CHAPTER VII.

THE WORD WENT FORTH.

The Procession of the Hours had a weary march of it between the yellow

sunrise and the yellow sunset of the 10th of May, 1857; for the

heavens were as brass, the air one flame of white heat. The mud huts

of the sepoy lines at Meerut looked and felt like bricks baking in a

kiln; yet the torpor which the remorseless glare of noon brings even

to native humanity was exchanged for a strange restlessness. The doors

stood open for the most part, and men wandered in and out aimlessly,

like swarming bees before the queen appears. In the bazaar, in the

city too, crowds drifted hither and thither, thirstily, as if it were

not the fast month of Rumzân, when the Mohammedans are denied the

solace of even a drop of water till sundown. Drifted hither and

thither, pausing to gather closer at a hint of novelty, melting away

again, restless as ever.

Mayhap it was but the inevitable reaction after the stun and

stupefaction of Saturday, the sudden awakening to the result--namely,

that eighty-five of the best, smartest soldiers in Meerut had been set

to toil for ten years in shackles because they refused to be defiled,

to become apostate. On the other hand, the old Baharupa may have been

right about the yellow fakir: the silent, motionless figure might have

set folk listening and waiting for the word. It was to be seen by all

now sitting outside the city; at least Jim Douglas saw it several

times. Saw, also, that the beggar's bowl was fuller and fuller; but

the impossibility of asserting that all the passers-by saw it, as he

did, haunted him, once the idea presented itself to his mind. It was

always so with Tiddu's mysteries; they were no more susceptible to

disproof than they were to proof. You could waste time, of course, in

this case by waiting and watching, but in the natural course of events

half the passers-by would go on as if they saw nothing, and only one

in a hundred or so would give an alms. So what would be the good?

No one else, however, among the masters troubled himself to find a

cause for the restlessness; no one even knew of it. To begin with, it

was a Sunday, so that even the bond of a common labor was slackened

between the dark faces and the light. Then a mile or more of waste

deserted land and dry watercourse lay on either side of the broad

white road which split the cantonment into halves. So that the North

knew nothing of what was going on in the South, and while men were

swarming like bees in the sun on one side, on the other they were shut

up in barracks and bungalows gasping with the heat, longing for the

sun to set, and thanking their stars when the chaplain's memo came

round to say that the evening service had been postponed for half an

hour to allow the seething, glowing air to cool a little.

It was not the heat, however, which prevented Major Erlton from taking

his usual _siesta_. It was thought. He had come over from Delhi on

inspection duty a few days before and had intended returning that

evening; but the morning's post had brought him a letter which upset

all his plans. Alice Gissing's husband had come out a fortnight

earlier than they had expected, and was already on his way up-country.

The crisis had come, the decision must be made. It was not any

hesitation, however, which sent the heavy handsome face to rest in the

big strong hands as he rested his elbows on a sheet of blank paper. He

had made up his mind on the very day when Alice Gissing had first told

him why she could not go back to her husband. The letter forwarding

his papers for resignation was already sealed on the table beside him;

and the surprise was rather a gain than otherwise. Alice could join

him at Meerut now, and they could slip away together to Cashmere or

any out of the way place where there was shooting. That would save a

lot of fuss; and the fear of fuss was the only one which troubled the

Major, personally. He hated to know that even his friends would

wonder--for the matter of that those who knew him best would wonder

most--why he was chucking everything for a woman he had been mixed up

with for years. Yet he had found no difficulty in writing that

official request; none in telling little Allie to join him as soon as

she could. It was this third letter which could not be written. He

took up the pen more than once, only to lay it down again. He began,

"My dear Kate," once, only to tear the sheet to pieces. How could he

call her his when he was going to tell her that she was his no longer;

that the best thing she could do was to divorce him and marry some

other chap to be a father to the boy.

The thought sent the head into the hands again; for Herbert Erlton was

a healthy animal and loved his offspring by instinct. He had, in

truth, a queer upside-down notion of his responsibilities toward them.

If the fates had permitted it he would have done his best by Freddy.

Shown him the ropes, given him useful tips, stood by his inexperience,

paid his reasonable debts--always supposing he had the wherewithal.

Then how was he to tell Kate all the ugly story. He had left her in

his thoughts so completely, she had been so far apart from him for so

many years now, that he hesitated over telling her the bare facts,

just as--being conventionally a perfectly well-bred man--he would have

hesitated how to tell them to any innocent woman of his acquaintance.

Rather more so, for Kate--though she was sentimental enough, he told

himself, for two--had never been sensible and looked things in the

face. If she had, it might all have been different. Then with a rush

came the remembrance that Allie did--that she knew him every inch and

was yet willing to come with him. While he? He would stick through

thick and thin to little Allie, who never made a man feel a fool or a

beast. Something in the last assertion seemed to harden his heart; he

took up his pen and began to write:

"My Dear Kate: I call you that because I can't think of any other

beginning that doesn't seem foolish; but it means nothing, and I only

want to tell you that circumstances over which we had no control (he

felt rather proud of this circumlocution for a circumstance due

entirely to his volition) make it necessary for me to leave you. It is

the only course open to me as a gentleman. Besides I want to, for I

love Alice Gissing dearly. I am going to marry her, D. V., as soon as

I can. Mr. Gissing may make a fuss--it is a criminal offense, you see,

in India--but we shall tide over that. Of course you could prevent me

too, but you are not that sort. So I have sent in my papers. It is a

pity, in a way, because I liked this work. But it is only a two-year

appointment, and I should hate the regiment after it. For the rest, I

am not such a fool as to think you will mind; except for the boy. It

is a pity for him too, but it isn't as if he were a girl, and the

other may be. It will do no good to say I'm sorry. Besides, I don't

think it is all my fault, and I know you will be happier without me.

"Yours sincerely,

"Herbert Erlton.

"P. S.--It's no use crying over spilled milk. I believe you used to

think I would get the regiment some day, but they would never have

given it to me. I made a bit of a spurt lately, but it couldn't have

lasted to the finish, and after all, that is the win or the lose in a

race.

"H. E."

The postscript was added after rereading the rest with an

uncomfortable remembrance that it was the last letter he meant to

write to her. Then he threw it ready for the post beside the others,

and lay down feeling that he had done his duty. And as he dozed off

his own simile haunted him. From start to finish! How few men rode

straight all the way; and the poor beggars who came to grief over the

last fence weren't so far behind those who came in for the clapping.

It was the finish that did it; that was the win or the lose. But he

would run straight with little Allie--straight as a die! So he lost

consciousness in a glow of virtuous content with the future, and

joined the whole of the northern half of Meerut in their noontide

slumbers; for the future outlook, if not exactly satisfying, was not

sufficiently dubious to keep it awake.

But in the southern half, humanity was still swarming in and out,

waiting, listening. In one of the mud-huts, however, a company of men

gathered within closed doors had been listening to some purpose.

Listening to an eloquent speaker, the accredited agent of a

down-country organization. He had arrived in Meerut a day or two

before, and had held one meeting after another in the lines, doing his

utmost to prevent any premature action; for the fiat of the leaders

was that there should be patience till the 31st of May. Then, not

until then, a combined blow for India, for God, for themselves, might

be struck with chance of success.

"Ameen!" assented one old man who had come with him. An old man in a

huge faded green turban with dyed red hair and beard, and with a huge

green waistband holding a curved scimitar. Briefly, a Ghâzee or

Mohammedan fanatic. "Patience, all ye faithful, till Sunday, the 31st

of May. Then, while the hell-doomed infidels are at their evening

prayer, defenseless, fall on them and slay. God will show the right!

This is the Moulvie's word, sent by me his servant. Give the Great

Cry, brothers, in the House of the Thief! Smite ye of Meerut, and we

of Lucknow will smite also." His wild uncontrolled voice rolled on in

broad Arabic vowels from one text to another.

"And we of Delhi will smite also," interrupted the wearer of a rakish

Moghul cap impatiently. "We will smite for the Queen."

"The Queen?" echoed an older man in the same dress. "What hath the

Sheeah woman to do with the race of Timoor?"

"Peace! peace! brothers," put in the agent with authority. "These

times are not for petty squabbles. Let who be the heir, the King must

reign."

A murmur of assent rose; but it was broken in upon by a dissentient

voice from a group of troopers at the door.

"Then our comrades are to rot in jail till the 31st? That suits not

the men of the 3d Cavalry."

"Then let the 3d Cavalry suit itself," retorted the agent fearlessly.

"We can stand without them. Can they stand without us? Answer me, men

of the 20th; men of the 11th."

"There be not many of us here," muttered a voice from a dark corner;

"and maybe we could hold our own against the lot of you." It was

Soma's, and the man beside him frowned. But the agent who knew every

petty jealousy, every private quarrel of regiment with regiment, went

on remorselessly. "Let the 3d swagger if it choose. The Rajpoots and

Brahmins know how to obey the stars. The 31st is the auspicious day.

That is the word. The word of the King, of the Brahmins, of India, of

God!"

"The 31st! Then slay and spare not! It is _jehad! Deen! Deen! Futteh

Mohammed!_" said the Ghâzee.

The cry, though a mere whisper, electrified the Mohammedans, and an

older man in the group of dissentients at the door muttered that he

could hold his troop--if others who had risen to favor quicker than

he--could hold theirs.

"I'll hold mine, Khân sahib, without thine aid," retorted a very young

smart-looking native officer angrily. "That is if the women will hold

their tongues. But, look you, my troop held the hardest hitters in the

3d. And Nargeeza's fancy is of those in jail. Now Nargeeza leads all

the other town-women by the nose; and that means much to men who be

not all saints like Ghâzee-_jee_ yonder, who ties the two ends of life

with a ragged green turban and a bloody banner!"

"And I see not why our comrades should stay yonder for three weeks,

when there is but a native guard to hold them, and I and mine have

made the _Sirkar_ what it is," put in a man with arrogance and

insolence written on him from top to toe; a true type of the pampered

Brahmin sepoy.

"Rescue them if thou wilt, Havildar-_jee_," sneered the agent. "But

the man who risks our plot will be held traitor by the Council. And

the men of the 11th," he added sharply, turning to the corner whence

Soma's voice had come, "may remember that also. They have had the

audacity to stipulate for their Colonel's life."

"For our officers lives, _baboo-jee_," came the voice again, bold as

the agent's. "We of the 11th kill not men who have led us to victory.

And if this be not understood I, Soma, Yadubansi, go straight to the

Colonel and tell him. We are not butchers in the 11th: Oh, priest of

Kâli!"

The agent turned a little pale. He did not care to have his calling

known, and he saw at a glance that his challenger had the reckless

fire of hemp in his eyes. He had indeed been drinking as a refuge from

the memory of the sweeper's broom and from the taunts and threats

which had been used to force him to join the malcontents. Such a man

was not safe to quarrel with, nor was the audience fit for a

discussion of that topic; there was already a stir in it, and

mutterings that butchery was one thing, fighting another.

"Pay thy Colonel's journey home if thou likest, Rajpoot-_jee_," he

said with a sneer. "Ay! and give him pension, too! All we want is to

get rid of them. And there will be plenty of loot left when the

pension is paid, for it is to be each man for himself when the time

comes. Not share and share alike with every coward who will not risk

his life in looting, as it is with the _Sirkar_."

It was a deft red-herring to these born mercenaries, and no more was

said. But as the meeting dispersed by twos and threes to avoid notice,

the agent stood at the door giving the word in a final whisper:

"Patience till the 31st."

"Willst take a seat in our carriage, Ghâzee-_jee_," said a fat native

officer as he passed out. "'Tis at thy service since thou goest to

Delhi and we must return to-night. God knows we have done enough to

damn us at Meerut over this court-martial! But what would you? If we

had not given the verdict for the Huzoors there would have been more

of us in jail. So we bide our time like the rest. And to-morrow there

is the parade to hear the sentence on the martyrs at Barrackpore. Do

the sahibs think us cowards that they drive us so? God smite their

souls to hell!"

"He will, brother, he will. The Cry shall yet be heard in the House of

the Thief," said the Ghâzee fiercely, his eyes growing dreamy with

hope. He was thinking of a sunset near the Goomtee more than a year

ago, when he had bid every penny he possessed for his own, in vain.

"Well, come if thou likest," continued the native officer. "That camel

of thine yonder is lame, and we have room. 'Twas Erlton sahib's dâk by

rights, but he goes not; so we got it cheap instead of an _ekka_."

"Erlton sahib's!" echoed the fanatic, clutching at his sword. "Ay!

Ay!" he went on half to himself. "I knew he was at Delhi, and

the mem who laughed, and the other mem who would not listen. Nay!

Soubadar-_jee!_ I travel in no carriage of Erlton sahib's. My camel

will serve me."

"'Tis the vehicle of saints," sneered the owner of the rakish Moghul

cap. "Verily, when I saw thee mounted on it, Ghâzee-_jee_, I deemed

thee the Lord Ali."

"Peace! scoffer," interrupted the fanatic, "lest I mistake thee for an

infidel."

