundred fakirs and wandering priests and mendicants had
+sent in word that the province from end to end was ready, and that the
+British slept. But there were those in Jailpore who distrusted fakirs
+and religious votaries of every kind. They believed them fully capable
+of rousing the countryside, of working on the religious feelings of the
+unsophisticated rustics and setting them to murdering and plundering
+right and left. But they doubted their ability to judge of the army's
+sleepiness. These doubters were the older men, who had had experience
+of England's craft in war. They knew of the ability of some at least of
+England's generals to match guile against guile, and back up guile with
+swift, unexpected hammer-strokes.
+
+There were men who claimed that what had happened in Jailpore would be
+repeated in Bholat and elsewhere. There was no need, these maintained,
+to march and join hands with other rebels. Each unit was sufficient to
+itself. Each city would be a British funeral pyre. Why march?
+
+Some said, "The general at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will
+learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find
+the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the
+he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and
+beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. They are not
+ordinary folk!"
+
+There were other factions that maintained that General Baines was strong
+enough, with his three thousand, to hold Bholat, unless the men of
+Jailpore marched, to join hands with the Bholatis--who were surely in
+revolt by this time. There were others who declared that he would leave
+Bholat and Jailpore to their fates without any doubt at all, and would
+march to join hands with the nearest contingent, at Harumpore.
+
+The bolder spirits of this latter faction were for setting off at once
+to prevent this combination. For a little while their arguments almost
+prevailed.
+
+But another faction yet, and an even more numerous one, insisted it were
+best to wait for news from other centers.
+
+Why march, they argued, why strike, why run unnecessary risks, before
+they knew what was happening elsewhere?
+
+"Surely," these argued, "the English will hear that four here are still
+unaccounted for. Some attempt will be made to find and rescue them. But
+if we find and slay them, and send their heads to Bholat, then will the
+English know that they are indeed dead. Then there will be no attempt at
+rescue, and we shall hold Jailpore unmolested as headquarters."
+
+That piece of logic won the day for a while, and parties were made up
+to explore the place, and search in every nook and cranny for the three
+women. and a child who surely had not passed out through any of the
+gates, and who were therefore just as surely in the city. A reward was
+offered by the committee of rebel-leaders and, although nobody believed
+that the reward would actually be paid, the opportunities for looting
+privately while searching were so great that the search was thorough.
+
+It failed, though, for the very simple reason that nobody suspected that
+the huge stone trap-door in the floor of the powder-magazine had ever
+been opened, or ever could be opened. The magazine had been a white
+man's watch. White men had kept guard over it for more than a hundred
+years, and the natives had forgotten that a maze of tunnels and caverns
+lay beneath it.
+
+So, while bayonet-points and swords were pushed into crevices, while
+smoke was sent down passages and tunnels and great, loose-limbed,
+slobbering hounds were led on the leash and cast to find a trail, the
+three women and the child lay still beneath the piled-up powder,
+and doled out water, and biscuit in siege-time measures. They lay in
+pitch-darkness, in a vault where not even a sound could reach them,
+except the whispered echo of their own voices and the scampering of
+the rats. They were growing nearly blind, and nearly crazed, with the
+darkness and the silence and the fear.
+
+Every second they expected to see daylight through the cracks above, as
+rebels levered up the door, or to hear feet and voices coming through
+the vaults below, for doubtless the vaults led somewhere. But for their
+fear of snakes and rats and unknown horrors, they would have tried to
+find a way through the vaults themselves. But as each movement that they
+made, and each word that they spoke, sent echoes reverberating through
+the gloom, they lay still and shuddered.
+
+Once they heard footsteps on the stone flags overhead. But the footsteps
+went away again, and then all was still. Soon they lost all count of
+time. They were only aware of heat and discomfort and fear and utter
+weariness.
+
+One woman and an infant wept. One woman prayed aloud incessantly. The
+third woman--the menial, the worst educated and least enlightened of
+the three, according to the others' notion of it--stubbornly refused to
+admit that there was not some human means of rescue.
+
+"If Bill were here," she kept on grumbling, "Bill'd find a way!"
+
+And in the darkness that surrounded her she felt that she could see
+Bill's face, as she remembered it--red-cheeked and clean-shaven--six
+years or more ago.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+The blazing roof of the guardroom lit up even the crossroads for a
+while, and Brown and his men could see that for the present there was a
+good wide open space between them and the enemy. The firelight showed a
+tree not far from the crossroads, and since anything is cover to men who
+are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree with one accord,
+and without a word from Brown.
+
+"We've all the luck," said Brown. "There's not a detachment of any other
+army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!"
+
+He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around the
+tree-trunk. Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.
+
+"Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging! Anybody see
+the connection?"
+
+There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the
+unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him to
+the tree-trunk. The roof of the guardhouse was blazing fiercely, and now
+they had fired the other roofs. The fakir, the tree and the little bunch
+of men who held him prisoner were as plainly visible as though it had
+been daytime. A bullet pinged past Brown's ear, and buried itself in the
+tree-trunk with a thud.
+
+"Let him feel that bayonet again!" said Brown.
+
+A rifleman obeyed, and the fakir howled aloud. An answering howl from
+somewhere beyond the dancing shadows told that the fakir had been
+understood.
+
+"And now," said Brown, paraphrasing the well-remembered wording of the
+drill-book, in another effort to get his men to laughing again, "when
+hanging a fakir by numbers--at the word one, place the noose smartly
+round the fakir's neck. At the word two, the right-hand man takes the
+bight of the rope in the hollow of his left hand, and climbs the tree,
+waiting on the first branch suitable for the last sound of the word
+three. At the last sound of the word three, he slips the rope smartly
+over the bough of the tree and descends smartly to the ground, landing
+on the balls of his feet and coming to attention. At the word four, the
+remainder seize the loose end of the rope, being careful to hold it in
+such a way that the fakir has a chance to breathe. And at the last
+sound of the word five, you haul all together, lifting the fakir off the
+ground, and keeping him so until ordered to release. Now--one!"
+
+He had tied a noose while he was speaking, and the fakir had watched him
+with eyes that blazed with hate. A soldier seized the noose, and slipped
+it over the fakir's head.
+
+"Two!"
+
+The tree was an easy one to climb. "Two" and "three" were the work of
+not more than a minute.
+
+"Four!" commanded Brown, and the rope drew tight across the bough. The
+fakir had to strain his chin upward in order to draw his breath.
+
+"Steady, now!"
+
+The men were lined out in single file, each with his two hands on the
+rope. Not half of them were really needed to lift such a wizened load as
+the fakir, but Brown was doing nothing without thought, and wasting not
+an effort. He wanted each man to be occupied, and even amused. He wanted
+the audience, whom he could not see, but who he knew were all around him
+in the shadows, to get a full view of what was happening. They might
+not have seen so clearly, had he allowed one-half of the men to be
+lookers-on.
+
+"Steady!" he repeated. "Be sure and let him breathe, until I give the
+word." Then he seized the cowering Beluchi by the neck, and dragged him
+up close beside the fakir. "Translate, you!" he ordered. "To the crowd
+out yonder first. Shout to 'em, and be careful to make no mistakes."
+
+"Speak, then, sahib! What shall I say?"
+
+"Say this. This most sacred person here is our prisoner. He will die the
+moment any one attempts to rescue him."
+
+The Beluchi translated, and repeated word for word.
+
+"I will now talk with him, and he himself will talk with you, and thus
+we will come to an arrangement!"'
+
+There was a commotion in the shadows, and somewhere in the neighborhood
+of fifty men appeared, keeping at a safe distance still, but evidently
+anxious to get nearer.
+
+"Now talk to the fakir, and not so loudly! Ask him 'Are you a sacred
+person?' Ask him softly, now!"
+
+"He says 'Yes,' sahib, 'I am sacred!"'
+
+"Do you want to die?"
+
+"All men must die!"
+
+The answer made an opening for an interminable discussion, of the kind
+that fakirs and their kindred love. But Brown was not bent just then on
+dissertation. He changed his tactics.
+
+"Do you want to die, a little slowly, before all those obedient
+worshipers of yours, and in such a way that they will see and understand
+that you can not help yourself, and therefore are a fraud?"
+
+The Beluchi repeated the question in the guttural tongue that apparently
+the fakir best understood. In the fitful light cast by the burning
+roofs, it was evident that the fakir had been touched in the one weak
+spot of his armor.
+
+There can scarcely be more than one reason why a man should torture
+himself and starve himself and maim and desecrate and horribly defile
+himself. At first sight, the reason sounds improbable, but consideration
+will confirm it. It is vanity, of an iron-bound kind, that makes the
+wandering fakir.
+
+"Ask him again!" said Brown.
+
+But again the fakir did not answer.
+
+"Tell him that I'm going to let him save his face, provided he saves
+mine. Explain that I, too, have men who think I am something more than
+human!"
+
+The Beluchi interpreted, and Brown thought that the fakir's eyes gleamed
+with something rather more than their ordinary baleful light. It might
+have been the dancing flames that lit them, but Brown thought he saw the
+dawn of reason.
+
+"Say that if I let my men kill him, my men will believe me superhuman,
+and his men will know that he is only a man with a withered arm!
+But tell him this: He's got the best chance he ever had to perform
+a miracle, and have the whole of this province believe in him
+forevermore."
+
+Again the fakir's eyes took on a keener than usual glare, as he listened
+to the Beluchi. He did not nod, though, and he made no other sign,
+beyond the involuntary evidence of understanding that his eyes betrayed.
+
+"His men can see that noose round his neck, tell him. And his men know
+me, more or less, and British methods anyhow. They believe now, they're
+sure, they're positive that his neck's got about as much chance of
+escaping from that noose as a blind cow has of running from a tiger. Now
+then! Tell him this. Let him come the heavy fakir all he likes. Tell
+him to tell his gang that he's going to give an order. Let him tell them
+that when he says 'Hookum hai!' my men'll loose his neck straight away,
+and fall down flat. Only, first of all he's got to tell them that he
+needs us for the present. Let him say that he's got an extra-special
+awful death in store for us by and by, and that he's going to keep us
+by him until he's ready to work the miracle. Meantime, nobody's to touch
+us, or come near us, except to bring him and us food!"
+
+The fakir listened, and said nothing. At a sign from Brown the rope
+tightened just a little. The fakir raised his chin.
+
+"And tell him that, if he doesn't do what I say, and exactly what I say,
+and do it now, he's got just so long to live as it takes a man to choke
+his soul out!"
+
+The fakir answered nothing.
+
+"Just ever such a wee bit tighter, men!"
+
+The fakir lost his balance, and had to scramble to his feet and stand
+there swaying on his heels, clutching at the rope above him with his one
+uninjured hand, and sawing upward with his head for air. There came a
+murmur from the shadows, and a dozen breech-bolts clicked. There seemed
+no disposition to lie idle while the holiest thing in a temple-ridden
+province dangled in mid-air.
+
+"In case of a rush," said Brown quietly, "all but two of you let go! The
+remainder seize your rifles and fire independently. The two men on the
+rope, haul taut, and make fast to the tree-trunk. This tree's as good a
+place to die as anywhere, but he dies first! Understand?"
+
+The fakir rolled his eyes, and tried to make some sort of signal with
+his free arm.
+
+"Just a wee shade tighter!" ordered Brown. "I'm not sure, but I think
+he's seeing reason!"
+
+The fakir gurgled. No one but a native, and he a wise one, could have
+recognized a meaning in the guttural gasp that he let escape him.
+
+"He says 'All right! sahib!'" translated the Beluchi.
+
+"Good!" said Brown. "Ease away on the rope; men! And now! You all heard
+what I told him. If he says 'Hookum hai!' you all let go the rope, and
+fall flat. But keep hold of your rifles!"
+
+The fakir's voice, rose in a high-pitched, nasal wail, and from the
+darkness all around them there came an answering murmur that was like
+the whispering of wind through trees. By the sound, there must have been
+a crowd of more than a hundred there, and either the crowd was sneaking
+around them to surround them at close quarters, or else the crowd was
+growing.
+
+"Keep awake, men!" cautioned Brown.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir! All awake, sir!"
+
+"Listen, now! And if he says one word except what I told him he might
+say, tip me the wink at once."
+
+Brown swung the Beluchi out in front of him where he could hear the
+fakir better.
+
+"I'll hang you, remember, after I've hanged him, if anything goes
+wrong!"
+
+"He is saying, sahib, exactly what you said."
+
+"He'd better! Listen now! Listen carefully! Look out for tricks!"
+
+The fakir paused a second from his high-pitched monologue, and a murmur
+from the darkness answered him.
+
+"Stand by to haul tight, you men!"
+
+"All ready, sir!"
+
+The rope tightened just a little--just sufficiently to keep the fakir
+cognizant of its position. The fakir howled out a sort of singsong
+dirge, which plainly had imperatives in every line of it. At each
+short pause for breath he added something in an undertone that made the
+Beluchi strain his ears.
+
+"He says, sahib, that they understand. He says, 'Now is the time!' He
+says now he will order 'Hookum hai!' He says, 'Are you ready?' He says,
+sahib,--he says it, sahib,--not I--he says, 'Thou art a fool to stare
+thus! Thou and thy men are fools! Stare, instead, as men who are
+bewitched!'"
+
+"Try to look like boiled owls, to oblige his Highness, men!" said Brown.
+"Now, that's better; watch for the word! Easy on the rope a little!"
+
+The men did their best to pose for the part of semimesmerized victims
+of a superhuman power. The flame from the burning roofs was dying down
+already, for the thatch burned fast, and the glowing gloom was deep
+enough to hide indifferent acting. With their lives at stake, though,
+men act better than they might at other times.
+
+The fakir spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at
+the rope, began to execute a sort of dance--a weird, fantastic, horrible
+affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm
+that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded
+on a dried-out-wrist-joint.
+
+"Hookum hai!" he screamed suddenly, waving his sound hand upward, and
+bringing it down suddenly with a jerk, as though by sheer force he was
+blasting them.
+
+"Down with you!" ordered Brown, and all except Brown and the Beluchi
+tumbled over backward.
+
+"Keep hold of your rifles!" ordered Brown.
+
+The fakir's wailing continued for a while. With his own hand he took the
+noose from his neck and, now that the flames had died away to nothing
+but spasmodic spurts above a dull red underglow, there was no one in
+the watching ring who could see Brown's sword-point. Only Brown and
+the fakir knew that it was scratching at the skin between the fakir's
+shoulder-blades.
+
+"It is done!" said the fakir presently. "Now take me back to my dais
+again!" And the Beluchi translated.
+
+"I'd like to hear their trigger-springs released," suggested Brown.
+"This has all been a shade too slick for me. I've got my doubts yet
+about it's being done. Tell him to order them to uncock their rifles, so
+that I can hear them do it."
+
+"He says that they are gone already!" translated the Beluchi.
+
+"Tell him I don't believe it!" answered Brown, whose eyes were straining
+to pierce the darkness, which was blacker than the pit again by now.
+
+The fakir raised his voice into a howl--a long, low, ululating howl like
+that he had uttered when they found him on his dais. From the distance,
+beyond the range of rifles, came a hundred answering howls. The fakir
+waited, and a minute later a hundred howls were raised again, this time
+from an even greater distance.
+
+Then he spoke.
+
+"He says that they are gone," translated the Beluchi. "He says he will
+go back to his dais again."
+
+"'Tshun!" ordered Brown. "Now, men, just because we've saved our skins
+so far is no reason why we should neglect precautions. We're going to
+put this imitation angel back on his throne again, so the same two carry
+him that brought him here. There's no sense in giving two more men the
+itch, and all the other ailments the brute suffers from! Form up round
+him, the rest. Take open order--say two paces--and go slow. Feel your
+way with your fixed bayonet, and don't take a step in the dark until
+you're sure where it will lead you. Forward-march! One of you bring that
+rope along."
+
+The weird procession crawled and crept and sidled back to where it had
+started from not so long before--jumping at every sound, and at every
+shadow that showed deeper than the coal-black night around them. It took
+them fifteen minutes to recross a hundred yards. But when they reached
+the earthen throne again at last, and had hoisted the fakir back in
+position on it, there had been no casualties, and the morale of the men
+in Sergeant Brown's command was as good again as the breech-mechanism of
+the rifles in his charge.
+
+They were scarcely visible to him or one another in the blackness,
+but he sensed the change in them, and changed his own tune to fit the
+changed condition.
+
+His voice had nothing in it but the abrupt military explosion when he
+gave his orders now--no argument, no underlying sympathy. He was no
+longer herding a flock of frightened children. He was ordering trained,
+grown men, and he knew it and they knew it. The orders ripped out, like
+the crack of a drover's whip.
+
+"Fall in, now, properly! 'Tshun! Right dress! To two paces--open
+order--from the center--extend! Now, then! Left and right wings--last
+three at each end forward--right wheel--halt. That's it. 'Bout face. Now
+each man keep two eyes lifting till the morning. If anything shows up,
+or any of you hear a sound, shoot first and challenge afterward!"
+
+They were standing so when the pale sun greeted them, in hollow square,
+with their backs toward the fakir, who was squatting, staring straight
+in front of him, on his dais, with his back turned to the tree and his
+withered arm still pointing up to heaven like a dead man's calling to
+the gods for vengeance.
+
+A little later, Brown made each alternate man lie down and get what
+sleep he could just where he was, with a comrade standing over him. He
+himself slept so for a little while. But one of the men heard something
+move among the hanging tendrils of the baobab, investigated with his
+bayonet-point, and managed to transfix a twelve-foot python. After that
+there was, not so much desire for sleep. The fakir either slept with his
+eyes open or else dispensed with sleep. No one seemed able to determine
+which.
+
+When the day grew hotter, and the utterly remorseless Indian sun
+bore down on them, and on the aching desolation of the plain and the
+burnt-out guardhouse, the fakir still sat unblinking, gazing straight
+out in front of him, with eyes that hated but did nothing else. He
+seemed to have no time nor thought nor care for anything but hate and
+the expression of it.
+
+At noon, three little children came to him, and brought him water in a
+small brass bowl, and cooked-up vegetables wrapped in some kind of leaf.
+Brown let him have theirs, and bribed the frightened children to go and
+bring water for the men and himself. He gave them the unheard-of wealth
+of one rupee between them, and they went off with it--and did not come
+back.
+
+Meanwhile the fakir had drunk his water, and had poured out what was
+left. He had also eaten what the children had brought him, and suddenly,
+from vacant, implacable hatred, he woke up and began to be amused.
+
+"Ha-ha!" he laughed at them. "Ho-ho!" And then he launched out with a
+string of eloquence that Brown called on the Beluchi to translate.
+
+"Who said there would be thirst, and the sound of water! Is there a
+thirst? Who spoke of an anthill and of hungry ants and raw red openings
+in the flesh for the little ants to run in and out more easily?"
+
+The Beluchi translated faithfully, and the men all listened.
+
+"Tell him to hold his tongue!" growled Brown at last.
+
+"Ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho!" laughed the fakir. "The heat grows great, and the
+tongues grow dry, and none bring water! Ho-ho! But I told them that I
+needed these for a deadlier death than any they devised! Ho-ho-ho-ho!
+Look at the little crows, how they wait in the branches! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
+See how the kites come! Where are the vultures? Wait! What speck sails
+in the sky there? Even the vultures come! Ho-ho-ho-ho!"
+
+"I hear a horse, sir!" said one of the men who watched.
+
+"I heard it more than a minute ago," said Brown.
+
+The fakir stopped his mockery, and even he listened.
+
+"Ask him," said Brown, "where are the men who set fire to the
+guardroom?"
+
+"He says they are in the village, waiting till he sends for them!" said
+the Beluchi.
+
+"Keep an eye lifting, you men," ordered Brown. "This'll be a messenger
+from Bholat, ten to one. Mind they don't ambush him! Watch every way at
+once, and shoot at anything that moves!"
+
+"Clippety-clippety-clippety-cloppety--"
+
+The sound of a galloping horse grew nearer; a horse hard-ridden, that
+was none the less sure-footed still, and going strong in spite of sun
+and heat. Suddenly a foam-flecked black mare swung round a bend between
+two banks, and the sun shone on a polished saber-hilt. A turbaned
+Rajput rose in his stirrups, gazed left and right and then in front of
+him--from the burned-out guardhouse to the baobab--drew rein to a walk
+and waved his hand.
+
+"By all that's good and great and wonderful," said Brown aloud, "if
+here's not Juggut Khan again!"
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+It is not easy to give any kind of real impression of India twenty-four
+hours after the outbreak of the mutiny. Movement was the keynote of
+the picture--stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one
+hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other
+hand, swift, desperate marches in the open.
+
+The moment that the seriousness of the outbreak had been understood, and
+the orders had gone out by galloper to "Get a move on!" each commanding
+officer strained every nerve at once to strike where a blow would
+have the most effect. There was no thought of anything but action, and
+offensive, not defensive action. Until some one at the head of things
+proved still to be alive, and had had time to form a plan, each
+divisional commander acted as he saw fit. That was all that any one was
+asked to do at first: to act, to strike, to plunge in headlong where the
+mutiny was thickest and most dangerous, to do anything, in fact; except
+sit still.
+
+Even with the evidence of mutiny and treachery on every side, with red
+flames lighting the horizon and the stench of burning villages on every
+hand, the strange Anglo-Saxon quality persisted that has done more even
+that the fighting-quality to teach the English tongue to half the world.
+The native servants who had not yet run away retained their places
+still, unquestioned. When an Englishman has once made up his mind to
+trust another man, he trusts him to the hilt, whatever shade of brown or
+red or white his hide may be.
+
+But, since every rule has its exceptions, there were some among the
+native servants, who remained ostensibly loyal to their masters, who
+would better have been shot or hanged at the first suggestion of
+an outbreak. For naturally a man who is trusted wrongly is far more
+dangerous than one who is held in suspicion. But it never was the
+slightest use endeavoring to persuade an average English officer that
+his own man could be anything but loyal. He may be a thief and a liar
+and a proved-up rogue in every other way; but as for fearing to let him
+sleep about the house, or fearing to let him cook his master's food,
+or fearing to let him carry firearms--well! Perhaps, it is conceit, or
+maybe just ordinary foolishness. It is not fear!
+
+So, in a country where the art of poisoning has baffled analysts since
+analysts have been invented, and where blood-hungry fanatic priests,
+both Hindu and Mohammedan, were preaching and promising the reward
+of highest heaven to all who could kill an Englishman or die in the
+attempt, a native cook whose antecedents were obscured in mystery cooked
+dinner for a British general, and marched with his column to perform the
+same service while the general tried to trounce the cook's friends and
+relatives!
+
+But General Baines felt perfectly at ease about his food. He never gave
+a thought to it, but ate what was brought to him, sitting his horse most
+likely, and chewing something as he rode among the men, and saw that
+they filled their bellies properly. He had made up his mind to march on
+Harumpore, and to take over the five-hundred-strong contingent there.
+Then he could swoop down on any of a dozen other points, in any one of
+which a blow would tell.
+
+He was handicapped by knowing almost too much. He had watched so long,
+and had suspected for so long that some sort of rebellion was brewing
+that, now that it had come, his brain was busy with the tail-ends of
+a hundred scraps of plans. He was so busy wondering what might be
+happening to all the other men subordinate to him, who would have to be
+acting on their own initiative, that his own plans lacked something of
+directness. But there was no lack of decision, and no time was lost. The
+men marched, and marched their swiftest, in the dust-laden Indian heat.
+And he marched with them, in among them, and ate what the cook brought
+him, without a thought but for the best interests of the government he
+served.
+
+So they buried General Baines some eighty-and-twenty miles from
+Harumpore, and shot the cook. And, according to the easy Indian
+theology, the cook was wafted off to paradise, while General Baines
+betook himself to hell, or was betaken. But the column, three thousand
+perspiring Britons strong, continued marching, loaded down with
+haversacks and ammunition and resolve.
+
+It was met, long before the jackals had dug down to General Baines'
+remains, by the advance-guard of Colonel Kendrick's column, which was
+coming out of Harumpore because things were not brisk enough in that
+place to keep it busy. Kendrick himself was riding with the cavalry
+detachment that led the way southward.
+
+"Who's in command now?" he asked, for they had told him of General
+Baines' death by poison.
+
+"I am," said a gray-haired officer who rode up at that moment.
+
+"I'm your senior, sir, by two years," answered Kendrick.
+
+"Then you command, sir."
+
+"Very good. Enough time's been wasted. The column can wait here until my
+main body reaches us. Then we'll march at once on Jailpore. This idea
+of leaving Jailpore to its fate is nonsense! The rebels are in strength
+there, and they have perpetrated an abominable outrage. There we will
+punish them, or else we'll all die in the attempt! If we have to raze
+Jailpore to the ground, and put every man in it to the sword before we
+find the four Europeans supposed to be left alive there, our duty is
+none the less obvious! Here comes my column. Tell the men to be ready to
+march in ten minutes."
+
+He turned his horse, to look through the dust at the approaching column,
+but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve.
+
+"What's that? Better have a rest? Tired out, you say? Oh! Form them all
+up in hollow square, then, and I'll say a few words to them. There are
+other ways of reviving a leg-weary column than by letting it lie down."
+
+Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud,
+and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun. Three
+thousand weary men had given him his answer! There was no kind of handle
+to it; no reserve--nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance
+unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death. It takes a real
+commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it
+is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders! It is not mere talk, on
+either side. It means that by some sixth sense a strong man and his men
+have discovered something that is good in each other.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+"You've made good time, friend Juggut Khan!" said Brown, advancing to
+meet him where the men and the fakir and the interpreter would not be
+able to Overhear.
+
+"Sahib, I killed one horse--the horse you looted for me--and I brought
+away two from Bholat. One of them carried me more than fifty miles, and
+then I changed to this one, leaving the other on the road. I have orders
+for you, sahib."
+
+"Hand 'em over then," said Brown. "Orders first, and talk afterward,
+when there's time!"
+
+The Rajput drew out a sealed envelope, and passed it to him. Brown tore
+it open, and read the message, scowling at the half-sheet of paper as
+though it were a death-sentence.
+
+"Where's the general?"
+
+"With his column-twenty or thirty miles away to the northward by now!"
+
+"And he's left me, with this handful, in the lurch?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! As I understood the orders, he has left you with a very
+honorable mission to fulfil!"
+
+Brown stared hard at the half-sheet of notepaper again. Reading was not
+his longest suit by any means, and at that he infinitely preferred to
+wrestle with printed characters.
+
+"Have you read it, Juggut Khan?" he asked.
+
+"Nay, sahib. I can speak English, but not read it."
+
+"Then we're near to being in the same boat, we two!" said Brown with
+a grin. "I'll have another try! It looks like a good-by message to
+me--here's the word 'good-by' written at the end above his signature."
+
+"There were other matters, sahib. There was an order. I can not read,
+but I know what is in the message."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You, and your twelve--"
+
+"Nine!" corrected Brown.
+
+"Three dead?"
+
+Brown nodded.
+
+"Your nine, then, sahib, and you and I are to proceed immediately
+to Jailpore, and to gain an entrance if we can, rescue those whom I
+concealed there and bring them to Harumpore, or to the northward of
+Harumpore, wherever we can find the column."
+
+"Eleven men are to attempt that?"
+
+Brown was studying out the letter word by word, and discovering to his
+amazement that its purport was exactly what Juggut Khan pretended.
+
+"If there are no more than eleven of us, then yes, eleven! And, sahib,
+since you seem to hold at least an island here where a man may lie down
+unmolested, I propose to sleep for an hour or two, before proceeding. I
+have had no sleep since I left Jailpore."
+
+"Nothing of the sort!" said Brown. "If we're to march on Jailpore, off
+we go at once! You can sleep on the road, my son! It's time we paid a
+visit to that village, I'm thinking. Those treacherous brutes need a
+lesson. I'd have been down there before, only I wanted to be in full
+view of the road in case anybody came looking for me from Bholat. We'll
+need a wagon for the fakir. You can sleep in it too."
+
+"Sleep with a fakir? I? Allah! I am a Rajput, sahib! A sergeant of the
+Rajput Horse, retired!"
+
+"I wouldn't want to sleep with him myself!" admitted Brown. "Come and
+look at him. You can smell him from here, but the sight of him's the
+real thing!"
+
+The Rajput swaggered up beside Brown, after loosening his horse's girths
+and lifting the saddle for a moment.
+
+"He's not the only one that needs a drink!" said Brown. "We're all dry
+as brick-dust here, except the fakir!"
+
+"He must wait a while before he drinks. Show me the fakir. Why, Brown
+sahib, know you what you have there?"
+
+"The father of all the smells, and all the dirt and all the evil eyes
+and evil tongues in Asia!" Brown hazarded.
+
+"More than that, sahib! That is the nameless fakir--him whom they know
+as HE! Has there been no attempt made to rescue him?"
+
+"They rescued him once, and murdered three of my men to get him. When
+they tried again, I put a halter round his neck and he and I arranged a
+sort of temporary compromise."
+
+"And the terms of it?"
+
+"Oh, he's supposed to have performed a miracle. He made us unslip the
+halter, and fall down flat, and he's supposed to be keeping us by him,
+by a sort of spell, so's to give us something extra-special in the line
+of ghastly deaths at his own convenience. That way, I was able to wait
+for news from Bholat--see?"
+
+"You could have captured no more important prisoner than that, sahib,
+let me tell you! They believe him to be almost a god; so nearly one
+that the gods themselves obey his orders now and then! It was he, and no
+other, that told the men of Jailpore that he would make them impervious
+to bullets. If we have him, sahib, we have the key to Jailpore!"
+
+"We, have certainly got him," said Brown. "You can see him, and you can
+smell him. I'll order one of the men to prick him with a bayonet, if you
+want to hear him, too! I wouldn't feel him, if I were you!"
+
+"He must come, too, to Jailpore!"
+
+"Of course he comes!"
+
+"Then, sahib, let us move away from here to where there is water. There
+let us rest until sundown, and then march, in the cool of the evening.
+It will be better so. And of a truth I must sleep, or else drop dead
+from weariness."
+
+"Does that message put you in command?" asked Brown, a trifle
+truculently.
+
+"No, sahib! But it orders you to listen to my advice whenever possible."
+
+"That means that you are under my orders?"
+
+"That letter does not say so, sahib!"
+
+"Very well, are you, or are you not?"
+
+"We are supposed to act in concert, sahib."
+
+"It doesn't say so in the letter! Yes, or no? Are you going to obey
+orders, or aren't you? In other words, are you coming with me, or do you
+stay behind?"
+
+"I come with you, sahib!"
+
+"Then you obey my orders!"
+
+"But the letter says--"
+
+"That I'm to take your advice whenever possible! I don't need advice
+just at the moment, thanks! I've got orders here to march, and I'm off
+at once! You can please yourself whether you come with me or not, but if
+you come you come on my terms."
+
+"I go with you, sahib."
+
+"Under my orders?"
+
+"Yes, sahib."
+
+"All right, Juggut Khan. Here's my hand on it. Now, we'll swoop down on
+that village, and take the fakir with us, with a halter round his neck
+for the sake of argument. We'll get two bullock-carts down there, and
+we'll stick him in one of them, with Sidiki the interpreter tied to him.
