"Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahinJo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne."
"Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahinJo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne."
A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people, warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and--dog-anglicized--runs thus:
"Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy,The only weapon was a cartridge greasy."
"Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy,The only weapon was a cartridge greasy."
"The Queen? Where is the Queen?" fumed the old man, when he found an empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the Great Moghul.
"She prays for the King's recovery," said Fâtma readily. "I will inform her that her prayer is granted." But as she passed on her errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest son behind decorous screens, and that she was thanking Heaven piously for having sent him back to her apron-string in the very nick of time. Sent him, and Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within reach of her quick wit.
"That is the best couplet my lord has done," she said superbly. "That must be signed and sealed."
So must a paper be, which lay concealed in her bosom. And as she spoke she drew the signet ring lovingly, playfully from the King's finger and walked over to where the scribe sat crouched on the floor.
"Ink it well, Pir-jee," she said, keeping her back to the King; "the impression must be as immortal as the verse."
Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all.
So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper brought by the Palace Guards, and passed under the door, ordering its instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the eight dashed people's impudence and cursed their cheek! Yet, after the laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave face had grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon bush. The black streak there would not fail them.
"In the King's name open!" The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself this time, for the Palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if they were to defend it, according to the Queen's idea, against all corners, till there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, half-drunk, wholly incapable, but full of valor; for a scout sent by the Queen had returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pass from lip to lip in the city.
Helpless!
The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge. Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked at each other with startled eyes.
Helpless! Helpless!
The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay huddled helplessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain of the eyes for a cloud of dust.
But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own.
"Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give information to the people outside."
For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. "Scaling ladders?" he echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes, finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the Palace. "Oh! by all means let them scale if they like."
Some of the Eight, hearing the reply, smiled grimly. By all means let the flies walk into the parlor; for if that straight streak of road was really going to remain empty, the fuller the four square walls round the lemon bush could be, the better.
"That's them, sir," said one of the Eight cheerfully, as a grating noise rose above the hum outside. "That's the grapnels." And as he turned to his particular gun of the ten, he told himself that he would nick the first head or two with his rifle and keep the grape for the bunches. So he smiled at his own little joke and waited. All the Nine waited, each to a gun, and of course there was one gun over, but, as the head of them had said, that could not be helped. And so the rifle-triggers clicked, and the stocks came up to the shoulders; and then?--then there was a sort of laugh, and someone said under his breath, "Well, I'm blowed!" And his mind went back to the streets of London, and he wondered how many years it was since he had seen a lamplighter. For up ropes and poles, on roofs and outhouses, somehow, clinging like limpets, running like squirrels along the top of the wall, upsetting the besiegers, monopolizing the ladders, was a rush, not of attack but of escape! Let what fool who liked scale the wall and come into the parlor of the Nine, those who knew the secret of the lemon-bush were off. No safety there beside the Nine! No life-insurance possible while that lay ready to their hand!
Would he ever see a lamplighter again? The trivial thought was with the bearded man who stood by his gun, the real self in him, hidden behind the reserve of courage, asking other questions too, as he waited for the upward rush of fugitives to change into a downward rush of foes worthy of good powder and shot.
It came at last--and the grape came too, mowing the intruders down in bunches. And these were no mere rabble of the city. They were the pick of the trained mutineers swarming over the wall to stand on the outhouse roofs and fire at the Nine; and so, pressed in gradually from behind, coming nearer and nearer, dropping to the ground in solid ranks, firing in platoons; so by degrees hemming in the Nine, hemming in the lemon-bush.
But the Nine were busy with the guns. They had to be served quickly, and that left no time for thought. Then the smoke, and the flashes, and the yells, and the curses, filled up the rest of the world for the present.
"This is the last round, I'm afraid, sir; we shan't have time for another," said a warning voice from the Nine, and the Head of them looked round quietly. Not more than forty yards now from the guns; barely time, certainly, unless they had had that other man! So he nodded. And the last round pealed out as recklessly, as defiantly, as if there had been a hundred to follow--and a hundred thousand--a hundred million. But one of the gunners threw down his fuse ere his gun recoiled, and ran in lightly toward the lemon-tree, so as to be ready for the favor he had begged.
"We're about full up, sir," came the warning voice again, as the rest of the Nine fell back amid a desultory rattle of small arms. The tinkle of the last church bell, as it were, warning folk to hurry up--a last invitation to walk into the parlor of the Nine.
"We're about full up, sir," came that one voice.
"Wait half a second," came another, and the Head-of-the-nine ran lightly to that river bastion for a last look down the white streak for that cloud of dust.
How sunny it was! How clear! How still! that world beyond the smoke, beyond the flashes, beyond the deafening yells and curses. He gave one look at it, one short look--only one--then turned to face his own world, the world he had to keep. Full up indeed! No pyrotechnist could hope for better audience in so small a place.
"Now, if you please!"
Someone in the thick of the smoke and the flashes heard the yells and curses and raised his cap--a last salute, as it were, to the school and schoolmaster. A final dismissal to the scholars--a thousand of them or so--about to finish their lesson of what men can do to hold their own. And someone else, standing beside the lemon-bush, bent over that faithful black streak, then ran for dear life from the hissing of that snake of fire flashing to the powder magazine.
A faint sob, a whispering gasp of horror, came from the thousand and odd; but above it came a roar, a rush, a rending. A little puff of white smoke went skyward first, and then slowly, majestically, a great cloud of rose-red dust grew above the ruins, to hang--a corona glittering in the slant sunbeams--over the school, the schoolmasters, and the scholars.
It hung there for hours. To those who know the story it seems to hang there still--a bloody pall for the many; for the Nine, a crown indeed.
"What's that?"
The question sprung to every lip; yet all knew the answer. The magazine had saved itself.
But in the main-guard, not six hundred yards off, where the very ground rocked and the walls shook, the men and women, pent up since noon, looked at each other when the first shock was over, feeling that here was the end of inaction. Here was a distinct, definite challenge to Fate, and what would come of it? It was now close on to four o'clock; the day was over, the darkness at hand. What would it bring them? If Meerut, with its two thousand, was so sore bested that it could not spare one man to Delhi, what could they, a mere handful, hope for save annihilation?
