"That hand no good. Cut thumb off."
"That hand no good—cut thumb off."
The soldiers laughed again, thinking that the Hindu was going to "back out"; but Tom offered his left hand without a word, and the juggler, laying the lemon on the open palm, drew his shorttulwar(sword).
The ring of spectators gave a sudden heave, and the boldest man among them held his breath as the Hindu stepped forward with uplifted weapon; but the young Englishman looked him full in the eyes, and held the extended hand as firm as a rock.
A flash—a whiz—a sudden chill across Tom's open hand, like the fall of a drop of cold water, and the lemon rolled on the ground in two clear halves, leaving the young soldier unharmed.[2]
A shout of applause from the lookers-on made the air ring, and under cover of it the pretended juggler, bending forward as if to satisfy himself that Tom's hand was indeed unhurt, said a few emphatic words to him, so low that no one else could hear them.
Whatever those words were, they seemed greatly to startle the hearer, who was about to reply, when the Hindu signed to him to be silent, and, letting drop, in passing, a second emphatic whisper (destined to bear, later on, strange and terrible fruit), glided by him and was gone.
All the rest of that day "Wild Tom" was unwontedly silent and thoughtful; and his gravity appeared to have infected his special crony, Sam Black (the man on whom the rupee trick had been played), with whom Tom had some talk apart as soon as the juggler had gone.
Meanwhile the prisoner in the "black hole" was fast sinking into a heavy torpor, which seemed proof againsteven the ceaseless torment of the swarming flies, when the sound of a well-known and hated voice outside his prison roused him like the sudden shock of a blow.
"We shall be well rid of the rascal; such a fellow is a disgrace to the name of Englishman!"
"Am I?" growled Bob Burton through his set teeth. "And what areyou?"
But just then his attention was diverted to a strange, rustling, scraping noise overhead, as if something were dragging itself along the roof of his prison. What could it be? A rat? a snake? and his hands were tied!
But the next moment appeared at the air-hole, high above him, a fresh, child-like face, framed in golden hair—the face of little Freddy Hardman, the colonel's son. An instant more, and the boy's slim figure had wormed itself through the opening (which was only just wide enough to let it pass), and had dropped lightly down on to the floor at Bob Burton's side.
"They wouldn't let me in to see you," said the little hero, with a gleeful laugh; "but I'd made up my mind that Iwouldcome, so I just went up into the store-house, and climbed through the window down on to this roof, and then squeezed through the air-hole, and here I am. Poor old Bob! why, your face is all bleeding, I declare; and how those horrid flies must have been plaguing you! Let me tie it up for you with my handkerchief."
And the kind little fingers tenderly wiped the dust and blood from the hurt, and bound it up dexterously enough.
"Ah! if only they was all like you!" said Burton brokenly; "you doesn't preach and jaw at a chap—you jistloveshim!"
No words could have better summed up the secret of that power by which One whose very name poor Bob had never heard, save in the form of an oath, had conquered the whole world.
"And here's a banana that I've brought you, for I knew how thirsty you must be, shut up in this hot place," went on Freddy, as he tugged from his pocket a huge ripe plantain.
As Burton awkwardly held out his bound hands to take it, the boy saw for the first time that they were knotted together at the wrists, and flushed up indignantly.
"What? have they really tied your hands? What a shame! Well, eat this banana first, and then I'll untie them for you."
The thirsty man's parched lips sucked in the juicy pulp with a wolfish eagerness that told its own story; and then Freddy, eager to help him, went to work manfully upon the cruel cord, which at first resisted all his efforts.
"Best let it be," said Bob Burton gruffly. "Thank'ee all the same, little 'un; but ye'll only 'urt them little fingers o' your'n."
But the brave little champion was not to be so easily balked of his kind purpose; and, bruise his fingers as he might, he persevered gallantly, till at length the hastily and clumsily tied knot gave way, and Burton's stiffened, aching hands were free.
Free once more! And then, with that sense of recovered strength, the wild beast in that perverted nature started into life again, and there came to him a thought from hell.
His worst enemy's only son was alone with him, and wholly in his power; and one strangling clutch of his strong hands on that slender throat would acquit at once and for ever the heavy debt of revenge that he had so long hungered to repay. Ah! to see that hard, pitiless man's face as he bent over the corpse of his only child! and to watch him writhe, and mock his agony!
It was but for a moment, and then the hideous temptation was past and gone like the phantom of a nightmare;but its tremendous reaction turned the overwrought man sick and faint, and he sank dizzily back against the wall.
The boy eyed him anxiously for an instant, and then, climbing on to his knee, began to wipe off, with the end of the sash that served him as a waist-belt, the big drops of moisture that beaded the tortured face.