+Sidiki won't like it, but he's only a Beluchi anyway! You get in the
+other, and get all the sleep you can. You and I'll take turns sleeping
+all the way to Jailpore, so's to be fresh, both of us, and fit for
+anything by the time that we get there!"
+
+"I am ready, sahib."
+
+"You two men who carried old Stinkijink before, pick him up again!"
+shouted Brown. "Let him feel the bayonet if he makes a noise, but carry
+him gently as though you loved him. The rest--'Tshun! Form two-deep--on
+the center--close order, march. Ri' dress. Eyes front. Ri' turn. By the
+left--quick march."
+
+The Rajput strode beside Brown, wondering wearily whether it was worth
+his while to offer him advice or not, and keeping his tired eyes ever
+moving in the direction of the distant huts.
+
+"They have rifles, sahib?" he queried.
+
+"Lots of 'em! Three that they took from my men, among others."
+
+"It would not be well to march into a trap at this stage."
+
+"As well now as later." "True, sahib! And my time has not come yet; I
+know it. Else had I died of weariness, as my horse did."
+
+Brown kept rigidly to that point of view in everything he did, from that
+time on until he reached Jailpore. He believed himself to be engaged on
+a forlorn hope that was so close to being an absolute impossibility as
+to be almost the same thing. He had no doubt whatever in his own mind
+but that his own death, and the death of those with him, was a matter
+now of hours, or possibly of minutes. His one resolute determination
+was to die, and make the others die, in a manner befitting their oath
+of service. He had orders, and he would pass them on according to his
+interpretation of them. He would obey his orders, and they theirs, and
+the rest was no business of his or anybody's.
+
+They put the fakir in a hut; where Juggut Khan--too weary for
+foraging--stood guard over him. When a crowd collected round the hut,
+and Juggut Khan applied the butt of a lighted cigarette to the tender
+skin between the fakir's shoulder-blades, the anxious fakir-worshipers
+were told that all was well. They were to let the white soldiers take
+two wagons, or three even, if they wanted them. They were to return
+to their houses at once, and hide, lest the devils who would shortly
+overwhelm the white men should make mistakes and include them, too, in
+the whelming. He, the fakir, intended to take the white men for a little
+journey along the road toward Jailpore, where the devils who would deal
+with them would have no opportunity to make mistakes. And, since the
+natives knew that Jailpore was a rebel stronghold, and that ten white
+men and a native would have no chance to do the slightest damage there,
+they chose to believe the fakir and to obey him.
+
+Hindus have as stubborn and unalterable a habit of obeying and believing
+their priests--when the fancy suits them--as white men of other
+religions have.
+
+If the fakir had told them through the doorway of the hut that he
+intended going with the white men in the direction of Bholat, they would
+most surely have prevented him. But it suited them very well indeed to
+have the white men killed elsewhere. It was not likely, but there might
+be a column on its way from Bholat now; and if that column came, and
+found the bones of British soldiers as well as a burned-out guard-house,
+vengeance would be dire and prompt. Between where they were and
+Jailpore, the white men could not possibly escape. And at Jailpore,
+if not sooner, they must surely die. So they believed the fakir, and
+retired to the seclusion of their houses.
+
+It was wonderful, of course, but no more wonderful than a thousand other
+happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average were
+upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed continent.
+Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-carts
+should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction of a
+plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than that on
+the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested fakir should be
+squatting, guarded by British soldiers, who marched on either hand; or
+that a Rajput, who could trace his birth from a thousand-year-long line
+of royal chieftains, should be sleeping in the bullock-cart behind,
+followed closely by a black charger with a British saddle on its back,
+which ate corn from the tail-board of the wagon; stranger things, even,
+than that a British sergeant should be marching last of all, with his
+stern eyes roving a little wildly but his jaw set firm and his tread as
+rigid and authoritative and abrupt as though he were marching to inspect
+accouterments.
+
+In more than a dozen places, about a dozen men were holding a fort
+against an army. They were using every wile and trick and dodge that
+ingenuity or inspiration could provide them with, and they were mostly
+contriving to hold out. But there were none who did anything more daring
+or more unusual than to march to the attack of a city, with a hostile
+fakir in the van, and nothing else but their eleven selves and their
+rifles to assist them. There is a tremendous difference between
+defending when you have to, and attacking when you might retire.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+There were many more causes than one that worked together to make
+possible the entry of Brown and his little force into Jailpore. They
+were brave men; they were more than brave and they held the ace of
+trumps, as Brown had stated, in the person of the fakir known as "He."
+But luck favored them as well, and but for luck they must have perished
+half a dozen times.
+
+They marched the whole of the first afternoon, and met no one. They only
+overtook little straggling parties of rebels, making one and all for
+Jailpore, who bolted at the sight of them, imagining them probably to be
+the advance-guard of a larger force. The very idiocy of marching eleven
+strong through a country infested by their enemies was in their favor.
+Nobody could believe that there were no more than eleven of them. Even
+the English could not be such lunatics!
+
+That night, they rested for a while, and then went on again. During the
+day following they lay in a hollow between some trees and rested, and
+slept by turns. They suffered agonies from the heat, and not a little
+from hunger, and once or twice they were hard put to it to stop the
+Rajput's charger from neighing when a native pony passed along the
+nearby road. But night came again, and with it the screen of darkness
+for their strange, almost defenseless caravan. Once or twice the
+fakir tried to shout an alarm to passing villagers, but the quick and
+energetic application of a cleaning-rod by Brown stopped him always
+in the nick of time, and they came within sight of the battlements of
+Jailpore without an accident.
+
+Then, though, their problem became really serious, and it was a series
+of circumstances altogether out of their control and not connected
+with them that made their entry possible. The mutineers in Jailpore had
+learned that Kendrick sahib was coming down on them from the north by
+forced marches with thirty-five hundred men or more. They were putting
+the place into a state of siege, and getting ready by all means in their
+power to oppose him.
+
+Little attention was being paid to small parties of arrivals from no man
+knew or cared where. And, in a final effort to find the four who were
+the lure that was bringing Kendrick down on them, the city was once
+more being turned upside down and inside out, and men were even being
+tortured who were thought to know of hiding-places.
+
+With purely Eastern logic, the leaders of the rebels had decided that
+the sight of the bodies of the four, writhing in their last agony on the
+sun-scorched outer wall, would mightily discourage the British when they
+came. So no efforts were being spared and no stones left unturned to
+find them. The hooks on the wall were sharp and ready, so that they
+might be impaled without loss of time in full view of their would-be
+rescuers.
+
+Almost every secret passage of the thousand odd had been explored. In
+the hurry to run through them and explore the next one, doors had been
+left open here and there that had been kept closed in some instances for
+centuries.
+
+One door in particular, placed cornerwise in a buttress of the outer
+wall, was spotted by Juggut Khan as he circled round the city on his
+charger at dusk on the day following their arrival. He brought his
+charger back to where the others lay concealed, and then went on an
+exploring-expedition on foot--to discover that the outer city wall
+was like a sponge, a nest of honey-combed cells and passages wandering
+interminably in the fifty-foot-thick brick and rubble rampart.
+
+And while he searched amid the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat
+in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city.
+He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and
+trying--with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the
+task--to figure out a plan.
+
+He knew by now that the four he had come to rescue were hidden
+underneath the powder-magazine, and he could see the magazine itself.
+But he could think of no way of rescuing them, for the city absolutely
+boiled with frantic, mixed-up castes and creeds picked at random, and
+thrown in at random from the whole of India. A mouse could not have
+passed through the streets undetected! And yet, from a soldier's point
+of view, there were certain fascinating details to be noticed about
+that powder-magazine. In the first place, it had been constructed for
+a granary by an emperor who never heard of Joseph, but who had the same
+ideal plan for cornering the people's food-supply. And since labor had
+been unlimited, and cheap, he had gone about building the thing on the
+most thoroughly unpractical and most pretentious plan that he and his
+architects could figure out. It was big enough to hold about ten times
+as much grain as the province could grow in any one year of plenty. And,
+since that was the least practical and most ungranary-like shape, he had
+caused it to be built like an enormous beehive, with a tiny platform at
+the top.
+
+Winding round and round the huge stone dome, and on the outside, was a
+six-foot-wide trail, which was the elevator. Up this, each with a sack
+or a basket on his head, the population was to have been induced to run
+in single file, dumping its hard-won corn into the granary through an
+opening at the top until the granary was full.
+
+The emperor died--by poison--before he could see his cherished project
+put into execution, but he had been a very thorough calculator, and
+a builder who believed in permanency. He had foreseen that when the
+granary was full, and the screw-jacks were turned beneath the cost of
+living, there would probably be efforts made by unwashed, untutored,
+unenlightened mobs to rape his storehouse. So he had made the little
+platform at the top a veritable fortress of a place, such as a handful
+of men could hold against a hundred thousand.
+
+There was no known entrance to the granary above ground, except on the
+ground level, where a huge stone gateway frowned above a teak-and-iron
+door. Above that door there were galleries, and fortalices and cunningly
+invented battlements in miniature, from behind whose shelter a resolute
+defending-party could pour out a hundred different kinds of death on a
+hungry crowd. The place was naturally fire-proof and naturally cool--as
+far as any building can be cool in Central India. It was a first-class,
+ideal powder-magazine, if useless as a granary; and the last new
+conquerors of India had hastened to adopt it as a means of storing up
+the explosive medicine with which they kept their foothold.
+
+Naturally, none but White soldiers, and a very few of the more trusted
+natives, had ever been allowed to go inside the powder-magazine.
+The secret passages beneath it had never been intended for public
+convenience or information. They had been designed as a means of rushing
+defenders secretly into the granary, and they connected with a tunnel
+underneath the palace that had just been burned. They also connected
+with the outer wall in such a way that defenders from the ramparts might
+be rushed there too, if wanted in a hurry. But, since there never had
+been corn kept in the granary, and nobody had ever had the slightest
+need to force an entrance, the knowledge even of the existence of the
+passages had become barely a memory, and there was not a man living in
+Jailpore who knew exactly where they began or where they ended. There
+was a man outside who knew, but none inside.
+
+The point about the powder-magazine which most appealed to Brown--next
+after his knowledge of its contents, mineral and human--was the fact
+that the little platform at its summit overlooked the city-wall, and
+that the side of the granary actually touched the wall on the side of
+the city farthest from where he sat and spied it out. Ten men on that
+protected platform, he thought, might suffer from the sun, but they
+could hold the building and command a good-sized section of the city
+ramparts against all comers.
+
+He noticed too, though that seemed immaterial at the time, that one
+well-aimed shot from heavy ordnance might crash through the upper dome
+and set off the powder underneath. There was no artillery that could
+be brought against the place, either with the British force or with the
+mutineers, but the thought set him to wondering how much powder there
+might be stored on the huge round floor below, and what would happen
+should it become ignited. It was a sanguinary, interesting, subtle kind
+of thought, that suited the condition of his brain exactly! He climbed
+down from the tree, feeling almost good-natured.
+
+At the bottom he met Juggut Khan, waiting for him patiently.
+
+"What have you seen, sahib?" he asked him. "Have you formed a plan?"
+
+"I've been wishing I was Joshua!" said Brown. "I'd like to make my men
+march round the city and blow trumpets, and then see the walls fall
+down. I can think of several things to do, if we could only get inside.
+But I can't think how to get there."
+
+"I have found a way in!" said Juggut Khan. "I have cross-questioned
+that fakir of ours as well, with a little assistance from a cleaning-rod
+wielded by one of your men. He knows the way too. He says he is the only
+man who knows it--in which he lies, since I too have discovered it. But
+his knowledge may help as well."
+
+"What's that about a cleaning-rod?" asked Brown.
+
+"It was used on him to help him forget his vow of silence."
+
+"When?"
+
+"When you were up that tree, sahib!"
+
+"Have you been giving my man orders?"
+
+"Nay, sahib!"
+
+"How did he come to beat the fakir, then?"
+
+"We both arrived at the same conclusion at the same moment, and the
+fakir received the benefit!"
+
+"Who held him, you?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! God forbid! I am a clean man. I listened to his
+conversation. The Beluchi held him."
+
+"Oh! Well, I like you well enough, Juggut Khan, but there are things
+about you that I don't like. You're too fond of doing things on your own
+responsibility, and you're much too fond of using oaths. Y our soul
+is none o' my business; you're a heathen anyhow, and no longer in the
+Service. But, I'll trouble you not to use those disgraceful oaths of
+yours in the presence of the men! Do you understand me?"
+
+"I understand you, sahib. If my respect for all your other qualities
+were not so profound, I would laugh at you! As it is, if your honor
+should see fit to turn the bullocks loose, and tie the fakir fast
+between two men and follow me, it seems to me dark enough by now, and I
+know the way. Might I furthermore suggest that the ammunition-box would
+make a reasonable load for another two men?"
+
+"Hadn't we better bring our rifles too?" asked Brown sarcastically.
+"Upon my honor, Juggut Khan! You're getting childish! Are your nerves
+upset, or what? Lead on, man! Lead on!"
+
+"Listen. There are two ways, sahib. One way leads from the burned-out
+barracks to the cellar where the women lie hidden. That way is closed by
+debris. The other way leads from the outer wall by a very winding route
+to the cellar where the women are. The fakir knows that way, and I do
+not, though I know of it. There is a third way, though, that leads from
+the outer wall, where I have been exploring, straight almost, if you
+disregard a wind or two, to the inside of the powder-magazine. It
+enters the magazine through a doorway secretly contrived in an upright
+pillar--or so the fakir swears. Now this is my notion, sahib. If we
+go in by the lower way, we must come out that way, and run the risk of
+being caught as we emerge. That risk will be greatly enhanced when
+we have frightened women with us whose eyes have been blinded by the
+darkness. But, if we go in by the upper way, and enter the magazine
+itself, I can make the fakir show us how to lift the stone trapdoor I
+spoke of--the one that I closed when I hid the women. Then I can ascend
+with him, and with say four men, while you ascend to the platform at the
+top with the remainder of the men, and guard our rear and our exit.
+From the top, you will be able to see us as we emerge, and can cover our
+retreat, and follow."
+
+"That sounds like a roundabout sort of plan to me!" said Brown. "Why not
+go straight in by the lower route, and gather up the women, and carry
+'em out, and make a bolt for it?"
+
+"Because, sahib, we will be at the fakir's mercy."
+
+"Nonsense! He's at our mercy."
+
+"Think, sahib! There, he will be in his own bat's nest, so to speak.
+These fakirs are the only men who know the windings of all the secret
+passages. They are the rats of religion and intrigue. At any step he
+might lead us into an ambush, and we might be overwhelmed before we knew
+that we were attacked. If we go the other way, though, I can lead the
+way myself, and we need only take the fakir to show us how to open the
+door."
+
+"Very well," said Brown. "Let's get a move on, though! I'm beginning to
+think that you're a better talker than a fighter, Juggut Khan!"
+
+"Yes, sahib? I trust there will be no fighting!" But the Rajput smiled
+as he said it, and thought of a certain lance-shaft which had been
+broken in the streets of Jailpore.
+
+"Lead on! Fall in behind me, men! Walk quietly, now, and remember. Hold
+your tongues! Each man keep his eye on me, and a finger on the trigger!"
+
+The Beluchi and the fakir and Juggut Khan moved in the van, with two
+men to hold the fakir. Next marched, or rather tiptoed, Sergeant Brown,
+followed by the other men in single file. In that order they hastened
+after Juggut Khan, through the darkness, across a dried-out moat and
+round the corner of a huge stone buttress. There they disappeared inside
+the wall, and a stone swung round and closed the gap behind the last of
+them. There was no alarm given, and not a sign or a sound of any kind
+to betoken that any one had seen them. Inside the walls the city roared
+like a flood-fed maelstrom, and outside all was darkness and the silence
+of the dead.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+There was some smart work done inside the powder-magazine. To be able to
+appreciate it properly one would be obliged to do what they did--wander
+through a maze of tunnels in a city-wall, blinded by darkness, oppressed
+by the stored-up stuffiness and heat of ages and deafened by the
+stillness--then emerge unexpectedly in the lamp-lit magazine, among
+mutineers who sprawled, and laughed; and chewed betel-nut at their ease
+upon the powder-kegs.
+
+Both sides were taken by surprise, but the mutineers had the nominal
+advantage, for their eyes were accustomed to the light. They had the
+advantage in numbers, too, by almost two to one. But they dared not
+fire, for fear of setting off the magazine, whereas Brown and his little
+force dared anything. They fully expected to die, and might as well die
+that way as any other. And a quick death for the women down below would
+be better than anything the rebels had in store for them. Brown yelled
+an order, and the rest was too quick, nearly, for the eye to follow.
+
+Three rebels died with bullets in them, and the rest stampeded for the
+teak-and-metal door, to find it locked on them, and Brown and the Rajput
+standing in front of it on guard. The mutineers attacked fiercely. They
+flung themselves all together on the two. But they had yet to learn that
+they were tackling, or endeavoring to tackle, the two finest swordsmen
+in that part of India. And when they turned, to find more room to fight
+in, or to draw their breath, they had to face nine bayonets that hemmed
+them in, and drove them closer and even closer to the swords again.
+They shouted, but no sound could pierce the walls or escape through that
+tremendous door. Even the sound of firing merely echoed upward until it
+reached the dome, and then filtered out and upward through the opening
+above. They might as well have shouted to their friends in Bholat!
+
+For ten minutes, perhaps, the battle surged and swayed on the stone
+floor first one side rushing, then the other. But man after man of the
+mutineers went down--appalled by the amazing swordsmanship, disheartened
+by the grim determination of their adversaries, bewildered to feebleness
+by the suddenness of the attack.
+
+Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then
+Brown shouted for a fresh formation, swung his contingent into line and
+led them with a rush across the floor that swept the remaining mutineers
+off their feet.
+
+Three more went down with steel through them, and then the rest
+surrendered, throwing down their arms, and begging mercy. Brown made a
+bundle of their arms, stowed it in a corner and made the prisoners stand
+together in a bunch, while he searched them thoroughly.
+
+"If we can't get that trapdoor open now, with these to help us," he
+remarked, panting and wiping the dotted blood off his sword on a Hindu
+prisoner's trousers, "it'll be a heavier proposition than I think!"
+
+"There's a trick to it," said Juggut Khan, panting too, for the battle
+had been fierce and furious while it lasted. "The fakir knows the trick.
+It is heavy, in any case. But, if we make him tell us, we can manage
+it."
+
+There followed delay while the fakir was induced to forego the pleasure
+of a sulking fit. He seemed like a child, anxious to emphasize their
+dependence on his knowledge, and needing to be recompelled to each new
+thing they needed of him. He was perfectly content, though, to surrender
+when he felt the weight of a cleaning-rod on his anatomy, or something
+in the way of fire--a match or cigarette for instance--placed where he
+would get the most sensation from it.
+
+Then followed more delay, while they rigged a lever of sorts, and a rope
+through an iron ring in the trap, and while Juggut Khan hunted for the
+secret catch that the fakir swore was hidden underneath a smaller stone
+that hinged in the middle of the floor. He found it at last, moved it
+and came across to lend a hand with the lever and the rope.
+
+The fakir sat still and smiled at them. His eyes gleamed more horridly
+than ever, and his withered arm seemed more than ever to be calling down
+dire vengeance on them.
+
+"I believe that monster is up to tricks of some kind!" swore Brown.
+
+"He can't do anything," said Juggut Khan. "If we were all to put our
+weight against this, all together, we and the prisoners, sahib, we could
+get it open in a second."
+
+"All together, then!" said Brown. "Come on, there! Lend a hand!"
+
+The prisoners and Brown's men and Juggut Khan and the Beluchi bent
+their backs above the lever, or hauled taut on the rope, and the fakir
+wriggled with some secret joke.
+
+"At the word three!" said Brown. "Then all together!"
+
+"One!"
+
+"Two!"
+
+The fakir writhed delightedly. He seemed more than ever like a wickedly
+malicious child.
+
+"Three!"
+
+They strained their utmost, and the huge stone trap gave way with a
+sudden jerk.
+
+"For the love of--"
+
+They all jumped, but they were strained in the wrong position for a
+quick recovery, and the ten-ton rock rolled back on unseen hinges to
+crush them all, and rolled back and yet farther back--and then stayed!
+Brown had snatched a rifle, and had placed it between the rolling rock
+and the wall!
+
+He stood wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the rest recovered
+their lost balance and walked out from behind unscathed. The rifle
+creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back, reached
+the wall and stayed there!
+
+"A near thing that!" said Brown. "That fakir's a bright beauty, isn't
+he!"
+
+"Shall I kick him, sir?" asked one of Brown's men.
+
+"Kick him? No! What good'd that do? What next, Juggut Khan?"
+
+But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare by
+the huge hinged trap.
+
+"Silence!" commanded Brown.
+
+The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the
+darkness down below.
+
+"Are they dead, d'you suppose?" asked Brown.
+
+And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and he
+heard a woman's voice that moaned.
+
+"Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I'm dead yet! I wouldn't be, I know, if
+Bill were here! He'd ha' got us out!"
+
+"There is one of them alive!" said Juggut Khan.
+
+"So I notice!" answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice.
+"Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It
+won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this awful
+fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing 'em up, while
+I make the prisoners carry their dead up on to the roof. I'll take the
+fakir up there too where he's out of mischief!"
+
+Just as a six-foot-wide pathway ran round and round the outside of the
+dome, another one, scarcely more than a yard wide, ran round the
+inside, and formed a roadway to the top in place of a stair. It took the
+prisoners and Brown's men fifteen minutes of continuous effort to carry
+up the dead and the fakir, and lay them on the roof.
+
+"Pitch the dead over!" ordered Brown, and the mutineers obeyed.
+
+"I've a mind to pitch you over too!" he growled at the fakir, and the
+strange creature seemed to understand him, for his eyes changed from
+their baleful hatred to a look of fear.
+
+The bodies slid and rolled down the rounded roof, and fell with a thud
+against the battlements, or else went rolling down the circular causeway
+that led to the street below.
+
+Brown seemed to be garnering ideas from watching them. He gazed down
+at the noisy tumult of the city, watching for a while the efforts of an
+ill-directed crowd to put out a fire that blazed in a distant quarter of
+the bazaar.
+
+There seemed to him something strangely preconcerted about much of the
+hurrying to and fro below him. It struck him as being far too orderly to
+be the mere boiling of a loot-crazed mob.
+
+His prisoners gave the secret to him. They were leaning against the
+parapet on the other side--the side closest to the city-wall, and
+farthest from the top of the causeway--and they were chattering together
+excitedly in undertones. Brown walked round to where they stood, and
+stared where they stared. Just as they had done, he recognized what lay
+below him.
+
+It was faintly outlined in the blackness, picked out here and there by
+lanterns, and still too far away for most civilians to name it until
+the sun rose and showed its detail. But Brown, the soldier, knew on the
+instant, and so did his men.
+
+Suddenly and unexpectedly and sweetly, like a voice in the night that
+spoke of hope and strength and the rebirth of order out of chaos, a
+bugle gave tongue from where the lanterns swung in straight-kept lines.
+
+"Oh, Juggut Khan! Oh, Juggut Khan!"
+
+Bill Brown's voice boomed through the opening in the dome, and spread
+down the walls of the powder-magazine as though in the inside of a
+speaking-trumpet.
+
+"Brown sahib?"
+
+"The army has got here from the north! It has come down here from
+Harumpore! It's outside the walls now, lying on its arms, and evidently
+waiting to attack at daylight!"
+
+"I, too, have news, Brown sahib! All four are living! All four lie here
+on the floor of the magazine, and they recover rapidly. They are all but
+strong enough to stand."
+
+"Good! Then come up here, Juggut Khan!"
+
+That winding pathway up the inside of the dome took longer to negotiate
+than an ordinary stairway would have done, but presently the Rajput
+leaned against the parapet and panted beside Brown.
+
+"D'you see them? There they are! Now, look on this side! D'you see the
+preparations going on? D'you realize what the next thing's going to be?
+They'll come for powder for the guns, so's to have it all ready for the
+gun-crews when the fun begins at dawn! Listen! Here they are already!"
+
+A thundering had started on the great teak door below--a thundering that
+echoed through the dome like the reverberations of an earthquake. It
+was punctuated by the screams of women. The prisoners changed their
+attitude, and eyed Brown and the Rajput with an air of truculence again.
+
+"They'll be up this causeway in a minute, sahib! Listen. There! They've
+seen the dead bodies that you tossed over. Better it had been to keep
+them up here for a while."
+
+"Never mind! We can hold this causeway until morning! Men! Take
+close order. Line up at the causeway-entrance. Kneel. Prepare for
+volley-firing. Now, let 'em come!"
+
+"I am for making an immediate escape, sahib!"
+
+"Go ahead!" said Brown, almost dreamily.
+
+He seemed to be thinking hard on some other subject as he spoke.
+
+"Sahib, one of the women there--she who is maid to the other two--asked
+me where Bill Brown might be! She swore to me that she had recognized
+his voice when the trapdoor opened up above her. Are you not Bill
+Brown?"
+
+"Yes, I'm William Brown!"
+
+"Her name, she says, is Emmett!"
+
+"You don't surprise me, Juggut Khan! I thought I had recognized her
+voice. It seemed strangely familiar. Well--here come the rebels up the
+causeway. See? They're at the bottom now with lanterns! Ready, men!"
+
+There came the answering click of breech-bolts, and a little rustling as
+each man eased his position, and laid his elbow on his knee.
+
+"Can you find your way out through the way we came, Juggut Khan?"
+
+"Of course I can!"
+
+"Are all the women on the floor?"
+
+"Three women and the child."
+
+"Can you close the trap-door again?"
+
+"Surely! It is only opening it that is difficult."
+
+"Then close it before you go. I've got a reason! Send one of my men up
+here with a lantern--one of those that are burning in the magazine. I
+want to signal."
+
+"Very well, sahib!"
+
+"Then take the women, with four of my men to help them walk, and get out
+as quickly as you can by the way we all came in. Wait for the rest of
+my men when you reach the opening in the outer wall, and when they
+reach you allot two men to carry each woman, and run--the whole lot of
+you--for the army over yonder. One of the women will object. She will
+want to see me first. Use force, if necessary!"
+
+"Are you, then, not coming, sahib?"
+
+"I have another plan. Here they come! Hurry now, be off with the women!
+Volley-firing--ready--present!"
+
+Pattering footsteps sounded on the causeway, and a little crowd of
+nearly doubled figures came up it at a run.
+
+"Fire!"
+
+The volley took the rebels absolutely by surprise, and no man could miss
+his mark at that short range. Five of the rebels fell back headlong, and
+the rest, who followed up the causeway, turned on their heels and ran.
+
+"'Bout turn!" Brown shouted suddenly. "Use the steel, men! Use the
+steel!"
+
+His own sword was flashing, and lunging as he spoke, and he had already
+checked a sudden rush by the prisoners.
+
+They had thought the moment favorable for joining in the scrimmage from
+the rear.
+
+"All right! That'll do them! I'll attend to 'em now!"
+
+A man came running up with the lantern Brown had asked for, and Brown
+took it and began waving it above his head.
+
+"They must have heard that volley!" he muttered to himself. "Ah! There's
+the answer!"
+
+A red light began to dance over in the British camp, moving up and down
+and sidewise in sudden little jerks. Brown read the jerks, as he could
+never have read writing, and a moment later he answered them.
+
+"Now, down below, the lot of you! Give me your rifle, you. I'll need
+it."
+
+"Not coming, sir."
+
+"Not yet. There's something else yet, and I can do it best. Besides,
+some one has got to guard the causeway still. There might be a rush
+again at any minute. Listen now. Obey Juggut Khan implicitly as soon as
+you get down. His orders are my orders. Understand? Very well, then. And
+you without a weapon, your job is to shut the door that you leave the
+magazine by tight from the outside--d'you understand me? Call up when
+you're all through the door, and then shut it tight!"
+
+"But, how'll you get out, sir?"
+
+"That's my business. One minute, though. Here they come again. Get ready
+to fire another volley!"
+
+The mutineers made another and a more determined rush up the causeway,
+coming up it more than twenty strong, and at the double. Brown let one
+volley loose in the midst of them, then led his men at the charge down
+on them and drove them over the edge of the causeway by dint of sheer
+impact and cold steel. Not one of them reached the ground alive, and
+in the darkness it must have been impossible for the mutineers below to
+divine how many were the granary's defenders.
+
+"That'll keep 'em quiet for a while, I'll wager! Now, quick, you men!
+Get down below, and follow Juggut Khan, and don't forget to shut the
+door tight on you. These prisoners here are going to follow you--they
+may as well go down with you for that matter. No! that won't do. They
+could open the door below, couldn't they? They'll have to stay up here.
+Got any rope? Then bind them, somebody. Bind their hands and feet. Now,
+off with you!"
+
+Brown spent the next few minutes signaling with the lantern, and reading
+answering flashes that zig-zagged in the velvet blackness of the British
+lines. Then, as a voice boomed up through the granary, "All's well, sir!
+I'm just about to shut the door!" he fixed his eyes on the fakir, and
+laughed at him.
+
+"You and I are going to turn in our accounts of how we've worked out
+this 'Hookum hai' business, my friend!" he told him. "You've given
+orders, and I've obeyed orders! We've both accounted for a death or two,
+and we've both accepted responsibility. We're going to know in less than
+five minutes from now which of us two was justified. There's one thing
+I know, though, without asking. There's one person, and she a woman,
+who'll weep for me. Will anybody weep for you, I wonder?"
+
+A lantern waved wildly from the British camp, and Brown seized his own
+lantern and signaled an answer.
+
+"See that? That's to say, you glassy-eyed horror you, that our mutual
+friend Juggut Khan has been seen emerging like a rat from a hole in the
+wall. I'll give him and his party one more minute to get clear. Then
+there's going to be a holocaust, my friend!"
+
+He cocked his rifle, and examined the breech-bolt and the foresight
+carefully. The fakir shuddered, evidently thinking that the charge was
+intended for himself.
+
+"No! It won't be that way. I know a better! I'm taking a leaf from your
+book and doing harm by wholesale!"
+
+Brown leaned down into the opening of the dome, and brought the rifle
+to his shoulder. There was a chorus of yells from the prisoners, and a
+noise like a wounded horse's scream from the fakir. The rest were bound,
+but the fakir rose and writhed toward him on his heels, with his sound
+arm stretched up in an attitude of despair beside the withered one.
+
+A chorus of bugles burst out from the British camp, and a volley ripped
+through the blackness.
+
+"All right! Here goes!" said Brown. And he aimed down into the shadowy
+powder-magazine, and pulled the trigger.
+
+Ten minutes later, an army three thousand and five hundred strong
+marched in through the gap made in the outer wall by a granary that had
+spread itself through--and not over--what was in its way. There were
+seventeen tons of powder that responded to the invitation of Brown's
+bullet.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Explosions are among the few things--or the many things, whichever way
+you like to look at it!--that science can not undertake to harness or
+account for. When a gun blows up, or a powder-magazine, the shock kills
+whom it kills, as when a shell bursts in a dense-packed firing-line. You
+can not kill any man before his time comes, even if a thousand tons of
+solid masonry combine with you to whelm him, and go hurtling through the
+air with him to absolutely obvious destruction.