Yet even Mrs. Seymour only clasped her baby closer, and said nothing. For there was no lack of courage anywhere. And Kate, with another child in her arms, paused as she laid it down, asleep at last, upon an officer's coat, to feel a certain relief. If they were to fare thus, that bitter self-reproach and agonizing doubt for vanished Sonny was unavailing. His chance might well be better than theirs.
Well indeed, pent up as they were cheek-by-jowl with four hundred unstable sepoys, and with the ominously rising hum of the unstable city on their unprotected rear. Up on the Flagstaff Tower crowning the extreme northern end of the Ridge, away from this hum, where Brigadier Graves had gathered together the remaining women and children, so as to guard them as best he could with such troops as he had remaining--many of them too unstable to be trusted cityward--they were in better plight. For they had the open country round them--a country where folk could still go and come with a fair chance of safety, since even the predatory tribes, always ready to take advantage of disorder, were still waiting to see what master the day would bring forth. And they had also the knowledge that something was being done, that they were not absolutely passive in the hands of Fate, after Dr. Batson started in disguise to summon that aid from Meerut which would not come of itself. Above all, they had the decision, they had the power to act; while down in the main-guard they could but obey orders. Not that the Flagstaff Tower did much with this advantage; for it was paralyzed by that straining of the eyes for a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road which was the damnation of Delhi. Yet even here that decisive roar, that corona of red dust brightening every instant as the sun dipped to the horizon, brought the conviction that something must be done at last. But what? Hampered by women and children, what could they do? If, earlier in the day, they had sent all the non-combatants off toward Kurnal or Meerut, with as many faithful sepoys as they could spare, arming everybody from the arsenal down by the river, they would have been free to make some forlorn hope--free, for instance, to go downen-masseto the main-guard and hold it, if they could. That was what one man thought, who, seven miles out from Delhi--returning from a reconnaissance of his own to see if help were on the way--saw that little puff of smoke, heard the roar, and watched the red corona grow to brightness.
But on the Ridge, men thought differently. The claims of those patient women and children seemed paramount, and so it was decided to get back the guns from the main-guard as a first step toward intrenching themselves for the night at the tower. But the men in the main-guard looked at each other in doubt when the order reached them. Was the garrison going to be withdrawn altogether, leaving merely a forlorn hope to keep the gate closed as long as possible against the outburst of rabble, to whom it would be the natural and shortest route to cantonments? If so, surely it would have been better to send the women away first? Still the orders were clear, and so the gate was set wide and the guns rumbled over the drawbridge under escort of a guard of the 38th. That, at any rate, was good riddance of bad rubbish; though the wisdom of sending the guns in such charge was doubtful. Yet how could the little garrison have afforded to give up a single man even of the still loyal 74th?--a company of whom had actually followed their captain to the ruins of the magazine to see if they could do anything, and returned, without a defaulter, to say that all was confusion--the dead lying about in hundreds, the enemy nowhere.
"How did the men behave, Gordon?" asked their commandant anxiously, getting his Captain into a quiet corner. And the two men, both beloved of their regiment, both believing in it, both with a fierce, wild hope in their hearts that such belief would be justified, looked into each other's faces for a moment in silence. There was a shadowing branch of neem overhead as they stood in the sunlight. A squirrel upon it was chippering at the glitter of their buckles; a kite overhead was watching the squirrel.
"I think they hesitated, sir," said Captain Gordon quietly.
Major Abbott turned hastily, and looked through the open gate, past the lumbering guns, to the open country lying peaceful, absolutely peaceful, beyond. If he could only have got his men there--away from the disloyalty of the 38th guard, the sullen silence of the 54th--if he could only have given them something to do! If he could only have said "Follow me!" they would have followed.
And Kate Erlton, who, weary of the deadly inaction in the room above, had drifted down to the courtyard, stood close to the archway looking through it also, thinking, not for the first time that weary day, of Alice Gissing's swift, heroic death with envy. It was something to die so that brave men turned away without a word when they heard of it. But as she thought this, the look on young Mainwaring's face as he stood with others listening to her story, came back to her. It had haunted her all day, and more than once she had sought him out, not for condolence--he was beyond that--but for a trivial word or two; just a human word or two to show him remembered by the living. And now the impulse came to her again, and she drifted back--for there was no hurry in that deadly, deadly inaction--to find him leaning listlessly against a wall digging holes in the dry dust idly with the point of his drawn sword for want of something better whereupon to use it. Such a young face, she thought, to be so old in its chill anger and despair! She went over to him swiftly, her reserve gone, and laid her hand upon his holding the sword.
"Don't fret so, dear boy," she said, and the fine curves of her mouth quivered. "She is at peace."
He looked at her in a blaze of fierce reproach. "At peace! How dare you say so? How dare you think so--when she lies--there."
He paused, impotent for speech before his unbridled hatred, then strode away indignantly from her pity, her consolation. And as she looked after him her own gentler nature was conscious of a pride, almost a pleasure in the thought of the revenge which would surely be taken sooner or later, by such as he, for every woman, every child killed, wounded--even touched. She was conscious of it, even though she stood aghast before a vision of the years stretching away into an eternity of division and mutual hate.
A fresh stir at the gate roused her, a quick stir among a group of senior officers, recruited now by two juniors who had earned their right to have their say in any council of war. These were two artillery subalterns, begrimed from head to foot, deafened, disfigured, hardly believing in their own safety as yet. Looking at each other queerly, wondering if indeed they could be the Head-of-the-nine and his second in command, escaped by a miracle through the sally port in the outer wall of the magazine, and so come back by the drawbridge, as Kate Erlton had come, to join the refugees in the main-guard. Was it possible? And--and--what would the world say? That thought must have been in their minds. And, no doubt, a vain regret that they were under orders now, as they listened while Major Abbott read out those just received from cantonments. Briefly, to take back the whole of the loyal 74th and leave the post to the 38th and the 54th--about a hundred and fifty openly disloyal men.