"Do you know what this reminds me of, Bob?" said he; "of a picture I saw once of Christ nailed to the Cross, and a little tiny bird that was sorry for Him, trying hard with its poor wee beak to pull the nails out of His hands, and set Him free. I used to think I should like to be that bird; and now Ihavebeen like it in a sort of a way, for I've setyourhands free, haven't I?"
A long shiver ran through the soldier's hardy frame, and he was about to speak, when a measured tramp was heard outside, a short, sharp order was given, and then the door swung back, revealing the uniforms of a corporal's guard.
But when the soldiers saw Freddy (whose absence had already been noticed and wondered at) in the cell with the prisoner, they exchanged looks of blank amazement, not wholly untinged with superstitious awe.
Was he indeed, then, what they had often called him—an angel sent down to undo the evil wrought by the merciless harshness of his iron-hearted father? How else could he have come into this lockfast place, with a sentry at its door, and (as they thought) no other available access?
One of the men entered the cell to bring out the prisoner, and Burton recognised his chum Tom Tuffen.
"What'll they do with me, Tom?" asked he in a whisper; "dose o' lead pills, eh?"
"No suchluck, Bob," replied the other gloomily, in the same low tone; "down to the depot at Kalipur!"
"Then I knows wot I've got to expect," said the doomed man with a sickly smile. "That's wot they calls 'commutin' the death-penalty,' I s'pose; if they'd commuted the penaltytodeath, there 'ud ha' been more sense in it!—Jist tie my 'ands agin, will yer, Tom? I don'twant the little chap to git into trouble for undoin' 'em!"
"Jist tie my 'ands agin, will yer, Tom?"
"Jist tie my 'ands agin, will yer, Tom?"
"There's my father, and I must go to him," called out Freddy at that moment. "Good-bye, dear Bob—good-bye!"
"Good-bye, little 'un—I won't forget yer; and" (with a terrific scowl at the tall, upright, soldierly figure toward which the boy flew with outstretched hands) "I won't forget 'im, neither!"[3]
CHAPTER II
A fewdays later startling news came to the garrison of Huttee-Ghur (Elephant's Home).
An armed escort on its way down the valley from the fort to the town of Kalipur, with some empty store-waggons (taking Bob Burton with them as a prisoner), had been attacked on the march, just as evening was closing in, by a large body of native soldiers, or of native robbers (which meant very much the same thing), who were not beaten off without a sharp fight, in which the English lost several men, including Bob Burton himself, as well as Sam Black and Tom Tuffen.
Nor was this all. Several of the native drivers were nowhere to be found after the fighting was done, andwere believed to have gone over to the enemy in the confusion. Moreover, three or four of the soldiers stoutly declared that the leader of their assailants was the famous robber-chief Kala-Bagh (Black Tiger), the terror of the whole district, and further, that he was no other than the pretended juggler whose tricks had amused their barrack-square only a week before!
This would have been unwelcome news at any time; but it was doubly ominous just then.
The great war that had been threatening so long had fairly broken out at last. The Mahratta hosts were sweeping over the great central plain, the English troops advancing to meet them; and all Northern India was holding its breath, as it were, to see which would win. A single disaster to the British arms, and all the subject provinces would blaze at once into open insurrection; and the unheard-of boldness of these native banditti in daring to attack British soldiers in open daylight, plainly showed which of the two partiestheythought more likely to get the best of it.
But the English officers at Huttee-Ghur hailed this prospect of open war as a positive relief from the nightmare feeling that had haunted them for weeks and months past, of being dogged at every step by secret treachery and sleepless murder, and slowly but surely entangled in an ever-tightening net of silent, viewless, implacable hatred.
In truth, there is no sorer trial of nerve on the face of the earth than to know, and never for a moment forget that you know, that the meek little water-carrier who fills your bath is probably in a plot to take your life—that the cook who dresses your dinner so well may have sprinkled poison on it—that the smart groom who obeys so promptly and intelligently your orders about your favourite horse, is calculating all the while how much he can get for it after he has cut your throat—and that the humble peasantswho crouch in the dust at your feet, hailing you as "protector of the poor," and whiningly calling you "their father and their mother," are just preparing to fire your house over your head, and burn or murder all within. Let any man be compelled to live for a time in a spot where the whole air is heavy with yellow fever or cholera, and where, whenever two men meet, each looks nervously in the other's face for the first signs of the fell destroyer—and he will know how it feels to be quartered in the midst of a disaffected Eastern population.
Not a word said Colonel Hardman when this attack, and the juggler's identity with the bandit chief who had led it, were reported to him. But the best of his native scouts, a jungle veteran, who had slain as many tigers as he had seen birthdays, knew enough of his master's ways to remark shrewdly to his comrades that evening—
"Brothers, there is evil in store for these Dacoits (robbers), whoever they be. When the Colonel Sahib looks fierce, and speaks angry words, it is as a strong wind that sweeps by and is gone; but when he says nothing, it is the hush before the thunderstorm."