+
+The fakir's time had come, and the prisoners' time had come. But
+Sergeant William Brown's had not.
+
+They found him, blackened by powder, and with every stitch of clothing
+blown from him, clinging to a bunch of lotus-stems in a temple-pond.
+There was a piece of fakir in the water with him, and about a ton of
+broken granary, besides the remnants of a rifle and other proof that he
+had come belched out of a holocaust. The men who came on him had given
+their officer the slip, and were bent on a private looting-expedition of
+their own. But by the time that they had dragged him from the water, and
+he had looted them of wherewithal to clothe himself, their thoughts of
+plunder had departed from them. Brown had a way of quite monopolizing
+people's thoughts!
+
+There were twenty of them, and he led them all that night, and all
+through the morning and the afternoon that followed. He held them
+together and worked them and wheeled them and coached and cheered and
+compelled them through the hell-tumult of the ghastliest thing there is
+beneath the dome of heaven--house-to-house fighting in an Eastern city.
+And at the end of it, when the bugles blew at last "Cease fire,"
+and many of the men were marched away by companies to put out the
+conflagrations that were blazing here and there, he led them outside
+the city-wall, stood them at ease in their own line and saluted their
+commanding-officer.
+
+"Twenty men of yours, sir. Present and correct."
+
+"Which twenty?"
+
+"Of Mr. Blair's half-company."
+
+"Where's Mr. Blair?"
+
+"Dunno, sir!"
+
+"Since when have you had charge of them?"
+
+"Since they broke into the city yesterday, sir."
+
+"And you haven't lost a man?"
+
+"Had lots of luck, sir!"
+
+"Who are you, anyway?"
+
+"I'm Sergeant Brown, sir."
+
+"Of the Rifles?"
+
+"Of the Rifles, sir."
+
+"Were you the man who signaled to us from the magazine and blew it up
+and made the breach in the wall for us to enter by?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Are you alive, or dead? Man or ghost?"
+
+"I'm pretty much alive, sir, thank you!"
+
+"D'you realize that you made the taking of Jailpore possible? That
+but for you we'd have been trying still to storm the walls without
+artillery?"
+
+"I had the chance, sir, and I only did what any other man would ha' done
+under like circumstances."
+
+"Go and tell that to the Horse Marines--or, rather, tell it to Colonel
+Kendrick! Go and report to him at once. Possibly he'll see it through
+your eyes!"
+
+So Brown marched off to report himself, and he found Colonel Kendrick
+nursing a badly wounded arm before a torn and mud-stained tent.
+
+"Who are you?" said the colonel, as Brown saluted him.
+
+"I'm Sergeant Brown, sir."
+
+"Not Bill Brown of the Rifles?"
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"You lie! He was blown up on the roof of the powder-magazine! I suppose
+every man who's gone mad from the heat will be saying that he's Brown!"
+
+"I'm Brown, sir! I had written orders from General Baines to enter
+Jailpore and rescue three women and a child."
+
+"Where are your orders?"
+
+"Lost 'em, sir, in the explosion."
+
+"For a madman, you're a circumstantial liar! What happened to the
+women?"
+
+The colonel sat back, and smothered an exclamation of agony as the
+nerves in his injured arm tortured him afresh. He had asked a question
+which should settle once and for all this man's pretentions, and he
+waited for the answer with an air of certainty. It was on his lips to
+call the guard to take the lunatic away.
+
+"Juggut Khan, the Rajput, took them, with nine of my men, and brought
+them in to your camp last night, sir. I naturally haven't seen them
+since."
+
+"Will the women know you?"
+
+"One of them will, sir."
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Jane Emmett, sir."
+
+"Well, we'll see!"
+
+The colonel called an orderly, and sent the orderly running for Jane
+Emmett. A minute later two strong arms were thrown round Bill Brown from
+behind, and he was all but carried off his feet.
+
+"Oh, Bill--Bill--Bill! I knew you'd be all right! Turn round, Bill! Look
+at me!"
+
+She was clinging to him in such a manner that he could not turn, but he
+managed to pry her hands loose, and to draw her round in front of him.
+
+"I knew, Bill! I felt sure you'd come! And I recognized your voice the
+minute that the trapdoor opened and I heard it! I did, Bill! I knew you
+in a minute! I didn't worry then! I knew you wouldn't come and talk to
+me as long as there was any duty to be done. I just waited! They said
+you were killed in the explosion, but I knew you weren't! I knew it! I
+did! I knew it!"
+
+"Face me, please!" said Colonel Kendrick. "Now, Jane Emmett, is that man
+Sergeant William Brown, of the Rifles?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is he the man who entered Jailpore with nine men and a Rajput, and came
+to your assistance?"
+
+"Yes, sir! He's the same man who spoke in the powder-magazine;"
+
+"Do you confirm that?" he asked Brown.
+
+"Under favor, sir, my men must be somewhere, if they're not all killed.
+They'll recognize me. And there's the other lot I led all last night and
+all today. They'll tell you where they found me!"
+
+"Never mind! I've decided I believe you! D'you realize that you're
+something of a marvel?"
+
+"No, sir--except that I've had marvelous luck!"
+
+"Well, I shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in
+despatches. It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen!
+There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what
+you dared in the first place. But, more than that, there are even fewer
+men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else's care while they blew
+up a powder-magazine with themselves on top of it, in order to make
+a breach for the army to come in by! My right hand's out of action
+unfortunately--you'll have to shake my left!"
+
+The colonel rose, held his uninjured hand out and Brown shook it, since
+he was ordered to.
+
+"I consider it an honor and a privilege to have shaken hands with you,
+Sergeant Brown!" said Colonel Kendrick.
+
+"Thank you, sir!" said Brown, taking one step back, and then saluting.
+"May I join my regiment, sir?"
+
+He joined his regiment, when he had helped to sort out the bleeding
+remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And
+the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off
+at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his
+regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was once more mentioned in
+despatches.
+
+When the Mutiny was over, and the country had settled down again to
+peace and reincarnation of a nation had begun, Brown found himself
+hoisted to a civil appointment that was greater and more highly paid
+than anything his modest soul had ever dreamed of.
+
+He never understood the reason for it, although he did his fighting-best
+consistently to fill the job; and he never understood why Queen Victoria
+should have taken the trouble to write a letter to him in which she
+thanked him personally, nor why they should have singled out for praise
+and special notice a fellow who had merely done his duty.
+
+Perhaps that was the reason why he was such a conspicuous success in
+civil life. They still talk of how Bill Brown, with Jane his wife and
+Juggut Khan the Rajput to advise him, was Resident Political Adviser to
+a Maharajah, and of how the Maharajah loathed him, and looked sidewise
+at him--but obeyed. That, though, is not a war-story. It is a story of
+the saving of a war, and shall go on record, some day, beneath a title
+of its own.
+
+
+
+
+
+FOR THE SALT HE HAD EATEN
+
+
+
+
+Prologue
+
+To the northward of Hanadra, blue in the sweltering heat-haze, lay
+Siroeh, walled in with sun-baked mud and listless. Through a wooden gate
+at one end of the village filed a string of women with their water-pots.
+Oxen, tethered underneath the thatched eaves or by the thirsty-looking
+trees, lay chewing the cud, almost too lazy to flick the flies away.
+Even the village goats seemed overcome with lassitude. Here and there
+a pariah dog sneaked in and out among the shadows or lay and licked
+his sores beside an offal-heap; but there seemed to be no energy in
+anything. The bone-dry, hot-weather wind had shriveled up verdure and
+ambition together.
+
+But in the mud-walled cottages, where men were wont to doze through the
+long, hot days, there were murmurings and restless movement. Men lay
+on thong-strung beds, and talked instead of dreaming, and the women
+listened and said nothing--which is the reverse of custom. Hanadra was
+what it always had been, thatched, sun-baked lassitude; but underneath
+the thatch there thrummed a beehive atmosphere of tension.
+
+In the center of the village, where the one main road that led from the
+main gate came to an abrupt end at a low mud wall, stood a house that
+was larger than the others and somewhat more neatly kept; there had been
+an effort made at sweeping the enclosure that surrounded it on all four
+sides, and there was even whitewash, peeling off in places but still
+comparatively white, smeared on the sun-cracked walls.
+
+Here, besides murmurings and movement, there was evidence of real
+activity. Tethered against the wall on one side of the house stood a row
+of horses, saddled and bridled and bearing evidence of having traveled
+through the heat; through the open doorway the sunshine glinted on a
+sword-hilt and amid the sound of many voices rang the jingling of a
+spur as some one sat cornerwise on a wooden table and struck his toe
+restlessly against the leg.
+
+Another string of women started for the water-hole, with their
+picturesque brass jars perched at varying angles on their heads; and as
+each one passed the doorway of this larger house she turned and scowled.
+A Rajput, lean and black-bearded and swaggering, came to the door and
+watched them, standing proudly with his arms folded across his breast.
+As the last woman showed her teeth at him, he laughed aloud.
+
+"Nay!" said a voice inside. "Have done with that! Is noticing the Hindu
+women fit sport for a Rajput?"
+
+The youngster turned and faced the old, black-bearded veteran who spoke.
+
+"If I had my way," he answered, "I would ride roughshod through this
+village, and fire the thatch. They fail to realize the honor that we pay
+them by a visit!"
+
+"Aye, hothead! And burn thy brother's barn with what is in it! The
+Hindus here are many, and we are few, and there will be burnings and
+saberings a-plenty before a week is past, if I read the signs aright!
+Once before have I heard such murmurings. Once before I have seen
+chupatties sent from house to house at sunset--and that time blood ran
+red along the roadside for a month to follow! Keep thy sword sharp a
+while and wait the day!"
+
+"But why," growled another deep-throated Rajput voice, "does the Sirkar
+wait? Why not smite first and swiftly?"
+
+Mahommed Khan moved restlessly and ran his fingers through his beard.
+
+"I know not!" he answered. "In the days when I was Risaldar in the
+Rajput Horse, and Bellairs sahib was colonel, things were different! But
+we conquered, and after conquest came security. The English have grown
+overconfident; they think that Mussulman will always war with Hindu, the
+one betraying the other; they will not understand that this lies deeper
+than jealousy--they will not listen! Six months ago I rode to Jundhra
+and whispered to the general sahib what I thought; but he laughed back
+at me. He said 'Wolf! wolf!' to me and drew me inside his bungalow and
+bade me eat my fill."
+
+"Well--what matters it! This land has always been the playground of new
+conquerors!"
+
+"There will be no new conquerors," growled the old Risaldar, "so long as
+I and mine have swords to wield for the Raj!"
+
+"But what have the English done for thee or us?"
+
+"This, forgetful one! They have treated us with honor, as surely no
+other conquerors had done! At thy age, I too measured my happiness in
+cattle and coin and women, but then came Bellairs sahib, and raised the
+Rajput Horse, and I enlisted. What came of that was better than all the
+wealth of Ind!"
+
+He spread his long legs like a pair of scissors and caught a child
+between them and lifted him.
+
+"Thou ruffian, thou!" he chuckled. "See how he fights! A true Rajput!
+Nay, beat me not. Some day thou too shalt bear a sword for England,
+great-grandson mine. Ai-ee! But I grow old."
+
+"For England or the next one!"
+
+"Nay! But for England!" said the Risaldar, setting the child down on his
+knee. "And thou too, hot-head. Before a week is past! Think you I called
+my sons and grandsons all together for the fun of it? Think you I rode
+here through the heat because I needed the exercise or to chatter like
+an ape or to stand in the doorway making faces at a Hindu woman or to
+watch thee do it? Here I am, and here I stay until yet more news comes!"
+
+"Then are we to wait here? Are we to swelter in Siroeh, eating up our
+brother's hospitality, until thy messengers see fit to come and tell us
+that this scare of thine is past?"
+
+"Nay!" said the Risaldar. "I said that I wait here! Return now to your
+own homes, each of you. But be in readiness. I am old, but I can ride
+still. I can round you up. Has any a better horse than mine? If he has,
+let him make exchange."
+
+"There will be horses for the looting if this revolt of thine breaks
+out!"
+
+"True! There will be horses for the looting! Well, I wait here then and,
+when the trouble comes, I can count on thirteen of my blood to carry
+swords behind me?"
+
+"Aye, when the trouble comes!"
+
+There was a chorus of assent, and the Risaldar arose to let his sons and
+grandsons file past him. He, who had beggared himself to give each one
+of them a start in life, felt a little chagrined that they should now
+refuse to exchange horses with him; but his eye glistened none the
+less at the sight of their stalwart frames and at the thought of what a
+fighting unit he could bring to serve the Raj.
+
+"All, then, for England!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Nay, all for thee!" said his eldest-born. "We fight on whichever side
+thou sayest!"
+
+"Disloyal one!" growled the Risaldar with a scowl. But he grinned into
+his beard.
+
+"Well, to your homes, then--but be ready!"
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The midnight jackals howled their discontent while heat-cracked
+India writhed in stuffy torment that was only one degree less than
+unendurable. Through the stillness and the blackness of the night came
+every now and then the high-pitched undulating wails of women, that no
+one answered-for, under that Tophet-lid of blackness, punctured by the
+low-hung, steel-white stars, men neither knew nor cared whose child had
+died. Life and hell-hot torture and indifference--all three were one.
+
+There was no moon, nothing to make the inferno visible, except that here
+and there an oil lamp on some housetop glowed like a blood-spot against
+the blackness. It was a sensation, rather than sight or sound, that
+betrayed the neighborhood of thousands upon thousands of human beings,
+sprawling, writhing, twisting upon the roofs, in restless suffering.
+
+There was no pity in the dry, black vault of heaven, nor in the bone-dry
+earth, nor in the hearts of men, during that hot weather of '57. Men
+waited for the threatened wrath to come and writhed and held their
+tongues. And while they waited in sullen Asiatic patience, through
+the restless silence and the smell--the suffocating, spice-fed,
+filth-begotten smell of India--there ran an undercurrent of even deeper
+mystery than India had ever known.
+
+Priest-ridden Hanadra, that had seen the downfall of a hundred kings,
+watched through heat-wearied eyes for another whelming the blood-soaked,
+sudden flood that was to burst the dam of servitude and rid India of her
+latest horde of conquerors. But eight hundred yards from where her high
+brick walls lifted their age-scars in the stifling reek, gun-chains
+jingled in a courtyard, and, sharp-clicking on age-old flagstones, rose
+the ring of horses' feet.
+
+Section Number One of a troop of Bengal Horse Artillery was waiting
+under arms. Sabered and grim and ready stood fifty of the finest men
+that England could produce, each man at his horse's head; and blacker
+even than the night loomed the long twelve-pounders, in tow behind their
+limbers. Sometimes a trace-chain jingled as a wheel-horse twitched his
+flank; and sometimes a man spoke in a low voice, or a horse stamped
+on the pavement; but they seemed like black graven images of war-gods,
+half-smothered in the reeking darkness. And above them, from a window
+that overlooked the courtyard, shone a solitary lamp that glistened here
+and there upon the sleek black guns and flickered on the saber-hilts,
+and deepened the already dead-black atmosphere of mystery.
+
+From the room above, where the lamp shone behind gauze curtains came the
+sound of voices; and in the deepest, death-darkest shadow of the door
+below there stood a man on guard whose fingers clutched his sword-hilt
+and whose breath came heavily. He stood motionless, save for his
+heaving breast; between his fierce, black mustache and his up-brushed,
+two-pointed beard, his white teeth showed through parted lips. But he
+gave no other sign that he was not some Rajput princeling's image carved
+out of the night.
+
+He was an old man, though, for all his straight back and military
+carriage. The night concealed his shabbiness; but it failed to hide the
+medals on his breast, one bronze, one silver, that told of campaigns
+already a generation gone. And his patience was another sign of age; a
+younger man of his blood and training would have been pacing to and fro
+instead of standing still.
+
+He stood still even when footsteps resounded on the winding stair above
+and a saber-ferrule clanked from step to step. The gunners heard and
+stood squarely to their horses. There was a rustling and a sound of
+shifting feet, and, a "Whoa,--you!" to an irritated horse; but the
+Rajput stayed motionless until the footsteps reached the door. Then he
+took one step forward, faced about and saluted.
+
+"Salaam, Bellairs sahib!" boomed his deep-throated voice, and Lieutenant
+Bellairs stepped back with a start into the doorway again--one hand on
+his sword-hilt. The Indian moved sidewise to where the lamplight from
+the room above could fall upon his face.
+
+"Salaam, Bellairs sahib!" he boomed again.
+
+Then the lieutenant recognized him.
+
+"You, Mahommed Khan!" he exclaimed. "You old war-dog, what brought you
+here? Heavens, how you startled me! What good wind brought you?"
+
+"Nay! It seems it was an ill wind, sahib!"
+
+"What ill wind? I'm glad to see you!"
+
+"The breath of rumor, sahib!"
+
+"What rumor brought you?"
+
+"Where a man's honor lies, there is he, in the hour of danger! Is all
+well with the Raj, sahib?"
+
+"With the Raj? How d'you mean, Risaldar?"
+
+Mahommed Khan pointed to the waiting guns and smiled.
+
+"In my days, sahib," he answered, "men seldom exercised the guns at
+night!"
+
+"I received orders more than three hours ago to bring my section in to
+Jundhra immediately--immediately--and not a word of explanation!"
+
+"Orders, sahib? And you wait?"
+
+"They seem to have forgotten that I'm married, and by the same token,
+so do you! What else could I do but wait? My wife can't ride with the
+section; she isn't strong enough, for one thing; and besides, there's
+no knowing what this order means; there might be trouble to face of some
+kind. I've sent into Hanadra to try to drum up an escort for her and I'm
+waiting here until it comes."
+
+The Risaldar stroked at his beard reflectively.
+
+"We of the service, sahib," he answered, "obey orders at the gallop when
+they come. When orders come to ride, we ride!"'
+
+Bellairs winced at the thrust.
+
+"That's all very fine, Risaldar. But how about my wife? What's going to
+happen to her, if I leave her here alone and unprotected?"
+
+"Or to me, sahib? Is my sword-arm withered? Is my saber rusted home?"
+
+"You, old friend! D'you mean to tell me--"
+
+The Risaldar saluted him again.
+
+"Will you stay here and guard her?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! Being not so young as thou art, I know better!"
+
+"What in Tophet do you mean, Mahommed Khan?"
+
+"I mean, sahib,"--the Indian's voice was level and deep, but it vibrated
+strangely, and his eyes glowed as though war-lights were being born
+again behind them--"that not for nothing am I come! I heard what thy
+orders were and--"
+
+"How did you hear what my orders were?"
+
+"My half-brother came hurrying with the news, sahib. I hastened! My
+horse lies dead one kos from Hanadra here!"
+
+The lieutenant laughed.
+
+"At last, Mahommed? That poor old screw of yours? So he's dead at last,
+eh? So his time had come at last!"
+
+"We be not all rich men who serve the Raj!" said the Risaldar with
+dignity. "Ay, sahib, his time was come! And when our time comes may thou
+and I, sahib, die as he did, with our harness on! What said thy orders,
+sahib? Haste? Then yonder lies the road, through the archway!"
+
+"But, tell me, Risaldar, what brought you here in such a hurry?"
+
+"A poor old screw, sahib, whose time was come--even as thou hast said!"
+
+"Mahommed Khan, I'm sorry--very sorry, if I insulted you! I--I'm
+worried--I didn't stop to think. I--old friend, I--"
+
+"It is forgotten, sahib!"
+
+"Tell me--what are these rumors you have heard?"
+
+"But one rumor, sahib-war! Uprising--revolution--treachery--all India
+waits the word to rise, sahib!"
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"Mutiny among the troops, and revolution north, south, east and west!"
+
+"Here, too, in Hanadra?"
+
+"Here, too, in Hanadra, sahib! Here they will be among the first to
+rise!"
+
+"Oh, come! I can't believe that! How was it that my orders said nothing
+of it then?"
+
+"That, sahib, I know not--not having written out thy orders! I heard
+that thy orders came. I knew, as I have known this year past, what storm
+was brewing. I knew, too, that the heavenborn, thy wife, is here. I am
+thy servant, sahib, as I was thy father's servant--we serve one Queen;
+thy honor is my honor. Entrust thy memsahib to my keeping!"
+
+"You will guard her?"
+
+"I will bring her in to Jundhra!"
+
+"You alone?"
+
+"Nay, sahib! I, and my sons, and my sons' sons--thirteen men all told!"
+
+"That is good of you, Mahommed Khan. Where are your sons?"
+
+"Leagues from here, sahib. I must bring them. I need a horse."
+
+"And while you are gone?"
+
+"My half-brother, sahib--he is here for no other purpose--he will answer
+to me for her safety!"
+
+"All right, Mahommed Khan, and thank you! Take my second charger, if you
+care to; he is a little saddle-sore, but your light weight--"
+
+"Sahib--listen! Between here and Siroeh, where my eldest-born and his
+three sons live, lie seven leagues. And on from there to Lungra, where
+the others live, are three more leagues. I need a horse this night!"
+
+"What need of thirteen men, Mahommed? You are sufficient by yourself,
+unless a rebellion breaks out. If it did, why, you and thirteen others
+would be swamped as surely as you alone!"
+
+"Thy father and I, sahib, rode through the guns at Dera thirteen strong!
+Alone, I am an old man--not without honor, but of little use; with
+twelve young blades behind me, though, these Hindu rabble--"
+
+"Do you really mean, Mahommed Khan, that you think Hanadra here will
+rise?"
+
+"The moment you are gone, sahib!"
+
+"Then, that settles it! The memsahib rides with me!"
+
+"Nay, listen, sahib! Of a truth, thou art a hot-head as thy father was
+before thee! Thus will it be better. If the heavenborn, thy wife, stays
+behind, these rabble here will think that the section rides out to
+exercise, because of the great heat of the sun by day; they will watch
+for its return, and wait for the parking of the guns before they put
+torch to the mine that they have laid!"
+
+"The mine? D'you mean they've--"
+
+"Who knows, sahib? But I speak in metaphor. When the guns are parked
+again and the horses stabled and the men asleep, the rabble, being many,
+might dare anything!"
+
+"You mean, you think that they--"
+
+"I mean, sahib, that they will take no chances while they think the guns
+are likely to return!"
+
+"But, if I take the memsahib with me?"
+
+"They will know then, sahib, that the trap is open and the bird flown!
+Know you how fast news travels? Faster than the guns, Sahib! There
+will be an ambuscade, from which neither man, nor gun, nor horse, nor
+memsahib will escape!"
+
+"But if you follow later, it will mean the same thing! When they see you
+ride off on a spent horse, with twelve swords and the memsahib--d'you
+mean that they won't ambuscade you?"
+
+"They might, sahib--and again, they might not! Thirteen men and a woman
+ride faster than a section of artillery, and ride where the guns would
+jam hub-high against a tree-trunk! And thy orders, sahib--are thy orders
+nothing?"
+
+"Orders! Yes, confound it! But they know I'm married. They know--"
+
+"Sahib, listen! When the news came to me I was at Siroeh, dangling a
+great-grandson on my knee. There were no orders, but it seemed the Raj
+had need of me. I rode! Thou, sahib, hast orders. I am here to guard thy
+wife--my honor is thy honor--take thou the guns. Yonder lies the road!"
+
+The grim old warrior's voice thrilled with the throb of loyalty, as he
+stood erect and pointed to the shadowy archway through which the road
+wound to the plain beyond.
+
+"Sahib, I taught thy father how to use his sword! I nursed thee
+when thou wert little. Would I give three false counsel now? Ride,
+sahib--ride!"
+
+Bellairs turned away and looked at his charger, a big, brown Khaubuli
+stallion, named for the devil and true in temper and courage to his
+name; two men were holding him, ten paces off.
+
+"Such a horse I need this night, Sahib! Thy second charger can keep pace
+with the guns!"
+
+Bellairs gave a sudden order, and the men led the brute back into his
+stable.
+
+"Change the saddle to my second charger!" he ordered.
+
+Then he turned to the Risaldar again, with hand outstretched.
+
+"I'm ashamed of myself, Mahommed Khan!" he said, with a vain attempt to
+smile. "I should have gone an hour ago! Please take my horse Shaitan,
+and make such disposition for my wife's safety as you see fit. Follow as
+and when you can; I trust you, and I shall be grateful to you whatever
+happens!"
+
+"Well spoken, Sahib! I knew thou wert a man! We who serve the Raj have
+neither sons, nor wives, nor sweethearts! Allah guard you, Sahib! The
+section waits--and the Service can not wait!"
+
+"One moment while I tell my wife!"
+
+"Halt, Sahib! Thou hast said good-by a thousand times! A woman's
+tears--are they heart-meat for a soldier when the bits are champing?
+Nay! See, sahib; they bring thy second charger! Mount! I will bring thy
+wife to Jundhra for thee! The Service waits!"
+
+The lieutenant turned and mounted.
+
+"Very well, Mahommed Khan!" he said. "I know you're right! Section!
+Prepare to mount!" he roared, and the stirrups rang in answer to him.
+"Mount! Good-by, Mahommed Khan! Good luck to you! Section, right! Trot,
+march!"
+
+With a crash and the clattering of iron shoes on stone the guns jingled
+off into the darkness, were swallowed by the gaping archway and rattled
+out on the plain.
+
+The Risaldar stood grimly where he was until the last hoof-beat and bump
+of gun-wheel had died away into the distance; then he turned and climbed
+the winding stairway to the room where the lamp still shone through
+gauzy curtains.
+
+On a dozen roof-tops, where men lay still and muttered, brown eyes
+followed the movements of the section and teeth that were betel-stained
+grinned hideously.
+
+From a nearby temple, tight-packed between a hundred crowded houses,
+came a wailing, high-pitched solo sung to Siva--the Destroyer. And as it
+died down to a quavering finish it was followed by a ghoulish laugh that
+echoed and reechoed off the age-old city-wall.
+
+Proud as a Royal Rajput--and there is nothing else on God's green earth
+that is even half as proud--true to his salt, and stout of heart even
+if he was trembling at the knees, Mahommed Khan, two-medal man and
+Risaldar, knocked twice on the door of Mrs. Lellairs' room, and entered.
+
+And away in the distance rose the red reflection of a fire ten leagues
+away. The Mutiny of '57 had blazed out of sullen mystery already, the
+sepoys were burning their barracks half-way on the road to Jundhra!
+
+And down below, to the shadow where the Risaldar had stood, crept
+a giant of a man who had no military bearing. He listened once, and
+sneaked into the deepest black within the doorway and crouched and
+waited.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Hanadra reeks of history, blood-soaked and mysterious. Temples piled on
+the site of olden temples; palaces where half-forgotten kings usurped
+the thrones of conquerors who came from God knows where to conquer older
+kings; roads built on the bones of conquered armies; houses and palaces
+and subterranean passages that no man living knows the end of and few
+even the beginning. Dark corridors and colonnades and hollow walls;
+roofs that have ears and peep-holes; floors that are undermined by
+secret stairs; trees that have swayed with the weight of rotting human
+skulls and have shimmered with the silken bannerets of emperors. Such is
+Hanadra, half-ruined, and surrounded by a wall that was age-old in the
+dawn of written history.
+
+Even its environs are mysterious; outside the walls, there are carven,
+gloomy palaces that once re-echoed to the tinkle of stringed instruments
+and the love-songs of some sultan's favorite--now fallen into ruins,
+or rebuilt to stable horses or shelter guns and stores and men; but
+eloquent in all their new-smeared whitewash, or in crumbling decay, of
+long-since dead intrigue. No places, those, for strong men to live alone
+in, where night-breezes whisper through forgotten passages and dry teak
+planking recreaks to the memory of dead men's footsteps.
+
+But strong men are not the only makings of an Empire, nor yet the only
+sufferers. Wherever the flag of England flies above a distant outpost
+or droops in the stagnant moisture of an Eastern swamp, there are the
+graves of England's women. The bones that quarreling jackals crunch
+among the tombstones--the peace along the clean-kept borderline--the
+pride of race and conquest and the cleaner pride of work well done,
+these are not man's only. Man does the work, but he is held to it and
+cheered on by the girl who loves him.
+
+And so, above a stone-flagged courtyard, in a room that once had echoed
+to the laughter of a sultan's favorite, it happened that an English
+girl of twenty-one was pacing back and forth. Through the open curtained
+window she had seen her husband lead his command out through the echoing
+archway to the plain beyond; she had heard his boyish voice bark out the
+command and had listened to the rumble of the gun-wheels dying in the
+distance--for the last time possibly. She knew, as many an English girl
+has known, that she was alone, one white woman amid a swarm of sullen
+Aryans, and that she must follow along the road the guns had taken,
+served and protected by nothing more than low-caste natives.
+
+And yet she was dry-eyed, and her chin was high; for they are a strange
+breed, these Anglo-Saxon women who follow the men they love to the
+lonely danger-zone. Ruth Bellairs could have felt no joy in her
+position; she had heard her husband growling his complaint at being
+forced to leave her, and she guessed what her danger was. Fear must have
+shrunk her heartbeats and loneliness have tried her courage. But there
+was an ayah in the room with her, a low-caste woman of the conquered
+race; and pride of country came to her assistance. She was firm-lipped
+and, to outward seeming, brave as she was beautiful.
+
+Even when the door resounded twice to the sharp blow of a saber-hilt,
+and the ayah's pock-marked ebony took on a shade of gray, she stood like
+a queen with an army at her back and neither blanched nor trembled.
+
+"Who is that, ayah?" she demanded.
+
+The ayah shrank into herself and showed the whites of her eyes and
+grinned, as a pariah dog might show its teeth--afraid, but scenting
+carrion.
+
+"Go and see!"
+
+The ayah shuddered and collapsed, babbling incoherencies and calling on
+a horde of long-neglected gods to witness she was innocent. She clutched
+strangely at her breast and used only one hand to drag her shawl around
+her face. While she babbled she glanced wild-eyed around the long,
+low-ceilinged room. Ruth Bellairs looked down at her pityingly and went
+to the door herself and opened it.
+
+"Salaam, memsahib!" boomed a deep voice from the darkness.
+
+Ruth Bellairs started and the ayah screamed.
+
+"Who are you? Enter--let me see you!"
+
+A black beard and a turban and the figure of a man--and then white teeth
+and a saber-hilt and eyes that gleamed moved forward from the darkness.
+
+"It is I, Mahommed Khan!" boomed the voice again, and the Risaldar
+stepped out into the lamplight and closed the door behind him. Then,
+with a courtly, long-discarded sweep of his right arm, he saluted.
+
+"At the heavenborn's service!"
+
+"Mahommed Khan! Thank God!"
+
+The old man's shabbiness was very obvious as he faced her, with his back
+against the iron-studded door; but he stood erect as a man of thirty,
+and his medals and his sword-hilt and his silver scabbard-tip were
+bright.
+
+"Tell me, Mahommed Khan, you have seen my husband?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"You have spoken to him?"
+
+The old man bowed again.
+
+"He left you in my keeping, heavenborn. I am to bring you safe to
+Jundhra!"
+
+She held her hand out and he took it like a cavalier, bending until he
+could touch her fingers with his lips.
+
+"What is the meaning of this hurrying of the guns to Jundhra, Risaldar?"