The Moghul ducked hastily from a wild swing of the curved sword, and

moved off swearing such firebrands should be locked up; they might set

light to the train ere wise men had it ready.

"No fear!" said the smart young troop-sergeant of the 3d. "Who listens

to such as he save those whose blood has cooled, and those whose blood

was never hot? The fighters listen to women who can make their flame."

Soma, who was drifting with them toward the drug-shops of the city,

scowled fiercely. "That may suit thee, Mussulman-_jee_, who art

casteless, and can sup shares with sweeper women in the bazaar; but

the Rajpoot needs no harlot to teach him courage. The mothers of his

race have enough and to spare."

"_Loh!_ hark to him!" jibed the corporal of the 20th, who was sticking

to his prey like a leech. "Ask him, Havildar-_jee_, if he prefers a

sweeper's broom to a sweeper's lips."

There was a roar of laughter from the group.

Soma gave a beast-like cry, looked as though he were about to spring,

then--recognizing his own helplessness--flung himself away from all

companionship and walked home moodily. They had driven him too far; he

would not stand it. If that tale was spread abroad, he would side with

the Huzoors who did not believe such things--with the Colonel who

understood, like the Colonel before him who had gone home on pension;

for the 11th had a cult of their officers. And these fools, his

countrymen, thought to make him a butcher by threats; sought to make

him take revenge for what deserved revenge. For it was the _Sirkar's_

fault--it was the _Sirkar's_ fault.

In truth a strange conflict was going on in this man's mind, as it was

in many another such as his, between inherited traditions, making

alike for loyalty and disloyalty. There was the knowledge of his

forbears' pride in their victories, in their sahibs who had led them

to victory, and the knowledge of their pride in the veriest jot or

tittle of ceremonial law. A dull, painful amaze filled him that these

two broad facts should be in conflict; that those, whom in a way he

felt to be part of his life, should be in league against him. All the

more reason, that, for showing them who were the better men; for

standing up fairly to a fair fight. By all the delights of Swargal he

would like to stand up fair, even to the master--the man who, in his

presence, had shot three tigers on foot in half an hour--the demi-god

of his hunting yarns for years.

And then, suddenly, he remembered that this hero of his might be shot

like a dog on the 31st at Delhi--would be shot, since he was certain

to be in the front of anything. Soma's heat-fevered, hemp-drugged

brain seized on the thought fiercely, confusedly. That must not be!

The master, at any rate, must be warned. He would go down when the sun

set, and see if he were still where he had been the day before; and if

not?--Why! then it must be two days leave to Delhi! He was not going

to butcher the master for all the sweepers' brooms in the world.

Fools! those others, to think to drive him, Soma, Chundrabansi! So he

flung himself on his string bed to sleep till the sunset came, and the

tyranny of heat be overpast.

But there was one, close by in the cantonment bazaar, who waited for

sunset with no desire for it to bring coolness. She meant it to bring

heat instead. And this was Nargeeza the courtesan. She was past the

prime of everything save vice, a woman who, once all-powerful, could

not hope for many more lovers; and hers, a man rich beyond most

soldiers, lay in jail for ten years. No wonder, then, that as she lay

half-torpid among a heap of tawdry finery in the biggest house of the

lane set apart by regulation for such as she, there was all the venom

of a snake in her drowsy brain. The air of the low room was deadly

with a scent of musk and roses and orange-blossom-oil. The half-dozen

girls and women who lounged in it, or in the balcony, were half

undressed, their bare brown arms flung carelessly upon dirty mats and

torn quilts. Their harvest time was not yet; that would come later

when sunsetting brought the men from the lines. This, then, was the

time for sleep. But Nargeeza, recognized head of the recognized

regimental women, sat up suddenly and said sharply:

"Thou didst not tell me, Nasiban, what Gulâbi said. Is she of us?"

A drowsy lump of a girl stirred, yawned, and answered sullenly, "Yea!

Yea! she is of us. She claims our right to kiss no cowards--no

cowards."

The voice tailed off into sleep again, and Nargeeza lay back with a

smile of content to wait also. So, after a time, folk began to stir in

the bungalows. First in the rest-house, where, oddly enough, Jim

Douglas occupied one end of the long low barrack of a place, and

Herbert Erlton the other. The former having come back from the city in

an evil temper to get something to eat before starting for Delhi, had

found his horse, the Belooch, unaccountably indisposed; Jhungi, who

had brought her there safely, professing entire ignorance of the

cause, or, on pressure, suggesting the nefarious Bhungi. Tiddu

asserting--with a calm assumption of superior knowledge, for which Jim

Douglas could have kicked him--that the mare had been drugged. As if

anybody could not tell that? And that the drug had been opium. To

which the old scoundrel had replied affably that in that case the

effects would pass off during the night, and the mare be none the

worse; no one be any the worse, since the Huzoor was quite comfortable

in Meerut, and could _easily stay another day_. It was a nicer place

than Delhi; there were more sahibs in it, and the presence of the

"_ghora logue_" (_i. e_., English soldiers) kept everyone virtuous.

His hearer looked at him sharply. Here was some other trick, no doubt,

to cozen him out of another five rupees; for something, maybe, as

useless as the yellow fakir. And there was really no reason for delay;

it was only a case of walking the mare quietly. For the matter of

that, the exercise would do her good, and help her to work off the

effects of the drug. So he would start sooner, that was all.

Nevertheless he gave an envious look at the Major's little Arab in the

next stall. It would most likely be marching back to Delhi that night,

and he would have given something to ride it again. But as he was

returning from the stables, he learned by chance that the Major's

plans had been altered. An orderly was coming from his room with

letters and a telegram, and knowing the man, Jim Douglas asked him to

take one for him also, and so save trouble. It did not take long to

write, for it only contained one word, "No." It was in reply to one he

had received a few hours before from the military magnate, asking him

to do some more work. And as the orderly stowed away the accompanying

rupee carefully, Jim Douglas--waiting to make over the paper--saw

quite involuntarily that the Major's telegram also consisted of one

word, "Come." And he saw the name also; big, black, bold, in the

Major's handwriting. "Gissing, Delhi."

He gave a shrug of his shoulders as he turned away to get ready for

his start. So that was it; and even Kate Erlton had not benefited by

his sacrifice. No one had benefited. There had been no chance for any

of them. "Come!" That ended Kate Erlton's hope of concealment, the

Major's career. "No!" That ended his own vague ambitions. Still, it

was a strange chance in itself that those two laconic renunciations

should go the same day by the same hand. No stranger telegrams, he

thought, could have left Meerut, or were likely to leave it that

night.

He was wrong, however. An hour or two later, the strangest telegram

that ever came as sole warning to an Empire that its very foundation

was attacked, left Meerut for Agra; sent by the postmaster's niece.

"The Cavalry," it ran, "have risen, setting fire to their own houses

besides having killed and wounded all European officers and soldiers

they could find near the lines. If Aunt intends starting to-morrow,

please detain her, as the van has been prevented from leaving the

station."

For, as Jim Douglas paced slowly down the Mall toward Delhi, and Soma,

his buckles gleaming, his belts pipe-clayed to dazzling whiteness, was

swaggering through the bazaar on his way to the rest-house with his

word of warning--the word which would have given Jim Douglas the power

for which he had longed--another word was being spoken in that lane of

lust, where the time had come for which Nargeeza had waited all day.

But _she_ did not say it. It was only a big trollop of a girl hung

with jasmine garlands, painted, giggling.

"We of the bazaar kiss no cowards," she said derisively. "Where are

your comrades?"

The man to whom she said it, a young dissolute-faced trooper, dressed

in the loose rakish muslins beloved of his class--the very man,

perchance, who had gone cityward that morning, and dropped an alms

into the yellow fakir's bowl--stood for a second in the stifling,

maddening atmosphere of musk and rose and orange-blossom; stood before

all those insolent allurements, balked in his passion, checked in his

desires. Then, with an oath, he dashed from her insulting charms;

dashed into the street with a cry:

"To horse! To horse, brothers! To the jail! to our comrades!"

The word had been spoken. The speech which brings more than speech,

had come from the painted lips of a harlot.

The first clang of the church bell--which the chaplain had forgotten

to postpone--came faintly audible across the dusty plain, making other

men pause and look at each other. Why not? It was the hour of

prayer--the appointed time. Their comrades could be easily

rescued--there was but a native guard at the jail. And hark! from

another pair of painted derisive lips came the same retort, flung from

a balcony.

"_Trra! We of the bazaar kiss no cowards!_"

"To horse! To horse! Let the comrades be rescued first; and then----"

The word had been spoken. Nothing so very soul-stirring after all. No

consideration of caste or religion, patriotism or ambition. Only a

taunt from a pair of painted lips.

BOOK III.

FROM DUSK TO DAWN.

CHAPTER I.

NIGHT.

"To the rescue! To the rescue!"

The cry was no more than that at first. To the rescue of the

eighty-five martyrs, the blows upon whose shackles still seemed to

echo in their comrades' ears. Even so, the cry heard by Soma as he

passed through the bazaar meant insubordination--the greatest crime he

knew--and sent him flying to his own lines to give the alarm. Sent him

thence by instinct, oblivious of that promise for the 31st--or perhaps

mindful of it and seeing in this outburst a mere riot--to his

Colonel's house with twenty or thirty comrades clamoring for their

arms, protesting that with them they would soon settle matters for the

Huzoors. But suspicion was in the air, and even the Colonel of the

11th could not trust all his regiment. Ready for church, he flung

himself on his horse and raced back with the clamoring men to the

lines.

And by this time there was another race going on. Captain Craigie's

faithful troop of the 3d Cavalry were racing after his shout of

"_Dau-ro! bhai-yan, Dau-ro!_" (Ride, brothers, ride!) toward the jail

in the hopes of averting the rescue of their comrades. For, as the

records are careful to say, he and his troop "were dressed as for

parade"--not a buckle or a belt awry--ready to combat the danger

before others had grasped it, and swiftly, without a thought, went for

the first offenders. Too late! the doors were open, the birds flown.

What next was to be done? What but to bring the troop back without a

defaulter--despite the taunts of escaping convicts, the temptations of

comrades flushed by success--to the parade ground for orders. But

there was no one to give them, for when the 3d Cavalry led the van of

mutiny at Meerut their Colonel was in the European cantonment as field

officer of the week, and there he "conceived it his duty to remain."

Perhaps rightly. And it is also conceivable that his absence made no

difference, since it is, palpably, an easier task to make a regiment

mutiny than to bring it back to its allegiance.

Meanwhile the officers of the other regiments, the 11th and the 20th,

were facing their men boldly; facing the problem how to keep them

steady till that squadron of the Carabineers should sweep down,

followed by a company or two of the Rifles at the double, and turn the

balance in favor of loyalty. It could not be long now. Nearly an hour

had passed since the first wild stampede to the jail. The refuse and

rabble of the town were by this time swarming out of it, armed with

sticks and staves; the two thousand and odd felons released from the

jails were swarming in, seeking weapons. The danger grew every second,

and the officers of the 11th, though their men stood steady as rocks

behind them, counted the moments as they sped. For on the other side

of the road, on the parade ground of the 20th regiment, the sepoys,

ordered, as the 11th had been, to turn out unarmed, were barely

restrained from rushing the bells by the entreaties of their native

officers; the European ones being powerless.

"Keep the men steady for me," said Colonel Finnis to his second in

command; "I'll go over and see what I can do."

He thought the voice of a man loved and trusted by one regiment, a man

who could speak to his sepoys without an interpreter, might have power

to steady another.

_Jai bahâduri!_ (Victory to courage!) muttered Soma under his breath

as he watched his Colonel canter quietly into danger. And his finger

hungered on that hot May evening for the cool of the trigger which was

denied him.

_Jai bahâduri!_ A murmur seemed to run through the ranks, they dressed

themselves firmer, squarer. Colonel Finnis, glancing back, saw a sight

to gladden any commandant's heart. A regiment steady as a rock, drawn

up as for parade, absolutely in hand despite that strange new sound in

the air. The sound which above all others gets into men's brains like

new wine. The sound of a file upon fetters--the sound of escape, of

freedom, of license! It had been rising unchecked for half an hour

from the lines of the 3d, whither the martyrs had been brought in

triumph. It was rising now from the bazaar, the city, from every

quiet corner where a prisoner might pause to hack and hammer at his

leg-irons with the first tool he could find.

What was one man's voice against this sound, strengthened as it was by

the cry of a trooper galloping madly from the north shouting that the

English were in sight? What more likely? Had not ample time passed for

the whole British garrison to be coming with fixed bayonets and a

whoop, to make short work of unarmed men who had not made up their

minds?

That must be no longer!

"Quick! brothers. Quick! Kill! Kill! Down with the officers! Shoot ere

the white faces come!"

It was a sudden wild yell of terror, of courage, of sheer cruelty. It

drowned the scream of the Colonel's horse as it staggered under him.