In fact, the colonel (who, like Lord Goring, "always kept his temper when he wasreallyangry"), had fully made up his mind that the "rabble of black thieves" who had dared to molest Englishmen should pay dearly for their insolence; and the means were ready to his hand, for the garrison had just been strongly reinforced, it being of the last importance, in the disturbed state of the whole country, to secure so important a post as Huttee-Ghur, which, so long as the English held it, would be an effectual curb on the surrounding population.
The old soldier's eye sparkled with stern approval as he saw filing into the fort three or four squadrons of Rajput horse (than whom there were no better riders or harder fighters in all India), and several companies ofRohilla foot—men whom their greatest leader had rightly declared to be "the best of all Sepoys at the cold steel."
With such men at his back, the colonel would have faced a whole native army; and he lost no time in scouring the jungle in quest of his skulking foes.
His style of campaigning would have sorely displeased those learned gentlemen who, sitting at home in England over their books and diagrams, lay down the law about "throwing out flankers," and performing this or that manœuvre amid thickets as dense as themselves, through which you may struggle for hours without sight or sound of an enemy, while passing again and again so close to the hidden foe whom you are hunting, that he could touch you with his spear if he chose. (A fact.) But, unscientific as it might be, the colonel's mode of fighting was eminently successful, as the jackals and vultures of the jungle could have told for many a day.
The savage chief himself, indeed, managed to escape; but he was almost the only survivor of his band, and there was no more trouble with the Dacoits that season.
But hardly was the work done when a wild legend began to creep abroad, that the three slain British soldiers, Bob Burton, Sam Black, and Tom Tuffen had come to life again, and had been seen fighting in the ranks of the brigands! Several of Colonel Hardman's native followers had recognised them, and all told the same story.
But when the English Grenadiers heard the tale, they laughed it to scorn.
"Rubbish!" growled a hard-faced old fellow, whose scarred visage looked like an ill-drawn railway map. "Rise from the dead, indeed! ifIwas once dead, I'd never be sitch a fool as to git up and 'ave it all over agin, I knows that! They've jist desarted, and j'ined Kala Bagh. I remember now as I see'd him, when he was made-up as a juggler, say some'at to Tom, and to Sam Black too. They've desarted, that's wot they've done; and if it warn'tfor the shame of herdin' with sitch scum as them coffee-coloured thieves yonder, I'm blowed ifIwouldn't desart too."
"And so would I," muttered more than one of his hearers.
The story at last reached the ears of Colonel Hardman, who, at any other time, would have been goaded to frenzy by the very thought of any ofhismen deserting, and, worse still, deserting to join a gang of Hindu robbers. But he soon had something else to think of; for as the summer was drawing to a close, his little Freddy fell suddenly ill.
Then was seen a change such as the fort had never known since British redcoats first garrisoned it. No more songs and laughter, no more coarse jokes or boisterous oaths. The rough soldiers went to and fro as silently as shadows—the officers sat over their evening cigars without uttering a word; and no man who crossed the barrack square after dark ever failed to look up instinctively at the light that burned in an upper room of the colonel's quarters, showing where life and death were contending for the bright-eyed boy whom they all knew and loved.
But, as if to sweep away their last hope, the heat of that memorable summer endured longer than the oldest man could recollect. Even the nights were as sultry as the days, and, slowly but surely, the poor little life withered away, though the kind-hearted doctor (who had always been a special friend of their little favourite) wore himself to a shadow in striving to save him, and the stern father never quitted for an instant, save when his duty called him, the sick-bed on which lay all that he had left to love.
"As if there warn'tmenenough 'ere to die, and plenty as could be better spared!" growled a big soldier one evening; "and then to go and pick out'im!"
"Hold yer jaw, can't yer?" broke in a second man savagely; "heshan'tdie, not if Death was to come for tofetch him hisself, with a full-strength battalion o' devils to back him!"
"I wish I knowed how to pray, so as I could pray for'im!" muttered a third—one of the wildest and worst men in the whole regiment.
"Well, look 'ere, boys!" cried a fourth; "s'pose we all volunteer to be put down on God's black list instead, mayhap He'll let the little 'un off for this once; for, whoever He is, He surely wouldn't be too hard on a sweet little chap like that!"
And then, doffing his cap as if in the presence of a superior, the rough fellow said, in a voice that he vainly tried to steady—
"O God, jist let'imoff this once, and do what you like with all ofus. Amen."
"Amen!" echoed all his comrades with one voice; and, having offered up that strange supplication, the poor fellows actually felt somewhat less despondent, without knowing why.
Just then Colonel Hardman's tall form was seen to issue from the door of his quarters, and come straight toward them.
"'Ere he comes!" said one of the men eagerly; "I'll go and ax how the little 'un is."
"Are you crazy, Jim?" cried the man beside him, catching him by the arm. "Don't be a fool, lad; if he's worse'n a tiger in the or'nary way, what d'ye s'pose he'll benow?"