+
+"Who knows, memsahib! The orders of the Sirkar come, and we of the
+service must obey. I am thy servant and the Sirkar's!"
+
+"You, old friend--that were servant, as you choose to call it, to my
+husband's father! I am a proud woman to have such friends at call!" She
+pointed to the ayah, recovering sulkily and rearranging the shawl about
+her shoulders. "That I call service, Risaldar. She cowers when a knock
+comes at the door! I need you, and you answer a hardly spoken prayer;
+what is friendship, if yours is not?"
+
+The Risaldar bowed low again.
+
+"I would speak with that ayah, heavenborn!" he muttered, almost into his
+beard. She could hardly catch the words.
+
+"I can't get her to speak to me at all tonight, Mahommed Khan. She's
+terrified almost out of her life at something. But perhaps you can do
+better. Try. Do you want to question her alone?"
+
+"By the heavenborn's favor, yes."
+
+Ruth walked down the room toward the window, drew the curtain back and
+leaned her head out where whatever breeze there was might fan her cheek.
+The Risaldar strode over to where the ayah cowered by an inner doorway.
+
+"She-Hindu-dog!" he growled at her. "Mother of whelps! Louse-ridden
+scavenger of sweepings! What part hast thou in all this treachery?
+Speak!"
+
+The ayah shrank away from him and tried to scream, but he gripped her by
+the throat and shook her.
+
+"Speak!" he growled again.
+
+But his ten iron fingers held her in a vise-like grip and she could not
+have answered him if she had tried to.
+
+"O Risaldar!" called Ruth suddenly, with her head still out of the
+window. He released the ayah and let her tumble as she pleased into a
+heap.
+
+"Heavenborn?"
+
+"What is that red glow on the skyline over yonder?"
+
+"A burning, heavenborn!"
+
+"A burning? What burning? Funeral pyres? It's very big for funeral
+pyres!"
+
+"Nay, heavenborn!"
+
+"What, then?"
+
+She was still unfrightened, unsuspicious of the untoward. The Risaldar's
+arrival on the scene had quite restored her confidence and she felt
+content to ride with him to Jundhra on the morrow.
+
+"Barracks, heavenborn!"
+
+"Barracks? What barracks?"
+
+"There is but one barracks between here and Jundhra."
+
+"Then--then--then--what has happened, Mahommed Khan?"
+
+"The worst has happened, heavenborn!"
+
+He stood between her and the ayah, so that she could not see the woman
+huddled on the floor.
+
+"The worst? You mean then--my--my--husband--you don't mean that my
+husband--"
+
+"I mean, heavenborn that there is insurrection! All India is ablaze from
+end to end. These dogs here in Hanadra wait to rise because they think
+the section will return here in an hour or two; then they propose to
+burn it, men, guns and horses, like snakes in the summer grass. It is
+well that the section will not return! We will ride out safely before
+morning!"
+
+"And, my husband--he knew--all this--before he left me here?"
+
+"Nay! That he did not! Had I told him, he had disobeyed his orders and
+shamed his service; he is young yet, and a hothead! He will be far
+along the road to Jundhra before he knows what burns. And then he will
+remember that he trusts me and obey orders and press on!"
+
+"And you knew and did not tell him!"
+
+"Of a truth I knew!"
+
+She stood in silence for a moment, gazing at the red glow on the
+skyline, and then turned to read, if she could, what was on the grim,
+grizzled face of Mahommed Khan.
+
+"The ayah!" he growled. "I have yet to ask questions of the ayah. Have I
+permission to take her to the other room?"
+
+She was leaning through the window again and did not answer him.
+
+"Who's that moving in the shadow down below?" she asked him suddenly.
+
+He leaned out beside her and gazed into the shadow. Then he called
+softly in a tongue she did not know and some one rose up from the shadow
+and answered him.
+
+"Are we spied on, Risaldar?"
+
+"Nay. Guarded, heavenborn! That man is my half-brother. May I take the
+ayah through that doorway?"
+
+"Why not question her in here?"
+
+The mystery and sense of danger were getting the better of her; she was
+thoroughly afraid now--afraid to be left alone in the room for a minute
+even.
+
+"There are things she would not answer in thy presence!"
+
+"Very well. Only, please be quick!"
+
+He bowed. Swinging the door open, he pushed the ayah through it to the
+room beyond. Ruth was left alone, to watch the red glow on the skyline
+and try to see the outline of the watcher in the gloom below. No sound
+came through the heavy teak door that the Risaldar had slammed behind
+him, and no sound came from him who watched; but from the silence of the
+night outside and from dark corners of the room that she was in and from
+the roof and walls and floor here came little eerie noises that made her
+flesh creep, as though she were being stared at by eyes she could not
+see. She felt that she must scream, or die, unless she moved; and she
+was too afraid to move, and by far too proud to scream! At last she
+tore herself away from the window and ran to a low divan and lay on it,
+smothering her face among the cushions. It seemed an hour before the
+Risaldar came out again, and then he took her by surprise.
+
+"Heavenborn!" he said. She looked up with a start, to find him standing
+close beside her.
+
+"Mahommed Khan! You're panting! What ails you?"
+
+"The heat, heavenborn--and I am old."
+
+His left hand was on his saber-hilt, thrusting it toward her
+respectfully; she noticed that it trembled.
+
+"Have I the heavenborn's leave to lock the ayah in that inner room?"
+
+"Why, Risaldar?"
+
+"The fiend had this in her possession!" He showed her a thin-bladed
+dagger with an ivory handle; his own hand shook as he held it out to
+her, and she saw that there were beads of perspiration on his wrist.
+"She would have killed thee!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense! Why, she wouldn't dare!"
+
+"She confessed before she--she confessed! Have I the heavenborn's
+leave?"
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"And to keep the key?"
+
+"I suppose so, if you think it wise."
+
+He strode to the inner door and locked it and hid the key in an inside
+pocket of his tunic.
+
+"And now, heavenborn," he said, "I crave your leave to bring my
+half-brother to the presence!"
+
+He scarcely waited for an answer, but walked to the window, leaned
+out of it and whistled. A minute later he was answered by the sound of
+fingernails scrabbling on the outer door. He turned the key and opened
+it.
+
+"Enter!" he ordered.
+
+Barefooted and ragged, but as clean as a soldier on parade and with huge
+knots of muscles bulging underneath his copper skin, a Rajput entered,
+bowing his six feet of splendid manhood almost to the floor.
+
+"This, heavenborn, is my half-brother, son of a low-born border-woman,
+whom my father chose to honor thus far! The dog is loyal!"
+
+"Salaam!" said Ruth, with little interest.
+
+"Salaam, memsahib!" muttered the shabby Rajput. "Does any watch?"
+demanded the Risaldar in Hindustanee. "Aye, one."
+
+"And he?"
+
+"Is he of whom I spoke."
+
+"Where watches he?"
+
+"There is a hidden passage leading from the archway; he peeps out
+through a crack, having rolled back so far the stone that seals it." He
+held his horny fingers about an inch apart to show the distance.
+
+"Couldst thou approach unseen?"
+
+The Rajput nodded.
+
+"And there are no others there?"
+
+"No others."
+
+"Has thy strength left thee, or thy cunning?"
+
+"Nay!"
+
+"Then bring him!"
+
+Without a word in answer the giant turned and went, and the Risaldar
+made fast the door behind him. Ruth sat with her face between her hands,
+trying not to cry or shudder, but obsessed and overpowered by a sense
+of terror. The mystery that surrounded her was bad enough; but this
+mysterious ordering and coming to and fro among her friends was worse
+than horrible. She knew, though, that it would be useless to question
+Mahommed Khan before he chose to speak. They waited there in the dimly
+lighted room for what seemed tike an age again; she, pale and tortured
+by weird imaginings; he, grim and bolt-upright like a statue of a
+warrior. Then sounds came from the stairs again and the Risaldar hurried
+to the door and opened it.
+
+In burst the Risaldar's half-brother, breathing heavily and bearing a
+load nearly as big as he was.
+
+"The pig caught my wrist within the opening!" he growled, tossing his
+gagged and pinioned burden on the floor. "See where he all but broke
+it!"
+
+"What is thy wrist to the service of the Raj? Is he the right one?"
+
+"Aye!" He stooped and tore a twisted loin-cloth from his victim's face,
+and the Risaldar walked to the lamp and brought it, to hold it above the
+prostrate form. Ruth left the divan and stood between the men, terrified
+by she knew not what fear, but drawn into the lamplight by insuperable
+curiosity.
+
+"This, heavenborn," said the Risaldar, prodding at the man with his
+scabbard-point, "is none other than the High Priest of Kharvani's temple
+here, the arch-ringleader in all the treachery afoot--now hostage for
+thy safety!"
+
+He turned to his half-brother. "Unbind the thing he lies with!" he
+commanded, and the giant unwrapped a twisted piece of linen from the
+High Priest's mouth.
+
+"So the big fox peeped through the trapdoor, because he feared to
+trust the other foxes; and the big fox fell into the trap!" grinned the
+Risaldar. "Bring me that table over yonder, thou!"
+
+The half-brother did as he was told.
+
+"Lay it here, legs upward, on the floor.
+
+"Now, bind him to it--an arm to a leg and a leg to a leg.
+
+"Remove his shoes.
+
+"Put charcoal in yon brazier. Light it. Bring it hither!"
+
+He seized a brass tongs, chose a glowing coal and held it six inches
+from the High Priest's naked foot.
+
+Ruth screamed.
+
+"Courage, heavenborn! Have courage! This is naught to what he would have
+done to thee!... Now, speak, thou priest of infidels! What plans are
+laid and who will rise and when?"
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"Sergeant!"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+The close-cropped, pipe-clayed non-commissioned officer spurred his
+horse into a canter until his scabbard clattered at young Bellairs'
+boot. Nothing but the rattling and the jolting of the guns and
+ammunition-wagon was audible, except just on ahead of them the
+click-clack, click-click-clack of the advance-guard. To the right and
+left of them the shadowy forms of giant banian-trees loomed and slid
+past them as they had done for the past four hours, and for ten paces
+ahead they could see the faintly outlined shape of the trunk road that
+they followed. The rest was silence and a pall of blackness obscuring
+everything. They had ridden along a valley, but they had emerged on
+rising ground and there was one spot of color in the pall now, or else a
+hole in it.
+
+"What d'you suppose that is burning over there?"
+
+"I couldn't say, sir."
+
+"How far away is it?"
+
+"Very hard to tell on a night like this, sir. It might be ten miles
+away and might be twenty. By my reckoning it's on our road, though, and
+somewhere between here and Jundhra."
+
+"So it seems to me; our road swings round to the right presently,
+doesn't it? That'll lead us right to it. That would make it Doonha more
+or less. D'you suppose it's at Doonha?"
+
+"I was thinking it might be, sir. If it's Doonha, it means that the
+sepoy barracks and all the stores are burning--there's nothing else
+there that would make all that flame!"
+
+"There are two companies of the Thirty-third there, too."
+
+"Yes, sir, but they're under canvas; tents would blaze up, but they'd
+die down again in a minute. That fire's steady and growing bigger!"
+
+"It's the sepoy barracks, then!"
+
+"Seems so to me, sir!"
+
+"Halt!" roared Bellairs. The advance-guard kicked up a little shower
+of sparks, trace-chains slacked with a jingle and the jolting ceased.
+Bellairs rode up to the advance-guard.
+
+"Now, Sergeant," he ordered, "it looks as though that were the Doonha
+barracks burning over yonder. There's no knowing, though, what it is.
+Send four men on, two hundred yards ahead of you, and you and the rest
+keep a good two hundred yards ahead of the guns. See that the men keep
+on the alert, and mind that they spare their horses as much as possible.
+If there's going to be trouble, we may just as well be ready for it!"
+
+"Very good, sir!"
+
+"Go ahead, then!"
+
+At a word from the sergeant, four men clattered off and were swallowed
+in the darkness. A minute later the advance-guard followed them and
+then, after another minute's pause, young Bellairs' voice was raised
+into a ringing shout again.
+
+"Section, advance! Trot, march!"
+
+The trace-chains tightened, and the clattering, bumping, jingling
+procession began again, its rear brought up by the six-horse
+ammunition-wagon. They rode speechless for the best part of an hour,
+each man's eyes on the distant conflagration that had begun now to light
+up the whole of the sky ahead of them. They still rode in darkness, but
+they seemed to be approaching the red rim of the Pit. Huge, billowing
+clouds of smoke, red-lit on the under side, belched upward to the
+blackness overhead, and a something that was scarcely sound--for it was
+yet too distant--warned them that it was no illusion they were riding
+into. The conflagration grew. It seemed to be nearly white-hot down
+below.
+
+Bellairs wet his finger and held it extended upward.
+
+"There's no wind that I can feel!" he muttered. "And yet, if that were
+a grass-fire, there'd be game and rats and birds and things--some of 'em
+would bolt this way. That's the Doonha barracks burning or I'm a black
+man, which the Lord forbid!"
+
+A minute later, every man in the section pricked up his ears. There
+was no order given; but a sensation ran the whole length of it and a
+movement from easy riding to tense rigidity that could be felt by some
+sixth sense. Every man was listening, feeling, groping with his senses
+for something he could neither hear as yet nor see, but that he knew was
+there. And then, far-distant yet--not above, but under the jolting of
+the gun-wheels and the rattle of the scabbards--they could hear the
+clickety-clickety-clickety-click of a horse hard-ridden.
+
+They had scarcely caught that sound, they had barely tightened up their
+bridle-reins, when another sound, one just as unmistakable, burst out in
+front of them. A ragged, ill-timed volley ripped out from somewhere
+near the conflagration and was answered instantly by one that was
+close-ripped like the fire of heavy ordnance. And then one of the
+advance-guard wheeled his horse and drove his spurs home rowel-deep. He
+came thundering back along the road with his scabbard out in the wind
+behind him and reined up suddenly when his horse's forefeet were abreast
+of the lieutenant.
+
+"There's some one coming, sir, hard as he can gallop! He's one of our
+men by the sound of him. His horse is shod--and I thought I saw steel
+when the fire-light fell on him a minute ago!"
+
+"Are you sure there's only one?"
+
+"Sure, sir! You can hear him now!"
+
+"All right! Fall in behind me!"
+
+Bellairs felt his sword-hilt and cocked a pistol stealthily, but he gave
+no orders to the section. This might be a native soldier run amuck, and
+it might be a messenger; but in either case, friend or foe, if there was
+only one man he could deal with him alone.
+
+"Halt!" roared the advance-guard suddenly. But the horse's hoof-beats
+never checked for a single instant.
+
+"Halt, you! Who comes there?"
+
+"Friend!" came the answer, in an accent that was unmistakable.
+
+"What friend? Where are you going?"
+
+One of the advance-guard reined his horse across the road. The others
+followed suit and blocked the way effectually. "Halt!" they roared in
+unison.
+
+The main body of the advance came up with them.
+
+"Who is he?" shouted the sergeant.
+
+"We'll soon see! Here he comes!"
+
+"Out of my way!" yelled a voice, as a foamed-flecked horse burst out of
+the darkness like an apparition and bore straight down on them--his head
+bored a little to one side, the red rims of his nostrils wide distended
+and his whole sense and energy, and strength concentrated on pleasing
+the speed-hungry Irishman who rode him. He flashed into them head-on,
+like a devil from the outer darkness. His head touched a man's knee--and
+he rose and tried to jump him! His breast crashed full into the
+obstruction and horse and gunner crashed down to the road.
+
+A dozen arms reached out--twelve horses surged in a clattering
+melee--two hands gripped the reins and four arms seized the rider,
+and in a second the panting charger was brought up all-standing. The
+sergeant thrust his grim face closer and peered at their capture.
+
+"Good--, if it ain't an officer!" he exclaimed. "I beg your pardon,
+sir!"
+
+And at that instant the section rattled, up behind them, with Bellairs
+in the lead.
+
+"Halt!" roared Bellairs. "What's this?"
+
+"Bloody murder, arson, high treason, mutiny and death! Blood and onions,
+man! Don't your men know an officer when they see one? Who are you? Are
+you Bellairs? Then why in God's name didn't you say so sooner? What have
+you waited for?
+
+"How many hours is it since you got the message through from Jundhra?
+Couldn't you see the barracks burning? Who am I--I'm Captain O'Rourke,
+of the Thirty-third, sent to see what you're doing on the road, that's
+who I am! A full-fledged; able-bodied captain wasted in a crisis, just
+because you didn't choose to hurry! Poison take your confounded gunners,
+sir! Have they nothing better to engage them than holding up officers on
+the Queen's trunk road?"
+
+"Supposing you tell me what's the matter?" suggested young Bellairs,
+prompt as are most of his breed to appear casual the moment there was
+cause to feel excited.
+
+"Your gunners have taken all my breath, sir. I can't speak!"
+
+"You shouldn't take chances with a section of artillery! They're not
+like infantry--they don't sleep all the time--you can't ride through
+them as a rule!"
+
+"Don't sleep, don't they! Then what have you been doing on the road? And
+what are you standing here for? Ride, man, ride! You're wanted!"
+
+"Get out of the way, then!" suggested Bellairs, and Captain O'Rourke
+legged his panting charger over to the roadside.
+
+"Advance-guard, forward, trot!" commanded the lieutenant.
+
+"Have you brought your wife with you?" demanded O'Rourke, peering into
+the jingling blackness.
+
+"No. Of course not. Why?"
+
+"'Of course not! Why?' says the man! Hell and hot porridge! Why, the
+whole of India's ablaze from end to end--the sepoys have mutinied to a
+man, and the rest have joined them! There's bloody murder doing--they've
+shot their officers--Hammond's dead and Carstairs and Welfleet and
+heaven knows who else. They've burned their barracks and the stores and
+they're trying to seize the magazine. If they get that, God help every
+one. They're short of ammunition as it is, but two companies of the
+Thirty-third can't hold out for long against that horde. You'll be in
+the nick of time! Hurry, man! For the love of anything you like to name,
+get a move on!"
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"Trot, march!
+
+"Canter!"
+
+Bellairs was thinking of his wife, alone in Hanadra, unprotected except
+by a sixty-year-old Risaldar and a half-brother who was a civilian and
+an unknown quantity. There were cold chills running down his spine and
+a sickening sensation in his stomach. He rode ahead of the guns, with
+O'Rourke keeping pace beside him. He felt that he hated O'Rourke, hated
+everything, hated the Service, and the country--and the guns, that could
+put him into such a fiendish predicament.
+
+O'Rourke broke silence first.
+
+"Who is with your wife?" he demanded suddenly.
+
+"Heaven knows! I left her under the protection of Risaldar Mahommed
+Khan, but he was to ride off for an escort for her."
+
+"Not your father's old Risaldar?" asked O'Rourke.
+
+"The same."
+
+"Then thank God! I'd sooner trust him than I would a regiment. He'll
+bring her in alive or slit the throats of half Asia--maybe 'he'll do
+both! Come, that's off our minds! She's safer with him than she would be
+here. Have you lots of ammunition?"
+
+"I brought all I had with me at Hanadra."
+
+"Good! What you'll need tonight is grape!"
+
+"I've lots of it. It's nearly all grape."
+
+"Hurrah! Then we'll treat those dirty mutineers to a dose or two of
+pills they won't fancy! Come on, man--set the pace a little faster!"
+
+"Why didn't my orders say anything about a mutiny or bringing in my
+wife?"
+
+"Dunno! I didn't write 'em. I can guess, though. There'd be something
+like nine reasons. For one thing, they'd credit you with sense enough to
+bring her in without being told. For another, the messenger who took the
+note might have got captured on the way--they wouldn't want to tell
+the sepoys more than they could help. Then there'd be something like a
+hurry. They're attacked there too--can't even send us assistance. Told
+us to waylay you and make use of you. Maybe they forgot your wife--maybe
+they didn't. It's a devil of a business anyhow!"
+
+It was difficult to talk at the speed that they were making, with their
+own horses breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering
+along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their
+attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead
+and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole
+sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they
+could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against
+the blazing red within. One mile or less from the burning buildings they
+could see, too, the occasional flash of rifles where the two companies
+of the Thirty-third, Honorable East India Company's Light Infantry, held
+out against the mutineers.
+
+"Why did they mutiny?" asked Bellairs.
+
+"God knows! Nobody knows! Nobody knows anything! I'm thinking--"
+
+"Thinking what?"
+
+"Forrester-Carter is commanding. We'll settle this business pretty
+quickly, now you've come. Then--Steady, boy! Steady! Hold up! This poor
+horse of mine is just about foundered, by the feel of him. He'll reach
+Doonha, though. Then we'll ask Carter to make a dash on Hanadra and
+bring Mrs. Bellairs--maybe we'll meet her and the Risaldar half-way--who
+knows? The sepoys wouldn't expect that, either. The move'd puzzle
+'em--it'd be a good move, to my way of thinking."
+
+"Let's hope Carter will consent!" prayed Bellairs fervently. "Now,
+what's the lay of things?"
+
+"Couldn't tell you! When I left, our men were surrounded. I had to burst
+through the enemy to get away. Ours are all around the magazine and
+the sepoys are on every side of them. You'll have to use diagonal fire
+unless you want to hurt some of our chaps--sweep 'em cornerwise. There's
+high ground over to the right there, within four hundred yards of the
+position. Maybe they're holding it, though--there's no knowing!"
+
+They could hear the roar of the flames now, and could see the figures
+of sepoys running here and there. The rattle of musketry was incessant.
+They could hear howls and yells and bugle-calls blown at random by the
+sepoys, and once, in answer as it seemed to a more than usually savage
+chorus from the enemy--a chorus that was punctuated by a raging din of
+intermittent rifle-fire--a ringing cheer.
+
+"They must be in a tight hole!" muttered Bellairs. "Answer that, men!
+All together, now! Let 'em know we're coming."
+
+The men rose in their stirrups all together, and sent roaring through
+the blackness the deep-throated "Hip-hip-hur-r-a-a-a-a-a!" that has
+gladdened more than one beleaguered British force in the course of
+history. It is quite different from the "Hur-o-a-o-a-u-r-rh" of a
+forlorn hope, or the high-pitched note of pleasure that signals the end
+of a review. It means "Hold on, till we get there, boys!" and it carries
+its meaning, clear and crisp and unmistakable, in its note.
+
+The two beleaguered companies heard it and answered promptly with
+another cheer.
+
+"By gad, they must be in a hole!" remarked Bellairs.
+
+British soldiers do not cheer like that, all together, unless there is
+very good reason to feel cheerless. They fight, each man according to
+his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs,
+until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through
+the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their eyes, and the last
+ditch that they line has been known to be a grave for the enemy.
+
+"Trumpeter! Sound close-order!"
+
+The trumpet rang. The advance-guard drew rein for the section to catch
+up. The guns drew abreast of one another and the mounted gunners formed
+in a line, two deep, in front of them. The ammunition-wagon trailed like
+a tail behind.
+
+"That high ground over there, I think!" suggested O'Rourke.
+
+"Thank you, sir. Section, right! Trot, march! Canter!"
+
+Crash went the guns and the following wagon across the roadside ditch.
+The tired horses came up to the collar as service-horses always will,
+generous to the last ounce of strength they have in them.
+
+"Gallop!"
+
+The limbers bumped and jolted and the short-handled whips cracked like
+the sound of pistol-practise. Blind, unreconnoitered, grim--like a black
+thunderbolt loosed into the blackness--the two guns shot along a
+hollow, thundered up a ridge and burst into the fire-light up above the
+mutineers, in the last place where any one expected them. A howl came
+from the road that they had left, a hundred sepoys had rushed down to
+block their passage the moment that their cheer had rung above the noise
+of battle.
+
+"Action--front!" roared young Bellairs, and the muzzles swung round at
+the gallop, jerked into position by the wheeling teams.
+
+"With case, at four hundred!"
+
+The orders were given and obeyed almost before the guns had lost their
+motion. The charges had been rammed into the greedy muzzles before the
+horses were away, almost--and that takes but a second--the horses vanish
+like blown smoke when the game begins. A howl from the mutineers told
+that they were seen; a volley from the British infantry announced that
+they were yet in time; and "boom-boom!" went both guns together.
+
+The grapeshot whined and shrieked, and the ranks of the sepoys wilted,
+mown down as though a scythe had swept them. Once, and once only, they
+gathered for a charge on the two guns; but they were met half-way up the
+rise by a shrieking blast of grape that ripped through them and took the
+heart out of them; and the grape was followed by well-aimed volleys from
+behind. Then they drew off to sulk and make fresh plans at a distance,
+and Bellairs took his section unmolested into the Thirty-third-lined
+rampart round the magazine.
+
+"What kept you, sir?" demanded Colonel Forrester-Carter, nodding to him
+in answer to his salute and holding out his right arm while a sergeant
+bandaged it.
+
+"My wife, sir--I--"
+
+"Where is she? Didn't you bring her?"
+
+"No, sir--I--"
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"Still at Hanadra, sir--I--"
+
+"Let the men fall in! Call the roll at once!"
+
+"There was nothing in my orders, sir, about--" But Colonel Carter cut
+him short with a motion and turned his back on him.
+
+"Much obliged, Sergeant," he said, slipping his wounded arm into an
+improvised sling. "How many wagons have we here?"
+
+"Four, sir."
+
+"And horses?"
+
+"All shot dead except your charger, sir."
+
+"Oh! Ask Captain Trevor to come here."
+
+The sergeant disappeared into the shadows, and a moment later Captain
+Trevor came running up and saluted.
+
+"There are seven wounded, sir, and nineteen dead," he reported.
+
+"Better than I had hoped, Trevor! Will you set a train to that magazine,
+please, and blow it up the moment we are at a safe distance?"
+
+Trevor seemed surprised, but he saluted and said nothing.
+
+"O'Rourke! Please see about burying the dead at once. Mr. Bellairs, let
+me have two horses, please, and their drivers, from each gun. Sergeant!
+See about putting the wounded into the lightest of the wagons and
+harness in four gun-horses the best way you can manage."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Which is your best horseman, Mr. Bellairs? Is his horse comparatively
+fresh? I'll need him to gallop with a message. I'll dictate it to
+Captain O'Rourke as soon as he is ready. Let the gunner stay here close
+to me."
+
+Bellairs sought out his best man and the freshest-seeming horse in
+wondering silence. He felt sick with anxiety, for what could one lone
+veteran Risaldar do to protect Mrs. Bellairs against such a horde as
+was in Hanadra? He looked at the barracks, which were still blazing
+heavenward and illuminating the whole country-side, and shuddered as he
+wondered whether his quarters at Hanadra were in flames yet.
+
+"It's a good job old Carter happened to be here!" he heard one of his
+men mumble to another. "He's a man, that is--I'd sooner fight under him
+than any I know of!"
+
+"What d'you suppose the next move is?" asked the other man.
+
+"I'd bet on it! I'll bet you what you like that--"
+
+But Bellairs did not hear the rest.
+
+A bugle rang out into the night. The gunners stood by their horses. Even
+the sentries, posted outside the rampart to guard against alarm, stood
+to attention, and Colonel Carter, wincing from the pain in his right
+arm, walked out in front of where the men were lined up.
+
+Captain O'Rourke walked up and saluted him.
+
+"I've arranged to bury them in that trench we dug this evening, sir,
+when the trouble started. It's not very deep, but it holds them all.
+I've laid them in it."
+
+"Are you sure they're all dead?"
+
+"I've burnt their fingers with matches, sir. I don't know of any better
+way to make sure."
+
+"Very well. Can you remember any of the burial service?"
+
+"'Fraid not, sir."
+
+"Um! That's a pity. And I'm afraid I can't spare the time. Take a
+firing-party, Captain O'Rourke, and give them the last honors, at all
+events."
+
+A party marched away toward the trench, and several minutes later
+O'Rourke's voice was heard calling through the darkness, "All ready,
+sir!"
+
+"Present arms!" ordered the colonel, and the gunners sat their horses
+with their hilts raised to their hips and the two long lines of infantry
+stood rigid at the general salute, while five volleys--bulleted--barked
+upward above the grave. They were, answered by sniping from the
+mutineers, who imagined that reprisals had commenced.
+
+"Now, men!" said Colonel Carter, raising his voice until every officer
+and man along the line could hear him, "as you must have realized,
+things are very serious indeed. We are cut off from support, but now
+that the guns are here to help us, we could either hold out here until
+relieved or else fight our way into Jundhra, where I have no doubt we
+are very badly needed. But"--he spoke more slowly and distinctly now,
+with a distinct pause between each word--"there is an officer's lady
+alone, and practically unprotected at Hanadra. Our duty is clear. You
+are tired--I know it. You have had no supper, and will get none. It
+means forced marching for the rest of this night and a good part of
+tomorrow and more fighting, possibly on an empty stomach; it means the
+dust and the heat and the discomfort of the trunk road for all of us and
+danger of the worst kind instead of safety--for we shall have farther to
+go to reach Jundhra. But I would do the same, and you men all know it,
+for any soldier's wife in my command, or any English woman in India. We
+will march now on Hanadra. No! No demonstrations, please!"
+
+His uplifted left hand was just in time to check a roar of answering
+approval.
+
+"Didn't I tell you so?" exclaimed a gunner to the man beside him in an
+undertone. "Him leave a white woman to face this sort o' music? He'd
+fight all India first!"
+
+Ten minutes later two companies of men marched out behind the guns,
+followed by a cart that bore their wounded. As they reached the trunk
+road they were saluted by a reverberating blast when the magazine that
+they had fought to hold blew skyward. They turned to cheer the explosion
+and then settled down to march in deadly earnest and, if need be, to
+fight a rear-guard action all the way.
+
+And in the opposite direction one solitary gunner rode,
+hell-bent-for-leather, with a note addressed to "O. C.--Jundhra." It was
+short and to the point. It ran:
+
+        Have blown up magazine;  Mrs. Bellairs at Hanadra;
+        have gone to rescue her.
+                (Signed)  A. FORRESTER-CARTER (Col.)
+                        per J. O'Rourke
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The red glow of barracks burning--an ayah from whom a dagger has
+been taken locked in another room--the knowledge that there are fifty
+thousand Aryan brothers, itching to rebel, within a stone's throw--and
+two lone protectors of an alien race intent on torturing a High Priest,
+each and every one of these is a disturbing feature. No woman, and least
+of all a young woman such as Ruth Bellairs, can be blamed for being
+nervous under the stress of such conditions or for displaying a certain
+amount of feminine unreasonableness.
+
+She stood shivering for a minute and watched spellbound while Mahommed
+Khan held the hot coal closer and even closer to the High Priest's naked
+foot. The priest writhed in anticipation of the agony and turned his
+eyes away, and as he turned them they met Ruth's. High priests of a
+religion that includes sooth-saying and prophecy and bribery of gods
+among its rites are students of human nature, and especially of female
+human nature. Knowledge of it and of how it may be gulled, and when,
+is the first essential of their calling. Her pale face, her blue eyes
+strained in terror, the parted lips and the attitude of tension, these
+gave him an idea. Before the charcoal touched him, he screamed--screamed
+like a wounded horse.
+
+"Mahommed Khan, stop! Stop this instant! I won't have it! I won't have
+my life, even, on those terms! D'you hear me, sir!"