It drowned his steady appealing voice, his faint sob, as he threw up

his hands at the next shot, and fell, the first victim to the Great

Revolt.

It drowned something else also. It drowned Soma's groan of wild,

half-stupefied, helpless rage as he saw his Colonel fall,--the sahib

who had led him to victory,--the sahib whom he loved, whom he was

pledged to save. And his groan was echoed by many another brave man in

those ranks, thus brought face to face suddenly with the necessity for

decision.

"Steady, men, steady!"

That call, in the alien voice, echoed above the whistling of the

bullets as they found a billet here and there among the ranks; for the

men of the 20th, maddened by that fresh murder, now shot wildly at

their officers.

"Steady, men! Steady, for God's sake!"

The entreaty was not in vain; they were steady still. Ay, steady, but

unarmed! Steady as a rock still, but helpless!

Helpless, unarmed! By all the gods all men worshiped, men could not

suffer that for long, when bullets were whistling into their ranks.

So there was a waver at last in the long line. A faint tremble, like

the tremble of a curving wave ere it falls. Then, with a confused

roar, an aimless sweeping away of all things in its path, it broke as

a wave breaks upon a pebbly shore.

"To arms, brothers! Quick! fire! fire!"

Upon whom?[2] God knows! Not on their officers, for these were already

being hustled to the rear, hustled into safety.

"Quick, brothers, quick! Kill! Kill!"

The cry rose on all sides now, as the wave of revolt surged on. But

there was none left to kill; for the work was done in the 20th lines,

and no new white faces came to stem the tide. Two thousand and odd

Englishmen who might have stemmed it being still on the parade-ground

by the church, waiting for orders, for ammunition, for a General, for

everything save--thank Heaven!--for courage.

So the wave surged on, to what end it scarcely knew, leaving behind it

groups of sullen, startled faces.

"Whose fault but their own?" muttered an old man fiercely; an old man

whose son served beside him in the regiment, whose grandson was on the

roster for future enlistment. "Why were we left helpless as new-born

babes?"

"Why?" echoed a scornful voice from the gathering clusters of

undecided men, waiting, with growing fear, hope, despair, or triumph,

for what was to come next: waiting, briefly, for the master to come,

or not to come. "Why? because they were afraid of us; because their

time is past, baba jee. Let them go!"

Let them go. Incomprehensible suggestion to that brave worn stiff in

the master's service; so, with a great numb ache in an old heart, an

old body strode away, elbowing younger ones from its path savagely.

"Old Dhurma hath grown milksop," jeered one spectator; "that is with

doing dry-nurse to his Captain's babies."

The words caught the old man's ear and sent a quick decision to his

dazed face. The baba logue! Yes; they must be safeguarded; for ominous

smoke began to rise from neighboring roof-trees, and a strange note of

sheer wild-beast ferocity grew to the confused roar of the drifting,

shifting, still aimless crowd.

"Quick, brothers, quick! Kill, root and branch! Why dost linger? Art

afraid? Afraid of cowards? Quick--kill everyone!"

The cry, boastful, jeering, came from a sepoy in the uniform of the

20th, who, with a face ablaze with mad exultation, forced his way

forward. There was something in his tone which seemed to send a shiver

of fresh excitement through his comrades, for they paused in their

strange, aimless tumult, paused and listened to the jeers, the

reproaches.

"What! art cowards too?" he went on. "Then follow me. For I began

it--I fired the first shot--I killed the first infidel. I----"

The boast never ended, for above it came a quicker cry: "Kill, kill,

kill the traitor! Kill the man who betrayed us."

There was a rush onward toward the boastful, arrogant voice, the

report of half a dozen muskets, and the crowd surged on to revolt over

the body of the man who had fired the first shot of the mutiny.

For it was a strange crowd indeed; most of it powerless for good or

ill, sheep without a shepherd, wandering after the rabble of escaped

convicts and the refuse of bazaars as they plundered and fired the

houses. Joining in in the license helplessly, drifting inevitably to

violence, so that some looked on curiously, unconcernedly, while

others, maddened by the smell of blood, the sounds of murder, dragged

helpless Englishmen and Englishwomen from their carriages and did them

to death savagely.

But there were more like Soma, who, as the darkness deepened and the

glare and the dire confusion and dismay grew, stood aloof from it

voluntarily, waiting, with a certain callousness, to see if the master

would come, or if folk said true when they declared his time was past,

his day done.

Where was he? He should have come hours ago, irresistible,

overwhelming. But there was no sign. Not a hint of resistance, save

every now and again a clatter of hoofs through the darkness, an alien

voice calling "Mâro! Mâro!" to those behind him, and a fierce howl of

an echo, "Mâro! Mâro! Mâ-roh!" from the faithful troop. For Captain

Craigie, finding none to help him, had changed his cry. It was "kill,

kill, kill" now. And the faithful troop obeyed orders.

Soma when he heard it gave a great sigh. If there had been more of

that sort of thing he would dearly have loved to be in it; but the

other was butchery. So he wandered alone, irresolute, drifting

northward from the dire confusion and dismay, and crossing the Mall to

question a sentry of his own regiment as to what had happened to the

masters. But the man replied by eager questions as to what had

happened to the servants. And they both agreed that if the two

thousand could not quell a riot it would be idle to help them, the

Lord's hand being so palpably against them.

Nevertheless, half an hour afterward the sentry still waited at his

post, and the guard over the Treasury saluted as if nothing unusual

was afoot to a group of Englishmen galloping past.

"Those men know nothing," called Major Erlton to another man. "It

can't be so bad. Surely something can be done!"

"Something should have been done two hours ago," came a sharp voice.

"However, the troops have started at last. If anyone----"

The remainder was lost in the clatter. But more than one man's voice

had been lost in those two hours at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857;

indeed, everything seems to have been lost save--thank Heaven once

more!--personal courage.

It was now near eight o'clock, and Soma, skulking by the Mall, midway

between the masters and the men, still irresolute, still uncertain,

heard the first cry of "To Delhi! to Delhi!" which, as the night wore

on, was to echo so often along that road. The cry which came unbidden

as the astounding success of the revolt brought thoughts of greater

success in the future.

The moon was now rising to silver the dense clouds of smoke which hung

above the pillars of flame, and give an additional horror of light to

the orgies going on unchecked. It showed him a group of 3d Cavalry

troopers galloping madly down the Mall. It showed them the glitter of

his buckles, making them shout again:

"To Delhi, brother, to Delhi!"

Not yet. He had not seen the upshot yet. He must go and see what was

going on in the lines first. So he struck rapidly across the open as

the quickest way. And then behind him, close upon him, came another

clatter of hoofs, a very different cry.

"_Shâh bash! bhaiyân. Mâro! Mâro!_"

Remembering the glitter of his buckles, he turned and ran for the

nearest cover. None too soon, for a Mohammedan trooper was after him,

shouting "_Deen! Deen!_ Death to the Hindoo pig!" For any cry comes

handy when the blood is up and there is a saber in the hand. Soma had

to double like a hare, and even so, when he paused to get his breath

in a tangle of lime-bushes there was a graze on his cheek. He had

judged his distance in one of those doubles a hair's breadth too

little. The faint trickle of blood sent a spasm of old inherited race

hatred through him. The outcaste should know that the Hindoo pig shot

straight. The means of showing this were not far to find in the track

of the faithful troop. Five minutes after, Soma, with a musket dragged

from beneath something which lay huddled up face down upon Mother

Earth, was crouching in a belt of cover, waiting for the troop to come

flashing through the glare seeking more work. For there had been yells

and screams enough round that bungalow to stop looting there. And as

it came number seven bent lower to his saddle bow suddenly, then

toppled over with a clang.

"Left wheel! clear those bushes!" came the order sharply. But Soma was

too quick for that.

"Close up. Forward!" came the order again, as Captain Craigie's

faithful troop went on, minus a man, and Soma, stumbling breathlessly

in safety, knew that the die was cast. There was an answering quiver

in his veins which comes when like blood has been spilled. He knew his

foe now; he could go to Delhi now. And hark! There was a regular

rattle of musketry, at last--not the dropping fire of mere butchery,

but a regular volley. He gripped his musket tighter and listened: if

the battle had begun he must be in it. The air was full of cracklings

and hissings--an inarticulate background to murderous yells, terrified

screams, horrors without end; but no more volleys came to tell of

retribution.

What did it mean? Soma held his breath hard. Hark! what was that? A

louder burst of that recurring cry, "To Delhi! to Delhi!" as the

last stragglers of the 3d Cavalry, escaping from the lines at the

long-delayed appearance there of law and order, followed their

comrades' example.

So that the two thousand coming down in force found nothing but the

women and children; poor, frightened, terror-struck hostages, left

behind, inevitably, in the unforeseen success.

But Soma, knowing nothing of this, waited--that grip on his musket

slackening--for the next volley. But none came. Only, suddenly, a

bugle call.

The retreat!

Incredible! Impossible! Yes! Once, twice, thrice--the retreat! The

masters were not going to fight at Meerut then, and he must try Delhi.

So, turning swiftly, he cut into the road behind the cry.

"My God, Craigie! what's that? Not the retreat, surely!" came a boyish

voice from the clatter and rattle of the faithful troop.

"Don't know! Hurry up all you can, Clark! There's more of the devils

needing cold steel yonder, and I'd like to see to my wife's safety as

soon as I can. _Shâh bâsh bhaiâan Dân-ro. Mâro_."

"Mâro--Mâ--ro--Mâ----roh!" echoed the howl. What was the retreat to

them when their Captain's voice called to them as brothers? It is idle

to ask the question, but one cannot help wondering if the Captain's

pocket still held the official wigging. For the sake of picturesque

effect it is to be hoped it did.

Nevertheless it _was_ the retreat. A council of officers had suggested

that since the mutineers were not in their lines, they might be

looting the European cantonments. So the two thousand returned

thither, after firing that one volley into a wood, and then finding

all quiet to the north proceeded to bivouac on the parade ground for

the night. Not a very peaceful spot, since it was within sight and

sound of blazing roof-trees and plundering ruffians. The worst horrors

of that night, we are told, can never be known. Perhaps some people

beg to differ, holding that no horror can exceed the thought of women

and children hiding like hares on that southern side, creeping for

dear life from one friendly shadow to another, and finding help in

dark hands where white ones failed them, within reach of that bivouac.

But the faithful troop did good service, and many another band of

independent braves also. Captain Craigie, finding leisure at last,

found also--it is a relief to know--that some of his own men had

sneaked away from duty to secure his wife's safety when they saw their

Captain would not. And if anything can relieve the deadly depression

which sinks upon the soul at the thought of that horrible lack of

emotion in the north, it is to picture that very different scene on

the south, when Captain Craigie, seeing his only hope of getting the

ladies safely escorted to the European barracks lay in his troopers,

brought the two Englishwomen out to them and said, simply, "Here are

the mems! Save them."

And then the two score or so of rough men, swashbucklers by birth and

training, flung themselves from their horses, cast themselves at those

alien women's feet with tears and oaths. Oaths that were kept.

But, on the other side, people were more placid. One reads of

Englishmen watching "their own sleeping children with gratitude in

their hearts to God," with wonderings as "to the fate of their friends

in the south," with anticipations of "what would befall their

Christian brethren in Delhi on the coming morn, who, less happy than

ourselves, had no faithful and friendly European battalions to shield

them from the bloodthirsty rage of the sepoys."

What, indeed? considering that for two hours bands of armed men had

clattered and marched down that dividing road crying "To Delhi, to

Delhi!" But no warning of the coming danger had been sent thither; the

confusion had been too great. And now, about midnight, the telegraph

wires had been cut. Yet Delhi lay but thirty miles off along a broad

white road, and there were horses galore and men ready to ride them.

Men ready for more than that, like Captain Rosser of the Carabineers,

who pleaded for a squadron, a field battery, a troop, a gun--anything

with which to dash down the road and cut off that retreat to Delhi.

But everything was refused. Lieutenant Mohler of the 11th offered to

ride, and at least give warning; but that offer was also set aside.

And many another brave man, no doubt, bound to obey orders, ate his

heart out in inaction that night, possessing himself in some measure

of patience with the thought that the dawn must see them on that Delhi

road.

But there was one man who owed obedience to none; who was free to go

if he chose. And he did choose. Ten minutes after it dawned upon

Herbert Erlton that no warning had been given, that no succor would be

sent, he had changed horses for the game little Arab which had once

belonged to Jim Douglas, and was off, to reach Delhi as best he could;

for a woman slept in the very city itself exposed to the first assault

of ruffianism, whom he must save, if he could. So he set his teeth

and rode straight. At first down the road, for the last of the

fugitives had had a good hour's start of him, and he could count on

four or five miles plain sailing. Then, since his object was to head

the procession, and he did not dare to strike across country from his

utter ignorance both of the way or how to ask it, he must give the

road a half-mile berth or so, and, keeping it as a guide, make his way

somehow. There were bridges he knew where he must hark back to the

only path, but he must trust to luck for a quiet interval.