"I don't care," said Jim Barlow desperately; "here goes."
And stepping right up to the dreaded commandant, he saluted, and said huskily—
"Beg pardon, sir—ishe any better?"
The white, rigid face looked vacantly at him for a moment, like one just aroused from sleep, and hardly understanding yet what was said to him; and then the grim man replied, in a low, weak voice—
"Thank you, my man, for asking. No, he is no better."
And Jim went back to his comrades in the lowest stage of depression.
"I'm afeared it's all up, boys," said he, "or Old Blue-Beard 'ud never have spoke to me so civil."
In truth, during those last few days, the stricken father's misery was such that even those who hated him most deeply might well have pitied him; for no torture on earth can compare with the unendurable torment of being forced to witness the sufferings of a helpless child, when powerless to alleviate them in any way. I have seen strong men die in agony, with none to help them; butthey, at least, knew what was in store for them, and faced it like men, neither pitying themselves nor asking pity from others. But a child cannot tell why it suffers, or why its suffering cannot be removed; and it looks instinctively to you for relief, unable to conceive that you are not powerful enough to help it. I have seen such a sight only too often; I pray God I may never see the like again.
And now—as if this iron man were doomed to feel, in his turn, the full bitterness of the pain that his merciless harshness had so often inflicted upon others—the poor little sufferer's ceaseless cry was for "dear old Bob Burton," the very man whom his listening father's ill-judged severity had driven forth into the jungle to herd with thieves and murderers, and perhaps to die like the beasts that perish.
"O Bob, dear Bob, do put your hand on my head and cool it; itdoesburn so!"
"Doctor, can't you doanything?" said the colonel in a fierce whisper, seizing the other's wrist in a convulsive clutch that made the very joint crackle. "He was always fond ofyou—can't you help him somehow?"
"God knows I would if I could!" replied the doctor despairingly; "but this is beyond me. There is only oneman in all India who could deal with such a case, and I don't even know where he is just now."
Another night and another day went by, and brought the end nearer still. The overwrought doctor (who was on the point of breaking down himself) crept out about nightfall for a breath of the fresh air that he so much needed.
But ere he had been gone five minutes, he came hurrying back, with a face so startlingly changed that the colonel sprang up from his place by the sick-bed and caught him by both hands, though the question that he would have asked died upon his lips.
"God be thanked!" said the doctor, "thereisa chance for us yet. I've just got word that my friend Skilman (whom I spoke of yesterday as the only man here that could deal with this case) has suddenly arrived at Kalipur. We must send off a swift messenger for him at once."
"I'll go myself," said Hardman, stepping towards the door.
"But—" began the dismayed doctor, through whose mind flashed instantly all the possible consequences of the commandant's absence from his post just when it might be attacked at any moment.
The colonel put aside the strong man like an infant, and said, in a tone which, though barely above a whisper, was terribly distinct—
"Don't talk to me—I'm going."
And, a few minutes later, he rode out of the fort into the deepening darkness, attended only by a Rajput trooper and his veteran scout, Lal Singh (Red Lion).
When the two Hindus saw their leader turn off from the high-road into the native path that led through the jungle to Kalipur, both knew well that although this way would save fully half the distance, they carried their lives in their hands by taking it, it being perilous not only from wild beasts and snakes, but from worse things still—forthe robbers were said to be astir again at the far end of the valley.
But, trained to exact obedience, there was no thought in their gallant hearts of wavering or hanging back. Had the whole Mahratta army barred their path, they would have simply repeated their usual formula, "Jo hookum" (it is an order), and gone without a murmur to certain death.
From first to last, that match against time with death was like one of those wild and feverish dreams, in which you are for ever rushing at full speed over a boundless waste, without advancing a single foot nearer to the goal. On, on, mile after mile—passing with bewildering suddenness from darkness to moonlight, and from moonlight into darkness again—now splashing through a swollen stream, now plunging down into a gloomy hollow, now bursting with a crash through a mass of tangled creepers, now checking their horses, barely in time, on the brink of a yawning chasm.
Once, the lights waved by the Hindus made a kind of broken rainbow on the scaly bulk of a monstrous snake, which, coiled round a tree above them, thrust out its huge flat head with an angry hiss, only to draw it back in affright at the sudden glare. Farther on, two flaming eyes broke the gloom for an instant, and then a long, gaunt, striped body vanished ghost-like into the surrounding blackness, with a snarl of mingled terror and rage; and, a few minutes later, a pack of prowling jackals, scared by the hoof-tramp and the lights, flitted spectrally away into the thickets, whimpering like frightened children.
But all this passed unheeded by Colonel Hardman. In place of the moonlit forest and the threatening monsters,hiseyes saw only a sick-room that lay already miles behind him, where a tiny golden head was tossing in weary pain upon its restless pillow; and he clenched his teeth in desperation at the thought that the aid which he was perilling his life to bring might come too late after all.