+
+"Have courage, heavenborn! There is but one way to force a Hindu priest,
+unless it be by cutting off his revenues--he must be hurt! This dog is
+unhurt as yet--see! The fire has not yet touched his foot!"
+
+"Don't let it, Mahommed Khan! Set that iron down! This is my room. I
+will not have crime committed here!"
+
+"And how long does the heavenborn think it would be her room were this
+evil-living pig of a priest at large, or how long before a worse crime
+were committed? Heavenborn, the hour is late and the charcoal dies out
+rapidly when it has left the fire! See. I must choose another piece!"
+
+He rummaged in the brazier, and she screamed again.
+
+"I will not have it, Risaldar! You must find another way."
+
+"Memsahib! Thy husband left thee in my care. Surely it is my right to
+choose the way?"
+
+"Leave me, then! I relieve you of your trust. I will not have him
+tortured in my room, or anywhere!"
+
+Mahommed Khan bowed low.
+
+"Under favor, heavenborn," he answered, "my trust is to your husband. I
+can be released by him, or by death, not otherwise."
+
+"Once, and for all, Mahommed Khan, I will not have you torture him in
+here!"
+
+"Memsahib, I have yet to ride for succor! At daybreak, when these Hindus
+learn that the guns will not come back, they will rise to a man. Even
+now we must find a hiding-place or--it is not good even to think what I
+might find on my return!"
+
+He leaned over the priest again, but without the charcoal this time.
+
+"Speak, thou!" he ordered, growling in Hindustanee through his savage
+black mustache. "I have yet to hear what price a Hindu sets on immunity
+from torture!"
+
+But the priest, it seemed, had formed a new idea. He had been looking
+through puckered eyes at Ruth, keen, cool calculation in his glance, and
+in spite of the discomfort of his strained position he contrived to nod.
+
+"Kharvani!" he muttered, half aloud.
+
+"Aye! Call on Kharvani!" sneered the Risaldar. "Perhaps the Bride of
+Sivi will appear! Call louder!"
+
+He stirred again among the charcoal with his tongs, and Ruth and the
+High Priest both shuddered.
+
+"Look!" said the High Priest in Hindustanee, nodding in Ruth's
+direction. It was the first word that he had addressed to them. It
+took them by surprise, and the Risaldar and his half-brother turned and
+looked. Their breath left them.
+
+Framed in the yellow lamplight, her thin, hot-weather garments draped
+about her like a morning mist, Ruth stood and stared straight back at
+them through frightened eyes. Her blue-black hair, which had become
+loosened in her excitement, hung in a long plait over one shoulder and
+gleamed in the lamp's reflection. Her skin took on a faintly golden
+color from the feeble light, and her face seemed stamped with fear,
+anxiety, pity and suffering, all at once, that strangely enhanced her
+beauty, silhouetted as she was against the blackness of the wall behind,
+she seemed to be standing in an aura, shimmering with radiated light.
+
+"Kharvani!" said the High Priest to himself again, and the two Rajputs
+stood still like men dumfounded, and stared and stared and stared.
+They knew Kharvani's temple. Who was there in Hanadra, Christian or
+Mohammedan or Hindu, who did not? The show-building of the city, the
+ancient, gloomy, wonderful erection where bats lived in the dome and
+flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who
+needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue,
+where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin--the
+ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every
+blackmail-wrung rupee!
+
+They knew, too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the
+place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the
+inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests
+believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well
+employed in painting but one picture of her--Kharvani the sorrowful,
+grieving for the wickedness of earth; Kharvani, Bride of Siva, ready to
+intercede with Siva, the Destroyer, for the helpless, foolish, purblind
+sons of man.
+
+And here, before them, stood Kharvani--to the life!
+
+"What of Kharvani?" growled Mahommed Khan.
+
+"'A purblind fool, a sot and a Mohammedan,"' quoted the priest
+maliciously, "'how many be they, three or one?'"
+
+The Risaldar's hand went to his scabbard. His sword licked out free and
+trembled like a tuning-fork. He flicked with his thumbnail at the blade
+and muttered: "Sharp! Sharp as death itself!"
+
+The Hindu grinned, but the blade came down slowly until the point of it
+rested on the bridge of his nose. His eyes squinted inward, watching it.
+
+"Now, make thy gentle joke again!" growled the Risaldar. Ruth Bellairs
+checked a scream.
+
+"No blood!" she exclaimed. "Don't hurt him, Risaldar! I'll not have you
+kill a man in here--or anywhere, in cold blood, for that matter! Return
+your sword, sir!"
+
+The Risaldar swore into his beard. The High Priest grinned again. "I am
+not afraid to die!" he sneered. "Thrust with that toy of thine! Thrust
+home and make an end!"
+
+"Memsahib!" said the Risaldar, "all this is foolishness and waste
+of time! The hour is past midnight and I must be going. Leave the
+room--leave me and my half-brother with this priest for five short
+minutes and we will coax from him the secret of some hiding-place where
+you may lie hid until I come!"
+
+"But you'll hurt him!"
+
+"Not if he speaks, and speaks the truth!"
+
+"Promise me!"
+
+"On those conditions--yes!"
+
+"Where shall I go?"
+
+The Risaldar's eyes glanced toward the door of the inner room, but he
+hesitated. "Nay! There is the ayah!" he muttered. "Is there no other
+room?"
+
+"No, Risaldar, no other room except through that door. Besides, I would
+rather stay here! I am afraid of what you may do to that priest if I
+leave you alone with him!"
+
+"Now a murrain on all women, black and white!" swore Mahommed Khan
+beneath his breath. Then he turned on the priest again, and placed one
+foot on his stomach.
+
+"Speak!" he ordered. "What of Kharvani?"
+
+"Listen, Mahommed Khan!" Ruth Bellairs laid one hand on his sleeve, and
+tried to draw him back. "Your ways are not my ways! You are a soldier
+and a gentleman, but please remember that you are of a different race!
+I can not let my life be saved by the torture of a human being--no, not
+even of a Hindu priest! Maybe it's all right and honorable according to
+your ideas; but, if you did it, I would never be able to look my husband
+in the face again! No, Risaldar! Let this priest go, or leave him
+here--I don't care which, but don't harm him! I am quite ready to ride
+with you, now, if you like. I suppose you have horses? But I would
+rather die than think that a man was put to the torture to save me! Life
+isn't worth that price!"
+
+She spoke rapidly, urging him with every argument she knew; but the grim
+old Mohammedan shook his head.
+
+"Better die here," he answered her, "than on the road! No, memsahib.
+With thirteen blades behind me, I could reach Jundhra, or at least make
+a bold attempt; but single-handed, and with you to guard, the feat is
+impossible. This dog of a Hindu here knows of some hiding-place. Let him
+speak!"
+
+His hand went to his sword again, and his eyes flashed.
+
+"Listen, heavenborn! I am no torturer of priests by trade! It is not my
+life that I would save!"
+
+"I know that, Mahommed Khan! I respect your motive. It's the method that
+I can't tolerate."
+
+The Risaldar drew his arm away from her and began to pace the room.
+The High Priest instantly began to speak to Ruth, whispering to her
+hurriedly in Hindustanee, but she was too little acquainted with the
+language to understand him.
+
+"And I," said the Risaldar's half-brother suddenly, "am I of no further
+use?"
+
+"I had forgotten thee!" exclaimed the Risaldar.
+
+They spoke together quickly in their own language, drawing aside and
+muttering to each other. It was plain that the half-brother was
+making some suggestion and that the Risaldar was questioning him and
+cross-examining him about his plan, but neither Ruth nor the High Priest
+could understand a word that either of them said. At the end of two
+minutes or more, the Risaldar gave an order of some kind and the
+half-brother grunted and left the room without another word, closing
+the door noiselessly behind him. The Risaldar locked it again from the
+inside and drew the bolt.
+
+"We have made another plan, heavenborn!" he announced mysteriously.
+
+"Then--then--you won't hurt this priest?"
+
+"Not yet," said the Risaldar. "He may be useful!"
+
+"Won't you unbind him, then? Look! His wrists and ankles are all
+swollen."
+
+"Let the dog swell!" he grunted.
+
+But Ruth stuck to her point and made him loosen the bonds a little.
+
+"A man lives and learns!" swore the Risaldar. "Such as he were cast
+into dungeons in my day, to feed on their own bellies until they had had
+enough of life!"
+
+"The times have changed!" said Ruth.
+
+The Risaldar looked out through the window toward the red glow on the
+sky-line.
+
+"Ha! Changed, have they!" he muttered. "I saw one such burning, once
+before!"
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The most wonderful thing in history, pointing with the surest finger to
+the trail of destiny, has been the fact that in every tremendous crisis
+there have been leaders on the spot to meet it. It is not so wonderful
+that there should be such men, for the world keeps growing better, and
+it is more than likely that the men who have left their footprints in
+the sands of time would compare to their own disadvantage with their
+compeers of today. The wonderful thing is that the right men have been
+in the right place at the right time. Scipio met Hannibal; Philip
+of Spain was forced to meet Howard of Effingham and Drake; Napoleon
+Bonaparte, the "Man of Destiny," found Wellington and Nelson of the Nile
+to deal with him; and, in America, men like George Washington and Grant
+and Lincoln seem, in the light of history, like timed, calculated,
+controlling devices in an intricate machine. It was so when the Indian
+Mutiny broke out. The struggle was unexpected. A handful of Europeans,
+commissioned and enlisted in the ordinary way, with a view to trade, not
+statesmanship, found themselves face to face at a minute's notice with
+armed and vengeful millions. Succor was a question of months, not days
+or weeks. India was ablaze from end to end with rebel fires that had
+been planned in secret through silent watchful years. The British force
+was scattered here and there in unconnected details, and each detail
+was suddenly cut off from every other one by men who had been trained to
+fight by the British themselves and who were not afraid to die.
+
+The suddenness with which the outbreak came was one of the chief assets
+of the rebels, for they were able to seize guns and military stores and
+ammunition at the very start of things, before the British force could
+concentrate. Their hour could scarcely have been better chosen. The
+Crimean War was barely over. Practically the whole of England's standing
+army was abroad and decimated by battle and disease. At home, politics
+had England by the throat; the income-tax was on a Napoleonic scale and
+men were more bent on worsting one another than on equipping armies.
+They had had enough of war.
+
+India was isolated, at the rebels' mercy, so it seemed. There were no
+railway trains to make swift movements of troops possible. Distances
+were reckoned by the hundred miles--of sun-baked, thirsty dust in
+the hot weather, and of mud in the rainy season. There were no
+telegraph-wires, and the British had to cope with the mysterious,
+and even yet unsolved, native means of sending news--the so-called
+"underground route," by which news and instructions travel faster than
+a pigeon flies. There was never a greater certainty or a more one-sided
+struggle, at the start. The only question seemed to be how many days,
+or possibly weeks, would pass before jackals crunched the bones of every
+Englishman in India.
+
+But at the British helm was Nicholson, and under him were a hundred
+other men whose courage and resource had been an unknown quantity until
+the outbreak came. Nicholson's was the guiding spirit, but it needed
+only his generalship to fire all the others with that grim enthusiasm
+that has pulled Great Britain out of so many other scrapes. Instead of
+wasting time in marching and countermarching to relieve the scattered
+posts, a swift, sudden swoop was made on Delhi, where the eggs of the
+rebellion had hatched.
+
+As many of the outposts as could be reached were told to fight their
+own way in, and those that could not be reached were left to defend
+themselves until the big blow had been struck at the heart of things.
+If Delhi could be taken, the rebels would be paralyzed and the rescue of
+beleaguered details would be easier; so, although odds of one hundred
+or more to one are usually considered overlarge in wartime--when the
+hundred hold the fort and the one must storm the gate--there was no time
+lost in hesitation. Delhi was the goal; and from north and south and
+east and west the men who could march marched, and those who could not
+entrenched themselves, and made ready to die in the last ditch.
+
+Some of the natives were loyal still. There were men like Risaldar
+Mahommed Khan, who would have died ten deaths ten times over rather than
+be false in one particular to the British Government. It was these men
+who helped to make intercommunication possible, for they could carry
+messages and sometimes get through unsuspected where a British soldier
+would have been shot before he had ridden half a mile. Their loyalty was
+put to the utmost test in that hour, for they can not have believed
+that the British force could win. They knew the extent of what was out
+against them and knew, too, what their fate would be in the event of
+capture or defeat. There would be direr, slower vengeance wreaked on
+them than on the alien British. But they had eaten British salt and
+pledged their word, and nothing short of death could free them from it.
+There was not a shred of self interest to actuate them; there could not
+have been. Their given word was law and there it ended.
+
+There were isolated commands, like that at Jundhra, that were too far
+away to strike at Delhi and too large and too efficient to be shut in by
+the mutineers. They were centers on their own account of isolated small
+detachments, and each commander was given leave to act as he saw best,
+provided that he acted and did it quickly. He could either march to the
+relief of his detachments or call them in, but under no condition was he
+to sit still and do nothing.
+
+So, Colonel Carter's note addressed to O. C.--Jundhra only got
+two-thirds of the way from Doonha. The gunner who rode with it was
+brought to a sudden standstill by an advance-guard of British cavalry,
+and two minutes later he found himself saluting and giving up his note
+to the General Commanding. The rebels at Jundhra had been worsted and
+scattered after an eight-hour fight, and General Turner had made up his
+mind instantly to sweep down on Hanadra with all his force and relieve
+the British garrison at Doonha on his way.
+
+Jundhra was a small town and unhealthy. Hanadra was a large city, the
+center of a province; and, from all accounts, Hanadra had not risen yet.
+By seizing Hanadra before the mutineers had time to barricade themselves
+inside it, he could paralyze the countryside, for in Hanadra were the
+money and provisions and, above all, the Hindu priests who, in that
+part of India at least, were the brains of the rebellion. So he burned
+Jundhra, to make it useless to the rebels, and started for Hanadra with
+every man and horse and gun and wagon and round of ammunition that he
+had.
+
+Now news in India travels like the wind, first one way and then another.
+But, unlike the wind, it never whistles. Things happen and men know
+it and the information spreads--invisible, intangible, inaudible, but
+positive and, in nine cases out of ten, correct in detail. A government
+can no more censor it, or divert it, or stop it on the way, than it can
+stay the birthrate or tamper with the Great Monsoon.
+
+First the priests knew it, then it filtered through the main bazaars
+and from them on through the smaller streets. By the time that General
+Turner had been two hours on the road with his command every man and
+woman and child in Hanadra knew that the rebels had been beaten back
+and that Hanadra was his objective. They knew, too, that the section had
+reached Doonha, had relieved it and started back again. And yet not a
+single rebel who had fought in either engagement was within twenty miles
+of Hanadra yet!
+
+In the old, low-ceilinged room above the archway Mahommed Khan paced
+up and down and chewed at his black mustache, kicking his scabbard away
+from him each time he turned and glowering at the priest.
+
+"That dog can solve this riddle!" he kept muttering. Then he would glare
+at Ruth impatiently and execrate the squeamishness of women. Ruth sat
+on the divan with her face between her hands, trying to force herself to
+realize the full extent of her predicament and beat back the feeling of
+hysteria that almost had her in its grip. The priest lay quiet. He was
+in a torture of discomfort on the upturned table, but he preferred
+not to give the Risaldar the satisfaction of knowing it. He eased his
+position quietly from time to time as much as his bandages would let
+him, but he made no complaint.
+
+Suddenly, Ruth looked up. It had occurred to her that she was wasting
+time and that if she were to fight off the depression that had seized
+her she would be better occupied.
+
+"Mahommed Khan," she said, "if I am to leave here on horseback, with you
+or with an escort, I had better collect some things that I would like to
+take with me. Let me in that room, please!"
+
+"The horse will have all that it can carry, heavenborn, without a load
+of woman's trappings."
+
+"My jewels? I can take them, I suppose?"
+
+He bowed. "They are in there? I will bring them, heavenborn!"
+
+"Nonsense! You don't know where to find them."
+
+"The ayah--will--will show me!"
+
+He fitted the key into the lock and turned it, but Ruth was at his side
+before he could pass in through the door.
+
+"Nonsense, Risaldar! The ayah can't hurt me. You have taken her knife
+away, and that is my room. I will go in there alone!"
+
+She pushed past him before he could prevent her, thrust the door back
+and peered in.
+
+"Stay, heavenborn--I will explain!"
+
+"Explain what?"
+
+The dim light from the lamp was filtering in past them, and her eyes
+were slowly growing accustomed to the gloom. There was something lying
+on the floor, in the middle of the room, that was bulky and shapeless
+and unfamiliar.
+
+"Ayah!" said Ruth. "Ayah!"
+
+But there was no answer.
+
+"Where is she, Risaldar?"
+
+"She is there, heavenborn!"
+
+"Is she asleep?"
+
+"Aye! She sleeps deeply!"
+
+There was, something in the Rajput's voice that was strange, that hinted
+at a darker meaning.
+
+"Ayah!" she called again, afraid, though she knew not why, to enter.
+
+"She guards the jewels, heavenborn! Wait, while I bring the lamp!"
+
+He crossed the room, brought it and stepped with it past Ruth, straight
+into the room.
+
+"See!" he said, holding the lamp up above his head. "There in her bosom
+are the jewels! It was there, too, that she had the knife to slay thee
+with! My sword is clean, yet, heavenborn! I slew her with my fingers,
+thus!"
+
+He kicked the prostrate ayah, and, as the black face with the wide-open
+bloodshot eyes and the protruding tongue rolled sidewise and the body
+moved, a little heap of jewels fell upon the floor. Mahommed Khan
+stooped down to gather them, bending, a little painfully, on one old
+knee--but stopped half-way and turned. There was a thud behind him in
+the doorway. Ruth Bellairs had fainted, and lay as the ayah had lain
+when Risaldar had not yet locked her in the room.
+
+He raised the lamp and studied her in silence for a minute, looking from
+her to the bound priest and back to her again.
+
+"Now praised be Allah!" he remarked aloud, with a world of genuine
+relief in his voice. "Should she stay fainted for a little while, that
+priest--"
+
+He stalked into the middle of the outer room. He set the lamp down on a
+table and looked the priest over as a butcher might survey a sheep he is
+about to kill.
+
+"Now--robber of orphans--bleeder of widows' blood--dog of an
+idol-briber! This stands between thee and Kharvani!" He drew his sword
+and flicked the edges of it. "And this!" He took up the tongs again.
+"There is none now to plead or to forbid! Think! Show me the way out of
+this devil's nest, or--" He raised the tongs again.
+
+At that minute came a quiet knock. He set the tongs down again and
+crossed the room and opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Mahommed Khan closed the door again behind his half-brother and turned
+the key, but the half-brother shot the bolt home as well before he
+spoke, then listened intently for a minute with his ear to the keyhole.
+
+"Where is the priest's son?" growled the Risaldar, in the Rajput tongue.
+
+"I have him. I have the priestling in a sack. I have him trussed and
+bound and gagged, so that he can neither speak nor wriggle!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Hidden safely."
+
+"I said to bring him here!"
+
+"I could not. Listen! That ayah--where is she?"
+
+"Dead! What has the ayah to do with it?"
+
+"This--she was to give a sign. She was not to slay. She had leave only
+to take the jewels. Her orders were either to wait until she knew by
+questioning that the section would not return or else, when it had
+returned, to wait until the memsahib and Bellairs sahib slept, and then
+to make a sign. They grow tired of waiting now, for there is news! At
+Jundhra the rebels are defeated, and at Doonha likewise."
+
+"How know you this?"
+
+"By listening to the priests' talk while I lay in wait to snare the
+priestling. Nothing is known as yet as to what the guns or garrison at
+Doonha do, but it is known that they of Jundhra will march on Hanadra
+here. They search now for their High Priest, being minded to march out
+of here and set an ambush on the road."
+
+"They have time. From Jundhra to here is a long march! Until tomorrow
+evening or the day following they have time!"
+
+"Aye! And they have fear also! They seek their priest--listen."
+
+There were voices plainly audible in the courtyard down below, and
+two more men stood at the foot of the winding stairway whispering. By
+listening intently they could hear almost what they said, for the stone
+stairway acted like a whispering-gallery, the voices echoing up it from
+wall to wall.
+
+"Why do they seek him here?"
+
+"They have sought elsewhere and not found him; and there is talk--He
+claimed the memsahib as his share of the plunder. They think--"
+
+Mahommed Khan glared at the trussed-up priest and swore a savage oath
+beneath his breath.
+
+"Have they touched the stables yet?" he demanded.
+
+"No, not yet. The loot is to be divided evenly among certain of the
+priests, and no man may yet lay a hand on it."
+
+"Is there a guard there?"
+
+"No. No one would steal what the priests claim, and the priests will not
+trust one another. So the horses stand in their stalls unwatched."
+
+The voices down the stairs grew louder, and the sound of footsteps began
+ascending, slowly and with hesitation.
+
+"Quick!" said the Risaldar. "Light me that brazier again!"
+
+Charcoal lights quickly, and before the steps had reached the landing
+Mahommed Khan had a hot coal glowing in his tongs:
+
+"Now speak to them!" he growled at the shuddering priest. "Order them to
+go back to their temple and tell them that you follow!"
+
+The priest shut his lips tight and shook his head. With rescue so near
+as that, he could see no reason to obey. But the hot coal touched him,
+and a Hindu who may be not at all afraid to die can not stand torture.
+
+"I speak!" he answered, writhing.
+
+"Speak, then!" said the Risaldar, choosing a larger coal. Then, in
+the priest's language, which none--and least of all a Risaldar--can
+understand except the priests themselves, he began to shout directions,
+pitching his voice into a high, wailing, minor key. He was answered by
+another sing-song voice outside the door and he listened with a glowing
+coal held six inches from his eyes.
+
+"An eye for a false move!" hissed Mahommed Khan. "Two eyes are the
+forfeit unless they go down the stairs again! Then my half-brother here
+will follow to the temple and if any watch, or stay behind, thy ears
+will sizzle!"
+
+The High Priest raised his voice into a wail again, and the feet
+shuffled along the landing and descended.
+
+"Put down that coal!" he pleaded. "I have done thy bidding!"
+
+"Watch through the window!" said the Risaldar. "Then follow!"
+
+His giant half-brother peered from behind the curtain and listened. He
+could hear laughter, ribald, mocking laughter, but low, and plainly not
+intended for the High Priest's ears.
+
+"They go!" he growled.
+
+"Then follow."
+
+Once again the Risaldar was left alone with the priest and the
+unconscious Ruth. She was suffering from the effects of long days and
+nights of nerve-destroying heat, with the shock of unexpected horror
+super-added, and she showed no disposition to recover consciousness. The
+priest, though, was very far from having lost his power to think.
+
+"You are a fool!" he sneered at the Risaldar, but the sword leaped from
+its scabbard at the word and he changed that line of argument. "You hold
+cards and know not how to play them!"
+
+"I know along which road my honor lies! I lay no plans to murder people
+in their sleep."
+
+"Honor! And what is honor? What is the interest on honor--how much
+percent?"
+
+The Risaldar turned his back on him, but the High Priest laughed.
+
+"'The days of the Raj are numbered!" said the priest. "The English will
+be slain to the last man and then where will you be? Where will be the
+profit on your honor?"
+
+The Risaldar listened, for he could not help it, but he made no answer.
+
+"Me you hold here, a prisoner. You can slay or torture. But what good
+will that do? The woman that you guard will fall sooner or later into
+Hindu hands. You can not fight against a legion. Listen! I hold the
+strings of wealth. With a jerk I can unloose a fortune in your lap. I
+need that woman there!"
+
+"For what?" snarled the Risaldar, whirling round on him, his eyes
+ablaze.
+
+"'For power! Kharvani's temple here has images and paintings and a voice
+that speaks--but no Kharvani!"
+
+The Rajput turned away again and affected unconcern.
+
+"Could Kharvani but appear, could her worshipers but see Kharvani
+manifest, what would a lakh, two lakhs, a crore of rupees mean to me,
+the High Priest of her temple? I could give thee anything! The power
+over all India would be in my hands! Kharvani would but appear and say
+thus and thus, and thus would it be done!"
+
+The Risaldar's hand had risen to his mustache. His back was still turned
+on the priest, but he showed interest. His eyes wandered to where Ruth
+lay in a heap by the inner door and then away again.
+
+"Who would believe it?" he growled in an undertone.
+
+"They would all believe it! One and all! Even Mohammedans would become
+Hindus to worship at her shrine and beg her favors. Thou and I alone
+would share the secret. Listen! Loose me these bonds--my limbs ache."
+
+Mahommed Khan turned. He stooped and cut them with his sword.
+
+"Now I can talk," said the priest, sitting up and rubbing his ankles.
+"Listen. Take thou two horses and gallop off, so that the rest may think
+that the white woman has escaped. Then return here secretly and name thy
+price--and hold thy tongue!"
+
+"And leave her in thy hands?" asked the Risaldar.
+
+"In my keeping."
+
+"Bah! Who would trust a Hindu priest!"
+
+The Rajput was plainly wavering and the priest stood up, to argue with
+him the better.
+
+"What need to trust me? You, sahib, will know the secret, and none other
+but myself will know it. Would I, think you, be fool enough to tell the
+rest, or, by withholding just payment from you, incite you to spread it
+broadcast? You and I will know it and we alone. To me the power that
+it will bring--to you all the wealth you ever dreamed of, and more
+besides!"
+
+"No other priest would know?"
+
+"Not one! They will think the woman escaped!"
+
+"And she--where would you keep her?"
+
+"In a secret place I know of, below the temple."
+
+"Does any other know it?"
+
+"No. Not one!"
+
+"Listen!" said the Risaldar, stroking at his beard. "This woman never
+did me any wrong--but she is a woman, not a man. I owe her no fealty,
+and yet--I would not like to see her injured. Were I to agree to thy
+plan, there would needs be a third man in the secret."
+
+"Who? Name him," said the priest, grinning his satisfaction.
+
+"My half-brother Suliman."
+
+"Agreed!"
+
+"He must go with us to the hiding-place and stay there as her servant."
+
+"Is he a silent man?"
+
+"Silent as the dead, unless I bid him speak!"
+
+"Then, that is agreed; he and thou and I know of this secret, and none
+other is to know it! Why wait? Let us remove her to the hiding-place!"
+
+"Wait yet for Suliman. How long will I be gone, think you, on my
+pretended flight?"
+
+"Nay, what think you, sahib?"
+
+"I think many hours. There may be those that watch, or some that ride
+after me. I think I shall not return until long after daylight, and then
+there will be no suspicions. Give me a token that will admit me safely
+back into Hanadra--some sign that the priests will know, and a pass to
+show to any one that bids me halt."
+
+The priest held out his hand. "Take off that ring of mine!" he answered.
+"That is the sacred ring of Kharvani--and all men know it. None will
+touch thee or refuse thee anything, do they have but the merest sight of
+it!"
+
+The Risaldar drew off a clumsy silver ring, set with three stones--a
+sapphire and a ruby and an emerald, each one of which was worth a
+fortune by itself. He slipped it on his own finger and turned it round
+slowly, examining it.
+
+"See how I trust thee," said the priest.
+
+"More than I do thee!" muttered the Risaldar.
+
+"I hear my brother!" growled the Risaldar after another minute. "Be
+ready to show the way!"
+
+He walked across the room to Ruth, tore a covering from a divan and
+wrapped her in it; then he opened the outer door for his half-brother.
+
+"Is it well?" he asked in the Rajput tongue.
+
+"All well!" boomed the half-brother, eying the unbound priest with
+unconcealed surprise.
+
+"Do any watch?"
+
+"Not one! The priests are in the temple; all who are not priests man the
+walls or rush here and there making ready."
+
+"And the priestling?"
+
+"Is where I left him."
+
+"Where?--I said."
+
+"In the niche underneath the arch, where I trapped the High Priest!"
+
+"Are the horses fed and watered?"
+
+"Ha, sahib!"
+
+"Good! How is the niche opened where the priestling lies?"
+
+"There is the trunk of an elephant, carved where the largest stone of
+all begins to curve outward, on the side of the stone as you go outward
+from the courtyard."
+
+"On which side of the archway, then?"
+
+"On the left side, sahib. Press on the trunk downward and then pull; the
+stone swings outward. There are steps then--ten steps downward to the
+stone floor where the priestling lies."
+
+"Good! I can find him. Now pick up the heavenborn yonder in those great
+arms of thine, and bear her gently! Gently, I said! So! Have a care,
+now, that she is not injured against the corners. My honor, aye, my
+honor and yours and all our duty to the Raj you bear and--and have a
+care of the corners?"
+
+"Aye," answered the half-brother, stolidly, holding Ruth as though she
+had been a little bag of rice.
+
+Again the Risaldar turned to the High Priest, and eyed him through eyes
+that glittered.
+
+"We are ready!" he growled. "Lead on to thy hiding-place!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The guns rode first from Doonha, for the guns take precedence. The
+section ground-scouts were acting scouts for the division, two hundred
+yards ahead of every one. Behind the guns rode Colonel Forrester-Carter,
+followed by the wagon with the wounded; and last of all the two
+companies of the Thirty-third trudged through the stifling heat.
+
+But, though the guns were ahead of every one, they had to suit their
+pace to that of the men who marched. For one thing, there might be an
+attack at any minute, and guns that are caught at close quarters at a
+distance from their escort are apt to be astonishingly helpless. They
+can act in unison with infantry; but alone, on bad ground, in the
+darkness, and with their horses nearly too tired to drag them, a leash
+of ten puppies in a crowd would be an easier thing to hurry with.
+
+Young Bellairs had his men dismounted and walking by their mounts. Even
+the drivers led their horses, for two had been taken from each gun to
+drag the wounded, and the guns are calculated as a load for six, not
+four.
+
+As he trudged through the blood-hot dust in clumsy riding-boots and
+led his charger on the left flank of the guns, Harry Bellairs fumed and
+fretted in a way to make no man envy him. The gloomy, ghost-like trees,
+that had flitted past him on the road to Doonha, crawled past him
+now--slowly and more slowly as his tired feet blistered in his boots.
+He could not mount and ride, though, for very shame, while his men were
+marching, and he dared not let them ride, for fear the horses might give
+in. He could just trudge and trudge, and hate himself and every one, and
+wonder.
+
+What had the Risaldar contrived to do? Why hadn't he packed up his
+wife's effects the moment that his orders came and ridden off with her
+and the section at once, instead of waiting three hours or more for an
+escort for her? Why hadn't he realized at once that orders that came in
+a hurry that way, in the night-time, were not only urgent but ominous as
+well? What chance had the Risaldar--an old man, however willing he might
+be--to ride through a swarming countryside for thirty miles or more and
+bring back an escort? Why, even supposing Mohammed Khan had ridden off
+at once, he could scarcely be back again before the section! And what
+would have happened in the meantime?
+
+Supposing the Risaldar's sons and grandsons refused to obey him?
+Stranger things than that had been known to happen! Suppose they were
+disloyal? And then--blacker though than any yet!--suppose--suppose--
+Why had Mahommed Khan, the hard-bitten, wise old war-dog, advised him
+to leave his wife behind? Did that seem like honest advice, on second
+thought? Mohammedans had joined in this outbreak as well as Hindus.