A sort of stunned silence fell on the little group, till Major Paterson of the 54th said quietly, officially to Major Abbott. "If you leave, sir, I shall have to abandon the post; I could not possibly hold it. Some of my men who have returned to the colors here might possibly fight were we to stick together. But with retreat, and the example of the 38th before them, they would not. I have, or I should have, lives in my charge when you are gone, and I warn you that I must use my own discretion in doing the best I can to protect them."
"Paterson is right, Abbott," put in the civil officer, who had stuck to his charge of the Treasury all day, and repelled the only attack made by the enemy during all those long hours. "If I am to do any good, I must have men who will fight. I don't trust the 54th; and the 38th are clearly just biding their time. This retreat might have done six hours ago--might do now if it were general; but I doubt it."
"Anyhow," put in another voice, "if the 74th are to go, they should take the women with them--they couldn't fare worse than they are sure to do here. I don't think the Brigadier can realize----"
"Couldn't you refer it?" asked someone; but the Major shook his head. The orders were clear; no doubt there was good cause for them. Anyhow they must be obeyed.
"Then as civil officer in charge of the Government Treasury, I ask for quarter-of-an-hour's law. If by then----"
The eager voice paused. Whether the owner thought once more of that expected cloud of dust, or whether he meant to gallop to cantonments in hope of getting the order rescinded is doubtful. Whether he went or stayed doubtful also. But the fifteen minutes of respite were given, during which the preparations for departure went on, the men of the 38th aiding in them with a new alacrity. Their time had come. Only a few minutes now before the last fear of a hand-to-hand fight would be over, the last chance of the master turning and rending them gone. It lingered a bit, though, for rumbling wheels came over the drawbridge once more, and voices clamored to be let in. The guns had returned. The gunners had deserted, said the escort insolently, and guns being in such case useless, they had preferred to rejoin their brethren; as for their officer, he had preferred to go on.
Kate Erlton, drawn from the inner room once again by the creaking of the gates, saw a look pass between one or two of the officers. And there stood the 74th, smart and steady, waiting for marching orders. No need to close the gates again, since time was up; the fifteen minutes had slipped by, bringing no help, just as the long hours had dragged by uselessly. So the gate stood open to the familiar, friendly landscape, all aglow with the rays of the setting sun. Close at hand, within a stone's throw, lay the tall trees and dense flowering thickets of the Koodsia gardens, where fugitives might have found cover. To the left were the ravines and rocks of the Ridge, fatal to mounted pursuit, and in the center lay the road northward, leading straight to the Punjab, straight from that increasing roar of the city. There had been no attack as yet; but every soul within the main-guard knew for a certainty that the first hint of retreat would bring it.
How could it do otherwise? The decisive answer of the magazine, with its thousand-and-odd good reasons against the belief that the master was helpless, had died away. The refuse and rabble of the city had ceased to wander awestruck among the ruins, murmuring, "What tyranny is here?"--that passive, resigned comment of the weaker brother in India. In the Palace, too, they had recovered the shock of the mean trick of the Nine, who, however, must, thank Heaven, be all dead too.
So as the gate stood open, and the sun streamed through it into the wide courtyard, glinting on the buckles and bayonets, Major Abbott's voice rose quietly. "Are you ready, Gordon?" The drawbridge was clear of the guns now, clear of everything save the slant shadows.
"All ready, sir," came the quiet reply.
"Number!" called the Commandant, but a voice at his right hand pleaded swiftly. "Don't wait for sections, Huzoor! Let us go!" And another at his left whispered, "For God's sake, Huzoor! quick; get them out quick!"
Major Abbott hesitated a second, only a second. The voices were the voices of good men and true, whom he could trust. "Fours about! Quick march!" he corrected, and a sort of sigh of relief ran down the regiment as it swung into position and the feet started rhythmically. Action at last!--at long last!
"Good-by, old chap," said someone cheerfully, but Major Abbott did not turn. "Good-by! Good-by!" came voices all round; steady, quiet voices, as the disciplined tramp echoed on the drawbridge, and a bar of scarlet coats grew on the rise of the white road outside.
"Good-by, Gordon! Good-by!"
The tall figure in its red and gold was under the very arch, shining, glittering in the sunlight streaming through it. Another step or two and he would have been beyond it. But the time for good-by had come. The time for which the 38th had been waiting all day. He threw up his arms and fell dead from his horse without a cry, shot through the heart. The next instant the gate was closed, its creaking smothered in the wild, senseless cry "To kill, to kill, to kill," in a wild, senseless rattle of musketry. For there was really no hurry; the handful of Englishmen were helpless. Major Abbott and his men might clamor for re-entry at the gate if they chose. They could not get in. Nor could the remnant of the 74th, deprived of its loyal companions, of the only two men who seemed to have controlled it, do anything. And the 54th were helpless also by their own act; for they had pushed Major Paterson through the gate before it closed.
So there was no one left even to try and stem the tide. No one to check that beast-like cry.
"Mâro! Mâro! Mâro!"
But, in truth, it would have been a hopeless task. The game was up; the only chance was flight. And two, foreseeing this for the last hour, had already made good theirs by jumping from an embrasure in the rampart into the ditch, while one, uninjured by the fall, had scrambled up the counter-scarp, and was running like a hare for those same thickets of the Koodsia.
"Come on! Come on!" cried others, seeing their success. And then? And then the cries and piteous screams of women reminded them of something dearer than life, and they ran back under a hail of bullets to that upper room which they had forgotten for the moment. And somehow, despite the cry of kill, despite the whistling bullets, they managed to drag its inmates to the embrasure. But--oh! pathos and bathos of poor humanity! making smiles and tears come together--the women who had stared death in the face all day without a wink, stood terrified before a twenty-feet scramble with a rope of belts and handkerchiefs to help them. It needed a round shot to come whizzing a message of certain death over their heads to give them back a courage which never failed again in the long days of wandering and desperate need which was theirs ere some of them reached safety.