But now they were more than half-way to Kalipur—and now but a quarter of the distance was left—and now, as they drew nearer and nearer to the goal, the father's heavy heart began to wax lighter with an ever-growing hope.
Ha! what was that red fire-glow that broke suddenly upon them from an open space just ahead? and what were these wild forms that sprang up around it, like spectres starting from their graves?
"Sahib," said Lal Singh as coolly as ever, "there are robbers in our path."
"Thank God," said the colonel.
So tremendous was the suppressed emotion that quivered through those half-whispered words, so ghastly this sudden revelation of that inward torment which could hail as a positive relief the prospect of blood and wounds, and death itself, that even the iron-nerved Hindu felt awed. But there was no time to think of it. Fixing themselves firmly in their saddles, the three men rushed upon the nineteen as tigers spring upon a herd of deer.[4]
Like a stone through a pane of glass, they broke through the straggling line of their enemies. Crushed beneath the horse-hoofs fell grim Ali Shere; Mulhar Rao's strong right hand spun six feet from his body, hewn off like a twig; gasping on the ground lay fierce Haji Ismail, cloven through neck and shoulder; and by him, with his whole side laid open, writhed his brother Abd'-Allah.
Lal Singh and the Rajput had each killed his man; and the three, slashing right and left like giants, were already almost clear of their foes, when there came a sudden crackle of shots from the rear, and Lal Singh dropped dead without a cry, while the Rajput's horse sank under him, mortally wounded!
Quick as thought, Colonel Hardman turned in hissaddle, and, seizing his trusty follower's arm, dragged him up on to his own horse.
A tall bandit sprang at them both with uplifted weapon, only to fall dead instantly, cut down through cap and skull to the very teeth; but Hardman's sword snapped with the force of the blow, and the robber-chief himself, the terrible "Black Tiger," thinking him disarmed and at his mercy, flew at the Englishman's throat with a laugh of savage joy.
The two men met like conflicting whirlwinds. A flash of steel—a whiz—a red stain on the colonel's white sleeve—a dull thud—a crunch like the breaking of a snow-crust—and Kala Bagh, the most dreaded bandit of the district, lay dead on the trampled earth, with his skull smashed in like an egg-shell, while over his corpse the colonel's horse and its double burden dashed away into the deeper shadows beyond.
"The two men met like conflicting whirlwinds."
"The two men met like conflicting whirlwinds."
For many a day after, the superstitious Mussulmans of Kalipur told to their friends, with bated breath and looks of awe, how, in the first grey of dawn, the Angel of Death had come rushing through their town in the likeness of an English warrior—stained with blood, and with a dead man behind him on his black horse—and had carried away theHakeem Ingrez(English doctor) along with him. But, in the end, their angel of death proved to be an angel of life; for the new doctor did his work well, and the sick boy was saved!
The robbers, cowed by their formidable leader's fall, made no attempt at pursuit, and, in truth, there were but few of them left to pursue; for, out of nineteen men, six had been slain outright, and four more desperately wounded.
But, over and above the nineteen who had taken so active a part in the fray, there were three more of the gang who had been strangely backward from first to last.All three were in Eastern dress, and almost as dark as their dusky comrades; but, had they been black as negroes, their speech would have told at once what they really were.
"Well done the old regiment!" cried the tallest of the three, with a look of savage and reluctant admiration after the vanishing form of the colonel. "It's hard to beat yet—ain't it, Tom?"
"Right you are, Sam," replied Tom Tuffen; "and the old country's 'ard to beat, too! One true Englishman agin a dozen o' these coffee-coloured thieves, any day!"
"I believe you, my boy," said Sam Black. "Did yer see that last blow o' his'n? how he did up Kala Bagh hisself with one lick of his sword-handle, arter the blade was broke! That's wotIcalls fightin'!"
"Same here!" cried Tom. "Don't I remember how Kala Bagh said to me, when he fust axed me to jine his gang (that time he comed among us as a juggler, ye know), 'If thou fearest the colonel sahib,' he says to me, 'thou shalt see, when he and I meet in fight, that I am the stronger,' says he. Blow his Hindu impudence! he's found out by this time, I take it, whether Old Blue-Beard's stronger than'imor not!"
Then the third man spoke for the first time, breaking at length, with a visible effort, the moody silence in which he had seemed to be sunk while his two comrades were talking.
"Look 'ere, Tom," said he, "why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"
"Well, if it comes to that, Bob, why didn'tyou"? cried the other. "You've swore to do it, once and agin—I've heerd yer myself!"
Bob Burton made no answer for a moment, and his hard face worked convulsively. Then he looked up, and said fiercely, as if the words were wrung from him by a sudden spasm of pain—
"Icouldn't!"