+The sepoys at Doonha were Mohammedans! Why had Mahommed Khan seemed so
+anxious to send him on his way? As though an extra five minutes
+would have mattered! Why had he objected to a last good-by to Mrs.
+Bellairs?... And then--he had shown a certain knowledge of the uprising;
+where had he obtained it? If he were loyal, who then had told him of it?
+Natives who are disloyal don't brag of their plans beforehand to men who
+are on the other side! And if he had known of it, and was still loyal,
+how was it that he had not divulged his information before the outbreak
+came? Would a loyal man hold his tongue until the last minute? Scarcely!
+
+He halted, pulled his horse to the middle of the road and waited for
+Colonel Carter to overtake him.
+
+"Well? What is it?" asked the colonel sharply.
+
+"Can I ride on ahead, sir? My horse is good for it and I'm in agonies of
+apprehension about my wife!"
+
+"No! Certainly not! You are needed to command your section!"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but I've a sergeant who can take command. He's
+a first-class man and perfectly dependable."
+
+"You could do no good, even if you did ride on," said the colonel, not
+unkindly.
+
+"I'm thinking, sir, that Mahommed Khan--"
+
+"Risaldar Mahommed Khan?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Of the Rajput Horse?"
+
+"Yes, sir. My father's Risaldar."
+
+"You left your wife in his charge, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but I'm thinking that--that perhaps the Risaldar--I
+mean--there seem to be Mohammedans at the bottom of this business, as
+well as Hindus. Perhaps--"
+
+"Bellairs! Now hear me once and for all. You thank your God that the
+Risaldar turned up to guard her! Thank God that your father was man
+enough for Mahommed Khan to love and that you are your father's son! And
+listen! Don't let me hear you, ever, under any circumstances, breathe a
+word of doubt as to that man's loyalty! D'you understand me, sir? You,
+a mere subaltern, a puppy just out of his 'teens, an insignificant
+jackanapes with two twelve-pounders in your charge, daring to impute
+disloyalty to Mahommed Khan!--your impudence! Remember this! That old
+Risaldar is the man who rode with your father through the guns at Dera!
+He's a pauper without a pension, for all his loyalty, but he went down
+the length of India to meet you, at his own expense, when you landed
+raw-green from England! And what d'you know of war, I'd like to know,
+that you didn't learn from him? Thank your God, sir, that there's
+some one there who'll kill your wife before she falls into the Hindus'
+hands!"
+
+"But he was going to ride away, sir, to bring an escort!"
+
+"Not before he'd made absolutely certain of her safety!" swore the
+colonel with conviction. "Join your section, sir!"
+
+So Harry Bellairs joined his section and trudged along sore-footed at
+its side--sore-hearted, too. He wondered whether any one would ever say
+as much for him as Colonel Carter had chosen to say for Mahommed Khan,
+or whether any one would have the right to say it! He was ashamed of
+having left his wife behind and tortured with anxiety--and smarting from
+the snub--a medley of sensations that were more likely to make a man of
+him, if he had known it, than the whole experience of a year's campaign!
+But in the dust and darkness, with the blisters on his heels, and fifty
+men, who had overheard the colonel, looking sidewise at him, his plight
+was pitiable.
+
+They trudged until the dawn began to rise, bright yellow below the
+drooping banian trees; only Colonel Carter and the advance-guard riding.
+Then, when they stopped at a stream to water horses and let them graze
+a bit and give the men a sorely needed rest, one of the ring of outposts
+loosed off his rifle and shouted an alarm. They had formed square in an
+instant, with the guns on one side and the men on three, and the colonel
+and the wounded in the middle. A thousand or more of the mutineers
+leaned on their rifles on the shoulder of a hill and looked them over, a
+thousand yards away.
+
+"Send them an invitation!" commanded Colonel Carter, and the left-hand
+gun barked out an overture, killing one sepoy. The rest made off in the
+direction of Hanadra.
+
+"We're likely to have a hot reception when we reach there!" said Colonel
+Carter cheerily. "Well, we'll rest here for thirty minutes and give them
+a chance to get ready for us. I'm sorry there's no breakfast, men, but
+the sepoys will have dinner ready by the time we get there--we'll eat
+theirs!"
+
+The chorus of ready laughter had scarcely died away when a horse's
+hoof-beats clattered in the distance from the direction of Doonha and a
+native cavalryman galloped into view, low-bent above his horse's neck.
+The foam from his horse was spattered over him and his lance swung
+pointing upward from the sling. On his left side the polished scabbard
+rose and fell in time to his horse's movement. He was urging his weary
+horse to put out every ounce he had in him. He drew rein, though, when
+he reached a turning in the road and saw the resting division in front
+of him, and walked his horse forward, patting his sweat-wet neck and
+easing him. But as he leaned to finger with the girths an ambushed
+sepoy fired at him, and he rammed in his spurs again and rode like a man
+possessed.
+
+"This'll be another untrustworthy Mohammedan!" said Colonel Carter in
+a pointed undertone, and Bellairs blushed crimson underneath the tan.
+"He's ridden through from Jundhra, with torture waiting for him if he
+happened to get caught, and no possible reward beyond his pay. Look out
+he doesn't spike your guns!"
+
+The trooper rode straight up to Colonel Carter and saluted. He removed
+a tiny package from his cheek, where he had carried it so that he might
+swallow it at once in case of accident, tore the oil-silk cover from
+it and handed it to him without a word, saluting again and leading his
+horse away. Colonel Carter unfolded the half-sheet of foreign notepaper
+and read:
+
+        Dear Colonel Carter:
+        Your letter just received in which you say that you have blown
+        up the magazine at Doonha and are marching to Hanadra with a
+        view to the rescue of Mrs. Bellairs.  This is in no sense
+        intended as a criticism of your action or of your plan, but
+        circumstances have made it seem advisable for me to transfer
+        my own headquarters to Hanadra and I am just starting.  I must
+        ask you, please, to wait for me--at a spot as near to where
+        this overtakes you as can be managed.  If Mrs. Bellairs, or
+        anybody else of ours, is in Hanadra, she--or they--are either
+        dead by now or else prisoners.  And if they are to be rescued
+        by force, the larger the force employed the better.  If you
+        were to attack with your two companies before I reached you,
+        you probably would be repulsed, and would, I think, endanger
+        the lives of any prisoners that the enemy may hold.  I am
+        coming with my whole command as fast as possible.
+                        Your Obedient Servant,
+                                        A. E. Turner
+                                        Genl. Officer Commanding
+
+"Men!" said Colonel Carter, in a ringing voice that gave not the
+slightest indication of his feelings, "we're to wait here for a while
+until the whole division overtakes us. The general has vacated Jundhra.
+Lie down and get all the rest you can!"
+
+The murmur from the ranks was as difficult to read as Colonel Carter's
+voice had been. It might have meant pleasure at the thought of rest,
+or anger, or contempt, or almost anything. It was undefined and
+indefinable.
+
+But there was no doubt at all as to how young Bellairs felt. He was
+sitting on a trunnion, sobbing, with his head bent low between his
+hands.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+"Come, then!" said the High Priest.
+
+Mahommed Khan threw open the outer door and bowed sardonically.
+"Precedence for priests!" he sneered, tapping at his sword-hilt. "Thou
+goest first! Next come I, and last Suliman with the memsahib! Thus can I
+reach thee with my sword, O priest, and also protect her if need be!"
+
+"Thou art trusting as a little child!" exclaimed the priest, passing out
+ahead of him.
+
+"A priest and a liar and a thief--all three are one!" hummed the
+Risaldar. "Bear her gently, Suliman! Have a care, now, as you turn on
+the winding stairs!"
+
+"Ha, sahib!" said the half-brother, carrying Ruth as easily as though
+she had been a little child.
+
+At the foot of the stairway, in the blackness that seemed alive with
+phantom shadows, the High Priest paused and listened, stretching out
+his left hand against the wall to keep the other two behind him. From
+somewhere beyond the courtyard came the din of hurrying sandaled feet,
+scudding over cobblestones in one direction. The noise was incessant and
+not unlike the murmur of a rapid stream. Occasionally a voice was raised
+in some command or other, but the stream of sound continued, hurrying,
+hurrying, shuffling along to the southward.
+
+"This way and watch a while," whispered the priest.
+
+"I have heard rats run that way!" growled the Risaldar.
+
+They climbed up a narrow stairway leading to a sort of battlement and
+peered over the top, Suliman laying Ruth Bellairs down in the darkest
+shadow he could find. She was beginning to recover consciousness, and
+apparently Mahommed Khan judged it best to take no notice of her.
+
+Down below them they could see the city gate, wide open, with a blazing
+torch on either side of it, and through the gate, swarming like
+ants before the rains, there poured an endless stream of humans that
+marched--and marched--and marched; four, ten, fifteen abreast; all
+heights and sizes, jumbled in and out among one another, anyhow, without
+formation, but armed, every one of them, and all intent on marching
+to the southward, where Jundhra and Doonha lay. Some muttered to one
+another and some laughed, but the greater number marched in silence.
+
+"That for thy English!" grinned the priest. "Can the English troops
+overcome that horde?"
+
+"Hey-ee! For a troop or two of Rajputs!" sighed the Risaldar. "Or
+English Lancers! They would ride through that as an ax does through the
+brush-wood!"
+
+"Bah!" said the priest. "All soldiers boast! There will be a houghing
+shortly after dawn. The days of thy English are now numbered."
+
+"By those--there?"
+
+"Ay, by those, there! Come!"
+
+They climbed down the steps again, the Rajput humming to himself and
+smiling grimly into his mustache.
+
+"Ay! There will be a houghing shortly after dawn!" he muttered. "Would
+only that I were there to see!... Where are the sepoys?" he demanded.
+
+"I know not. How should I know, who have been thy guest these hours
+past? This march is none of my ordering."
+
+The priest pressed hard on a stone knob that seemed to be part of the
+carving on a wall, then he leaned his weight against the wall and a huge
+stone swung inward, while a fetid breath of air wafted outward in their
+faces.
+
+"None know this road but I!" exclaimed the priest.
+
+"None need to!" said the Risaldar. "Pass on, snake, into thy hole. We
+follow."
+
+"Steps!" said the priest, and began descending.
+
+"Curses!" said the Risaldar, stumbling and falling down on top of him.
+"Have a care, Suliman! The stone is wet and slippery."
+
+Down, down they climbed, one behind the other, Suliman grunting beneath
+his burden and the Risaldar keeping up a running fire of oaths. Each
+time that he slipped, and that was often, he cursed the priest and
+cautioned Suliman. But the priest only laughed, and apparently Suliman
+was sure-footed, for he never stumbled once. They seemed to be diving
+down into the bowels of the earth. They were in pitch-black darkness,
+for the stone had swung to behind them of its own accord. The wall on
+either side of them was wet with slime and the stink of decaying ages
+rose and almost stifled them. But the priest kept on descending, so fast
+that the other two had trouble to keep up with him, and he hummed to
+himself as though he knew the road and liked it.
+
+"The bottom!" he called back suddenly. "From now the going is easy,
+until we rise again. We pass now under the city-wall."
+
+But they could see nothing and hear nothing except their own footfalls
+swishing in the ooze beneath them. Even the priest's words seemed to
+be lost at once, as though he spoke into a blanket, for the air they
+breathed was thicker than a mist and just as damp. They walked on, along
+a level, wet, stone passage for at least five minutes, feeling their way
+with one band on the wall.
+
+"Steps, now!" said the priest. "Have a care, now, for the lower ones are
+slippery."
+
+Ruth was regaining consciousness. She began to move and tried once or
+twice to speak.
+
+"Here, thou!" growled the Risaldar. "Thou art a younger man than I--come
+back here. Help with the memsahib."
+
+The priest came back a step or two, but Suliman declined his aid,
+snarling vile insults at him.
+
+"I can manage!" he growled. "Get thou behind me, Mahommed Khan, in case
+I slip!"
+
+So Mahommed Khan came last, and they slipped and grunted upward, round
+and round a spiral staircase that was hewn out of solid rock. No light
+came through from anywhere to help them, but the priest climbed on, as
+though he were accustomed to the stair and knew the way from constant
+use. After five minutes of steady climbing the stone grew gradually dry.
+The steps became smaller, too, and deeper, and not so hard to climb.
+Suddenly the priest reached out his arm and pulled at something or other
+that hung down in the darkness. A stone in the wall rolled open. A flood
+of light burst in and nearly blinded them.
+
+"We are below Kharvani's temple!" announced the priest. He led them
+through the opening into a four-square room hewn from the rock below the
+foundations of the temple some time in the dawn of history. The light
+that had blinded them when they first emerged proved to be nothing but
+the flicker of two small oil lamps that hung suspended by brass chains
+from the painted ceiling. The only furniture was mats spread on the
+cut-stone floor.
+
+"By which way did we come?" asked the Risaldar, staring in amazement
+round the walls. There was not a door nor crack, nor any sign of one,
+except that a wooden ladder in one corner led to a trapdoor overhead,
+and they had certainly not entered by the ladder.
+
+"Nay! That is a secret!" grinned the priest. "He who can may find the
+opening! Here can the woman and her servant stay until we need them."
+
+"Here in this place?"
+
+"Where else? No man but I knows of this crypt! The ladder there leads to
+another room, where there is yet another ladder, and that one leads out
+through a secret door I know of, straight into the temple. Art ready?
+There is need for haste!"
+
+"Wait!" said the Risaldar.
+
+"These soldiers!" sneered the priest. "It is wait--wait--wait with them,
+always!"
+
+"Hast thou a son."
+
+"Ay! But what of it?"
+
+"I said 'hast,' not 'hadst'!"
+
+"Ay. I have a son.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In one of the temple-chambers overhead."
+
+"Nay, priest! Thy son lies gagged and bound and trussed in a place I
+know of, and which thou dost not know!"
+
+"Since when?"
+
+"Since by my orders he was laid there."
+
+"Thou art the devil! Thou liest, Rajput!"
+
+"So? Go seek thy son!"
+
+The priest's face had blanched beneath the olive of his skin, and he
+stared at Mahommed Khan through distended eyes.
+
+"My son!" he muttered.
+
+"Aye! Thy priestling! He stays where he is, as hostage, until my return!
+Also the heavenborn stays here! If, on my return, I find the heavenborn
+safe and sound, I will exchange her for thy son--and if not, I will
+tear thy son into little pieces before thy eyes, priest! Dost thou
+understand?"
+
+"Thou liest! My son is overhead in the temple here!"
+
+"Go seek him, then!"
+
+The priest turned and scampered up the ladder with an agility that was
+astonishing in a man of his build and paunch.
+
+"Hanuman should have been thy master!" jeered the Risaldar. "So run the
+bandar-log, the monkey-folk!"
+
+But the priest had no time to answer him. He was half frantic with the
+sickening fear of a father for his only son. He returned ten minutes
+later, panting, and more scared than ever.
+
+"Go, take thy white woman," he exclaimed, "and give me my son back!"
+
+"Nay, priest! Shall I ride with her alone through that horde that
+are marching through the gate? I go now for an escort; in
+eight--ten--twelve--I know not how many hours, I will return for her,
+and then--thy son will be exchanged for her, or he dies thus in many
+pieces!"
+
+He turned to Suliman. "Is she awake yet?" he demanded.
+
+"Barely, but she recovers."
+
+"Then tell her, when consciousness returns, that I have gone and will
+return for her. And stay here, thou, and guard her until I come."
+
+"Ha, sahib!"
+
+"Now, show the way!"
+
+"But--" said the priest, "our bargain? The price that we agreed on--one
+lakh, was it not?"
+
+"One lakh of devils take thee and tear thee into little pieces! Wouldst
+bribe a Rajput, a Risaldar? For that insult I will repay thee one day
+with interest, O priest! Now, show the way!"
+
+"But how shall I be sure about my son?"
+
+"Be sure that the priestling will starve to death or die of thirst or
+choke, unless I hurry! He is none too easy where he lies!"
+
+"Go! Hurry, then!" swore the priest. "May all the gods there are, and
+thy Allah with them, afflict thee with all their curses--thee and thine!
+Up with you! Up that ladder! Run! But, if the gods will, I will meet
+thee again when the storm is over!"
+
+"Inshallah!" growled Mahommed Khan.
+
+Ten minutes later a crash and a clatter and a shower of sparks broke out
+in the sweltering courtyard where the guns had stood and waited. It was
+Shaitan, young Bellairs' Khaubuli charger, with his haunches under him,
+plunging across the flagstones, through the black-dark archway, out
+on the plain beyond--in answer to the long, sharp-roweled spurs of the
+Risaldar Mahommed Khan.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+Dawn broke and the roofs of old Hanadra became resplendent with the
+varied colors of turbans and pugrees and shawls. As though the rising
+sun had loosed the spell, a myriad tongues, of women chiefly, rose in
+a babel of clamor, and the few men who had been left in. Hanadra by
+the night's armed exodus came all together and growled prophetically in
+undertones. Now was the day of days, when that part of India, at least,
+should cast off the English yoke.
+
+To the temple! The cry went up before the sun was fifteen minutes high.
+There are a hundred temples in Hanadra, age-old all of them and carved
+on the outside with strange images of heathen gods in high relief, like
+molds turned inside out. But there is but one temple that that cry could
+mean--Kharvani's; and there could be but one meaning for the cry. Man,
+woman and child would pray Kharvani, Bride of Siva the Destroyer, to
+intercede with Siva and cause him to rise and smite the English. On the
+skyline, glinting like flashed signals in the early sun, bright English
+bayonets had appeared; and between them and Hanadra was a dense black
+mass, the whole of old Hanadra's able-bodied manhood, lined up to
+defend the city. Now was the time to pray. Fifty to one are by no means
+despicable odds, but the aid of the gods as well is better!
+
+So the huge dome of Kharvani's temple began to echo to the sound of
+slippered feet and awe-struck whisperings, and the big, dim auditorium
+soon filled to overflowing. No light came in from the outer world.
+There was nothing to illuminate the mysteries except the chain-hung
+grease-lamps swinging here and there from beams, and they served only
+to make the darkness visible. Bats flicked in and out between them
+and disappeared in the echoing gloom above. Censers belched out
+sweet-smelling, pungent clouds of sandalwood to drown the stench of hot
+humanity; and the huge graven image of Kharvani--serene and smiling and
+indifferent--stared round-eyed from the darkness.
+
+Then a priest's voice boomed out in a solemn incantation and the
+whispering hushed. He chanted age-old verses, whose very meaning was
+forgotten in the womb of time--forgotten as the artist who had painted
+the picture of idealized Kharvani on the wall. Ten priests, five on
+either side of the tremendous idol, emerged chanting from the gloom
+behind, and then a gong rang, sweetly, clearly, suddenly, and the
+chanting ceased. Out stepped the High Priest from a niche below the
+image, and his voice rose in a wailing, sing-song cadence that reechoed
+from the dome and sent a thrill through every one who heard.
+
+His chant had scarcely ceased when the temple door burst open and a man
+rushed in.
+
+"They have begun!" he shouted. "The battle has begun!"
+
+As though in ready confirmation of his words, the distant reverberating
+boom of cannon filtered through the doorway from the world of grim
+realities outside.
+
+"They have twenty cannon with them! They have more guns than we have!"
+wailed he who brought the news. Again began the chanting that sought the
+aid of Siva the Destroyer. Only, there were fewer who listened to this
+second chant. Those who were near the doorway slipped outside and joined
+the watching hundreds on the roofs.
+
+For an hour the prayers continued in the stifling gloom, priest
+relieving priest and chant following on chant, until the temple was half
+emptied of its audience. One by one, and then by twos and threes, the
+worshipers succumbed to human curiosity and crept stealthily outside to
+watch.
+
+Another messenger ran in and shouted: "They have charged! Their cavalry
+have charged! They are beaten back! Their dead lie twisted on the
+plain!"
+
+At the words there was a stampede from the doorway, and half of those
+who had remained rushed out. There were hundreds still there, though,
+for that great gloomy pile of Kharvani's could hold an almost countless
+crowd.
+
+Within another hour the same man rushed to the door again and shouted:
+
+"Help comes! Horsemen are coming from the north! Rajputs, riding like
+leaves before the wind! Even the Mussulmans are for us!"
+
+But the chanting never ceased. No one stopped to doubt the friendship
+of arrivals from the north, for to that side there were no English, and
+England's friends would surely follow byroads to her aid. The city gates
+were wide open to admit wounded or messengers or friends--with a view,
+even, to a possible retreat--and whoever cared could ride through them
+unchallenged and unchecked.
+
+Even when the crash of horses' hoofs rattled on the stone paving outside
+the temple there was no suspicion. No move was made to find out who
+it was who rode. But when the temple door reechoed to the thunder of a
+sword-hilt and a voice roared "Open!" there was something like a panic.
+The chanting stopped and the priests and the High Priest listened to the
+stamping on the stone pavement at the temple front.
+
+"Open!" roared a voice again, and the thundering on the panels
+recommenced. Then some one drew the bolt and a horse's head--a huge
+Khaubuli stallion's--appeared, snorting and panting and wild-eyed.
+
+"Farward!" roared the Risaldar Mahommed Khan, kneeling on young
+Bellairs' winded charger.
+
+"Farm twos! Farward!"
+
+Straight into the temple, two by two, behind the Risaldar, rode two
+fierce lines of Rajputs, overturning men and women--their drawn swords
+pointing this way and that--their dark eyes gleaming. Without a word
+to any one they rode up to the image, where the priests stood in an
+astonished herd.
+
+"Fron-tt farm! Rear rank--'bout-face!" barked the Risaldar, and there
+was another clattering and stamping on the stone floor as the panting
+chargers pranced into the fresh formation, back to back.
+
+"The memsahib!" growled Mahommed Khan. "Where is she?"
+
+"My son!" said the High Priest. "Bring me my son!"
+
+"A life for a life! Thy heavenborn first!"
+
+"Nay! Show me my son first!"
+
+The Risaldar leaped from his horse and tossed his reins to the man
+behind him. In a second his sword was at the High Priest's throat.
+
+"Where is that secret stair?" he growled. "Lead on!"
+
+The swordpoint pricked him. Two priests tried to interfere, but wilted
+and collapsed with fright as four fierce, black-bearded Rajputs spurred
+their horses forward. The swordpoint pricked still deeper.
+
+"My son!" said the High Priest.
+
+"A life for a life! Lead on!"
+
+The High Priest surrendered, with a dark and cunning look, though, that
+hinted at something or other in reserve. He pulled at a piece of
+carving on the wail behind and pointed to a stair that showed behind
+the outswung door. Then he plucked another priest by the sleeve and
+whispered.
+
+The priest passed on the whisper. A third priest turned and ran.
+
+"That way!" said the High Priest, pointing.
+
+"I? Nay! I go not down!" He raised his voice into an ululating howl. "O
+Suliman!" he bellowed. "Suliman! O!--Suliman! Bring up the heaven-born!"
+
+A growl like the distant rumble from a bear-pit answered him. Then Ruth
+Bellairs' voice was heard calling up the stairway.
+
+"Is that you, Mahommed Khan?"
+
+"Ay, memsahib!"
+
+"Good! I'm coming!"
+
+She had recovered far enough to climb the ladder and the steep stone
+stair above it, and Suliman climbed up behind her, grumbling dreadful
+prophecies of what would happen to the priests now that Mohammed Khan
+had come.
+
+"Is all well, Risaldar?" she asked him.
+
+"Nay, heavenborn! All is not well yet! The general sahib from Jundhra
+and your husband's guns and others, making one division, are engaged
+with rebels eight or nine miles from here. We saw part of the battle as
+we rode!"
+
+"Who wins?"
+
+"It is doubtful, heavenborn! How could we tell from this distance?"
+
+"Have you a horse for me?"
+
+"Ay, heavenborn! Here! Bring up that horse, thou, and Suliman's! Ride
+him cross-saddle, heavenborn--there were no side-saddles in Siroeh! Nay,
+he is just a little frightened. He will stand--he will not throw thee!
+I did better than I thought, heavenborn. I come with four-and-twenty,
+making twenty-six with me and Suliman. An escort for a queen! So--sit
+him quietly. Leave the reins free. Suliman will lead him! Ho! Fronnnt!
+Rank--'bout-face!"
+
+"My son!" wailed the High Priest. "Where is my son?"
+
+"Tell him, Suliman!"
+
+"Where I caught thee, thou idol-briber!" snarled the Risaldar's
+half-brother.
+
+"Where? In that den of stinks. Gagged and bound all this while?"
+
+"Ha! Gagged and bound and out of mischief where all priests and
+priests' sons ought to be!" laughed Mahommed Khan. "Farward! Farm twos
+Ter-r-r-ott!"
+
+In went the spur, and the snorting, rattling, clanking cavalcade sidled
+and pranced out of the temple into the sunshine, with Ruth and Suliman
+in the midst of them.
+
+"Gallop!" roared the Risaldar, the moment that the last horse was clear
+of the temple-doors. And in that instant he saw what the High Priest's
+whispering had meant.
+
+Coming up the street toward them was a horde of silent, hurrying Hindus,
+armed with swords and spears, wearing all of them the caste-marks of
+the Brahman--well-fed, indignant relations of the priests, intent on
+avenging the defilement of Kharvani's temple.
+
+"Canter! Fronnnt--farm--Gallop! Charge!"
+
+Ruth found herself in the midst of a whirlwind of flashing sabers,
+astride of a lean-flanked Katiawari gelding that could streak like
+an antelope, knee to knee with a pair of bearded Rajputs, one of whom
+gripped her bridle-rein--thundering down a city street straight for a
+hundred swords that blocked her path. She set her eyes on the middle of
+Mahommed Khan's straight back, gripped the saddle with both hands, set
+her teeth and waited for the shock. Mahommed Khan's right arm rose and
+his sword flashed in the sunlight as he stood up in his stirrups. She
+shut her eyes. But there was no shock! There was the swish of whirling
+steel, the thunder of hoofs, the sound of bodies falling. There was a
+scream or two as well and a coarse-mouthed Rajput oath. But when she
+dared to open her eyes once more they were thundering still, headlong
+down the city street and Mahommed Khan was whirling his sword in mid-air
+to shake the blood from it.
+
+Ahead lay the city gate and she could see another swarm of Hindus
+rushing from either side to close it. But "Charge!" yelled Mahommed Khan
+again, and they swept through the crowd, through the half-shut gate, out
+on the plain beyond, as a wind sweeps through the forest, leaving fallen
+tree-trunks in its wake.
+
+"Halt!" roared the Risaldar, when they were safely out of range. "Are
+any hurt? No? Good for us that their rifles are all in the firing-line
+yonder!"
+
+He sat for a minute peering underneath his hand at the distant, dark,
+serried mass of men and the steel-tipped lines beyond it, watching the
+belching cannon and the spurting flames of the close-range rifle-fire.
+
+"See, heavenborn!" he said, pointing. "Those will be your husband's
+guns! See, over on the left, there. See! They fire! Those two! We can
+reach them if we make a circuit on the flank here!"
+
+"But can we get through, Risaldar? Won't they see us and cut us off?"
+
+"Heavenborn!" he answered, "men who dare ride into a city temple and
+snatch thee from the arms of priests dare and can do anything! Take
+this, heavenborn--take it as a keepsake, in case aught happens!"
+
+He drew off the priest's ring, gave it to her and then, before she could
+reply:
+
+"Canter!" he roared. The horses sprang forward in answer to the spurs
+and there was nothing for Ruth to do but watch the distant battle and
+listen to the deep breathing of the Rajputs on either hand.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+There could be no retreat that day and no thought of it. Jundhra and
+Doonha were in ruins. The bridges were down behind them and Hanadra lay
+ahead. The British had to win their way into it or perish. Tired out,
+breakfastless, suffering from the baking heat, the long, thin
+British line had got--not to hold at bay but to smash and pierce--an
+over-whelming force of Hindus that was stiffened up and down its length
+by small detachments of native soldiers who had mutinied.
+
+Numbers were against them, and even superiority of weapons was not so
+overwhelmingly in their favor, for those were the days of short-range
+rifle-fire and smoothbore artillery, and one gun was considerably like
+another. The mutinous sepoys had their rifles with them; there were
+guns from the ramparts of Hanadra that were capable of quite efficient
+service at close range; and practically every man in the dense-packed
+rebel line had a firearm of some kind. It was only in cavalry and
+discipline and pluck that the British force had the advantage, and the
+cavalry had already charged once and had been repulsed.
+
+General Turner rode up and down the sweltering firing-line, encouraging
+the men when it seemed to him they needed it and giving directions to
+his officers. He was hidden from view oftener than not by the
+rolling clouds of smoke and he popped up here and there suddenly and
+unexpectedly. Wherever he appeared there was an immediate stiffening
+among the ranks, as though he carried a supply of spare enthusiasm with
+him and could hand it out.
+
+Colonel Carter, commanding the right wing, turned his head for a second
+at the sound of a horse's feet and found the general beside him.
+
+"Had I better have my wounded laid in a wagon, sir?" he suggested, "in
+case you find it necessary to fall back?"
+
+"There will be no retreat!" said General Turner. "Leave your wounded
+where they are. I never saw a cannon bleed before. How's that?"
+
+He spurred his horse over to where one of Bellairs' guns was being run
+forward into place again and Colonel Carter followed him. There was
+blood dripping from the muzzle of it.
+
+"We're short of water, sir!" said Colonel Carter.
+
+And as he spoke a gunner dipped his sponge into a pool of blood and
+rammed it home.
+
+Bellairs was standing between his two guns, looking like the shadow of
+himself, worn out with lack of sleep, disheveled, wounded. There was
+blood dripping from his forehead and he wore his left arm in a sling
+made from his shirt.
+
+"Fire!" he ordered, and the two guns barked in unison and jumped back
+two yards or more.
+
+"If you'll look," said General Turner, plucking at the colonel's
+sleeve, "you'll see a handful of native cavalry over yonder behind the
+enemy--rather to the enemy's left--there between those two clouds of
+smoke. D'you see them?"
+
+"They look like Sikhs or Rajputs," said the colonel.
+
+"Yes. Don't they? I'd like you to keep an eye on them. They've come
+up from the rear. I caught sight of them quite a while ago and I can't
+quite make them out. It's strange, but I can't believe that they belong
+to the enemy. D'you see?--there--they've changed direction. They're
+riding as though they intended to come round the enemy's left flank!"
+
+"By gad, they are! Look! The enemy are moving to cut them off!"
+
+"I must get back to the other wing!" said General Turner. "But that
+looks like the making of an opportunity! Keep both eyes lifting, Carter,
+and advance the moment you see any confusion in the enemy's ranks."
+
+He rode off, and Colonel Carter stared long and steadily at the
+approaching horsemen. He saw a dense mass of the enemy, about a thousand
+strong, detach itself from the left wing and move to intercept them, and
+he noticed that the movement made a tremendous difference to the ranks
+opposed to him. He stepped up to young Bellairs and touched his sleeve.
+Bellairs started like a man roused from a dream.
+
+"That's your wife over there!" said Colonel Carter. "There can't be any
+other white woman here-abouts riding with a Rajput escort!"
+
+Bellairs gripped the colonel's outstretched arm.
+
+"Where?" he almost screamed. "Where? I don't see her!"
+
+"There, man! There, where that mass of men is moving! Look! By the Lord
+Harry! He's charging right through the mob! That's Mahommed Khan, I'll
+bet a fortune! Now's our chance Bugler!"