But Kate neither hesitated nor jumped. She had not the chance of doing either. For that longing look of hers through the open gates had tempted her to creep along the wall nearer to them; so that the rush to close them jammed her into a corner against a door, which yielded slightly to her weight. Quick enough to grasp her imminent danger, she stooped instantly to see if the door could be made to yield further. And that stoop saved her life, by hiding her from view behind the crowd. The next moment she had pushed aside a log which had evidently rolled from some pile within, and slipped sideways into a dark outhouse. She was safe so far. But was it worth it? The impulse to go out again and brave merciful death rose keen, until with a flash, the memory of that escape through the crowd came back to her; she seemed to hear the changing ready voice of the man who held her, to feel his quick instinctive grip on every chance of life.
Chance! There was a spell in the very word. A minute after logs jammed the door again, and even had it been set wide, none would have guessed that a woman, full of courage, ay! and hope, crouched behind the piles of brushwood. So she lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others, what was passing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of "Deen! Deen!" or "Jai Kali ma!" For faith is one of the two great passions which make men militant, The other, sex. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights silently, giving and asking no words--only works.
So fought young Mainwaring, who, with his back to that same wall against which Kate had found him leaning, was using his sword to a better purpose than digging holes in the dust; or rather had adopted a new method of doing the task. He had not tried to escape as the others had done; not from superior courage, but because he never even thought of it. When he was free to choose, how could he think of leaving those devils unpunished, leaving them unchecked to touch her dead body, while he lived? He gave a little faint sob of sheer satisfaction as he felt the first soft resistance, which meant that his sword had cut into flesh and blood; for all his vigorous young life made for death, nothing but death. Was not she dead yonder?
So, after a bit, it seemed to him there was too little of it there--that it came slowly, with his back to the wall and only those who cared to go for him within reach--for the crowd was dense, too dense for loading and firing. Dense with a hustling, horrified wonder, a confused prodding of bayonets. So, without a sound, he charged ahead, hacking, hewing, never pausing, not even making for freedom, but going for the thickest silently.
"Amuk! Sayia! A-muk!" The yell that he was mad, possessed, rang hideously as men tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape, their hurry to have at this wild beast, this devil, this horror. And they were right. He was possessed. He was life instinct with death; filled with but one desire--to kill, or to be killed quickly.
"Saiya! Amuk! Saiya!--out of his way--out of his way!Amuk! Saiya!Fate is with him! The gods are with him.Saiya! Amuk!"
So, by chance, not method; so by sheer terror as well as hacking and hewing, the tall figure found itself, with but a stagger or two, outside the wooden gates, out on the city road, out among the gardens and the green trees. And then, "Hip, hip, hurray!" His ringing cheer rose with a sort of laugh in it. For yonder was her house!--her house!
"Hip, hip, hurray!" As he ran, as he had run in races at school, his young face glad, the fingers on the triggers behind him wavered in sheer superstitious funk, and two troopers coming down the road wheeled back as from a mad dog. The scarlet coat with its gold epaulettes went crashing into a group red-handed with their spoil, out of it impartially into a knot of terrified bystanders, while down the lane left behind it by the hacking and hewing came bullet after bullet; the fingers on the triggers wavered, but some found a billet. One badly. He stumbled in the dust and his left arm fell oddly. But the right still hacked and hewed as he ran, though the crowd lessened; though it grew thin, too thin for his purpose; or else his sight was failing. But there, to the right, the devils seemed thicker again. "Hip, hip, hooray!" No! trees. Only trees to hew--a garden--perhaps the garden about her house--then, "Hip, hip----"
He fell headlong on his face, biting the soft earth in sheer despite as he fell.
"Don't touch him, brothers!" said one of the two or three who had followed at a distance, as they might have followed a mad dog, which they hoped others would meet and kill. "Provoke him not, or the demon possessing him may possess us. 'Tis never safe to touch till they have been dead a watch. Then the poison leaves them. Krishnjee, save us! Saw you how he turned our lead?"
"He has eaten mine, I'll swear," put in another sepoy boastfully, pointing gingerly with his booted foot to a round scorched hole in the red coat. "The muzzle was against him as I fired."
"And mine shall be his portion too," broke in a new arrival breathlessly, preparing to fire at the prostrate foe; but the first speaker knocked aside the barrel with an oath.
"Not while I stand by, since devils choose the best men. As 'tis, having women in our houses 'twere best to take precautions." He stooped down as he spoke, and muttering spells the while, raised a little heap of dust at the lad's head and feet and outstretched arms--a little cross of dust, as it were, on which the young body lay impaled.
"What is't?" asked a haughty-looking native officer, pausing as he rode by.
"'Tis a hell-doomed who went possessed, and Dittu makes spells to keep him dead," said one.
"Fool!" muttered the man. "He was drunk, likely. They get like that, the cursed ones, when they take wine." And he spat piously on the red coat as he passed on. So they left the lad there lying face down in the growing gloom, hedged round by spells to keep him from harming women. Left him for dead.
But the scoffer had been right. He was drunk, but with the Elixir of Life and Love which holds a soul captive from the clasp of Death for a space. So, after a time, the cross of dust gave up its victim; he staggered to his feet again; and so, tumbling, falling, rising to fall again, he made his way to the haven where he would be, to the side of a dead woman.
And the birds, startled from their roosting-places by the stumbling, falling figure, waited, fluttering over the topmost branches for it to pass, or paused among them to fill up the time with a last twittering song of goodnight to the day; for the sun still lingered in the heat-haze on the horizon as if loath to take its glow from that corona of red dust above the northern wall of Delhi, mute sign of the only protest made as yet by the master against mutiny.
And now he had left the city to its own devices. The rebels were free to do as they liked. The three thousand disciplined soldiers, more or less, might have marched out, had they chose, and annihilated the handful of loyal men about the Flagstaff Tower. But it was sunset--sunset in Rumzân. And the eyes of thousands, deprived even of a drop of water since dawn, were watching the red globe sink in the West, hungrily, thirstily; their ears were attuned but to one sound--the firework signal from the big mosque that the day's fast was over. The very children on the roofs were watching, listening, so as to send the joyful news that day was done, in shrill voices to their elders below, waiting with their water-pots ready in their hands.
Then, in good truth, there was no set purpose from one end of the city to another. From the Palace to the meanest brothel which had belched forth its vilest to swell the tide of sheer rascality which had ebbed and flowed all day, the one thought was still, "What does it mean? How long will it last? Where is the master?"