The plan proved more difficult than he expected. More than once he

found himself in danger from being too close to the disciplined tramp

which he began to overtake about six miles out, and twice he lost

himself from being too far away, by mistaking one belt of trees for

another. Still there was plenty of time if the Arab held out with his

weight. The night was hot and stifling, but if he took it coolly till

the road was pretty clear again he could forge ahead in no time; for

the Arab had the heels of every horse in Upper India. Major Erlton

knew this, and bent over to pat its neck with the pride of certainty

with which he had patted it before many a race which it had won for

him since it had lost one for Jim Douglas.

So he saved it all he knew; but he rode fourteen stone, and that, over

jumps, must tell. There was no other way, however, that he knew of, by

which an Englishman could head that procession of shouting black

devils.

One headed already, as it happened; though he was unaware of the

supreme importance of the fact, ignorant of what lay behind him. Jim

Douglas, who had left Meerut all unwitting of that rescue party on its

way to the jail, was still about a mile from the halfway house where

he expected to find his relay. He had had the greatest difficulty in

getting the drugged mare to go at all at first, and more than once had

regretted having refused old Tiddu's advice. She had pulled herself

together a bit, but she was in a drip of sweat and still shaky on her

feet. Not that it mattered, he being close now to Begum-a-bad, with

plenty of time to reach Delhi by dawn.

He rather preferred to pace slowly, his feet out of the stirrups, his

slight, easy figure dressed, as it always was when in English costume,

with the utmost daintiness, sitting well back in the saddle. For the

glamour of the moonlight, the stillness of the night, possessed him.

Everything so soundless save when the jackals began; there were a

number of them about. A good hunting country; the memory of many a run

in his youthful days, with a bobbery pack, came to him. After all he

had had the cream of life in a way. Few men had enjoyed theirs more,

for even this idle pacing through the stillness was a pleasure.

Pleasure? How many he had had! His mind, reverting from one to

another, thought even of the owner of the golden curl without regret.

She had taught him the religion of Love, the adoration of a spotless

woman. And Zora, dear little Zora, had taught him the purity of

passion. And then his mind went back suddenly to a scene of his

boyhood. A boy of eighteen carrying a girl of sixteen who held a

string of sea-trout midway in a wide, deep ford. And he heard, as if

it had been yesterday, the faint splash of the fish as they slipped

one by one into the water, and felt the fierce fighting of the girl to

be set down, his own stolid resistance, their mutual abuse of each

other's obstinacy and carelessness. Yes! he would like to see his

sisters again, to know that pleasure again. Then his mind took another

leap. Alice Gissing had not struggled in his hold, because she had

been in unison with his ideal of conduct; but if she had not been, she

would have fought as viciously, as unconsciously as any sister. Alice

Gissing, who---- He settled his feet into the stirrups sternly,

thinking of that telegram with its one word "Come," which ended so

many chances.

Hark! What was that? A clatter of hoofs behind. And something more,

surely. A jingle, a jangle, familiar to a soldier's ears. Cavalry at

the gallop. He drew aside hastily into the shadow of the arcaded trees

and waited.

Cavalry, no doubt. And the moon shone on their drawn sabers. By

Heaven! Troopers of the 3d! Half a dozen or more!

"Shâh bâsh, brothers," cried one as they swept past, "we can breathe

our beasts a bit at Begum-a-bad and let the others come up; no need to

reach Delhi ere dawn. The Palace would be closed."

Delhi! The Palace! And who were the others? That, if they were coming

behind, could soon be settled. He turned the Belooch and trotted her

back in the shadow, straining eyes and ears down the tree-fringed road

which lay so still, so white, so silent.

Something was on it now, but something silent, almost ghost-like,--an

old man, muttering texts, on a lame camel which bumped along as even

no earthly camel ought to bump. That could not be the "others."

No! Surely that was a thud, a jingle, a clatter once more. And once

more the glitter of cold steel in the moonlight. Forty or fifty of the

3d this time, with stragglers calling to others still further behind,

"To Delhi! To Delhi! To Victory or Death!"

As he stood waiting for them all to pass ere he moved, his first

thought was, that with all these armed men at Begum-a-bad there would

be no chance of a remount. Then came a swift wonder as to what had

happened. A row of some sort, of course, and these men had fled. Ere

long, no doubt, a squadron of Carabineers would come rattling after

them. No! That was not cavalry. That was infantry in the distance.

Quite a number of men shouting the same cry. Men of the 20th, to judge

by what he could see. Then the row had been a big one. Still the men

were evidently fugitives. There was that in their recurring cry which

told of almost hopeless, reckless enthusiasm.

And how the devil was he to get his remount? It was to be at the serai

on the roadside, the very place where these men would rest. Yet he

must get to Delhi, he must get there sharp! The possibility that Delhi

was unwarned did not occur to him; he only thought how he might best

get there in time for the row which must come. Should he wait for the

English troops to come up, and chance his remount being coolly taken

by the first rebel who wanted one? Or, Delhi being not more than

fifteen miles off across country, should he take the mare as far as

she would go, leave her in some field, and do the rest on foot? He

looked at his watch. Half-past one! Say five miles in half an hour.

The mare was good for that. Then ten miles, at five miles an hour. The

very first glimmer of light should see him at the boat-bridge if--if

the mare could gallop five miles.

He must try her a bit slowly at first. So, slipping across the broad,

white streak of road to the Delhi side, he took her slanting through

the tall tiger grass, for they were close on a nullah which must be

forded by a rather deep ford lower down, since the bridge was denied

to him. About half a mile from the road he came upon the track

suddenly, in the midst of high tamarisk jungle growing in heavy sand,

and the next moment was on the shining levels of the ford. The mare

strained on his hand, and he paused to let her have a mouthful of

water. As she stood there, head down, a horseman at the canter showed

suddenly, silently, behind him, not five yards away, his horse's hoofs

deadened by the sand.

There was a nasty movement, an ominous click on both sides. But the

moon was too bright for mistakes; the recognition was mutual.

"My God, Erlton!" he cried, as the other, without a pause, went on

into the ford. "What's up?"

"Is it fordable?" came the quick question, and as Jim Douglas for an

answer gave a dig with his spurs, the Major slackened visibly; his eye

telling him that the depth could not be taken, save at a walk.

"What's up?" he echoed fiercely. "Mutiny! murder! I say, how far am I

from Delhi?"

"Delhi!" cried Jim Douglas, his voice keen as a knife. "By Heaven! you

don't mean they don't know--that they didn't wire--but the troops----"

"Hadn't started when I left," said the Major with a curse. "I came on

alone. I say, Douglas," he gave a sharp glance at the other's mount

and there was a pause.

"My mare's beat--been drugged," said Jim Douglas in the swish-swish of

the water rising higher and higher on the horses' breasts, and there

was a curious tone in his voice as if he was arguing out something to

himself. "I've a remount at the serai, but the odds are a hundred to

one on my getting it. I'd given up the chance of it. I meant to take

the mare as many miles across country as she'd go--more, perhaps--for

she feels like falling at a fence, and walk the rest. I didn't know

then----" He paused and looked ahead. The water, up to the girths,

made a curious rushing sound, like many wings. The long, shiny levels

stretched away softly, mysteriously. The tamarisk jungle reflected in

the water seemed almost as real as that which edged the shining sky. A

white egret stood in the shallows; tall, ghostly.

"I thought it was only--a row."

The voice ceased again, the breathings of the tired horses had

slackened; there was no sound but that rushing, as of wings, as those

two enemies rode side by side, looking ahead. Suddenly Jim Douglas

turned.

"You ride nigh four stone heavier than I do, Major Erlton."

The heavy, handsome face came round swiftly, all broken up with sheer

passion.

"Do you suppose I haven't been thinking that ever since I saw your

cursed face. And you know the country, and I don't. You know the

lingo, and I don't. And--and--you're a deuce sight better rider than I

am, d----n you! But for all that, it's my chance, I tell you. My

chance, not yours."

A great surge of sympathy swept through the other man's veins. But the

water was shallowing rapidly. A step or two and this must be decided.

"It's yours more than mine," he said slowly, "but it isn't ours, is

it? It's the others', in Delhi."

Herbert Erlton gave an odd sound between a sob and an oath, a savage

jag at the bridle as the little Arab, over-weighted, slipped a bit

coming up the bank. Then, without a word, he flung himself from the

saddle and set to work on the stirrup nearest him.

"How many holes?" he asked gruffly, as Jim Douglas, with a great ache

in his heart, left the Belooch standing, and began on the other.

"Three; you're a good bit longer in the leg than I am."

"I suppose I am," said the Major sullenly; but he held the stirrup

for the other to mount.

Jim Douglas gathered the reins in his hand and paused.

"You had better walk her back. Keep more to the left; it's easier."

"Oh! I'll do," came the sullen voice. "Stop a bit, the curb's too

tight."

"Take it off, will you? he knows me."

Major Erlton gave an odd, quick, bitter laugh. "I suppose he does.

Right you are."

He stood, putting the curb chain into his pocket, mechanically, but

Jim Douglas paused again.

"Good-by! Shake hands on it, Erlton."

The Major looked at him resentfully, the big, coarse hand came

reluctantly; but the touch of that other like iron in its grip, its

determination, seemed to rouse something deeper than anger.

"The odds are on you," he said, with a quiver in his voice. "You'll

look after her--not my wife, she's in cantonments--but in the city,

you know."

The voice broke suddenly. He threw out one hand in a sort of

passionate despair, and walked over to the Belooch.

"I'll do everything you could possibly do in my place, Erlton."

The words came clear and stern, and the next instant the thud of the

Arab's galloping hoofs filled the still night air. The sound sent a

spasm of angry pain through Major Erlton. The chance had been his, and

he had had to give it up because he rode three stone heavier; and,

curse it! knew only too well what a difference a pound or two might

make in a race.

Nevertheless Jim Douglas had been right when he said the chance was

neither his nor the Major's. For, less than an hour afterward, riding

all he knew, doing his level best, the Arab put his foot in a rat hole

just as his rider was congratulating himself on having headed the

rebels, just as, across the level plain stretching from Ghazeabad to

the only bridge over the Jumna, he fancied he could see a big shadowy

bubble on the western sky, the dome of the Delhi mosque. Put its foot

in a rat hole and came down heavily! The last thing Jim Douglas saw

was--on the road which he had hoped to rejoin in a minute or two--a

strange ghostlike figure. An old man on a lame camel, which bumped

along as even no earthly camel ought to bump.

As he fell, the rushing roar in his ears which heralds unconsciousness

seemed by a freak of memory to take a familiar rhythm:

"La! il-lah-il-Ullaho! La! il-lah-il-Ul-la-ho!"

CHAPTER II.

DAWN.

The chill wind which comes with dawn swayed the tall grass beyond the

river, and ruffling the calm stretches below the Palace wall died away

again as an oldish man stepped out of a reed hut, built on a sandbank

beside the boat-bridge, and looked eastward. He was a poojari, or

master of ceremonial at the bathing-place where, with the first streak

of light, the Hindoos came to perform their religious ablutions. So he

had to be up betimes, in order to prepare the little saucers of

vermilion and sandal and sacred gypsum needed in his profession; for

he earned his livelihood by inherited right of hallmarking his

fellow-creatures with their caste-signs when they came up out of the

water. Thus he looked out over those eastern plains for the dawn, day

after day. He looks for it still; this account is from his lips. And

this dawn there was a cloud of dust no bigger than a man's hand upon

the Meerut road. Someone was coming to Delhi.

But someone was already on the bridge, for it creaked and swayed,

sending little shivers of ripples down the calm stretches. The poojari

turned and looked to see the cause; then turned eastward again. It was

only a man on a camel with a strange gait, bumping noiselessly even on

the resounding wood. That was all.

The city was still asleep; though here and there a widow was stealing

out in her white shroud for that touch of the sacred river without

which she would indeed be accursed. And in a little mosque hard by the

road from the boat-bridge a muezzin was about to give the very first

call to prayer with pious self-complacency. But someone was ahead of

him in devotion, for, upon the still air, came a continuous rolling of

chanted texts. The muezzin leaned over the parapet, disappointed, to

see who had thus forestalled him at heaven's gate; stared, then

muttered a hasty charm. Were there visions about? The suggestion

softened the disappointment, and he looked after the strange, wild

figure, half-seen in the shimmering, shadowy dawn-light, with growing

and awed satisfaction. This was no mere mortal, this green-clad figure

on a camel, chanting texts and waving a scimitar. A vision has been

vouchsafed to him for his diligence; a vision that would not lose in

the telling. So he stood up and gave the cry from full lungs.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

The echo from the rose-red fortifications took it up first; then one

chanting voice after another, monotonously insistent.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

And the city woke to another day of fasting. Woke hurriedly, so as to

find time for food ere the sun rose, for it was Rumzân, and one-half

of the inhabitants would have no drop of water till the sun set, to

assuage the terrible drought of every living, growing thing beneath

the fierce May sun. The backwaters lay like a steel mirror reflecting

the gray shadowy pile of the Palace, the poojari--waist-deep in

them--was a solitary figure flinging water to the sacred airts,

absorbed in a thorough purification from sin.