"No more couldn't I neither," said Tom Tuffen, visibly relieved by this frank admission on the part of his comrade. "I tell yer, boys, when he came chargin' in among us like that, and knockin' over them niggers like nine-pins, by Jingo, I almost forgot to hate him!"
"Aye, that's jist 'ow I felt too," put in Sam Black gruffly. "I had my gun all ready to let fly at him, but when I see'd him a-fightin' the whole lot of 'em like a hero—and lickin' 'em too—why, I felt as if, s'pose I was to pull trigger on himthen, the very bullet 'ud turn round and hitmeinstead!"
"You're right, Sam," said Bob Burton with grim emphasis. "He's a thunderin' old tyrant, he is, and I hate him worse than Old Nick—and when I git another chance to pay him out, I won't let it slip so easy—but, curse him, he's a man every inch of him!"
Note.—This supposed desertion of British soldiers to join the ranks of Eastern marauders has, unhappily (as I have already shown in "The Boy Slave in Bokhara") only too much foundation in fact. During my first journey through Central Asia, not so many years ago, I was told of several Englishmen (my informants said seven) who were then serving in the so-called "army" of the Khan of Kokan; and all of these were deserters from British India.—D. K.
Note.—This supposed desertion of British soldiers to join the ranks of Eastern marauders has, unhappily (as I have already shown in "The Boy Slave in Bokhara") only too much foundation in fact. During my first journey through Central Asia, not so many years ago, I was told of several Englishmen (my informants said seven) who were then serving in the so-called "army" of the Khan of Kokan; and all of these were deserters from British India.—D. K.
CHAPTER III
A yearhad gone by since that memorable night, and had brought great events in its train.
The power at which all India had so lately trembled was now broken at once and for ever. At Delhi, at Laswaree, at Assaye, at Argaum, the Mahratta conquerors ofCentral India, with all odds of numbers and artillery in their favour, had fought gallantly to maintain their well-won renown; but numbers and artillery alike, and the utmost efforts of reckless valour, were all vain against the unconquerable "white faces from the West." From the Indian Ocean to the Bay of Bengal, not one native army was left that could look the soldiers of England in the face; and, both at home and throughout India, all men were full of the marvellous exploits of a promising young British commander, then known only as General Wellesley, but ere long to fill the whole world with the fame of the Duke of Wellington.
The East India Company's army had been increased by the formation of several new regiments; and one of the best of these was now commanded by Colonel Hardman, who had been transferred to a newly-built fort about a day's march from his former post at Huttee-Ghur.
Freddy was by this time quite well and strong again; but his father—from whose mind the haunting terror of that fearful summer was never wholly absent—had fully made up his mind to deprive himself of his son's company altogether, rather than take the risk of keeping him any longer in the fatal climate of India; and it had been settled that as soon as the country was quiet enough to make travelling safe, the boy should be sent down to Calcutta, and put on board of the first ship for England.
Evening was just beginning to darken into night, when a gaunt, haggard, wild-looking man in native dress, with a long gun on his shoulder, dragged his weary limbs heavily out of the matted thickets that fringed both sides of the road leading north-eastward to the border of Oude, and threw himself on the ground with a surly oath, which was hoarsely echoed by two other figures, as ragged and dusty as himself, that came creeping out after him.
Curiously enough, though all three were dressed asHindus, and were very nearly as dark in complexion, they all spoke inEnglish.
"Plenty o' dead wood for a fire, anyhow," growled the first man; "but wot's the use? It's jist like our luck, ain't it, Tom, to have a good fire and nothin' to cook at it!"
"Well, it'll keep the tigers off, if it does nothin' else," said Tom Tuffen; "though, if theywasto eat us, Bob," added he, with a meaning glance at his own lean hands, "they'd have pretty nigh as poor a supper as we're a-goin' to have ourselves."
"Why, there's some o' themchupatties(thin flour cakes) left yet, ain't there, Sam?" cried Bob Burton sharply.
"Two apiece, Bob—that's all!" replied Sam Black, producing the scanty provisions as he spoke, while his two comrades hastily scraped together and set on fire a heap of dead twigs and withered leaves, round which the wanderers stretched themselves in moody silence.
The meagre meal was eaten without a word; and, in truth, the three outcasts had but too good reason to be so silent and gloomy.
After the breaking up of the robber band which they had joined, they had taken service with one native prince after another, and had passed through all the vicissitudes of wild Eastern warfare. Now revelling in short-lived luxury—now fighting for their lives against terrible odds—now heading a mutiny for arrears of pay, and sacking the palace of their so-called master—one week filling their pockets with precious stones and goldmohurs(to be instantly flung away in the wildest freaks of excess), and then a week later, struggling half-starved through swamp and jungle, with a swarm of merciless foes in hot pursuit—they had compressed into those few months the perils and adventures of a whole lifetime.
And what had all this profited them? Nothing. Alltheir rich gains, all their daring feats, had left them as poor, and destitute, and hopeless as before.