So men ate and drank their fill first, then looked at each other almost suspiciously, and drifted away to do what pleased them best. Some to the Palace to swell the turmoil of bellicose loyalty to the King--loyalty which sounded unreal, almost ridiculous, even as it was spoken. Others to plunder while they could. The bungalows had long since been rifled, the very church bells thrown down and broken; for the time had been ample even for wanton destruction. But the city remained. And while shops were being looted inside, the dispossessed Goojurs were busy over Metcalfe House, tearing up the very books in their revenge. The Flagstaff Tower lay not a mile away, almost helpless against attack. But there was no stomach for cold steel in Delhi on the 11th of May, 1857. No stomach for anything except safe murder, safe pillaging. Least of all was it to be found in the Palace, where men had given the rein to everything they possessed--to their emotions, their horses, their passions, their aspirations. Stabling some in the King's gardens, some in dream-palaces, some in pigstyes of sheer brutality. Weeping maudlin tears over heaven-sent success, and boasting of their own prowess in the same breath; squabbling insanely over the partition of coming honors and emoluments.
Abool-Bukr, drunk as a lord, lurched about asserting his intention of being Inspector-General of the King's cavalry, and not leaving man, woman, or child of the hell-doomed alive in India. For he had been right when he had warned Newâsi to leave him to his own life, his own death; when he had shrunk from the inherited bloodstains on his hands, the inherited tinder in his breast. It had caught fire with the first spark, and there was fresh blood on his hands: the blood of a Eurasian boy who had tried to defend his sister from drunken kisses. Someone in the melée had killed the girl and finished the boy: the Prince himself being saved from greater crime by tumbling into the gutter and setting his nose a-bleeding, a catastrophe which had sent him back to the Palace partially sobered.
But Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, safe housed in the rooms kept for honored visitors, knew nothing of this, knew little even of the disturbances; for she had been a close prisoner since noon--a prisoner with servants who would answer no questions, with trays of jewels and dresses as if she had been a bride. She sat in a flutter, trying to piece out the reason for this kidnaping. Was she to be married by force to some royal nominee? But why to-day? Why in all this turmoil, unless she was required as a bribe. The arch-plotter was capable of that. But who? One thing was certain, Abool-Bukr could know nothing of this--he would not dare--and suddenly the hot blood tingled through every vein as she lay all unconsciously enjoying the return to the easeful idleness and luxury she had renounced. But if he did dare? if it was not mere anger which brought bewilderment to heart and brain, as she hid her face from the dim light which filtered in through the lattice--the dim, scented, voluptuous light from which she had fled once to purer air?
And not a hundred yards away from where she was trying to steady her bounding pulse, Abool-Bukr himself was bawling away at his favorite love-song to a circle of intimates, all of whom he had already provided with places on the civil list. His head was full of promises, his skin as full of wine as it could be, and he not be a mere wastrel unable to enjoy life. For Abool-Bukr gave care to this; since to be dead drunk was sheer loss of time.
"Ah mistress rare, divine,Thy lover like a vineWith tendril arms entwine."
"Ah mistress rare, divine,Thy lover like a vineWith tendril arms entwine."
Here his effort to combine gesture with song nearly caused him to fall off the steps, and roused a roar of laughter from some sepoys bivouacking under the trees hard by. But Mirza Moghul, passing hastily to an audience with the King, frowned. To-day, when none knew what might come, the Queen might have her way so far; but this idle drunkard must be got rid of soon. He would offend the pious to begin with, and then he could not be trusted. Who could trust a man who had been known to lure back his hawk because a bird's gay feathers shone in the sunshine?
But Ahsan-Oolah, dismissed from feeling the royal pulse once more, by the Mirza's audience, paused as he passed to recommend a cooling draught if the Inspector-General of Cavalry wanted to keep his head clear. It was the physician's panacea for excitement of all kinds. But an exhibition of steel would have done better on the 11th of May.
There was no one, however, to administer it to Delhi, and even the refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were beginning to give up hope of its arriving from Meerut. Those in the storehouse at Duryagunj still clung to the belief that succor must come somehow; but Kate Erlton, behind the wood-pile, knew that her hope lay only in herself.
For how could Jim Douglas, as he more than once passed through the now open and almost deserted Cashmere gate, in the hope, or rather the fear, of finding some trace of her, know that she was hidden within a few yards of him? or, how could she distinguish the sound of his horse's hoofs from the hundreds which passed?
She must have escaped with the others, he concluded, as he galloped toward the cantonments to see if she were there. But she was not. He had failed again, he told himself; failed through no fault of his own; for who could have foretold that madness of retreat from the gate?
So now, there was nothing to be done in Delhi save gather what information he could, give decent burial--if he could--to Alice Gissing's body, and, if no troops arrived before dawn, leave the city.
"I entreat you to leave, sir. Believe me, there is nothing else to be done now. It will be dark in half an hour, and we shall need every minute of the night to reach Kurnal."
It was said openly now by many voices. It had been hinted first when, the corona of red dust having just sprung to hide the swelling white dome of the distant mosque, a dismal procession had come slowly up the steep road to the tower with a ghastly addition to the little knot of white faces there--slowly, slowly, the drivers of the oxen whacking and jibing at them as if the cart held logs or refuse, as if the driving of it were quite commonplace. Yet in a way the six bodies of English gentlemen it held were welcome additions; since it was something to see a dear face even when it is dead. But they were fateful additions, making the disloyal 38th regiment, posted furthest from the Tower--partly commanded by it and the guns, in case of accident--shift restlessly. If others had done such work, ought not they to be up and doing? And now another procession came filing up from the city--the two guns returning from the Cashmere gate. They came on sullenly, slowly, yet still they came on; another few minutes and the refugees would have been the stronger, the chances of mutiny weaker. The 38th saw this. Their advanced picket rushed out, drove off the gunners and the officers, and, fixing bayonets, forced the drivers to wheel and set off down the road again at a trot. And down the road, commanded by other guns, they went unchecked; for the refugees did not dare to give the order to fire, lest it should be disobeyed. The effect, we read, would probably have been "that the guns would have been swung round and fired on the orderers; and so not an European would have escaped to tell the tale; this catastrophe, however, was mercifully averted and the crisis passed over." It reads strangely, but once more, there were women and children to think of. And few men are strong enough to say, much less set it down in black and white as John Nicholson did, that the protection "of women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all."
