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!”
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 blownup the magazine at Doonha and are marching to Hanadra with aview to the rescue of Mrs. Bellairs. This is in no senseintended as a criticism of your action or of your plan, butcircumstances have made it seem advisable for me to transfermy own headquarters to Hanadra and I am just starting. I mustask you, please, to wait for me—at a spot as near to wherethis overtakes you as can be managed. If Mrs. Bellairs, oranybody else of ours, is in Hanadra, she—or they—are eitherdead by now or else prisoners. And if they are to be rescuedby force, the larger the force employed the better. If youwere to attack with your two companies before I reached you,you probably would be repulsed, and would, I think, endangerthe lives of any prisoners that the enemy may hold. I amcoming with my whole command as fast as possible.Your Obedient Servant,A. E. TurnerGenl. 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.
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.
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.