In fact, their future seemed even darker than their past; for no one knew better than they that the savage despot of Oude—for whose court they were now making, as a last resource—even should he admit them among his soldiers, might any day reward them for their services by torturing them to death, or flinging them to the crocodiles of the Goomtee.[5]
"I'll tell yer wot hurtsmemost," muttered Bob Burton at last, in the tone of a man thinking aloud, rather than actually addressing his comrades; "to think o' them pals of our'n in the old regiment fightin' like men agin them coffee-coloured' heathens, one agin a dozen—and lickin' 'em too, every time—and every one in the old country's a-praisin'them, and calling 'em 'eroes; and we—wot havewebeen doin' all the while? Why, thievin' and murderin' along with a lot o' sneakin' blackamoors!"
"Aye," cried Tom Tuffen fiercely, "that's jist howIfelt that time at Krishnabad, when I axed that old sepoy as comed there with the major, to give me a drink o' water. D'ye remember wot the old chap said? 'Ismail Beg gives hislotah(brass cup) to no man who is not worthy. I am animmuk-wallah[6]—I have been true to my salt; but what artthou?' Now, how do you think a Englishman feels when he finds out that even a common blackamoor's ashamed of him!"
"And d'ye see that 'ere flag yonder?" added Sam Black grimly, as he pointed to the British colours that waved jauntily in the last gleam of sunset, above the lowwhite wall of a fort not more than a mile away. "That's the English flag, that is; and here be three Englishmen as daren't show their faces a-nigh it!"
Then followed a long and gloomy silence, each of the three unhappy men being wholly absorbed in his own sombre thoughts, as if they had now begun to realise, for the first time, the full depth of their degradation, and felt at last the whole bitterness of the harrowing contrast between what they might have been and what they were.
"It's allhisfault!" muttered Bob Burton at length, his voice sounding strange and hollow amid the deepening darkness. "If he hadn't druv us to it, we wouldn't have j'ined Kala Bagh's riff-raff; and if we hadn't took up withthem, we shouldn't ha' been where we are now. By Jingo, if I could have a wish granted me just this very minute, I knows wot it 'ud be!"
"To cotch'imsomewhere by hisself, and pay him out once for all—eh, Bob?" said Tom Tuffen, in a hoarse whisper.
Burton nodded silently, and Sam Black gave an assenting growl, as deadly in its meaning as the hiss of a rattlesnake.
But that menacing sound died away into a stifled gasp of terror, as there started out all at once from the encircling blackness into the ring of light cast by the fire—plain before the startled eyes of all three—a slender white figure, and a bright, smooth, child-like face, framed in golden hair!
"Is it a h'angel, Bob?" asked Sam Black, in a tremulous whisper.
"Is it a h'angel?"
"Is it a h'angel?"
"A h'angel, you fool!" said Burton, with grim scorn; "what have h'angels got to do with the likes of us? It's the devil asweb'longs to, and he'll have his own some day!"
But, at the sound of Burton's voice, the apparition sprang forward and called out joyfully, in accents that were familiar to them all—
"Is that you, Bob? Oh, Iamso glad! Come along with me, quick!"
And the desperate man suddenly felt his hard, bony hand clutched by the small, soft fingers of a child.
"Why, if it ain't the little 'un hisself!" cried Sam Black, in a tone of joyful recognition, as he laid his strong hand caressingly on the boy's shoulder.
"How comeyouhere, laddie, all by yourself?" asked Tom Tuffen, stepping forward on the other side.
"Father—come and help father!" was Freddy's only reply, as he caught hold of Tom's arm with his other hand.
"What, ishewith you?" cried Burton, with a sudden and terrible change on his worn face, which was instantly answered by a murderous gleam in the eyes of his two comrades.
"The horse came down with us—it took fright at your fire, I think—and my father fell with his leg under it—and I tried to pull him out, and couldn't; so then I ran to fetch help."
The three castaways exchanged looks of terrible meaning, without uttering a word.
Seldom indeed have such men been tried by such a temptation. Here was the vengeance for which they had just been longing, placed all at once within their very grasp. Here was the man whom they most hated in all the world, lying bruised and helpless, and wholly at their mercy; and even if they did not care to kill him themselves, all that was needed was simply to leave him to his fate. But then the boy—the boy—!
"Make haste—how slow you are!" cried Freddy imperiously. "Come and get him out—quick!"
And, as if his overwhelming excitement had really made him stronger, for the moment, than the two big, hardy men whom he was urging on, both made a step forward as he spoke, with the mechanical, unconscious movement of men walking in their sleep.
But hardly had they turned toward the high-road (close beside which lay the hollow wherein the colonel and his horse had fallen), when the whole forest shook with a terrific roar—the roar of a hungry tiger springing on its prey.[7]
"Oh, the tiger—the tiger!" screamed Freddy, "he'll get father!"