Still, it began to be patent to all that there was little good in remaining in a place where they did not dare to defend themselves. There were carriages and horses ready; the road to Karnal was still fairly safe. Would it not be better to retreat? But the Brigadier held out. He had, in deference partly to others, wholly for the sake of his helpless charges, weakened the city post. Why should he have done that if he meant to abandon his own? Then he was an old sepoy officer who had served boy and man in one regiment, rising to its command at last, and he was loath to believe that the 38th regiment, which had been specially commended to him by his own, would turn against him, if only he were free to handle it.
And this hope gained color from the fact, that to him personally and to his direct orders, the regiment was still cheerfully obedient.
So the waiting went on, and there were no signs of the 74th returning. What had happened? Fresh disaster? The voices urging retreat grew louder.
"Have it your own way, gentlemen," said the Brigadier at last. "The women and children had better go, at any rate, and they will need protection; so let all retire who will, and in what way seems best to them. I stay here."
So on foot, on horseback, in carriages, the exodus began forthwith; hastening more rapidly when the first man to jump from the embrasure at the Cashmere gate arrived with that tale of hopeless calamity.
But still the Brigadier refused to join the rout. He had been hanging on the skirts of Hope all day, trying, wisely or unwisely, to shield women and children behind that frail shelter. So he had been tied hand and foot. Now he would be free. True! the mystery of oncoming dusk made that red city in the distance loom larger, but a handful of desperate men unhampered, with plenty of ammunition, might hold such a post as the Flagstaff Tower till help arrived. He meant to try it, at any rate. Then nearly half of the 74th had got away safely--they were long in turning up certainly--but when they came they would form a nucleus. The 54th were not all bad, or they would not have saved their Major. Even the 38th, if they could once be got away from the sight of weakness, from that ghastly cart with its mute witness to successful murder, might respond to a familiar commonplace order. They were creatures of habit, with drill born in the blood, bred in the bone.
"I stay here," he said shortly. Said it again, even when neither the escaped officers nor men turned up. Said it again, when the guns rolled off toward Meerut, leaving him face to face with a sprinkling of the 74th and 54th, and the mass of the 38th, sullen, but still obedient.
The sun, now some time set, had left a flaming pennant in the sky, barring it low down on the horizon with a blood-red glow marking the top of the dust-haze, and the quick chill of color which in India comes with the lack of sunlight, even while its heat lingers to the touch, had fallen upon all things--upon the red Ridge, upon the distant line of trees marking the canal, upon the level plain between them where all the familiar landmarks of cantonment life still showed clearly, despite the darkening sky. Guard-rooms, lines, bells-of-arms, wide parade-grounds--all the familiar surroundings of a sepoy's life, and behind them that red flare of a day that was done.
"There is no use, sir, in stopping longer," said the Brigade-major, almost compassionately, to the figure which sat its horse steadfastly, but with a despondent droop of the shoulders.
"No possible use, sir," echoed the Staff Doctor kindly. The three were facing westward, for that vain hope of help from the east had been given up at last; and behind them, barely audible, was the faint hum of the distant city. A shaft of cormorants flying jheel-ward with barbed arrow head, trailed across the purpling sky; below them the red pennant was fading steadily. The day was done. But to one pair of eyes there seemed still a hope, still a last appeal to something beyond east or west.
"Bugler! sound the assembly!"
The Brigadier's voice rang sharp over the plain, and was followed, quick as an echo, quick from that habit of obedience on which so much depended, by the cheerful notes.
"Come--to the co-lors! Come quick, come all--come quick, come all--come quick! Quick! Come to the colors!"
Last appeal to honor and good faith, to memory and confidence. But they had passed with the day. Yet not quite, for as the rocks and stones, the distant lines, the familiar landmarks gave back the call, a solitary figure, trim and smart in the uniform of the loyal 74th, fell in and saluted.
In all that wide plain one man true to his salt, heroic utterly, standing alone in the dusk. A nameless figure, like many another hero. Yet better so, when we remember that but a few hours before his regiment hadvolunteered to a managainst their comrades and their country! So sepoy----, of company----, can stand there, outlined against the dying day upon the parade-ground at Delhi, as a type of others who might have stood there also, but for the lack of that cloud of dust upon the Meerut road.
Brigadier Graves wheeled his horse slowly northward; but at the sight the sepoys of the 38th, still friendly to him personally, crowded round him urging speed. It was no place for him, they said. No place for the master.
Palpably not. It was time, indeed, for the thud of retreating hoofs to end the incident, so far as the master was concerned; the actual finale of the tragic mistake being a disciplined tramp, as the sepoy who had fallen in at the last Assembly fell out again, at his own word of command, and followed the master doggedly. He was killed fighting for us soon afterward.
"God be praised!" said the 38th, as with curious deliberation they took possession of the cantonments. "That is over! He has gone in safety, and we have kept the promise given to our brothers of the 56th not to harm him." So, joined by their comrades from the city, they set guards and gave out rations, with double and treble doses of rum. Played the master, in fact, perfectly; until, in the darkness, a rumble arose upon the road, and one-half of the actors fled cityward incontinently and the other half went to bed in their huts like good boys. But it was not the troops from Meerut at last. It was only their old friends the guns, once more brought back from the fugitives by comrades who had finally decided to stand by the winning side.
So the question has once more to be asked, "What would have happened, if, even at that eleventh hour, there reallyhadbeen a cloud of dust on the Meerut road?"