Then from the serrated line of the Ridge came a bugle followed by the

roll of a time gun. All the world was waking now. Waking to give

orders, to receive them; waking to mark itself apart with signs of

salvation; waking to bow westward and pray for the discomfiture of the

infidel; waking to stand on parade and salute the royal standard of a

ruler, hell-doomed inevitably, according to both creeds.

A flock of purple pigeons, startled by the sound, rose like cloud

flakes on the light gray sky above the glimmering dome of the big

mosque, then flew westward toward the green fields and groves on the

further side of the town. For the roll of the gun was followed by a

reverberating roll, and groan, and creak, from the boat-bridge. The

little cloud on the Meerut road had grown into five troopers dashing

over the bridge at a gallop recklessly. The poojari, busy now with his

pigments, followed them with his eyes as they clattered straight for

the city gate. They were waking in the Palace now, for a slender hand

set a lattice wide. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps simply to let in

the cool air of dawn. It was a lattice in the women's apartments.

The poojari went on rubbing up the colors that were to bring such

spiritual pride to the wearers, then turned to look again. The

troopers, finding the city gate closed, were back again; clamoring for

admittance through the low arched doorway leading from Selimgarh to

the Palace. And as the yawning custodian fumbled for his keys, the men

cursed and swore at the delay; for in truth they knew not what lay

behind them. The two thousand from Meerut, or some of them, of course.

But at what distance?

As a matter of fact only one Englishman was close enough to be

considered a pursuer, and he was but a poor creature on foot, still

dazed by a fall, striking across country to reach the Raj-ghât ferry

below the city. For when Jim Douglas had recovered consciousness it

had been to recognize that he was too late to be the first in Delhi,

and that he could only hope to help in the struggle. And that tardily,

for the Arab was dead lame.

So, removing its saddle and bridle to give it a better chance of

escaping notice, he had left it grazing peacefully in a field and

stumbled on riverward, intending to cross it as best he could; and so

make for his own house in Duryagunj for a fresh horse and a more

suitable kit. And as he plodded along doggedly he cursed the sheer

ill-luck which had made him late.

For he was late.

The five troopers were already galloping through the grape-garden

toward the women's apartments and the King's sleeping rooms.

Their shouts of "The King! The King! Help for the martyrs! Help for

the Holy War!" dumfoundered the court muezzin, who was going late to

his prayers in the Pearl Mosque; the reckless hoofs sent a squatting

bronze image of a gardener, threading jasmine chaplets for his gods

peacefully in the pathway, flying into a rose bush.

"The King! The King! Help! Help!"

The women woke with the cry, confused, alarmed, surprised; save one or

two who, creeping to the Queen's room, found her awake, excited,

calling to her maids. "Too soon!" she echoed contemptuously. "Can a

good thing come too soon? Quick, woman--I must see the King at

once--nay, I will go as I am if it comes to that."

"The physician Ahsan-Oolah hath arrived as usual for the dawn

pulse-feeling," protested the shocked tirewoman.

"All the more need for hurry," retorted Zeenut Maihl. "Quick! Slippers

and a veil! Thine will do, Fâtma; sure what makes thee decent----" She

gave a spiteful laugh as she snatched it from the woman's head and

passed to the door; but there she paused a second. "See if Hafzân be

below. I bid her come early, so she should be. Tell her to write word

to Hussan Askuri to dream as he never dreamed before! And see," her

voice grew shriller, keener, "the rest of you have leave. Go! cozen

every man you know, every man you meet. I care not how. Make their

blood flow! I care not wherefore, so that it leaps and bounds, and

would spill other blood that checked it." She clenched her hands as

she passed on muttering to herself. "Ah! if _he_ were a man--if _his_

blood were not chilled with age--if I had someone----"

She broke off into smiles; for in the anteroom she entered was, man or

no man, the representative of the Great Moghul.

"Ah, Zeenut!" he cried in tones of relief. "I would have sought thee."

The trembling, shrunken figure in its wadded silk dressing gown paused

and gave a backward glance at Ahsan-Oolah, whose shrewd face was full

of alarm.

"Believe nothing, my liege!" he protested eagerly. "These rioters are

boasters. Are there not two thousand British soldiers in Meerut? Their

tale is not possible. They are cowards fled from defeat; liars, hoping

to be saved at your expense. The thing is impossible."

The Queen turned on him passionately. "Are not all things possible

with God, and is not His Majesty the defender of the faith!"

"But not defender of five runaway rioters," sneered the physician. "My

liege! Remember your pension."

Zeenut Maihl glared at his cunning; it was an argument needing all her

art to combat.

"Five!" she echoed, passing to the lattice quickly. "Then miracles are

about--the five have grown to fifty. Look, my lord, look! Hark! How

they call on the defender of the faith."

With reckless hand she set the lattice wide, so becoming

visible for an instant, and a shout of "The Queen! The Queen!"

mingled with that other of "The Faith! The Faith! Lead us, Oh!

Ghâzee-o-din-Bahâdur-shâh, to die for the faith."

Pale as he was with age, the cry stirred the blood in the King's veins

and sent it to his face.

"Stand back," he cried in sudden dignity, waving both counselors aside

with trembling, outstretched hands. "I will speak mine own words."

But the sight of him, rousing a fresh burst of enthusiasm, left him no

possibility of speech for a time. The Lord had been on their side,

they cried. They had killed every hell-doomed infidel in Meerut! They

would do so in Delhi if he would help! They were but an advance guard

of an army coming from every cantonment in India to swear allegiance

to the Pâdishah. Long live the King! and the Queen!

In the dim room behind, Zeenut Maihl and the physician listened to the

wild, almost incredible, tale which drifted in with the scented air

from the garden, and watched each other silently. Each found in it

fresh cause for obstinacy. If this were true, what need to be

foolhardy? time would show, the thing come of itself without risk. If

this were true, decisive action should be taken at once; and would be

taken.

But the King, assailed, molested by that rude interrupting loyalty,

above all by that cry of the Queen, felt the Turk stir in him also.

Who were these intruders in the sacred precincts, infringing the

seclusion of the Great Moghul's women? Trembling with impotent

passion, inherited from passions that had not been impotent, he turned

to Ahsan-Oolah, ignoring the Queen, who, he felt, was mostly to blame

for this outrage on her modesty. Why had she come there? Why had she

dared to be seen?

"Your Majesty should send for the Captain of the Palace Guards and bid

him disperse the rioters, and force them into respect for your royal

person," suggested the physician, carefully avoiding all but the

immediate present, "and your Majesty should pass to the Hall of

Audience. The King can scarce receive the Captain-sahib here in

presence of the Consort." He did not add--"in her present

costume"--but his tone implied it, and the King, with an angry

mortified glance toward his favorite, took the physician's arm. If

looks could kill, Ahsan-Oolah would not, he knew, have supported those

tottering steps far; but it was no time to stick at trifles.

When they had passed from the anteroom Zeenut Maihl still stood as if

half stupefied by the insult. Then she dashed to the open lattice

again, scornful and defiant; dignified into positive beauty for the

moment by her recklessness.

"For the Faith!" she cried in her shrill woman's voice, "if ye are

men, as I would be, to be loved of woman, as I am, strike for the

Faith!"

A sort of shiver ran through the clustering crowd of men below;

the shiver of anticipation, of the marvelous, the unexpected.

The Queen had spoken to them as men; of herself as woman.

Inconceivable!--improper of course--yet exciting. Their blood

thrilled, the instinct of the man to fight for the woman rose at once.

"Quick, brothers! Rouse the guard! Close the gates! Close the gates!"

It was a cry to heal all strife within those rose-red walls, for the

dearest wish of every faction was to close them against civilization;

against those prying Western eyes and sniffing Western noses,

detecting drains and sinks of iniquity. So the clamor grew, and faces

which had frowned at each other yesterday sought support in each

other's ferocity to-day, and wild tales began to pass from mouth to

mouth. Men, crowding recklessly over the flower-beds, trampling down

the roses, talked of visions, of signs and warnings, while the

troopers, dismounting for a pull at a pipe, became the center of eager

circles listening not to dreams, but deeds.

"Dost feel the rope about thy neck, Sir Martyr?" said a bitter jeering

voice behind one of the speakers. And something gripped him round the

throat from behind, then as suddenly loosed its hold, as a shrouded

woman's figure hobbled on through the crowd. The trooper started up

with an oath, his own hand seeking his throat involuntarily.

"Heed her not!" said a bystander hastily, "'tis the Queen's scribe,

Hafzân. She hath a craze against men. One made her what she is. Go on!

Havildar-jee. So thou didst cut the _mem_ down, and fling the

babe----"

But the doer of the deed stood silent. He did in truth seem to feel

the rope about his neck. And he seemed to feel it till he died; when

it _was_ there.

But Hafzân had passed on, and there were no more with words of

warning. So the clamor grew and grew, till the garden swarmed with men

ready for any deed.

Ahsan-Oolah saw this, and laid a detaining hand on the Captain of the

Guard's arm, who, summoned in hot haste from his quarters over the

Lahore gate, came in by the private way, and proposed to go down and

harangue the crowd.

"It is not safe, Huzoor," he cried. "My liege, detain him. These men

by their own confession are murderers----"

The King looked from one to the other doubtfully. Someone must get rid

of the rioters; yet the physician said truth.

"And if aught befall," added the latter craftily, "your Majesty will

be held responsible."

The old man's hand fell instantly on the Englishman's arm. "Nay, nay,

sahib! go not. Go not, my friend! Speak to them from the balcony. They

will not dare to violate it."

So, backed by the sanctity of the Audience Hall of a dead dynasty, the

Englishman stood and ordered the crowd to desist from profaning

privacy in the name of the old man behind him; whose power he, in

common with all his race, hoped and believed to be dead.

It was sufficient, however, to leave some respect for the royal

person, and make the crowd disperse. To little purpose so far as peace

and quiet went, since the only effect was to send a leaven of revolt

to every corner of the Palace. And the Palace was so full of

malcontents, docked of power, privilege, pensions; of all that makes

life in a Palace worth living.

So the cry "Close the gates" grew wider. The dazed old King clung to

the Englishman's arm imploring him to stay; but now a messenger came

running to say that the Commissioner-sahib had called and left word

that the Captain was to follow without delay to the Calcutta gate of

the city. The courtiers, who had begun to assemble, looked at each

other curiously; the disturbance, then, had spread beyond the Palace.

Could, then, this amazing tale be true? The very thought sent them

cringing round the old man, who might ere long be King indeed.

Yet as the Captain dashed at a gallop past the sentries standing

calmly at the Lahore gate, there was no sign of trouble beyond, and he

gave a quick glance of relief back at those cool quarters of his over

the arched tunnel where the chaplain, his daughter, and her friend

were staying as his guests. He felt less fear of leaving them when he

saw that the city was waking to life as always, buckling down quietly

to the burden and heat of a new day. It was now past seven o'clock,

and the sunlight, still cool, was bright enough to cleave all things

into dark or light, shade or shine. Up on the Ridge, the brigade,

after listening to the sentence on the Barrackpore mutineers, was

dispersing quietly; many of the men with that fiat of patience till

the 31st in their minds, for the carriage-load of native officers

returning from the Meerut court-martial had come into cantonments late

the night before. On the roofs of the houses in the learned quarter

women were giving the boys their breakfasts ere sending them off to

school. The milkwomen were trooping in cityward from the country, the

fruit-sellers and hawkers trooping out Ridge-way as usual. The postman

going his rounds had left letters, written in Meerut the day before,

at two houses. And Kate Erlton returning from early church had found

hers and was reading it with a scared face. Alice Gissing, however,

having had that laconic telegram, had taken hers coolly. The decision

had had to be made, since nothing had happened; and Herbert had the

right to make it. For her part, she could make him happy; she had the

knack of making most men happy, and she herself was always content

when the people about her were jolly. So she was packing boxes in the

back veranda of the little house on the city wall.

Thus she did not see the man who, between six and seven o'clock, ran

breathlessly past her house, as a shortcut to the Court House from the

bridge, taking a message from the toll-keeper to the nearest Huzoor,

the Collector, who was holding early office, that a party of armed

troopers had come down the Meerut road, that more could be seen

coming, and would the Huzoor kindly issue orders. That first and final

suggestion of the average native subordinate in any difficulty.

Armed men? That might mean much or nothing. Yet scarcely anything

really serious, or warning would have been sent. The Commissioner,

anyhow, must be told. So the Collector flung himself on his horse,

which, in Indian fashion, was waiting under a tree outside the Court

House, and galloped toward Ludlow Castle. No need for that warning,

however, for just by the Cashmere gate he met the man he sought

driving furiously down with a mounted escort to close the city gates.