And he flew like an arrow in the direction of the sound.
If ever Bob and his comrades had run in their lives, they did so then. But ere they could reach the fatal spot, there came a second roar, louder and fiercer than the last—a wild, despairing cry—and then all was still.
When the tiger made his spring upon the prostrate horse and rider, the cool old soldier, unarmed and helpless as he was, did not give himself up for lost even then, shrewdly guessing that between a large and well-fed horse and a lean dried-up man, the monster's choice would be soon made.
And so it proved. One crunch of the destroyer's mighty jaws broke the poor beast's neck, and in a moment more the tiger was rending the yet quivering carcass with tooth and claw.
And now, could the colonel have lain still where he was, all might yet have gone well. The tiger, when gorged, would probably have gone off without troubling itself abouthim; nay, it might perhaps have dragged away the dead horse to serve it for a second meal, and thus have freed the imprisoned man from the weight that kept him down.
But it was not to be. The pain of that heavy pressure on his hurt limb made him impatient; and his hitherto unyielding nerves were sorely shaken (as, in truth, they might well be) by thus hearing, close to his very face, the tearing of his favourite horse piecemeal by the cruel fangs that might at any moment be buried in his own flesh. Feeling the pressure of the dead beast lightened for an instant as the tiger tugged at it and rocked it to and fro, he imprudently attempted to drag himself out from beneath it.
It was a fatal error. The moment he stirred, the tiger was upon him!
For one instant, while his thick military cloak hampered the monster's teeth, he saw the fierce yellow eyesglare into his, and felt the hot, foul, rank breath steaming on his face. Instinctively he uttered one last cry for help—and then—!
There was a trample of hurrying feet—a hoarse shout—the crackle of three shots fired in quick succession—and the terror of the jungle lay dead over his victim's body, just as a native patrol, alarmed by the noise, came racing up to the spot.
Hardman was promptly freed, and, to his son's vast relief, proved to have escaped with unbroken bones, though sorely bruised and shaken; for the tiger's fangs had not reached him, and the trench into which he had fallen had saved him from the full weight of the horse's body.
The lights carried by the patrol, as well as the cloudless splendour of the rising moon, made the whole scene as clear as day; and Colonel Hardman at once recognised his three rescuers, who, seeing that he knew them, and cut off from escape by the coming-up of the native soldiers, stood waiting in sullen silence to hear what he would say.
"I don't ask who you are, and I don't want to know," said the colonel to them, with a peculiar emphasis which all three fully understood. "I can see that you are Englishmen, and that you have been down on your luck; and, at all events, I owe you a good turn for saving my life. You look like the sort of fellows that I should like to have as recruits for my new regiment—what do you say?"
What they said no one heard save themselves and the colonel. But when, thirty-two years later, Colonel Hardman (General Hardman by that time), was laid at rest beneath the elms of the quiet English churchyard of his native village, foremost among those who bore him to the grave walked, side by side with his famous son, Major Frederick Hardman, a stalwart, grey-haired, soldier-likeman named Bob Burton, who had nursed the dying general, night and day, through the last hours of his final illness, and had felt amply repaid for all by the light of grateful affection that shone for a moment in the sunken eyes of his old enemy, just ere they settled into stillness for ever.
Matterswere proceeding satisfactorily enough at Gerstonville, a farm lying some thirty miles north-east of Buluwayo, in Rhodesia. Richard Gerston had had the luck to peg out a fairly rich claim when, after the finish of the first Matabele war and the fall of old Lobengula, Buluwayo and the surrounding territories fell into the hands of the Company. Gerston had taken an honourable share in the fighting, and shared also in the privileges held out towards those who had been actively engaged in the war; and though his hopes—or dreams, as perhaps it would be more correct to call them—his dreams of finding gold upon his claim had not been realised, or had remained practically unrealised (for there were signs of gold here and there, though the precious metal had not been found in paying quantities), yet the soil was excellent, and his crops and his live-stock were doing wonders—so well indeed, that after a few months Gerston had felt justified in sending for his wife and two children from the Cape, where, for the present, they had remained waiting in anxious expectancy for the message which would enable them to start northwards in order to begin a new life in a new home in this new country.
For a year or two everything flourished. The farm had become a bit of England, though with African surroundings. Gerston's son Bruce, a lad of fifteen, was as much help to his father in the farm during working hoursas his sister Kittie was to her mother in the house; while in the evening English outdoor games were the vogue; squash cricket especially, in which all the family took part, including Mrs. Gerston, who, however, according to the dictum of Bruce, "wasn't much good," and Kittie, who "played a much stronger game." Bruce had even attempted to teach a few Mashona labourers employed on the farm to wield the willow, but the result had been conspicuous failure; for not one of them displayed the smallest capacity for understanding the rules of the game, nor much inclination to run about or exert themselves after the fatigues of the day's work on the farm.