As it was, confidence and peace were restored. In the city they had never been disturbed. It seemed weary, bewildered by the topsy-turvydom of the day, desirous chiefly of sleep and dreams. So that Kate Erlton, peering out through a chink in the wood-store, felt that if she were ever to escape from the slow starvation which stared her in the face, she could choose no better time than this, when traffic had ceased, and the moon had not yet risen. She had settled that her best chance lay in creeping along the wall at first, then, taking advantage of the gardens, cutting across to that same sally-port through which the heroes of the magazine had told her they had made their escape. She did not know the exact situation, but she could surely find it. Besides, the ruins would most likely be deserted, and the other gates of the city, even if they were not closed for the night, as the gate here was, would be guarded. Once out of the city, she meant to make for the Flagstaff Tower; for, of course, she knew nothing of its desertion.
So she set the door ajar softly, and crept out. And as she did so, the whiteness of her own dress, even in the dense blackness, startled her, and roused the trivial wish that she had put on her navy-blue cotton instead, as she had meant to do that day. Strange! how a mere chance--the word was like a spur always, and she crept along the wall, hoping that the smoking, flaring fire of refuse in the opposite corner, round which the guard were sitting, so as to be free of mosquitoes, might dazzle their eyes. It was her only chance, however, so she must risk it. Then suddenly, under her foot, she felt something long, curved, snakelike. It was all she could do not to scream; but she set her teeth, and trod down hard with all her strength, her heart beating wildly in the awful suspense. But nothing struck her, there was no movement. Had she killed it? Her hand went down in the dark with a terror in it lest her touch should light on the head--perhaps within reach of the fangs. But she forced herself to the touch, telling herself she was a coward, a fool.
Thank Heaven! no snake after all, only a rope. A rope that must have been used for tethering a horse, for here under her foot was straw, rustling horribly. No! not now--that was something soft. A blanket; a horse's double blanket, dark as the darkness itself. Here was a chance, indeed. She caught it up and paused deliberately in the darkest corner of the square, to slip off shoes and stockings, petticoats and bodice; so, in the scantiest of costumes, winding the long blanket round her, as a skirt and veil in ayah's fashion. Her face could be hidden by a modest down-drop over it, her white hands hidden away by the modest drawing of a fold across her mouth. Her feet, then, were the only danger, and the dust would darken them. She must risk that anyhow. So, boldly, she slipped out of the corner, and made for the gate, remembering to her comfort that it was not England where a lonely woman might be challenged all the more for her loneliness. In this heathen land, that down-dropped veil hedged even a poor grass-cutter's wife about with respect. What is more, even if she were challenged, her proper course would be to be silent and hurry on. But no one challenged her, and she passed on into the denser shadows of the church garden to regain her breath; for it had gone somehow. Why, she knew not; she had not felt frightened. Then the question came, what next? Get to the magazine, somehow; but the strain of looking forward seemed far worse than the actual doing, so she went on without settling anything, save that she would avoid roads, and give the still smoking roofless bungalows as wide a birth as possible, lest, in the dark, she should come on some dead thing--a friend perhaps. And with the thought came that of Alice Gissing. The house lay right on her path to the magazine. Surely she must be near it now. Was that the long sweep of its roof against the sky? If she could see so much, the moon must be rising, and she could have no time to lose. As she crept along through the garden, she wondered why the bungalow had not been burned like the others. Perhaps the ayah's friends had saved it, or, perhaps, there had not been much to attract them in the little hired house. Or, perhaps----
Hark! She crouched back, from voices close beside her, and doubled a bit; but they seemed to follow her. And straight ahead the trees ended, and she must brave the open space by the house itself; unless, indeed, she slipped by the row of servant's houses to the veranda, and so--through the rooms--gain the further side. Or she might hide in the house till these voices passed, There they were again! She made a breathless dash for the shadow, ran on till she found the veranda, and deciding to hide for a time, passed in at the first door--the door of the room where she had left Alice Gissing lying dead a few hours before. But it was too dark, as yet, to see if she lay there still, too dark to see even if the house had been plundered. It must have been, however, for the very floor-cloths were gone; the concrete struck cold to her feet. And a sudden terror at the darkness, the emptiness, coming over her, she passed on rapidly to the faintly glimmering square of the further door, seen through the intervening rooms. There were three of them; bedroom, drawing room, dining room, set in a row in Indian fashion, all leading into each other, all opening on to the veranda; the two end ones opening also into the side veranda. She could get out again, therefore, by this further door. But it was bolted. She undid the bolts, only to find it hasped on the outside. A feeling of being trapped seized upon her. She ran to the other door. Hasped also. The drawing-room door? Firmer even than the others. But what a fool she was to feel so frightened, when she could always go out as she had come in when the voices had passed. She stole back softly, knowing they must be just outside, and almost fancying, in her alarm, that she heard a step in the veranda. But there was the glimmering square of escape, open. No! shut too! shut from the outside.
Had they seen her and shut the door? And there, indeed, were footsteps! Loud footsteps and voices coming up the long flight of steps which led to the veranda from the road. Coming straight, and she locked in, helpless.
She threw up her hands involuntarily at a bright flash in the veranda. Was it lightning? No! a pistol shot, a quick curse, a fall. A yell of rage, a rush of those feet upon the steps, and then another flash, another, and another! More curses and a confused clashing! She stood as if turned to stone, listening. Hark! down the steps, surely, this time, another rush, a cry, a scuffle, a fall. Then, loud and unmistakable, a laugh! Then silence.
Merciful Heavens! what was it? What had happened? She shook at the door gently, but still there was silence. Then, gripping the woodwork, she tried to peer out. But she could only see the bit of veranda in front of her which, being latticed in and hung with creepers, was very dark. The rest was invisible from within. She leaned her ear on the glass and listened. Was that a faint breathing? "Who's there?" she cried softly; but there was no answer. She sank down on the floor in sheer bewilderment and tried to think what to do, and after a time, a faint glimmer of the rising moon aiding her, she went round to every door and tried it again. All locked inside and out. And now she could see that the house had been pillaged to the uttermost. There was literally nothing left in it. Nothing to aid her fingers if she tried to open the doors. By breaking the upper panes of glass, of course, she could undo the top bolt, but how was she to reach the bottom ones behind the lower panels? And why? why had they been locked? Who had locked the one by which she had come in? What was there that needed protection in that empty house. Was there by chance someone else? Then, suddenly, the remembrance of what she had left lying in the end room hours before came back to her. She had forgotten it utterly in her alarm and she crept back to see if Alice Gissing still kept her company. The bed was gone, but by the steadily growing glimmer of the moon she could see something lying on the floor in the very center of the room. Something strangely orderly, with a look of care and tidiness about it; but not white--and her dress had been white. Kate knelt down beside it and touched the still figure gently. What had it been covered with? Some sort of network, fine--silken--crimson. An officer's sash surely! And now her eyes becoming accustomed to what lay before them, and the light growing, she saw that the curly head rested on an officer's scarlet coat. The gold epaulettes were arranged neatly on either side the delicate ears so as not to touch them. Who had done this? Then that step she had thought she heard in the veranda must have been a real one. Someone must have been watching the dead woman.