He had already heard the news.[3]

Gathering graver apprehensions from this hasty meeting, the Collector

was off again to warn the Resident, then still further to beg help

from cantonments. No delay here, no hesitation. Simply a man on a

horse doing his best for the future, leaving the present for those on

the spot.

Nor was there delay anywhere. The Commissioner, calling by the way for

the Captain of the Guard, the nearest man with men under him, was at

the gate, giving on the bridge of boats, by half-past seven. The

Resident, calling on his way at the magazine for two guns to sweep the

bridge, joined him there soon after. Too late. The enemy had crossed,

and were in possession of the only ground commanding the bridge.

Nothing remained but to close the gate and keep the city quiet till

the columns of pursuit from Meerut should arrive; for that there was

one upon the road no one doubted. The very rebels clamoring at the

gate were listening for the sound of those following footsteps. The

very fanatics, longing for another blow or two at an infidel to gain

Paradise withal ere martyrdom was theirs, listened too; for during

that moonlit night the certainty of failure had been as myrrh and

hyssop deadening them to the sacrifice of life.

So the little knot of Englishmen, looking hopefully down the road,

looked anxiously at each other, and closed the river gate; kept it

closed, too, even when the 20th claimed admittance from their friends

the guard within. For the 38th regiment, whose turn it was for city

work, was also rotten to the core.

But they could not close that way through Selimgarh, though it, in

truth, brought no trouble to the town. The men who chose it being

intriguers, fanatics, the better class of patriots more anxious to

intrench themselves for the struggle within walls, than to swarm into

a town they could not hope to hold. But there were others of different

mettle, longing for loot and license. The 3d Cavalry had many friends

in Delhi, especially in the Thunbi Bazaar; so they made for it by

braving the shallow streams and shifting sandbanks below the eastern

wall, and so gaining the Raj-ghât gate. Here, after compact with vile

friends in that vile quarter, they found admittance and help. For

what?

Between the bazaar and the Palace lay Duryagunj, full of helpless

Christian women and children; and so, "_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed_,"

the convenient Cry of Faith, was ready as, followed by the rabble and

refuse once more, the troopers raced through the peaceful gardens,

pausing only to kill the infidels they met. But like a furious wind

gathering up all vile things in the street and carrying them along for

a space, then dropping them again, the band left a legacy of license

and sheer murder behind it, while it sped on to loot.

But now the cry of "Close the gates" rose once more, this time from

the shopkeepers, the respectable quarters, the secluded alleys, and

courtyards. And many a door was closed on the confusion and never

opened again, except to pass in bare bread, for four long months.

"Close the gates! Close the gates! Close the gates!" The cry rose from

the Palace, the city, the little knot of Englishmen looking down the

Meerut road. Yet no one could compass that closing. Recruits swarmed

in through Selimgarh to the Palace. Robbers swarmed in through the

Raj-ghât gate to harry the bazaars. Only through the Cashmere gate,

held by English officers and a guard of the 38th, no help came. The

Collector arriving therein, hot from his gallop to cantonments, found

more wonder than alarm; for death was dealt in Delhi by noiseless cold

steel; and the main-guard having to be kept, in order to secure

retreat and safety to the European houses around it, no one had been

able to leave it. And all around was still peaceful utterly; even the

roar of growing tumult in the city had not reached it. Sonny Seymour

was playing with his parrot in the veranda, Alice Gissing packing

boxes methodically. The Collector galloping past--as, scorning the

suggestion that it was needless risk to go further, he replied

briefly, that he was the magistrate of the town, and struck spurs to

his horse--made some folk look up--that was all.

But he could scarcely make his way through the growing crowd, which,

led by troopers, was beginning to close in behind the knot of waiting

Englishmen. And once more they looked down the Meerut road as they

heard that some time must elapse ere they could hope for

reinforcement. The guns could not be got ready at a moment's notice;

nor could the Cashmere gate guard leave the post. But the 54th

regiment should be down in about---- In about what? No one asked; but

those waiting faces listened as for a verdict of life and death.

In about an hour.

An hour! And not a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road.

"They can't be long, though, now," said the eldest there hopefully.

"And Ripley will bring his men down at the double. If we go into the

guard-house we can hold our own till then, surely."

"I can hold mine," replied a young fellow with a rough-hewn homely

face. He gave a curt nod as he spoke to a companion, and together they

turned back, skirting the wall, followed by an older, burlier man.

They belonged to the magazine, and they were off to see the best way

of holding their own. And they found it--found it for all time.

But fate had denied to those other brave men the nameless something

which makes men succeed together, or die together. Within half an hour

they were scattered helplessly. The Resident, after seeking support

from the city police for one whose name had been a terror to Delhi for

fifty years, and finding insult instead, was flying for dear life

through the Ajmere gate to the open county; The Commissioner, who,

after seizing a musket from a wavering guard beside him and--with the

first shot fired in Delhi--shooting the foremost trooper dead, seems

to have lost hope, with mutiny around and treason beside him, jumped

into his buggy alone and drove off to those cool quarters above the

Palace gate, as his nearest refuge. Their owner, the Captain sought

like refuge by flinging himself into the cover of the dry moat, and

creeping--despite injuries from the fall--along it till some of his

men, faithful so far, seeing him unable for more, carried him to his

own room.

The Collector! Strangely enough there is no record of what the

Magistrate of the city did, thus left alone. He had been wounded by

the crowd at first, and was no doubt weary after his wild gallopings.

Still he, holding his own so far, managed to gain the same refuge,

somehow. What else could he do alone? One thing we know he could not

do. That is, mount the broad, curving flight of shallow stone stairs

leading to the cool upper rooms. So the chaplain helped him; the

chaplain who had "from an early hour been watching the advance of the

Meerut mutineers through a telescope and feeling there was mischief in

the wind."

Mischief indeed! and danger; most of all in those rose-red walls

within which refuge had been sought. For the King was back in the

women's apartments listening to the Queen's cozenings and Hussan

Askuri's visions, when that urgent appeal to send dhoolies to convey

the English ladies at the gate to the security of the harem reached

him; reached him in Ahsan-Oolah's warning voice of wisdom. And he

listened to both the wheedling ambition and the crafty policy with a

half-hearing for something beyond it of pity, honor, good faith; while

Hâfzan, pen in hand, sat with her large profoundly sad eyes fixed on

the old man's face, waiting--waiting.

"If they come here--outcaste! infidel! I go," said Zeenut Maihl.

"Thou shalt go with a bowstring about thy neck, woman, if I choose,"

said the old King fiercely. "Write! girl--the Queen's dhoolies to the

Lahore gate at once."

So, through the swarms of pensioners quarreling already over new

titles and perquisites, through the groups of excited fanatics

preparing for martyrdom about the Mosque, past Abool-Bukr, three parts

drunk, boasting to ruffling blades of the European mistresses he meant

to keep, the Queen's dhoolies went swaying out of the precincts; all

yielding place to them. And beyond, in the denser, more dangerous

crowd without, they passed easily; for those tinsel-decked, tawdry

canopies, screened with sodden musk and dirt-scented curtains, were

sacred.

Sacred even to the refuse and rabble of the city, the dissolute

eunuchs, the mob of retainers, palace guards, and blood-drunk

soldierly surging through that long arched tunnel by the Lahore gate,

and hustling to get round that wide arch, and so, a few steps further,

see the Commissioner standing at bay upon that wide curving red-stone

stair that led upward. Standing and thinking of the women above; of

one woman mostly. Standing, facing the wild sea of faces, waiting to

see if that last appeal for help had been heard.

"Room! Room! for the Queen's dhoolies!"

The cry echoed above the roar of the crowd.

At last! He turned, to pass on the welcome news, perchance; but it was

enough--that one waver of that stern face! There was a rush, a cry, a

clang of steel on stone, a fall! And then up those wide curving

stairs, like fiends incarnate, jostled a mad crew, elbowing each

other, cursing each other, in their eagerness for that blow which

would win Paradise.

Four crowns of glory in the first room, where the chaplain, the

Captain, and the two English girls fell side by side. One in the next,

where the Collector and Magistrate, weary and wounded, still lay

alone.

"Way! Way! for the Queen's dhoolies!"

But they had come too late, as all things seemed to come too late on

that fatal 11th of May.

Too late! Too late! The words dinned themselves into a horseman's

brain, as he dashed out of the compound of a small house in Duryagunj

and headed straight through the bazaar for the little house on the

city wall by the Cashmere gate. And as he rode he shouted: "_Deen!

Deen!_"

It was a convenient cry, and suited the trooper's dress he wore. He

had had to shoot a man to get it, but he hoped to shoot many more when

he had seen Alice Gissing in safety, and the Meerut column had come

in. It could not be long now.

CHAPTER III.

DAYLIGHT.

Three miles away Kate Erlton sat in her home-like, peaceful drawing

room, feeling dazzled. The sunshine, streaming through the open doors,

seemed to stream into the very recesses of her mind as she sat, still

looking at the letter which she had found half an hour before waiting

for her beside a bunch of late roses which the gardener had laid on

the table ready for her to arrange in the vases. The flowers were

fading fast; the dog-cart waiting outside to take her on to see a sick

friend ere the sun grew hot, shifted to find another shadow; but she

did not move.

She was trying to understand what it all meant; really--deprived of

her conventional thoughts about such things. And one sentence in the

letter had a strange fascination for her. "I am not such a fool as to

think you will mind. I know you will get on much better without me."

Of course. She had, in a way, accepted the truth of this years ago.

The fact must have been patent to him also all that time; and she had

known that he accepted it.

But now, set down in black and white, it forced her into seeing--as

she had never seen before--the deadly injury she had done to the man

by not minding. And then the question came keenly--"Why had she not

minded?" Because she had not been content with her bargain. She had

wanted something else. What? The emotion, the refinement, the

_fin-fleur_ of sentiment. Briefly, what made _her_ happy; what gave

_her_ satisfaction. It was only, then, a question between different

forms of enjoyment; the one as purely selfish as the other. More so,

in a way, for it claimed more and carried the grievance of denial into

every detail of life. She moved restlessly in her chair, confused by

this sudden daylight in her mind; laid down the letter, then took it

up again and read another sentence.

"I believe you used to think that I'd get the regiment some day; but I

shouldn't--after all, the finish is the win or the lose of a race."

The letter went down on the table again, but this time her head went

down with it to rest upon it above her clasped hands. Oh! the pity of

it! the pity of it! Yet how could she have avoided standing aloof from

this man's life as she had done from the moment she had discovered she

did not love him?

Suddenly she stood up, pressing those clasped hands tight to her

forehead as if to hold in her thoughts. The sunlight, streaming in,

shone right into her cool gray eyes, showing in a ray on the iris, as

if it were passing into her very soul.

If she had been this man's sister, instead of his wife, could she not

have lived with him contentedly enough, palliating what could be

palliated, gaining what influence she could with him, giving him

affection and sympathy? Why, briefly, had she failed to make him what

Alice Gissing had made him--a better man? And yet Alice Gissing did

not love him; she had no romantic sentiment about him. Did she really

lay less stress--she, the woman at whom other women held up pious

hands of horror--on that elemental difference between the tie of

husband and wife, and brother and sister than she, Kate Erlton, did,

who had affected to rise superior to it altogether? It seemed so. She

had asked for a purely selfish gratification of the mind. And Alice

Gissing? A strange jealousy came to her with the thought, not for

herself, but for her husband; for the man who was content to give up

everything for a woman whom he "loved very dearly." That was true.

Kate had watched him for those three months, and she had watched Mrs.

Gissing too, and knew for a certainty the latter gave him nothing any

woman might not have given him if she had been content to put her own

claims for happiness, her own gratification, her own mental passion

aside. So a quick resolve came to her. He must not give up the finish,

the win or the lose of the race, for so little. There was time yet for

the chance. She had pleaded for one with a man a year ago; she would

plead for it with a woman to-day.

She passed into the veranda hastily, pausing involuntarily ere getting

into the dog-cart before the still, sunlit beauty of that panorama of

the eastern plains, stretching away behind the gardens which fringed

the shining curves of the river. There was scarcely a shadow anywhere,

not a sign to tell that three miles down that river the man with whom

she had pleaded a year ago was straining every nerve to give her and

himself a chance, and that within the rose-lit, lilac-shaded city the

chance of some had come and gone.

Nor, as she drove along the road intent on that coming interview in

the hot little house upon the wall, was there any sign to warn her of

danger. The Cashmere gate stood open, and the guard saluted as usual.

Perhaps, had the English officers seen her, they might have advised

her return, even though there was as yet no anticipation of danger;

had there been one, the first thought would have been to clear the

neighboring bungalows. But they were in the main-guard, and she set

down the stare of the natives to the fact that nine o'clock was

unusually late for an English lady to be braving the May sun. The road

beyond was also unusually deserted, but she was too busy searching for

the winged words, barbed well, yet not too swift or sharp to wound

beyond possibility of compromise, which she meant to use ere long, to

pay any attention to her surroundings. She did not even catch the

glimpse of Sonny, still playing with the cockatoo, as she sped past

the Seymours' house, and she scarcely noticed the groom's "_Hut! teri,

hut!_" (Out of the way! you there!) to a figure in a green turban,

over which she nearly ran, as it came sneaking round a corner as if

looking for something or someone; a figure which paused to look after

her half doubtfully.