+
+The bugler ran to him, and he began to puff into his instrument.
+
+"Blow the 'attention' first!"
+
+Out rang the clear, strident notes, and the non-commissioned officers
+and men took notice that a movement of some kind would shortly be
+required of them, but the din of firing never ceased for a single
+instant. Then, suddenly, an answering bugle sang out from the other
+flank.
+
+"Advance in echelon!" commanded Colonel Carter, and the bugler did his
+best to split his cheeks in a battle-rending blast.
+
+"You remain where you are, sir!" he ordered young Bellairs. "Keep your
+guns served to the utmost!"
+
+Six-and-twenty horsemen, riding full-tilt at a thousand men, may look
+like a trifle, but they are disconcerting. What they hit, they kill; and
+if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations.
+And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home. He changed direction
+suddenly and, instead of using up his horses' strength in outflanking
+the enemy, who had marched to intercept him, and making a running target
+of his small command, he did the unexpected--which is the one best thing
+to do in war. He led his six-and-twenty at a headlong gallop straight
+for the middle of the crowd--it could not be called by any military
+name. They fired one ragged volley at him and then had no time to
+load before he was in the middle of them, clashing right and left and
+pressing forward. They gave way, right and left, before him, and a good
+number of them ran. Half a hundred of them were cut down as they fled
+toward their firing-line. At that second, just as the Risaldar and his
+handful burst through the mob and the mob began rushing wildly out
+of his way, the British bugles blared out the command to advance in
+echelon.
+
+The Indians were caught between a fire and a charge that they had good
+reason to fear in front of them, and a disturbance on their left flank
+that might mean anything. As one-half of them turned wildly to face what
+might be coming from this unexpected quarter, the British troops came
+on with a roar, and at the same moment Mahommed Khan reached the rear of
+their firing-line and crashed headlong into it.
+
+In a second the whole Indian line was in confusion and in another minute
+it was in full retreat not knowing nor even guessing what had routed it.
+Retreat grew into panic and panic to stampede and, five minutes after
+the Risaldar's appearance on the scene, half of the Indian line was
+rushing wildly for Hanadra and the other half was retiring sullenly in
+comparatively dense and decent order.
+
+Bellairs could not see all that happened. The smoke from his own guns
+obscured the view, and the necessity for giving orders to his men
+prevented him from watching as he would have wished. But he saw
+the Rajputs burst out through the Indian ranks and he saw his own
+charger--Shaitan the unmistakable--careering across the plain toward him
+riderless.
+
+"For the love of God!" he groaned, raising both fists to heaven, "has
+she got this far, and then been killed! Oh, what in Hades did I entrust
+her to an Indian for? The pig-headed, brave old fool! Why couldn't he
+ride round them, instead of charging through?"
+
+As he groaned aloud, too wretched even to think of what his duty was, a
+galloper rode up to him.
+
+"Bring up your guns, sir, please!" he ordered. "You're asked to hurry!
+Take up position on that rising ground and warm up the enemy's retreat!"
+
+"Limber up!" shouted Bellairs, coming to himself again. Fifteen seconds
+later his two guns were thundering up the rise.
+
+As he brought them to "action front" and tried to collect his thoughts
+to figure out the range, a finger touched his shoulder and he turned to
+see another artillery officer standing by him.
+
+"I've been lent from another section," he explained: "You're wanted."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Over there, where you see Colonel Carter standing. It's your wife wants
+you, I think!"
+
+Bellairs did not wait for explanations. He sent for his horse and
+mounted and rode across the intervening space at a breakneck gallop that
+he could barely stop in time to save himself from knocking the colonel
+over. A second later he was in Ruth's arms.
+
+"I thought you were dead when I saw Shaitan!" he said. He was nearly
+sobbing.
+
+"No, Mahommed Khan rode him," she answered, and she made no pretense
+about not sobbing. She was crying like a child.
+
+"Salaam, Bellairs sahib!" said a weak voice close to him. He noticed
+Colonel Carter bending over a prostrate figure, lifting the head up
+on his knee. There were three Rajputs standing between, though, and he
+could not see whose the figure was.
+
+"Come over here!" said Colonel Carter, and young Bellairs obeyed him,
+leaving Ruth sitting on the ground where she was.
+
+"Wouldn't you care to thank Mohammed Khan?" It was a little cruel of the
+colonel to put quite so much venom in his voice, for, when all is said
+and done: a man has almost a right to be forgetful when he has just had
+his young wife brought him out of the jaws of death. At least he has a
+good excuse for it. The sting of the reproof left him bereft of words
+and he stood looking down at the old Risaldar, saying nothing and
+feeling very much ashamed.
+
+"Salaam, Bellairs sahib!" The voice was growing feebler. "I would have
+done more for thy father's son! Thou art welcome. Aie! But thy charger
+is a good one! Good-by! Time is short, and I would talk with the colonel
+sahib!"
+
+He waved Bellairs away with a motion of his hand and the lieutenant went
+back to his wife again.
+
+"He sent me away just like that, too!" she told him. "He said he had no
+time left to talk to women!"
+
+Colonel Carter bent down again above the Risaldar, and listened to as
+much as he had time to tell of what had happened.
+
+"But couldn't you have ridden round them, Risaldar?" he asked them.
+
+"Nay, sahib! It was touch and go! I gave the touch! I saw as I rode how
+close the issue was and I saw my chance and took it! Had the memsahib
+been slain, she had at least died in full view of the English--and there
+was a battle to be won. What would you? I am a soldier--I."
+
+"Indeed you are!" swore Colonel Carter.
+
+"Sahib! Call my sons!"
+
+His sons were standing near him, but the colonel called up his
+grandsons, who had been told to stand at a little distance off. They
+clustered round the Risaldar in silence, and he looked them over and
+counted them.
+
+"All here?" he asked.
+
+"All here!"
+
+"Whose sons and grandsons are ye?"
+
+"Thine!" came the chorus.
+
+"This sahib says that having done my bidding and delivered her ye rode
+to rescue, ye are no more bound to the Raj. Ye may return to your homes
+if ye wish."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Ye may fight for the rebels, if ye wish! There will be a safe-permit
+written."
+
+Again there was no answer.
+
+"For whom, then, fight ye?"
+
+"For the Raj!" The deep-throated answer rang out promptly from every
+one of them, and they stood with their sword-hilts thrust out toward the
+colonel. He rose and touched each hilt in turn.
+
+"They are now thy servants!" said the Risaldar, laying his head back.
+"It is good! I go now. Give my salaams to General Turner sahib!"
+
+"Good-by, old war-dog!" growled the colonel, in an Anglo-Saxon effort to
+disguise emotion. He gripped at the right hand that was stretched out on
+the ground beside him, but it was lifeless.
+
+Risaldar Mahommed Khan, two-medal man and pensionless
+gentleman-at-large, had gone to turn in his account of how he had
+remembered the salt which he had eaten.
+
+
+
+
+MACHASSAN AH
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Waist-held in the chains and soused in the fifty-foot-high spray, Joe
+Byng eyed his sounding lead that swung like a pendulum below him, and
+named it sacrilege.
+
+"This 'ere navy ain't a navy no more," he muttered. "This 'ere's a
+school-gal promenade, 'and-in-'and, an' mind not to get your little
+trotters wet, that's what this is, so 'elp me two able seamen an' a red
+marine!"
+
+From the moment that the lookout, lashed to the windlass drum up
+forward, had spied the little craft away to leeward and had bellowed his
+report of it through hollowed hands between the thunder of the waves,
+Joe Byng had had premonitory symptoms of uneasiness. He had felt in his
+bones that the navy was about to be nose-led into shame.
+
+At the wheel, both eyes on the compass, as the sea law bids, but both
+ears on the more-even-than-usual-alert, Curley Crothers felt the same
+sensations but expressed them otherwise.
+
+"Admiral's orders!" he muttered. "Maybe the admiral was drunk?"
+
+The brass gongs clanged down in the bowels of H.M.S. Puncher and she
+gradually lost what little weigh she had, rolling her bridge ends under
+in the heave and hollow of a beam-on monsoon sea.
+
+"How much does he say he wants?" asked her commander.
+
+Joe Byng in the chains and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized
+the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy;
+every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed
+exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt
+for what he had seen fit to log as "half a gale."
+
+"He says he'll take us in for fifty pounds, sir."
+
+"Oh! Tell him to make it shillings, or else to get out of my course!"
+
+It is not much in the way of Persian Gulf Arabic that a man picks
+up from textbooks but at garnering the business end of beach-born
+dialects--the end that gets results at least expense of time
+or energy--the Navy goes even the Army half a dozen better. The
+sublieutenant's argument, bawled from the bridge rail to the reeling
+little boat below, was a marvel in its own sweet way; it combined abuse
+and scorn with a cataclysmic blast of threat in six explosive sentences.
+
+"He says he'll take us in for ten pounds, sir," he reported, without the
+vestige of a smile.
+
+"Oh! Ask Mr. Hartley to step up on the bridge, will you?"
+
+Two minutes later, during which the nasal howls from the boat were
+utterly ignored, the acting chief engineer hauled himself along the rail
+hand over hand to windward, ducking below the canvas guard as a more
+than usually big comber split against the Puncher's side and hove itself
+to heaven.
+
+"It beats me how any man can keep a coat on him this weather," he
+remarked, and the sublieutenant noticed that the streams that ran down
+both his temples were not sea water. "Send for me?"
+
+His temper, judging by his voice, would seem to be a lot worse than
+could be due to the pitching of the ship.
+
+"Yes. There's a pilot overside, and our orders are to take a pilot
+aboard when running in, if available. There are three men bailing that
+boat below there, and the sea's gaining on them. They'll need rescuing
+within two hours. Then we'd have a pilot aboard and would have saved the
+government ten pounds. Point is, can you manage in the engine-room for
+two or three hours longer? Three more waves like that last one and the
+man's ours anyway!"
+
+"He might not wait two hours," suggested Mr. Hartley. "He might get
+tired of looking at us, and beat back into port. Then where would be
+your strategy?"
+
+"Then there wouldn't be a pilot available. I'd be justified in going in
+without one. Point is, can you hold out below?"
+
+"Man," said Mr. Hartley, "you're a genius." He peered through the spray
+down to leeward, where the pilot's boat danced a death dance alongside,
+heel and toe to the Puncher's statelier swing. "Yes; there are three men
+bailing, and you're a genius. But no! The answer's no! The engines'll
+keep on turning, maybe and perhaps, until we make the shelter o' yon
+reef. There's no knowing what a cherry-red bearing will do. I can give
+ye maybe fifteen knots; maybe a leetle more for just five minutes, for
+steerage way and luck, and after that--"
+
+Even crouched as he was against the canvas guard he contrived to shrug
+his shoulders.
+
+"But if we go in there are you sure you can contrive to patch her up? It
+looks like a rotten passage, and not much of a berth beyond it."
+
+"I could cool her down."
+
+"Oh, if that's all you want, I can anchor outside in thirty fathoms."
+
+Curley Crothers heard that and his whole frame stiffened; there seemed
+a chance yet that the Navy might not be disgraced. But it faded on the
+instant.
+
+"Man, we've got to go inside and we've got to hurry! Better in there
+than at the bottom of the Gulf! Put her where she'll hold still for a
+day, or maybe two days--"
+
+"Say a month!" suggested the commander caustically.
+
+"Say three days for the sake of argument. Then I can put her to rights.
+I daren't take down a thing while she's rolling twenty-five and more,
+and I've got to take things down! Why, man, the engine-room is all
+pollution from gratings to bilge; if I loosened one more bolt than is
+loose a'ready her whole insides 'ud take charge and dance quadrilles
+until we drowned!"
+
+"You won't try to make Bombay?"
+
+"I'll try to give ye steam as far as the far side o' yon reef. After
+that I wash my hands of a' responsibility!"
+
+"Oh, very well. Mr. White!"
+
+The sublieutenant hauled himself in turn to windward. Curley Crothers
+gave the wheel a half-spoke and looked as if he had no interest in
+anything. Joe Byng in the chains bowed his head and groaned inwardly;
+his sticky, spray-washed lead seemed all-absorbing.
+
+"Tell that black robber to hurry aboard, unless he wants me to come in
+without him."
+
+The little boat had drifted fast before the wind, and the sublieutenant
+had to bellow through a megaphone to where the three men bailed and the
+ragged oarsmen swung their weight against the storm. The man of ebony,
+who would be pilot and disgrace the Navy, balanced on a thwart with
+wide-spread naked toes and yelled an ululating answer. With his rags
+out-blown in the monsoon he looked like a sea wraith come to life. The
+big gongs clanged again, and the Puncher drifted rather than drove down
+on the smaller craft. A hand line caught the pilot precisely in the
+face. He grabbed it frantically, fell headlong in the sea, and was
+hauled aboard.
+
+"He says he wants a tow for that boat of his," reported the
+sublieutenant. "Said it in English, too--seems he knows more than he
+pretends."
+
+"Missed it, by gad, by just about five minutes!" said the commander
+aloud but to himself. "Well--the bargain's made, so it can't be helped.
+That boat's sinking! Throw 'em a line, quick!"
+
+The pilot's crew displayed no overdone affection for their craft, and
+there was no struggle to the last to leave it. One by one--whichever
+could grab the line first was the first to come--they were hauled
+through the thundering waves and their boat was left to sink. Then,
+before they could adjust their unaccustomed feet to the different
+balance of the Puncher's heaving deck, the gongs clanged and the
+destroyer leaped ahead like a dripping sea-soused water beetle, into her
+utmost speed that instant.
+
+All conscious of his new-won dignity, and utterly regardless of his
+boat, the pilot had found the bridge at once. He clung to the rail there
+and braced one naked foot against a stanchion. To him the ship's speed
+seemed the all-absorbing thing, for either Mr. Hartley had forgotten
+just how many revolutions would make fifteen knots or else he had
+underestimated his engine-room's capacity. The Puncher split the waves
+and spewed them twenty feet above her, racing head-on for the reef,
+and Curley Crothers was too busy at his wheel to pass the pilot the
+surreptitious insult he intended.
+
+The gongs clanged presently, and the Puncher swallowed half her speed at
+once, giving the pilot courage.
+
+"This exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!" he remarked.
+
+"No bottom at eight!" sang Joe Byng in the chains.
+
+Three words passed between the commander and Crothers, and the Puncher
+hove a weed-draped underside high over the crest of a beam-on roller as
+she veered a dozen points, ducked her starboard rail into the trough
+of it, and sliced her long thin nose, sizzling and swirling, into the
+welter ahead. It was growing weedier and dirtier each minute.
+
+"No bottom at eight!" chanted Joe Byng.
+
+And at the sound of his voice the pilot hauled himself up by his
+leverage on the rail and found his voice again.
+
+"This most exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!"
+
+But the commander was too busy acting all three L's--Log, Lead and
+Lookout--his shrouded figure swaying to the heave and fall and his eyes
+fixed straight ahead of him on the double line of boiling foam. He had
+conned his course and had it charted in his head. There was no time to
+argue with a pilot.
+
+"Port you-ah hel-um, sah! Port you-ah hel-um!"
+
+"By the mark--seven!" sang Joe Byng from the chains.
+
+"Port you-ah hel-um, sah!" yelled the pilot in an ecstasy of fright.
+
+"Starboard a little," came the quiet command.
+
+Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty feet,
+as if Providence had pushed her.
+
+"Gawd A'mighty!" murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of
+jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.
+
+The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the
+weigh off her by pulling.
+
+"Half speed, sah! Go slow, sah! Go dead slow, sah! You'll pile up you-ah
+damn ship, sah! Ah tell you, sah, you'll pile her up as suah as hell,
+sah! 'Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah! For the love o' God,
+sah--Captain, sah--"
+
+"Oh, muzzle him, some one!" ordered the commander, and the jiggling,
+complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot's
+ebony notwithstanding.
+
+"By the deep--four!" warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song. The two gongs
+clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher's speed was reduced at
+once to her point, of minimum stability. She rolled and quivered like
+a living thing in fear, falling on and off, nosing out a passage on her
+own account apparently, and seeming to be gathering all her strength for
+one tremendous effort.
+
+"That's bettah, sah! That's bettah, Captain, sah! Go astern! This
+he-ah's the bar, sah--damn bad place, the bar, sah! Go astern, sah.
+Captain, sah, d'you he-ah me--go astern! Try again, 'nother place
+further up, sah. Captain, sah! Over that way; that way thar--that way,
+sah!"
+
+He pointed through the sky-flung spray with a trembling finger and his
+voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course
+and carried on. There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on
+that unsteadiest of ships. Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and
+looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle. Joe Byng in
+the chains kept up his even sing-song, expressionless, as if he were an
+automatic clock that did not care, but must record the truth each time
+his dripping pendulum touched bottom.
+
+"And a half--three!"
+
+White foam was boiling in among the dirty welter, and the Puncher's bow
+pitched suddenly as the first big bar wave lifted her; a second later
+her propellers chug-chug-chugged in surface spume as she kicked upward
+like a porpoise diving.
+
+"Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy!" groaned the pilot. "This he-ah watah's full
+of sharks, an' that's the bar! You're on the bar now, Captain, sah!"
+
+"By the mark--three!" Byng chanted steadily.
+
+"Starboard a little more," said the commander leaning forward and
+shoving the pilot away to leeward at the same time. Then he shouted to
+the fo'castle head, where a bosun's mate and his crew had climbed and
+were awaiting orders in evident and most unreasonable unconcern.
+
+"Get both anchors ready!"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir!" came the answer, and efficiency controlled by experts
+proceeded at kaleidoscopic angles to defy the elements. The big steel
+hooks were ready in an instant.
+
+"Stop her!" ordered the commander.
+
+The gongs clanged out an alarm and the throbbing ceased.
+
+"Hard astern, both engines!"
+
+Again there was a clangor under hatches, and the suffering bearings
+shrieked. The Puncher dropped her stern two feet or so, and the foam
+boiled brown round her propellers. The shock of the reversal pitched the
+pilot up against the forward rail, where he clung like a drowning man.
+
+"For the love o' God, sah! Captain; sah, we've struck! Ah told you so;
+Ah said--"
+
+"And a half-three!" chanted Joe Byng.
+
+"Stop her! Starboard engine ahead! Port engine ahead! Ease your helm!
+Meet her! Half speed ahead!"
+
+The Puncher pitched and rolled, kicking at the following monsoon that
+thundered at her counter and tossing up the foam that seethed about her
+bow. She trembled from end to end, as if the pounding of the water hurt
+her.
+
+"Helm amidships!" ordered the commander suddenly.
+
+"'Midships, sir!"
+
+"Full speed ahead, both engines!"
+
+The Puncher leaped, as all destroyers do the second day they are loosed.
+She sliced through the storm straight for the coral beach beyond the
+bar, shaking her graceful shoulders free of the sticky spray--reeling,
+rolling, thugging, kicking, bucking through the welter to where
+quiet water waited and the ever-lasting, utterly unrighteous stink of
+sun-baked Arab beaches. As each tremendous breaker thundered on her
+stern each time she lifted to the underswell, the pilot vowed that
+she had struck, rolling his eyes and calling two different deities to
+witness that none of it was any fault of his.
+
+"Thar's no water, sah--no water, Captain, sah--not one drop! You've
+piled up you-ah ship! Ah told you so; Ah said--"
+
+"By the deep--four!"
+
+"And a half-four!"
+
+"By the mark--five!"
+
+The Puncher was across the bar, gliding through muddy water on an even
+keel and giving the lie direct to him whose fee was ten pounds English.
+The pilot drew a talisman of some kind from underneath the least torn
+portion of his shirt, and to the commander's amazement kissed it. It is
+not often that a woolly headed, or any other, native of the East kisses
+either folk or things. But the commander was too busy at the moment to
+ask questions.
+
+"Have your starboard anchor ready!" he commanded, making mental notes.
+
+"Ready, sir!"
+
+The glittering, wet, wind-blown beach and the little estuary slid by
+like a painted panorama smelling of all the evil in the world as the
+Puncher eased her helm a time or two seeking a comfortable berth with
+Joe Byng's chanted aid.
+
+"Let go twenty fathoms!"
+
+The pilot sighed relief as the starboard anchor splashed into the water
+and the cable roared after it through the hawse pipe.
+
+"What nationality are you?" asked the commander, watching the Puncher
+swing and gaging distances, but sparing one eye now for his unwelcome
+but official guest.
+
+"Me, sah?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+The pilot looked anywhere but at his questioner, and a picture passed
+before the commander's eyes--a memory, perhaps, of something he had
+read about at school--of Christians in Nero's day being asked what their
+religion was.
+
+"Are you afraid to tell me?" he asked, softening his voice to a kinder
+tone as he remembered that God did not make all men Englishmen, and
+turning just in time to cause Crothers to withdraw his right leg.
+
+The pilot's toes were, after all, not destined to be trodden on just
+then.
+
+"No, sah, Ah'm not afraid."
+
+"What are you, then?"
+
+"Ah'm--"
+
+"Well? What?"
+
+"Ah'm English!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Captain, sah, Ah'm English!"
+
+"Oh! Are you? Um-m-m! Mr. White, give this man his ten pounds, will you?
+And get his receipt for it."
+
+That appeared to end matters, so far as the commander was concerned;
+official dignity forbade any further interest. But it was not so very
+long since Mr. White was senior midshipman, and it takes a man until
+he is admiral of the fleet to unlearn all he knew then and forget the
+curiosity of those days.
+
+"Now, I should have thought you were a Scotchman," he suggested without
+smiling, studying the salt-encrusted wrinkles on the ebony face. "You
+like whisky?"
+
+"Yes, sah--positively, sah! Yes, Captain, sah--Ah do!"
+
+Mr. White sent for whisky and poured out a stiff four fingers, to the
+awful disgust of Curley Crothers, who saw the whole transaction. The
+pilot consumed it so instantly that there seemed never to have been any
+in the glass.
+
+"I suppose your name's Macnab--or Macphairson--which? Sign here,
+please."
+
+The pilot took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a
+crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke
+under the strain, and he handed it back with an air of confidential
+remonstrance.
+
+"That thing's no mo-ah good," he volunteered.
+
+"So I see. Now tell me your name in full, so that I can write it next to
+the mark. It's a wonder of a mark! Mac--what's the rest of it?"
+
+"Hassan Ah."
+
+"Machassan?"
+
+"No, sah. Hassan Ah."
+
+"And you're English?"
+
+"Yes, sah."
+
+"With that name?"
+
+"Mah name makes no diffunts, sah. Ah'm English."
+
+"Well--here's your money. Cutter away, there! Put the pilot and his crew
+ashore! Sorry about your boat, pilot, but it couldn't be helped."
+
+"Makes me believe that I'm a nigger!" muttered Curley Crothers, not yet
+released from duty on the bridge.
+
+"First time I ever wished I was a Dutchman!" swore Joe Byng, coiling up
+his sounding line.
+
+Ten minutes later the cutter's captain swung the boat's stern in shore
+when he judged that he was reasonably near enough and too far in for
+sharks. He had his orders to put the pilot and his crew ashore, but the
+means had not been too exactly specified.
+
+"Get out and swim for it, you bally Englishman!" he ordered, using a
+boat-hook on the nearest one to make his meaning clear.
+
+One by one they jumped for it, the pilot going last. He plainly did not
+understand the point of view.
+
+"Ah'm English!" he expostulated. "Lissen he-ah, Ah'm English! Damwell
+English!"
+
+"All right; let's see you swim, English!" jeered the cutter's captain,
+and the pilot took the water with a splash.
+
+"Ah su-ah am English!" he vowed, as he swam for the shore, and he stood
+by the sea's edge repeating his assertion with a leathery pair of lungs
+until the cutter had rowed out of ear-shot.
+
+"English, is he?" said Joe Byng to Curley Crothers in the fo'castle,
+not twenty minutes later. "I'd show him, if I had him in here for twenty
+minutes!"
+
+"That fellow's interested me," said Crothers. "He's got me thinking. I
+vote we investigate him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Ashore, fathead."
+
+"There'll be no shore leave."
+
+"No? You left off being wet nurse to the dawg?" "I brush him, mornin's;
+if that's what you mean."
+
+"Is he fit?"
+
+"Fit to fight a bumboat full o' pilots!"
+
+"Could he be sick for an hour?"
+
+"Might be did."
+
+"Tomorrow?"
+
+"Morning?"
+
+"At about two bells?"
+
+"It could be done."
+
+"Then do it!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, Joe Byng my boy, you and I want shore leave; and the pup--and
+he's a decent pup--must suffer for to make a 'tween-deck holiday. Get my
+meaning? I've a propagandrum that'll work this tide. You go and set the
+fuse in the pup's inside; and mind you, time it right, my son--for two
+bells when the old man's in the chair!"
+
+So Joe Byng, who was something of an expert in the way and ways of
+dogs, departed in search of an oiler with whom he was on terms of
+condescension; and he returned to the fo'castle a little later with
+the nastiest, most awful-smelling mess that ever emanated even from the
+engine-room of a destroyer in the Persian Gulf (where grease and things
+run rancid.)
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Lying lazily at anchor off the reeking beach of Adra Bight, the Puncher
+looked peaceful and complacent--which is altogether opposite to what she
+and her commander were, or had been, for a month. The ship hummed her
+shut-in discontent, as a hive does when the bees propose to swarm, and
+her commander--who never, be it noted, went to windward of the one word
+"damn"--used that one word very frequently.
+
+He sat "abaft the mainmast" at a table that was splotched already with
+abundant perspiration, and the acting engineer who stood in front of him
+shifted from foot to foot in attitudes expressive of increasing agony
+of mind. It grew obvious at last that there was a limit to Mr. Hartley's
+store of courteous deference.
+
+There had been news, red hot but wrong, of dhows loaded to the
+water-line with guns and ammunition somewhere up the Gulf. India, ever
+fretful for her tribes beyond the border, had borrowed Applewaite and
+his destroyer by instant cablegram, and jealously held records had been
+broken while the Puncher quartered those indecent seas and heated up her
+bearings. It was almost too much to have to come back empty-handed. It
+was quite too much to have to run for shelter under the lee of Adra's
+uninviting coral reef. And to be told by an acting engineer that
+he would have to stay a week was utterly beyond the scope of polite
+conversation.
+
+"Why a week?" asked Commander Applewaite, with eyebrows raised to the
+nth power of incredulity.
+
+"Why a week?" asked Mr. Hartley, breaking down the barrier of
+self-restraint at last. "I'll tell you why. Because, although the guts
+of her are so much scrap-iron, you've a crew of engineers who could
+build machinery of hell-slag--build it, mind--and could get steam out o'
+the Sahara, where there isn't any water at all.
+
+"Because--conditional upon the act o' God and your permission--I'm
+willing to perform a miracle. Because the whole engine-room complement
+is dancing mad for shore leave, and there'll be none this side o'
+Bombay; and because, in consequence o' that, creation would be a mild
+name for what's about to happen under gratings until the shafts revolve
+again. Man, I wish ye'd take one peep at her bearings, though ye
+wouldn't understand.
+
+"Because you're lucky; any other engineer in all the navies o' the world
+would take a month to tinker with her, even if he didn't have to send to
+Bombay for a tow. Because--"
+
+"That'll do!" said Applewaite, his mind wandering already in search
+of suitable employment for the crew. "Get the repairs done as soon as
+possible; we stay here until you have finished what is necessary."
+
+It looked like an evil moment for asking favors, but it was the time
+laid down in Regulations when such things as favors may be had; and
+it was the moment Curley Crothers had picked out for asking for shore
+leave.
+
+"Come 'ere, Scamp. Come along, Scamp. Come along 'ere--good boy!" he
+coaxed, dragging by a short chain in his wake the sorriest-looking
+bull terrier that ever acted mascot in the British or any other navy.
+Courteous and huge and cap in hand, his weather-beaten face smiling
+respectfully above a snow-white uniform, he took his stand before the
+little table. His outward bearing was one of certainty, but his
+shrewd, slightly puckered eyes alternately conned the expression of his
+commander's face and watched the dog.
+
+The lee, scuppers were the goal of the dog's immediate ambition, for he
+was a well-brought-up dog and such of the decencies as were not his by
+instinct he had learned by painful and repeated acquisition. But at the
+moment Curley Crothers showed a wondrous disregard for etiquette.
+
+"He's very sick, sir," he asserted, tugging a little at the chain in
+the hope of producing instant proof of his contention. But the dog was
+gamiest of the game, and swallowed hurriedly.
+
+"Well? I'm not a vet. What about it?"
+
+"The whole ship's crew 'ud be sorry, sir, if 'e was to lose 'is number.
+He's the best mascot this ship ever had, by all accounts."
+
+"He hasn't brought us much luck this run!" smiled Applewaite,
+remembering a long list of "previous convictions" and wondering what
+Crothers might be up to next.
+
+"No, sir? We're still a-top o' the water, sir."
+
+"Oh! He gets the credit for that, eh? But for him, I suppose we'd have
+piled up on the reef yesterday?"
+
+"Saving your presence, sir."
+
+Curley Crothers made a gesture expressive of a world of compliment and
+praise, but he kept one eye steadily on the dog; he seemed to imply
+that but for the presence of the dog on board the commander might have
+forgotten his seamanship.
+
+"Well? What do you suggest?"
+
+"Seeing the poor dog's sick, sir, and you and all of us so fond of him,
+and all he needs is exercise, I thought perhaps as 'ow you'd order me
+an' Byng, sir, to take 'im for a run ashore. There'd be jackals and
+pi-dogs for 'im to chase. A bit o' sport 'ud set 'im up in a jiffy. He's
+languishing--that's what's the matter with him."
+
+There were almost tears in his voice as he tugged at the chain
+surreptitiously, in a vain effort to produce the cataclysm that was
+overdue. But for all his efforts to appear affected, his eyes were
+smiling. So were his commander's.
+
+"Why Byng?" he asked.
+
+"Byng cleans him, sir. He knows Byng."
+
+"Then, why you?"
+
+"Why; he knows me too, sir, and between the two of us, we'd manage him
+proper. S'posin' he was to get huntin' on his own and one of us was
+tired out chasin' him, t'other could run and catch him. If there was
+only one of us, he couldn't."
+
+"I see. Well? One of the other men might take him on the chain. A
+good-conduct man, for instance."
+
+Crothers tugged at the chain, and the unhappy dog drew away toward the
+scuppers with all his remaining strength.
+
+"He's cussed about the chain, sir--apt to drag on it and try to chaw it
+through. Besides, sir, when a dawg's sick, he's like a man--same as me
+an' you; he likes to 'ave 'is partic'lar pals with 'im. Now, that dawg's
+fond o' me an' Byng.'
+
+"I see. But supposing exercise isn't what he wants after all? Suppose he
+needs a long rest and lots of sleep? How about that?"
+
+The argument had reached a crisis, and Curley realized it. Joking or
+not, when the commander of a ship takes too long in reaching a decision
+he generally does not reach a favorable one. The leash was tugged
+again, this time with some severity. The martyred Scamp was drawn on
+his protesting haunches close to the official table, that the commander
+might have a better view of his distress. And then the expected
+happened--voluminously.