She was at the door in an instant rapping at a pane, "Herbert! Herbert! are you there? Herbert! Herbert!" He might have done this thing. He might have come over from Meerut, for he had loved the dead woman, he had loved her dearly.
But there was no answer. Then wrapping the blanket round her hand she dashed it through the pane, and removing the glass, managed to crane out a little. She could see better so. Was that someone, or only a heap of clothes in the shadow of the corner by the inner wall? By this time the moonlight was shining white on the orange-trees on the further side of the road. She could see beyond them to the garden, but nothing of the road itself, nothing of the steep flight of steps leading down to it; a balustrade set with pots filling up all but the center arch prevented that.
"Herbert!" she cried again louder, "is that you?" But there was not a sound.
God in heaven! who lay there? dying or dead? helplessness broke down her self-control at last, and she crept back into the room, back to the old companionship, crying miserably. Ah! she was so tired, so weary of it all. So glad to rest! A sense of real physical relief came to her body as, for the first time for long, long hours, she let her muscles slacken, and to her mind as she let herself cry on, like a child, forgetting the cause of grief in the grief itself. Forgetting even that after a time in sheer rest; so that the moon, when it had climbed high enough to peep in through the closed doors, found her asleep, her arms spread out over the crimson network, her head resting on what lay beneath it. But she slept dreamfully and once her voice rose in the quick anxious tones of those who talk in their sleep.
"Freddy! Freddy!" she called. "Save Freddy, someone! Never mind, ayah! He is only a boy, and the other, the other may----" Then her words merged into each other uncertainly, after the manner of dreamers, and she slept sounder.
Soundest of all, however, in the cool before the dawn; so that she did not wake with a stealthy foot in the side veranda, a stealthy hand on the hasp outside; did not wake even when Jim Douglas stood beside her, looking down vexedly on the blanket-shrouded figure pillowed on the body he came to seek. For he had been delayed by a thousand difficulties, and though the shallow grave was ready dug in the garden, the presence of this native--even though a woman, apparently--must make his task longer. Was it a woman? One hand on his revolver, he laid the other on the sleeper's shoulder. His touch brought Kate to her feet blindly, without a cry, to meet Fate.
"My God! Mrs. Erlton!" he cried, and she recognized his voice at once. Fate indeed! His chance and hers. His chance and hers!
She stood half stupefied by her dreams, her waking; but he, after his nature, was ready in a second for action, and broke in on his own wondering questions impatiently. "But we are losing time. Quick! you must get to some safer place before dawn. Twist that blanket right--let me, please. That will do. Now, if you will follow close, I must get you hidden somewhere for to-day. It is too near dawn for anything else. Come!"
She put out her hand vaguely, as if to stave his swift decision away, and, looking in her face, he recognized that she must have time, that he must curb his own energy.
"Then it was you who fired," she said in a dull voice. "You who shut me in here? You who killed those voices. Why didn't you answer when I called, when I thought it was Herbert? It was very unkind--very unkind."
He stared at her for a second, and then his hand went out and closed on hers firmly. "Mrs. Erlton! I'm going to save you if I can. Come. I don't know what you're talking about, and there is no time for talk. Come."
So, hand in hand, they passed into the side veranda, through which he had entered, and so, since the nearest way to the city lay down that flight of steps, to the front one.
"Take care," he cried, half-stumbling himself, and forcing her to avoid something that lay huddled up against the wall. It was a dead man. And there, upon the steps which showed white as marble in the moonlight, were two others in a heap. A third lower down, ghastlier still, lying amid dark stains marring the whiteness, and with a gaping cut clearly visible on the shoulder.
But that still further down! Jim Douglas gave a quick cry, dropped Kate's hand, and was on his knees beside the tall young figure--coatless, its white shirt stiff with blood, which lay head downward on the last steps as if it had pitched forward in some mad pursuit. As he turned it over on its back gently, the young face showed in the moonlight stern, yet still exultant, and the sword, still clenched in the stiff right hand, rattled on the steps.
"Mainwaring! I don't understand," he said, looking up bewildered into Kate's face. The puzzle had gone from it; she seemed roused to life again.
"I understand now," she said softly, and as she spoke she stooped and raised the boy's head tenderly in her hands. "Don't let us leave him here," she went on eagerly, hastily. "Leave him there, beside--beside--her."
Jim Douglas made no reply. He understood also dimly, and he only signed to her to take the feet instead. So together they managed to place that dead weight within the threshold and close the door.
Then Jim Douglas held out his hand again, but there was a new friendliness in its grip. "Come!" he said, and there was a new ring in his voice, "the night is far spent, the day is at hand."
It was true. As they stepped from the now waning moonlight into the shadow of the trees, the birds, beginning to dream of dawn, shifted and twittered faintly among the branches. And once, startling them both, there was a louder rustling from a taller tree, a flutter of broad white wings to a perch nearer the city, a half-sleepy cry of:
"Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!"
"If I had time," muttered Jim Douglas fiercely, "I would go and wring that cursed bird's neck! But for it----" Kate's tighter clasp on his hand seemed like an appeal, and he went on in silence.
So, as they slipped from the gardens into the silent streets, the muezzin's monotonous chant began from the shadowy minaret of the big mosque.
"Prayer is more than sleep!--than sleep!--than sleep!"
The night was far spent; the day was indeed at hand--and what would it bring forth? Jim Douglas, with a sinking at his heart, told himself he could at least be thankful that one day was done.