Yet these same words, which came so readily to her imaginings, failed

her, as set words will, before the commonplace matter-of-fact reality.

If she could have jumped from the dog-cart and dashed into them

without preamble, she would have been eloquent enough; but the

necessary inquiry if Mrs. Gissing could see her, the ushering in as

for an ordinary visit, the brief waiting, the perfunctory hand-shake

with the little figure in familiar white-and-blue were so far from the

high-strung appeal in her thoughts that they left her silent, almost

shy.

"Find a comfy chair, do," came the high, hard voice. "Isn't it

dreadfully hot? My old Mai will have it something is going to happen.

She has been dikking me about it all the morning. An earthquake, I

suppose; it feels like it, rather. Don't you think so?"

Kate felt as if one had come already, as, quite automatically, she

satisfied Alice Gissing's choice of "a really--really comfy chair."

How dizzily unreal it seemed! And yet not more so, in fact, than the

life they had been leading for months past; knowing the truth about

each other absolutely; pretending to know nothing. Well! the sooner

that sort of thing came to an end, the better!

"I have had a letter from my husband," she began, but had to pause to

steady her voice.

"So I supposed when I saw you," replied Alice Gissing, without a

quiver in hers. But she rose, crossed over to Kate, and stood before

her, like a naughty child, her hands behind her back. She looked

strangely young, strangely innocent in the dim light of the sunshaded

room. So young, so small, so slight among the endless frills and laces

of a loose morning wrapper. And she spoke like a child also,

querulously, petulantly.

"I like you the better for coming, too, though I don't see what

possible good it can do. He said in his letter to me he would tell you

all about it, and if he has, I don't see what else there is to say, do

you?"

Kate rose also, as if to come nearer to her adversary, and so the two

women stood looking boldly enough into each other's eyes. But the

keenness, the passion, the pity of the scene had somehow gone out of

it for Kate Erlton. Her tongue seemed tied by the tameness; she felt

that they might have been discussing a trivial detail in some trivial

future. Yet she fought against the feeling.

"I think there is a great deal to say; that is why I have come to say

it," she replied, after a pause. "But I can say it quickly. You don't

love my husband, Alice Gissing, let him go. Don't ruin his life."

Bald and crude as this was in comparison with her imagined appeal, it

gave the gist of it, and Kate watched her hearer's face anxiously to

see the effect. Was that by chance a faint smile? or was it only the

barred light from the jalousies hitting the wide blue eyes?

"Love!" echoed Alice Gissing. "I don't know anything about love. I

never pretended to. But I can make him happy; you never did."

There was not a trace of malice in the high voice. It simply stated a

fact; but a fact so true that Kate's lip quivered.

"I know that as well as you do. But I think I could--now. I want you

to give me the chance."

She had not meant to put it so humbly; but, being once more the gist

of what she had intended to say, it must pass. There was no doubt

about the smile now. It was almost a laugh, that hateful, inconsequent

laugh; but, as if to soften its effect, a little jeweled hand hovered

out as if it sought a resting-place on Kate's arm.

"You can't, my dear. It _is_ so funny that you can't see that, when I,

who know nothing about--about all that--can see it quite plainly. You

are the sort of woman, Mrs. Erlton, who falls in love--who must fall

in love--who--don't be angry!--likes being in love, and is unhappy if

she isn't. Now I don't care a rap for people to be thinking, and

thinking, and thinking of me, nothing but me! I like them to be

pleasant and pleased. And I make them so, somehow----" She shrugged

her shoulders whimsically as if to dismiss the puzzle, and went on

gravely, "And you can't make people happy if you aren't happy

yourself, you know, so there is no use in thinking you could."

It was bitter truth, but Kate was too honest to deny it. There had

always been the sense of grievance in the past, and the sense of

self-sacrifice, at least, would remain in the future.

"But there are other considerations," she began slowly. "A man does

not set such store by--by love and marriage as a woman. It is only a

bit----"

"A very small bit," put in Mrs. Gissing, with a whimsical face.

"A very small bit of his life," continued Kate stolidly, "and if my

husband gives up his profession----"

Mrs. Gissing interrupted her again; this time petulantly. "I told him

it was a pity--I offered to go away anywhere. I did, indeed! And I

couldn't do more, could I? But when a man gets a notion of honor into

his head----"

"Honor!" interrupted Kate in her turn, "the less said about honor the

better, surely, between you and me!"

The wide blue eyes looked at her doubtfully.

"I never can understand women like you," said their owner. "You

pretend not to care, and then you make so much fuss over so little."

"So little!" retorted Kate, her temper rising. "Is it little that my

boy should have to know this about his father--about me? You have no

children, Mrs. Gissing! If you had you would understand the shame

better. Oh! I know about the baby and the flowers--who doesn't? But

that is nothing. It was so long ago, it died so young, you have

forgotten----"

She broke off before the expression on the face before her--that face

with the shadowless eyes, but with deep shadows beneath the eyes and a

nameless look of physical strain and stress upon it--and a sudden

pallor came to her own cheek.

"So he hasn't told you," came the high voice half-fretfully,

half-pitifully. "That was very mean of him; but I thought, somehow, he

couldn't by your coming here. Well! I suppose I must. Mrs. Erlton----"

Kate stepped back from her defiantly, angrily. "He has told me all I

need, all I care to know about this miserable business. Yes! he has!

You can see the letter if you like--there it is! I am not ashamed of

it. It is a good letter, better than I thought he could write--better

than you deserve. For he says he will marry you if I will let him! And

he says he is sorry it can't be helped. But I deny that. It can, it

must, it shall be helped! And then he says it's a pity for the boy's

sake; but that it does not matter so much as if it was a girl----"

It was the queerest sound which broke in on those passionate

reproaches. The queerest sound. Neither a laugh nor a sob, nor a cry;

but something compounded of all three, infinitely soft, infinitely

tender.

"_And the other may be_," said Alice Gissing in a voice of smiles and

tears, as she pointed to the end of the sentence in the letter Kate

had thrust upon her. "Poor dear! What a way to put it! How like a man

to think you could understand; and I wonder what the old Mai _would_

say to its being----"

What did she say? What were the frantic words which broke from the

frantic figure, its sparse gray hair showing, its shriveled bosom

heaving unveiled, which burst into the room and flung its arms round

that little be-frilled white one as if to protect and shield it?

Kate Erlton gave a half-choked, half-sobbing cry. Even this seemed a

relief from the incredible horror of what had dawned upon her,

frightening her by the wild insensate jealousy it roused--the jealousy

of motherhood.

"What is it? What does she say?" she cried passionately, "I have a

right to know!"

Alice Gissing looked at her with a faint wonder. "It is nothing about

_that_," she said, and her face, though it had whitened, showed no

fear. "It's something more important. There has been a row in the

city--the Commissioner and some other Englishmen have been killed and

she says we are not safe. I don't quite understand. Oh! don't be a

fool, Mai!" she went on in Hindustani, "I won't excite myself. I never

do. Don't be a fool, I say!" Her foot came down almost savagely and

she turned to Kate. "If you will wait here for a second, Mrs. Erlton,

I'll go outside with the Mai and have a look round, and bring my

husband's pistol from the other room. You had better stay, really. I

shall be back in a moment. And I dare say it's all the old Mai's

nonsense--she is such a fool about me--nowadays." Her white face;

smiling over its own certainty of coming trouble, was gone, and the

door closed, almost before Kate could say a word. Not that she had any

to say. She was too dazed to think of danger to the little figure,

which passed out into the shady back veranda perched on the city wall,

looking out into the peaceful country beyond. She was too absorbed in

what she had just realized to think of anything else. So this was what

he had meant!--and this woman with her facile nature, ready to please

and be pleased with anyone--this woman content to take the lowest

place--had the highest of all claims upon him. This woman who had no

right to motherhood, who did not know----

God in Heaven! What was that through the stillness and the peace? A

child's pitiful scream.

She was at the closed windows in an instant, peering through the slits

of the jalousies; but there was nothing to be seen save a blare and

blaze of sunlight on sun-scorched grass and sun-withered beds of

flowers. Nothing!--stay!--Christ help us! What was that? A vision of

white, and gold, and blue. White garments and white wings, golden

curls and flaming golden crest, fierce gray-blue beak and claws among

the fluttering blue ribbons. Sonny! His little feet flying and failing

fast among the flower-beds. Sonny! still holding his favorite's chain

in the unconscious grip of terror, while half-dragged, half-flying,

the wide white wings fluttered over the child's head.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

That was from the bird, terrified, yet still gentle.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

That was from the old man who followed fast on the child with long

lance in rest like a pig-sticker's. An old man in a faded green turban

with a spiritual, relentless face.

Kate's fingers were at the bolts of the high French window--her only

chance of speedy exit from that closed room. Ah! would they never

yield?--and the lance was gaining on those poor little flying feet.

Every atom of motherhood in her--fierce, instinctive, animal, fought

with those unyielding bolts....

What was that? Another vision of white, and gold, and blue, dashing

into the sunlight with something in a little clenched right hand.

Childish itself in frills, and laces, and ribbons, but with a face as

relentless as the old man's, as spiritual. And a clear confident voice

rang above those discordant cries.

"All right, Sonny! All right, dear!"

On, swift and straight in the sunlight; and then a pause to level the

clenched right hand over the left arm coolly, and fire. The lance

wavered. It was two feet further from that soft flesh and blood when

Alice Gissing caught the child up, turned and ran; ran for dear life

to shelter.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

The cry came after the woman and child, and over them, released by

Sonny's wild clutch at sheltering arms, the bird fluttered, echoing

the cry.

But one bolt was down at last, the next yielding--Ah! who was that

dressed like a native, riding like an Englishman, who leaped the high

garden fence and was over among the flower-beds where Sonny was being

chased. Was he friend or foe? No matter! Since under her vehement

hands the bolt had fallen, and Kate was out in the veranda. Too late!

The flying sunlit vision of white, and gold, and blue had tripped and

fallen. No! not too late. The report of a revolver rang out, and the

Cry of Faith came only from the bird, for the fierce relentless face

was hidden among the laces, and frills, and ribbons that hid the

withered flowers.

But the lance? The lance whose perilous nearness had made that shot

Jim Douglas' only chance of keeping his promise? He was on his knees

on the scorched grass choking down the curse as he saw a broken shaft

among the frills and ribbons, a slow stream oozing in gushes to dye

them crimson. There was another crimson spot, too, on the shoulder,

showing where a bullet, after crashing through a man's temples, had

found its spent resting place. But as the Englishman kicked away one

body, and raised the other tenderly from the unhurt child, so as not

to stir that broken shaft, he wished that if death had had to come, he

might have dealt it. To his wild rage, his insane hatred, there seemed

a desecration even in that cold touch of steel from a dark hand.

But Alice Gissing resented nothing. She lay propped by his arms with

those wide blue eyes still wide, yet sightless, heedless of Kate's

horrified whispers, or the poor old Mai's frantic whimper. Until

suddenly a piteous little wail rose from the half-stunned child to

mingle with that ceaseless iteration of grief. "_Oh! meri buchchi

murgyia!_" (Oh, my girlie is dead!--dead!)

It seemed to bring her back, and a smile showed on the fast-paling

face.

"Don't be a fool, Mai. It isn't a girl; it's a boy. Take care of him,

do, and don't be stupid. I'm all right."

Her voice was strong enough, and Kate looked at Jim Douglas hopefully.

She had recognized him at once, despite his dress, with a faint, dead

wonder as to why things were so strange to-day. But he could feel

something oozing wet and warm over his supporting arm, he knew the

meaning of that whitening face; so he shook his head hopelessly, his

eyes on those wide unseeing ones. She was as still, he thought, as she

had been when he held her before. Then suddenly the eyes narrowed into

sight, and looked him in the face curiously, clearly.

"It's you, is it?" came the old inconsequent laugh. "Why don't you say

'Bravo!--Bravo!--Bra--'"

The crimson rush of blood from her still-smiling lips dyed his hands

also, as he caught her up recklessly with a swift order to the others

to follow, and ran for the house. But as he ran, clasping her close,

close, to him, his whispered bravos assailed her dead ears

passionately, and when he laid her on her bed, he paused even in the

mad tumult of his rage, his anxiety, his hope for others to kiss the

palms of those brave hands ere he folded them decently on her breast,

and was out to fetch his horse, and return to where Kate waited for

him in the veranda, the child in her arms. Brave also; but the

certainty that he had left the flood-level of sympathy and admiration

behind him at the feet of a dead woman he had never known, was with

him even in his hurry.

"I can't see anyone else about as yet," he said, as he reloaded

hastily, "and but for that fiend--that devil of a bird hounding him

on--what did it mean?--not that it matters now"--he threw his hand out

in a gesture of impotent regret and turned to mount.