+
+Curley stood with an expression of wooden-headed, abject innocence on
+his big, broad face, and looked straight in front of him.
+
+"He certainly is sick, sir," he remarked.
+
+"Sick. Good heavens! The dog's turning himself inside out! That's the
+last time a thing like this happens; he's the last dog I ever take on
+a cruise. Take him away at once! Bosun--call some one to wipe up that
+disgusting mess!"
+
+"Take him ashore, did you say, sir?"
+
+"Take him out of this! Take him anywhere you like! Yes, take him ashore
+and lose him--feed him to the sharks--give him to the Arabs--take him
+away, that's all!"
+
+"Me and Byng, sir?"
+
+"Yes, you and Byng! Did you hear me tell you to take him away?"
+
+"Very good, sir; thank you!"
+
+Curley Crothers saluted without the vestige of a smile, and hurried
+off before the dog could show too early signs of recovering health and
+strength or the commander could change his mind.
+
+"Come on, Scamp," he whispered. "That was nothing but a temporary
+disaccommodation to your tummy, doglums; we'll soon have you to rights
+again."
+
+He dived into the fo'castle with the dog behind him, and there were
+those who noticed that the terrier's whip-like tail no longer hugged his
+stomach, but was waving to the world at large.
+
+And thirty minutes later, as the Puncher's launch put off with Curley
+and Joe Byng comfortably seated in the stern, it was obvious to any one
+who cared to look that Scamp was the happiest and healthiest terrier in
+Asia.
+
+"Now, I wonder what they did to him," mused the Puncher's commander,
+watching from beneath his awning. "Those two men live up to the name
+they brought aboard! I believe they'd find means and a good excuse for
+walking to windward of a First Sea Lord!"
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Now an Arab would as soon allow a dog to lick his face as he would think
+of eating pork in public with his women folk; so the bearded, hook-nosed
+believers in the Prophet who looked down from the rock wall that lines
+one side of Adra knew what to think of Curley and his friend Joe Byng
+long before either of them realized that they were being watched.
+
+Arrayed from head to ankles in spotless white, their black boots looking
+blacker by comparison, they proceeded in the general direction of the
+distant village, with the order and decorum of sea lords descending on
+a dockyard for inspection purposes. The trackless sand proved hot
+and sharp; the dog proved in poor condition from the voyage and the
+morning's incidental martyrdom, and Byng was generous-hearted. He
+picked up the dog and carried him; and Scamp displayed his gratitude in
+customary canine way.
+
+The comments of the watching Arabs would not fit into any story in the
+world, and it is quite as well that Crothers and Joe Byng did not hear
+them and could not have translated them, for in the other case trouble
+would have started even sooner than it did. As it was, they tumbled and
+maneuvered over unresisting sand through almost tangible stench to where
+a gap in the ragged wall did duty as a gate. As they came nearer, a
+banner with the star and crescent was displayed from the wall-top, but
+no other sign was given that their coming was observed.
+
+It was not until they had debouched (as Crothers termed it) to their
+half-right front and had taken to a narrow one-man track that ran below
+the wall that any over attention was paid them. Suddenly a hook-nosed
+Asiatic gentleman emerged through the once-was gateway--a picture of
+a Bible shepherd but for the long-barreled gun he carried instead of
+crook--a brown shadow against brown masonry. He challenged them in
+Arabic, and Curley Crothers answered him in Queen Victoria's English
+that all was well.
+
+"Everything in the garden's lovely!" he asserted, in a deep-sea
+sing-song. "How's yourself?"
+
+The man repeated whatever he had said before, this time with a gesture
+of impatience.
+
+"Friend!" roared Byng and Curley both together. And the bull terrier
+took the joint yell for a war cry, or a bunting call, or possibly the
+herald's overture that summons bull pups to Valhalla. He was bred right
+and British Navy trained and his was not to reason why. He waited for
+no second invitation, but lit out from Byng's arms like a streak--a
+whip-tail, snow-white streak--for where the Arab's hard lean legs shone
+shiny-brown below his fluttering brown raiment.
+
+"Come back, there!" yelled both keepers in excited unison, but they
+called too late.
+
+Each grabbed for the chain too late. Their heads and shoulders cannoned
+and they fell together on the hot, dirty sand while Scamp and the Arab
+made each other's intimate acquaintance in a whirl of ripping cloth and
+legs and teeth and blasphemy.
+
+That in itself was bad enough, and good enough excuse if such were
+wanted for war between the Shadow of God Upon Earth and England's
+distant Queen; but there was worse to follow.
+
+One does not laugh, between certain parallels, unless the ultimate
+degree of insult is intended. And Curley Crothers and Joe Byng did
+laugh. They held their ribs and laughed until their muscles ached and
+their strong men's strength oozed out of them.
+
+They were laughing when they grabbed the dog at last and pulled him off.
+They laughed as they set the Arab on his feet and gave him back his gun;
+and they laughed at him with Christian and mannerly good grace when he
+spat at them in awful frenzy until the spittle matted in his beard.
+And, being gentlemen after a fashion quite their own, they smilingly
+apologized.
+
+Arabia lies in the middle of the zone where laughter is not wisdom.
+And a smile lies midway in the measure of a laugh. A laugh might be
+unintentional. A smile must be deliberate. And the Arab's spittle was
+run dry. Creed, custom, law of tooth for tooth and the thought of half
+a hundred co-religionists all watching him from crannies in the wall
+combined to make him shoot, since further means of showing malice were
+denied him; and he raised the long butt to his shoulder with meaning
+that was unmistakable.
+
+And so, with sorrow that the East should be so lacking in good
+fellowship, but with the ready instinct of men who have been trained for
+war, they closed with him from two directions, swiftly, bull-dog-wise,
+and took his gun away. And how could even an able seaman help the dog's
+taking a share in the game again?
+
+So far, nobody had done anything intended to be wrong--least of all the
+dog. The Arab was defending institutions; Crothers and Joe Byng were
+bent on holiday, and full of kind regards for anything that lived; and
+the dog was living dogfully up to well-bred-terrier tradition. It was as
+if two harmless chemicals had met and blended into nitroglycerin.
+
+Deprived of his gun, the Arab drew a knife; and no British sailor lives
+who does not understand the quick-loosed answer to the glint of steel.
+Fist and boot both landed on the Arab quicker than his own thought
+served the knife, and the weight of quick concussions jarred him into
+all but coma. This time Byng caught the dog in time and held him back,
+leaving Curley Crothers to finish matters by making the long knife prize
+of war. Once more he helped the Arab on his feet, smiling hugely and
+gentling the iron sinews with huge paws that could have wrenched them
+all apart if need be.
+
+"Take my advice, cully, and weigh quick!" he counseled, looking the Arab
+over and making sure the unfortunate had not been too much hurt. "Run
+for shelter where you can cool your bearings! Run off to the mosque and
+pray, to make up for all that cussing. Go and be good! And next time you
+meets us, be friendly--see?"
+
+The Arab was too apoplectically angry to comply, but Crothers took him
+by both shoulders and shoved him; and finding himself shot forward
+out of reach, seeing safety ahead and its possible corollary of awful
+vengeance, he suddenly achieved discretion and scampered through the gap
+in the wall.
+
+"'E's gone to fetch his pals. Look out, mate!" warned Joe Byng.
+
+"Not 'im!" vowed Crothers. "'E's 'ad enough, that's all! We've seen the
+last of 'im!"
+
+And the most amazing thing of all was that Crothers believed just what
+he said--Curley Crothers, to whom Red Sea and Persian Gulf ports were
+as an open book, and to whom the Arab customs and religion and
+reprehensible tendencies were currently supposed to be first-reader
+knowledge. It was he who had proved there were no harems--he who coined
+the Navy adage, "Search an Arab first, and sit on him, before you come
+to terms!"
+
+Yet here he was, advising Byng to disregard a looted Arab's spittle!
+There is no accounting, ever, for the ways of shore-leave sailor-men.
+
+"Come on, Joe," he said. "Lead 'the dawg--he can walk now--and let's see
+what Adra looks like."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+All might have been well, and both seamen might have reached the Puncher
+again with dignity and grace, had they not entered Adra, past the
+only jail in that part of Arabia. And an Arab jail being rarer and one
+percent more evil than any other evil thing there is, the two of them
+quite naturally paused to make its closest possible acquaintance.
+
+"Look out for vermin!" cautioned Curley, standing on tiptoe to peer in
+through the close-spaced iron bars.
+
+They forgot the dog. The jail, for the moment, challenged all their
+waking senses, the olfactory by no means least.
+
+"Can you see anything?" asked Byng.
+
+Before Crothers could answer him, a snarl, then a yap, then a quick,
+determined growl gave warning of the terrier's interest in something
+else than fleas.
+
+He had been scratching himself peacefully a moment earlier; now, like a
+bower anchor taking charge, he ripped the chain through Byng's hand and
+was off--chin, back and tail in one straight, striving line--in full
+chase of a pariah.
+
+The yellow cur yapped its agony of fear; the nearest hundred and odd
+mangy monsters of the gutter took up the chorus; within five seconds
+of the start there was the Puncher's mascot racing after one abominable
+scavenger, and after him in just as hot pursuit there raced the whole
+street-cleaning force of Adra--tongues out, eyes blazing, and their mean
+thin barks all working overtime.
+
+"Good-by, Scamp!" groaned Byng, estimating rapidly.
+
+"Not yet it ain't!" said Crothers, grabbing Byng's arm and nearly
+tearing out the muscles.
+
+It was a crude way of rousing Byng's latent speed, both of thought and
+movement, but it worked. Before Joe could swear, even, Crothers was
+off like the wind, with Joe after him, using the string of oaths he had
+meant for Crothers on the sand that gave under him and made him stumble
+at every other stride.
+
+Adra turned out, as a colony of prairie dogs might from planless
+burrows; only these had more venom in their bite than prairie dogs and
+came from structural instead of natural, from flea-bepeppered instead of
+grass-grown dirt. Man, woman and child--the grown men armed, the women
+veiled in dirt-brown, some of them, and some (mostly the better-looking)
+unveiled and unashamed, the little children mostly naked and colored
+with all the human hues there are--raced, yelling, through a swarm of
+flies in hot pursuit. Never since Shem's great-grandson gat the Arab
+race was there a procession like it.
+
+Behind its mud-and-Masonry decrepit wall that guards only the seaward
+side, Adra straggles quite a distance desertward; and there are winding
+streets enough to hide an army in, provided that the army did not mind
+the fleas. Scamp, view-halloaing his utmost, led that most amazing hunt
+a quite considerable circuit before other men and dogs, arriving from a
+dozen different directions, set a limit to his unobstructed movement.
+
+He knew what he was after, but they did not; they had come to see. For a
+moment they seemed to think that Scamp was the object of the chase, and
+a dozen guns of a dozen different kinds and dates were aimed at him.
+
+And then, as consciousness dawns on a man recovering from chloroform,
+there swept over their lethargic Eastern brains the simultaneous idea
+that Curley Crothers and Joe Byng were the real quarry; and--again like
+men recovering from chloroform--they did not quite know what to do.
+Should they slay, there was the Puncher to be reckoned with; and the
+Puncher's port quick-firers could be seen commanding Adra by any man who
+cared to climb the wall.
+
+Besides, an Arab's hospitality is proverbial. He very seldom kills a
+visitor on sight.
+
+On the other hand a man, and particularly a British sailor, who runs
+has reason, as a rule. Therefore these two men were evidently guilty.
+Therefore they must not escape. In five seconds the affair had changed
+from a spectacular amusement, with Adra's population in the role of
+super-heated audience, to a hunt of Crothers and Joe Byng.
+
+Within ten seconds each of the sailors lay with his face pressed hard
+into the sand and at least a dozen Arabs sitting on him. Scamp--utterly
+forgotten now by all except the sailors--still behind the one stray
+pariah and ahead of all the rest but beginning to appreciate the fact
+that he was hunted, and beginning to feel spent--raced on, took three
+sharp turns in close succession, and was gathered all unwilling in the
+arms of an enormous black man who snatched him from the very teeth
+of the following pack and dispersed them, howling, by means of
+well-directed kicks.
+
+"Ah seed you yesterday, Ah did," said his deliverer in English; and,
+recalling principle, the terrier bit at him--only to find himself
+muzzled by a horny, huge fist that caressed even while it rendered
+impotent.
+
+"Ah'm fond of little dogs! Ah'm English!"
+
+Scamp understood nothing of the conversation, but with canine instinct
+realized that he was safe; and after that he was satisfied to lie and
+pant. With five red inches of tongue hanging out, and no sign whatever
+of his white-uniformed guardians to trouble him, a black man's arms were
+as good as any other place; he did not waste half a thought on Byng and
+Crothers.
+
+But Byng, three turnings back, spat filthy sand out of his mouth the
+moment an Arab deemed it safe to leave off sitting on his head, looked
+wildly around for Crothers, and bellowed--
+
+"Where's the pup?"
+
+Crothers, spitting out sand, too, twenty yards behind where the swifter
+Byng had fallen, called back:
+
+"Dunno. Whistle him!"
+
+Byng tried to whistle, and the Arabs mistook the effort for a signal. In
+an instant both men were face-downward again, struggling for breath
+and clawing at the dirt. Then worse befell. The gentleman whose brown
+anatomy had suffered from the seamen's feet and fists just previous to
+their invasion of the town limped up with his eye teeth showing and his
+flapping cotton raiment still unmended where the dog had torn it. Any
+other wrath, however awful, could be nothing but the shadow of his state
+of mind; and since he knew the more vindictive portions of the Koran all
+by heart, and was quoting as he came, there was little need of words to
+illustrate further his attitude.
+
+He seemed to be a person of authority. An Arab town or village is a
+democracy in which each free man has his say; not even a sheik can
+overrule the vote of a majority, and this man was no sheik. But rage
+and self-assertion will generally exercise a certain weight in tribal
+councils, and the crowd in this case was too doubtful of the facts to
+have any settled notions of its own.
+
+"To the jail with them!" the new arrival almost shrieked, and about a
+dozen in the crowd took up the cry--
+
+"To jail with them!"
+
+"Infidels! Worshipers of dogs! Wine-drinkers! Eaters of pig flesh! Dogs
+and the sons of dogs--what mothers gave them birth? Are your hands,
+True-believers, fit bonds for them? To the jail! To the jail that Abdul
+Hamid caused his men to build for such as these!"
+
+He stooped and looked deliberately to make sure that Crothers could not
+break away, then came closer and spat on him, saving half his spittle
+with impartial forethought for the struggling Byng, who looked up
+in time to see what was in store for him. Being spat on is even less
+exhilarating than it sounds or looks, and Byng waxed speechless after
+passing through a many-worded stage of blasphemy.
+
+Crothers, the larger of the two and by six brawny inches more
+phlegmatic, bode his time in silence, so that neither of them spoke a
+word while they were hustled and cuffed along the street between the
+unbaked brick hovels. It was not until the reinforced iron door of
+Adra's one stone building slammed on them that either of them said a
+word.
+
+Then--
+
+"I'm not a mean man," protested Crothers.
+
+"No?" said Byng, monosyllabic for a start.
+
+"No," repeated Crothers, "I am not, Joe Byng. But--and I says it solemn;
+I says it with one 'and above my 'ed, and I'd take my affidavy on it in
+a court o' law, if it's the last word I ever does say an' it's my dying
+oath--so 'elp me Solomon and all 'is glory; I'm a Dutchman if I wouldn't
+like to 'ave a come-back at that Arab."
+
+Byng lay full length on his stomach, and buried his face in his arms. He
+was still too full of wrath for words.
+
+"I'd kick his mother, if I couldn't land on him," mused Crothers.
+And then he busied himself about conning his new bearings. It was a
+four-walled jail--one-doored, one-windowed, iron-barred--ill-smelling,
+verminous, too hot for words and too suggestive of the opposite of home,
+sweet home to call forth humor, even from a seaman.
+
+"They'll come an' rescue us," moaned Byng. "They'll quarantine the pair
+of us for being lousy, and they'll turn the perishing salt-water hose
+on us. We're due for the brig for Gawd knows 'ow long; our reppitation's
+gone; we've been spat on by a--by a Arab, and we 'aven't hit 'im back;
+an' we've lost the pup. We've gone an' lost the pup! Gawd! There ain't
+no more good in nothin'!"
+
+Which shows no more than that Joe Byng in his sorrow overlooked a
+circumstance or two. For instance, there were rings in the floor that
+Crothers eyed with keen curiosity. They were anchored in the solid
+blocks of stone.
+
+"It's better than it might be, mate!" he argued optimistically. "They
+might 'ave gone and chained us up to those!"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Arabia has some peculiarities, not all of them discreditable, which she
+does not share with any other country. There is, for instance, the kind
+custom that dictates the setting free of slaves when they have rendered
+seven years' good service.
+
+That rule (and it is rather rule than law) tends to eliminate all class
+and color prejudice. Provided that a man will bow to Mecca three times
+daily and refrain from pork and wine, he may wear whatever skin God gave
+him and yet mingle with the best. He may even marry whom he will and
+can afford; and he may be whatever his ability, ambition, and audacity
+dictate.
+
+And Hassan Ah had never been a slave, so he had even less to overcome
+than might have been the case. He stalked Adra socially uncondemned
+where once he had caught fish, groomed camels, and done other irritating
+jobs. His old fish-catching days had given him an intimate acquaintance
+with the reef, and his small-boat seamanship, born of hard pulling in
+the trough of beam-on-seas, was well suited to the local type of craft.
+
+So nobody questioned his right to the title of harbor pilot. And if
+certain perquisites went with an otherwise barren office, that was to
+be expected. Who worked for nothing, or for the empty honor of it, in
+Arabia?
+
+Nobody can pass the reef at night in shallow-draft lateen-sail boats
+without having him on board; and though he was never ostensibly paid
+for his services, it was understood that he performed pilot service in
+return for certain other opportunities that sometimes came his way. When
+things happened on the high sea that were not discussed in public, it
+was understood that Hassan Ah could have discussed them as thoroughly as
+anybody if he chose.
+
+On the whole, then, and within limits that were only more or less
+definable, he was something of a personality. Men listened to him when
+he raised his voice in argument, and as one who could grant favors on
+occasion his words had weight.
+
+The sun was very nearly in its zenith, beating down on dry Arabia
+between racing black clouds, when he had finished talking to the local
+council in the ramshackle old council-house, skin and mat curtained,
+that faced the sheik's where the main street broadened for a hundred
+filthy yards into a market-place. All through his argument he had held a
+pure-white bull terrier between his knees as proof that he knew whereof
+he spoke.
+
+"Can any of you hold him without being bitten?" he demanded. And they
+did not seem to care to try.
+
+"I know the ways of these men!" he asserted, drawing extravagant
+expressions of contentment from the dog in proof of it.
+
+So the others in the stuffy council place gave the dog a wide berth and
+no privilege, but conceded him the right to hold the beast, if he wanted
+to, without personal defilement. And since the way of the world is that
+a man who has won the first of his contentions can win all the rest
+with half the ease, he persuaded them with a hurricane of black man's
+rhetoric to do what Arabs consider almost wicked.
+
+Unbelievers who are prisoners should die, beyond all question.
+
+"As the dregs of oil shall the fruit of the tree of Al Zakkum boil in
+the bellies of the damned!" the sheik quoted. "They should be hurried,
+therefore, to the punishment that waits!"
+
+But Hassen Ah outargued him.
+
+"Then they will land men from the ship, who will search our houses,"
+he asserted. "Is there a majority in the council who would like to be
+searched by unbelievers?"
+
+"Then bind them, and take them to their ship, and tell a tale of much
+drunkenness and wrong-doing. Ask an indemnity, and show the proofs,
+which will be easy to arrange."
+
+"They, too, will tell their tale!" said Hassan Ah in perfect Arabic.
+
+Unlike the more enlightened peoples of the West, Arabs do not encourage
+the mutilation of their mother-tongue; they teach it as carefully as
+they talk it, and this negro spoke like an Arab of the blood.
+
+"There are certain damages they have received--some bruises on the
+face and tears in the clothing that does not belong to them but their
+government," he continued. "They would lay all the blame on us, and
+would breathe in the face of an appointed man, in proof that they were
+not drunk. And who could get other drink than coffee or water here? And
+who would believe the rest of our story, having found that part to be
+a lie? There would be a landing, and a search for proof, and much
+unpleasantness. Besides--"
+
+If he had intended to add further arguments, the sheik saw fit to nip
+them in the bud; for there were some men in the council-room who did not
+know as much as Hassan Ah. Any free man may speak in council in Arabia.
+
+"What is thy way, then?" he asked.
+
+The woolly headed pilot laughed aloud, taking care to make it evident
+that he was laughing at the prisoners; to laugh at a sheik or a sheik's
+bewilderment would be too dangerous.
+
+"I would send them to the ship well satisfied," he answered.
+
+"With money?" asked the sheik.
+
+"With whose money?" asked Hassan Ah.
+
+"With thine?" shot back the sheik.
+
+"In the name of Allah, no!"
+
+The black man laughed again, and rose to lean against the wall behind
+him, gathering the dog up in his arms.
+
+"If it is the order of the council," he asserted, "I will send them back
+satisfied, with a tale to tell that will bring about no landing. Also, I
+will give the council much amusement."
+
+"But will other sailors land afterward, seeking similar amusement?"
+asked the sheik.
+
+"No! There will be an order that none land!"
+
+The sheik took a vote on it. Heads nodded solemnly all around the room
+as his eyes sought each half-veiled face in turn. His own face was
+almost altogether shielded by the brown linen head-dress, for men of
+his race like to reach a judgment unobserved. They were all nods that
+answered him, and he saw fit to keep his own opinion to himself.
+
+"Thou seest? These others are all with thee. Have it thine own way,
+Hassan Ah. Unlock thou the riddle and on thy head be the answer! Thou
+hast our leave to go."
+
+So Hassan Ah set out undaunted for the jail, with a terrier in tow
+behind him and a huge smile on his broad-beamed face. And behind him a
+murmur rose that:
+
+"It was well. He brought the warship in, instead of leaving it outside
+or--as any wise man would have done--wrecking it on the outer reef,
+where it could have been plundered at discretion. Let him send the
+sailors back again and bear the consequences!"
+
+And within a minute of the pilot's arrival at the window of the jail
+(through which he peered for two minutes before speaking) the whole
+of Adra's council, followed by the city's children in a noisy horde,
+proceeded in a cluster after him and took up position, each as he saw
+fit, at different vantage points.
+
+Then Hassan Ah shook a loose bar of the window until it rattled, and so
+called attention to himself. Crothers and Joe Byng raced for the window
+neck and neck, and reached it simultaneously.
+
+"You two men want you-ah dog?" asked Hassan Ah, and the chained dog
+leaped up at the window as both men swore at once.
+
+"You pass him in here! Come on, you black-faced cornerman! There'll be
+a cutter's crew ashore pretty soon to rescue us, and if you don't hand
+that dog over before they get here you'll get the worst whipping you
+ever had in all your black life!"
+
+"They'll feed you to the dog when they're through with you!" vowed Byng.
+
+"Come on, MacHassan!" ordered Crothers. "Get the key and pass the
+dog in. That'll settle your account. T hen you's free. You needn't be
+'fraid."
+
+"Ah'm English," said the pilot of the day before, with an enormous grin
+that showed a pound or two of yellow ivory. "Ah'm not afraid; Ah can
+lick you; Ah can fight same as you men. Ah'm English!"
+
+"Fight? You Irish Chink! Which of us two do you want to fight?" asked
+the outraged Byng. "Come on in here! I'll fight you!"
+
+But to Byng's amazement Hassan Ah pointed to Crothers, who was heavier
+by forty pounds or more and taller by at least half a head.
+
+"Ah choose him!" he grinned; and Curley Crothers clenched both fists in
+absolute but quite unterrified amazement.
+
+"Come on, then," he answered. "Open the door." Then, as an
+afterthought--"I'll fight you for the dog."
+
+"Ah don't want to kill that little man," said Hassan Ah. "But Ah'll give
+you the dog, win or lose, if you'll fight me. You fight fair? You fight
+English?"
+
+"Well, I'm damned!" said Crothers. "I fight Queensberry rules. That suit
+you?"
+
+"Oh-ah, yes! Keensby rules, that's it. All right-o!"
+
+Hassan Ah produced his key and turned it in the creaking lock. He was
+stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the sun, and
+by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that there was
+an audience of something like a thousand, including children, he was
+standing posed like a gladiator, with the straight-down tropic sun
+streaming off his ebony hide. As Crothers, not quite sure even yet that
+the whole affair was not a joke, began to doff his blouse it dawned on
+him that if the thing were true it would not be a picnic.
+
+"Do you mean this?" he asked.
+
+"Ah shohly do. Are you afraid o' me?"
+
+That, of course, settled matters. The thing was not a joke, and
+Englishman or nigger--black, green, white, or gray--the plot must be
+licked forthwith and in accordance with the rules.
+
+Crothers spat into his hands, while Joe Byng folded up his blouse and
+knelt on it. He eyed his antagonist for at least a minute, summing him
+up and ignoring none of the woolly-headed one's physical advantages in
+weight and strength, in height and reach, in being used to the climate
+and the glare, the odds were all with Hassan Ah. Then he sized up the
+moral odds; and though a biased audience might be at first supposed to
+weigh against him too, the sight of all those Arabs waiting to see him
+beaten roused his fighting dander.
+
+"Do you represent the bloke that spat on us two men?" asked Crothers.
+
+"Ah represent maself! Ah'm English! Ah fight English, and Ah'll prove
+it!"
+
+"Aw, wade into him!" advised Joe Byng. "London Prize Rules--no time
+called until a man's down. Go on, Curley--lead!"
+
+"Do you agree?" asked Crothers.
+
+"Suttainly!" The black man seemed disposed to agree to anything so long
+as he could get what he was after.
+
+"Then here goes!" said Crothers; and he stepped in and led for the honor
+of the British Navy.
+
+Oh! It was a fight! Crothers knew what he was up against the instant
+that his left fist slid along an ebony forearm and his nose collided
+with what seemed like an iron club. Steamship pilot this man might not
+be, but fighting man he very surely was. He hit straight and guarded
+high. He was no untutored savage. He had the hardest to acquire of all
+the Christian arts at his fingers' (or rather his fists') ends, and
+the heavyweight champion of Gosport took a double reef in his fighting
+tactics while he sparred for time in which to recover from the shock
+of that first blow. The claret was streaming down his face and he was
+dizzy.
+
+"Oh, wade into him, mate!" urged Joe.
+
+It is always easier to see what should be done than to do it. The sand
+was not slipping and giving under Joe Byng's feet, nor were his fists
+and wrists aching from contact with hard ebony. To him the thing seemed
+easy, and he was as anxious to get into the fight himself as was the
+terrier that strained at his chain. But Crothers, who had won a hundred
+fights at least in cleaner climes, fought canny and tried to make the
+black man tire himself with wasted effort.
+
+And the Arabs sat in silence, like a row of vultures waiting for the
+end. Even the little children held their clamor and subsided into
+motionless calm. There was not a movement along the roofs or the wall,
+or in the rings of those who squatted. Arabia was spellbound, watching
+something she had never seen before and trying to puzzle out the
+wherefore of it. There were knives and guns available, yet these men
+fought without weapons. The white contender had a friend, but the friend
+did not join in. Why? Had Allah struck all three men mad? They sat
+still to see the end, having no doubt but that it would prove to be a
+judgment.
+
+Curley Crothers was the first to close a round. He put an end to round
+one at the end of three minutes by missing with a heavy right swing,
+ducking to avoid terrific punishment, slipping in the yielding sand and
+falling.
+
+"Back with you!" yelled Joe Byng, afraid that the pilot would take
+liberties and ready to jump in and stop him if need be. But he wasted
+his excitement.
+
+"Ah told you Ah'm English!" said the pilot, stepping back and letting
+Crothers find his corner.
+
+Curley was glad enough of a rest on Joe Byng's knee, and too intent on
+getting back his wind to listen over carefully to Joe's advice. When Joe
+called "Time" he stepped in readily again; and this time it was Hassan
+Ah who suffered from surprise.
+
+Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed
+waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that
+followed it were exhibitions of the "noble art" that men in any of the
+larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen.
+
+There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual
+decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been
+nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds
+against him that--after the first repulse--usually make men like
+Crothers do their utmost.
+
+Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way.
+Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their
+position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they
+actually sighed in unison when Hassan Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the
+way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand.
+
+After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting
+wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much
+advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a
+soft spot in Hassan's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on
+the desperate defensive.
+
+There was no doubt of the end, then, barring accidents. Even Hassan Ah
+could not have doubted it; but he did his black man's uttermost to put
+it off, and he fought as gamely as anybody ever fought since prize-ring
+rules were drafted. He did not foul, or take undue advantage once.
+
+It was a plain, right-handed, battering-ram punch to the neck that ended
+things, and Hassan Ah lay coughing on the sand with bulging eyes while
+Joe Byng tended Curley's hurts.
+
+"Hasn't the nigger got any pals?" asked Crothers; and then it occurred
+to Byng that the most hurt man was surely most in need of mending. Both
+he and Crothers bent over him, then, and they soon had him on his feet
+again.
+
+"Ah told you Ah'm English!" were the first words he succeeded in
+spluttering through swollen lips.
+
+"Now, what d'you mean by that exactly?" asked Joe Byng, his attitude
+toward him almost entirely changed. A man who loses gamely is entitled
+to respect if not to friendship.
+
+Hassan Ah searched in the tattered shirt that he had laid aside, and
+pulled out a folded piece of paper after a lot of fumbling. He opened it
+gingerly, and holding one corner of it displayed the rest with evident
+intention not to allow it out of his grasp.
+
+"That says Ah'm English!" he explained.
+
+"Oh!" said Crothers, rubbing an injured eye in order to see it better.
+"Can you read, you black heathen?"
+
+"No," said the pilot. "That says Ah'm English, but Ah can't read!"
+
+"Well, MacHassan," said Curley Crothers, reading the document a second
+time. "Black or white, you fight like a gentleman. I'm proud to have
+licked you. Good-by, and good luck! Here's my hand!"
+
+They shook hands, and the seamen started shoreward with the terrier in
+tow.
+
+"Did you read the paper?" asked Crothers. "It was dated Aden--non-coms'
+mess of some regiment or other. 'This is to certify that this regiment
+taught Hassan Ah to use his fists, and that he has since licked every
+single mother's son of us!' Pity I didn't see that first, eh?"
+
+"Oh, I dunno," said Joe Byng, who had not had to do the fighting. "You
+licked the savage, anyway."
+
+Hassan Ah was right. There was no more shore leave granted. Crothers and
+Joe Byng were punished with extra duty and "confined to ship" for coming
+back with the marks of fighting on them; and the Puncher gave no further
+signs of life until, some three I days later, her long-suffering engines
+turned again and she departed through the channel that had brought her
+in.
+
+Then the sheik and three others and a certain Hassan Ah went down
+at midnight to the jail and lifted with the aid of long poles
+passed through the rings in them the largest floor stones of that
+vermin-infested building. But the vermin did not trouble them. What they
+were after and what they lifted out was the cases of guns and cartridges
+the Puncher had contrived to miss.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Told in the East, by Talbot Mundy
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