Kate shivered. What, indeed, did it mean? A vague recollection was

adding to her horror. Had she driven away once from an uncomprehensible

appeal in that relentless face? when the bird----

"Don't think, please," said Jim Douglas, pausing to give her a sharp

glance. "You will need all your nerve. The troops mutinied at Meerut

last night, and killed a lot of people. They have come on here, and I

don't trust the native regiments. Go inside, and shut the door. I must

reconnoiter a bit before we start."

"But my husband?" she cried, and her tone made him remember the

strangeness of finding her in that house. She looked unreliable, to

his keen eye; the bitter truth might make her rigid, callous, and in

such callousness lay their only chance.

"All right. He asked me to look after--her."

He saw her waver, then pull herself together; but he saw also that her

clasp on Sonny tightened convulsively, and he held out his arms.

"Hand the child to me for a moment," he said briefly, "and call that

poor lady's ayah from her wailing."

The piteous whimperings from the darkened rooms within ceased

reluctantly. The old woman came with lagging step into the veranda,

but Jim Douglas called to her in the most matter-of-fact voice.

"Here, Mai! Take your mem's charge. She told you to take care

of the boy, remember." The tear-dim doubtful eyes looked at him

half-resentfully, but he went on coolly. "Now, Sonny, go to your ayah,

and be a good boy. Hold out your arms to old ayah, who has had ever so

many Sonnys--haven't you, ayah?"

The child, glad to escape from the prancing horse, the purposely rough

arms, held out its little dimpled hands. They seemed to draw the

hesitating old feet, step by step, till with a sudden fierce snatch, a

wild embrace, the old arms closed round the child with a croon of

content.

Jim Douglas breathed more freely. "Now, Mrs. Erlton," he said, "I

can't make you promise to leave Sonny there; but he is safer with her

than he could be with you. She must have friends in the city. You

haven't _one_."

He was off as he spoke, leaving her to that knowledge. Not a friend!

No! not one. Still, he need not have told her so, she thought proudly,

as she passed in and closed the doors as she had been bidden to do.

But he had succeeded. A certain fierce, dull resistance had replaced

her emotion. So while the ayah, still carrying Sonny, returned to her

dead mistress, Kate remained in the drawing room, feeling stunned. Too

stunned to think of anything save those last words. Not a friend! Not

one, saving a few cringing shop-keepers, in all that wide city to whom

she had ever spoken a word! Whose fault was that? Whose fault was it

that she had not understood that appeal?

A rattle of musketry quite close at hand roused her from apathy into

fear for the child, and she passed rapidly into the next room. It was

empty, save for that figure on the bed. The ayah with her charge had

gone, closing the doors behind her; to her friends, no doubt. But she,

Kate Erlton, had none. The renewed rattle of musketry sent her to peer

through the jalousies; but she could see nothing. The sound seemed to

come from the open space by the church, but gardens lay between her

and that, blocking the view. Still it was quite close; seemed closer

than it had been. No doubt it would come closer and closer till it

found her waiting there, without a friend. Well! Since she was not

even capable of saving Sonny, she could at least do what she was

told--she could at least die alone.

No! not quite alone! She turned back to the bed and looked down on the

slender figure lying there as if asleep. For the ayah's vain hopes of

lingering life had left the face unstained, and the folded hands hid

the crimson below them. Asleep, not dead; for the face had no look of

rest. It was the face of one who dreams still of the stress and strain

of coming life.

So this was to be her companion in death; this woman who had done her

the greatest wrong. What wrong? the question came dully. What wrong

had she done to one who refused to admit the claims or rights of

passion? What had she stolen, this woman who had not cared at all?

Whose mind had been unsullied utterly. Only motherhood; and that was

given to saint and sinner alike.

Given rightly here, for those little hands were brave mother-hands.

Kate put out hers softly and touched them. Still warm, still

life-like, their companionship thrilled her through and through. With

a faint sob, she sank on her knees beside the bed and laid her cheek

on them. Let death come and find her there! Let the finish of the

race, which was the win and the lose----

"Mrs. Erlton! quick, please!"

Jim Douglas' voice, calling to her from outside, roused her from a

sort of apathy into sudden desire for life; she was out in the veranda

in a second.

"The game's up," he said, scarcely able to speak from breathlessness;

and his horse was in a white lather. "I had to see to the Seymours

first, and now there's only one chance I can think of--desperate at

that. Quick, your foot on mine--so--from the step---- Now your hand.

One! two! three! That's right." He had her on the saddle before him

and was off through the gardens cityward at a gallop. "The 54th came

down from the cantonments all right," he went on rapidly, "but shot

their officers at the church--the city scoundrels are killing and

looting all about, but the main-guard is closed and safe as yet. I got

Mrs. Seymour there. I'll get you if I can. I'm going to ride through

the thick of the devils now with you as my prisoner. Do you see--there

at the turn. I'll hark back down the road--it's the only chance of

getting through. Slip down a bit across the saddle bow. Don't be

afraid. I'll hold as long as I can. Now scream--scream like the devil.

No! let your arms slack as if you'd fainted--people won't look so

much--that's better--that's capital--now--ready!"

He swerved his horse with a dig of the spur and made for the crowd

which lay between him and safety. The words describing the rape of the

Sabine women, over the construing of which he remembered being birched

at school, recurred to him, as such idle thoughts will at such times,

as he hitched his hand tighter on Kate's dress and scattered the first

group with a coarse jest or two. Thank Heaven! She would not

understand these, his only weapons; since cold steel could not be

used, till it had to be used to _prevent_ her understanding. Thank

Heaven, too! he could use both weapons fairly. So he dug in the spurs

again and answered the crowd in its own kind, recklessly. A laugh, an

oath, once or twice a blow with the flat of his sword. And Kate, with

slack arms and closed eyes, lay and listened--listened to a sharper,

angrier voice, a quick clash of steel, a shout of half-doubtful,

half-pleased derision from those near, a jest provoking a roar of

merriment for one who meant to hold his own in love and war. Then a

sudden bound of the horse; a faint slackening of that iron grip on her

waist-belt. The worst of the stream was past; another moment and they

were in a quiet street, another, and they had turned at right-angles

down a secluded alley where Jim Douglas paused to pass his right hand,

still holding his sword, under Kate's head and bid her lean against

him more comfortably. The rest was easy. He would take her out by the

Moree gate--the alleys to it would be almost deserted--so, outside the

walls, to the rear of the Cashmere gate. They were already twisting

and turning through the narrow lanes as he told her this. Then, with a

rush and a whoop, he made for the gate, and the next moment they had

the open country, the world, before them. How still and peaceful it

lay in the sunshine! But the main-guard was the nearest, safest

shelter, so the galloping hoofs sped down the tree-set road along

which Kate generally took her evening drive.

"And you?" she asked hurriedly as he set her down at the moat and bade

her run for the wicket and knock, while he kept the drawbridge.

He shook his head. "The reliefs from Meerut must be in soon. If they

started at dawn, in an hour. Besides, I'm off to the Palace to see

what has really happened; information's everything."

She saw him turn with a wave of his sword for farewell as the wicket

was opened cautiously, and make for the Moree gate once more. As he

rode he told himself there should be no further cause for anxiety on

her account. De Tessier's guns were in the main-guard now, and

reinforcements of the loyal 74th. They could hold their own easily

till the Meerut people smashed up the Palace. They could not be long

now, and the city had not risen as yet. The bigger bazaars through

which he cantered were almost deserted; everyone had gone home. But at

the entrance to an alley a group of boys clustered, and one ran out to

him crying, "Khân-sahib! What's the matter? Folk say people are being

killed, but we want to go to school."

"Don't," said Jim Douglas as he passed on. He had seen the

schoolmaster, stripped naked, lying on his back in the broad daylight

as he galloped along the College road with Kate over his saddle-bow.

"_Ari_, brothers," reported the spokesman. "He said '_don't_,' but he

can know naught. He comes from the outside. And we shall lose places

in class if we stop, and others go."

So in the cheerful daylight the schoolboys discussed the problem,

school or no school; the Great Revolt had got no further than that, as

yet.

But there was no cloud of dust upon the Meerut road, though straining

eyes thought they saw one more than once.

CHAPTER IV.

NOON.

But if the schoolmaster of one school lay dead in the sunlight there

was another, well able to teach a useful lesson, left alive; and his

school remains for all time as a place where men may learn what men

can do.

For about three hundred yards from the deserted College, about six

hundred from the main-guard of the Cashmere gate, stood the magazine,

to which the two young Englishmen, followed by a burlier one, had

walked back quietly after one of them had remarked that he could hold

his own. For there were gates to be barred, four walls to be seen to,

and various other preparations to be made before the nine men who

formed the garrison could be certain of holding their own. And their

own meant much to others; for with the stores and the munitions of war

safe the city might rise, but it would be unarmed; but with them at

the mercy of the rabble every pitiful pillager could become a recruit

to the disloyal regiments.

"The mine's about finished now, sir," said Conductor Buckley, saluting

gravely as he looked critically down a line ending in the powder

magazine. "And, askin' your pardon, sir, mightn't it be as well to

settle a signal beforehand, sir; in case it's wanted? And, if you have

no objection, sir, here's Sergeant Scully here, sir, saying he would

look on it as a kind favor----"

A man with a spade glanced up a trifle anxiously for the answer as he

went on with his work.

"All right! Scully shall fire it. If you finish it there in the middle

by that little lemon tree, we shan't forget the exact spot. Scully

must see to having the portfire ready for himself. I'll give the word

to you, as your gun will be near mine, and you can pass it on by

raising your cap. That will do, I think."

"Nicely, sir," said Conductor Buckley, saluting again.

"I wish we had one more man," remarked the Head-of-the-nine, as he

paused in passing a gun to look to something in its gear with swift

professional eye. "I don't quite see how the nine of us are to work

the ten guns."

"Oh! we'll manage somehow," said his second in command, "the native

establishment--perhaps----"

George Willoughby; the Head-of-the-nine, looked at the sullen group of

dark faces lounging distrustfully within those barred doors, and his

own face grew stern. Well, if they would not work, they should at

least stay and look on--stay till the end. Then he took out his watch.

"Twelve! The Meerut troops will be in soon--if they started at dawn."

There was the finest inflection of scorn in his voice.

"They must have started," began his companion. But the tall figure

with the grave young face was straining its eyes from the bastion they

were passing; it gave upon the bridge of boats and the lessening white

streak of road. He was looking for a cloud of dust upon it; but there

was none.

"I hope so," he remarked as he went on. He gave a half-involuntary

glance back, however, to the stunted lemon-bush. There was a black

streak by it, which might be relied upon to give aid at dawn, or dusk,

or noon; high noon as it was now.

The chime of it echoed methodically as ever from the main-guard,

making a cheerful young voice in the officer's room say, "Well! the

enemy is passing, anyhow. The reliefs can't be long--if they started

at dawn."

"If they had started when they ought to have started, they would have

been here hours ago," said an older man, almost petulantly, as he rose

and wandered to the door, to stand looking out on the baking court

where his men--the two companies of the 54th, who had come down under

his charge after those under Colonel Riply had shot down their

officers by the church--were lounging about sullenly. These men might

have shot him also but for the timely arrival of the two guns; might

have shot at him, even now, but for those loyal 74th over-awing them.

He turned and looked at some of the latter with a sort of envy. These

men had come forward in a body when the regiment was called upon by

its commandant to give honest volunteers to keep order in the city.

What had they had, which his men had lacked? Nothing that he knew of.

And then, inevitably, he thought of his six murdered friends and

comrades, officers apparently as popular as he, whose bodies were

lying in the next room waiting for a cart to remove them to the Ridge.

For even Major Paterson, saddened, depressed, looked forward to decent

sepulture for his comrades by and by--by and by when the Meerut troops

should arrive. And the half dozen or more of women upstairs were

comforting each other with the same hope, and crushing down the cry

that it seemed an eternity, already, since they had waited for that

little cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. But for that hope they

might have gone Meerutward themselves; for the country was peaceful.

Even in Duryagunj, though by noon it was a charnel-house, the score or

so of men who kept cowards at bay in a miserable storehouse comforted

themselves with the same hope; and women with the long languid eyes of

one race, looked out of them with the temper and fire of the other,

saying in soft staccato voices--"It will not be long now. They will be

here soon, for they would start at dawn."

"They will come soon," said a young telegraph clerk coolly, as he

stood by his instrument hoping for a welcome _kling_; sending,

finally, that bulletin northward which ended with the reluctant

admission, "we must shut up." Must indeed; seeing that some ruffians

rushed in and sabered him with his hands still on the levers.

"They will be here soon," agreed the compositors of the _Delhi

Gazette_ as they worked at the strangest piece of printing the world

is ever likely to see. That famous extra, wedged in between English

election news, which told in bald journalese of a crisis, which became

the crisis of their own lives before the whole edition was sent out.