Explosions are among the few things--or the many things, whichever way
you like to look at it!--that science can not undertake to harness or
account for. When a gun blows up, or a powder-magazine, the shock kills
whom it kills, as when a shell bursts in a dense-packed firing-line. You
can not kill any man before his time comes, even if a thousand tons of
solid masonry combine with you to whelm him, and go hurtling through the
air with him to absolutely obvious destruction.
The fakir's time had come, and the prisoners' time had come. But
Sergeant William Brown's had not.
They found him, blackened by powder, and with every stitch of clothing
blown from him, clinging to a bunch of lotus-stems in a temple-pond.
There was a piece of fakir in the water with him, and about a ton of
broken granary, besides the remnants of a rifle and other proof that he
had come belched out of a holocaust. The men who came on him had given
their officer the slip, and were bent on a private looting-expedition of
their own. But by the time that they had dragged him from the water, and
he had looted them of wherewithal to clothe himself, their thoughts of
plunder had departed from them. Brown had a way of quite monopolizing
people's thoughts!
There were twenty of them, and he led them all that night, and all
through the morning and the afternoon that followed. He held them
together and worked them and wheeled them and coached and cheered and
compelled them through the hell-tumult of the ghastliest thing there is
beneath the dome of heaven--house-to-house fighting in an Eastern city.
And at the end of it, when the bugles blew at last “Cease fire,”
and many of the men were marched away by companies to put out the
conflagrations that were blazing here and there, he led them outside
the city-wall, stood them at ease in their own line and saluted their
commanding-officer.
“Twenty men of yours, sir. Present and correct.”
“Which twenty?”
“Of Mr. Blair's half-company.”
“Where's Mr. Blair?”
“Dunno, sir!”
“Since when have you had charge of them?”
“Since they broke into the city yesterday, sir.”
“And you haven't lost a man?”
“Had lots of luck, sir!”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”
“Of the Rifles?”
“Of the Rifles, sir.”
“Were you the man who signaled to us from the magazine and blew it up
and made the breach in the wall for us to enter by?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you alive, or dead? Man or ghost?”
“I'm pretty much alive, sir, thank you!”
“D'you realize that you made the taking of Jailpore possible? That
but for you we'd have been trying still to storm the walls without
artillery?”
“I had the chance, sir, and I only did what any other man would ha' done
under like circumstances.”
“Go and tell that to the Horse Marines--or, rather, tell it to Colonel
Kendrick! Go and report to him at once. Possibly he'll see it through
your eyes!”
So Brown marched off to report himself, and he found Colonel Kendrick
nursing a badly wounded arm before a torn and mud-stained tent.
“Who are you?” said the colonel, as Brown saluted him.
“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”
“Not Bill Brown of the Rifles?”
“Yes, sir!”
“You lie! He was blown up on the roof of the powder-magazine! I suppose
every man who's gone mad from the heat will be saying that he's Brown!”
“I'm Brown, sir! I had written orders from General Baines to enter
Jailpore and rescue three women and a child.”
“Where are your orders?”
“Lost 'em, sir, in the explosion.”
“For a madman, you're a circumstantial liar! What happened to the
women?”
The colonel sat back, and smothered an exclamation of agony as the
nerves in his injured arm tortured him afresh. He had asked a question
which should settle once and for all this man's pretentions, and he
waited for the answer with an air of certainty. It was on his lips to
call the guard to take the lunatic away.
“Juggut Khan, the Rajput, took them, with nine of my men, and brought
them in to your camp last night, sir. I naturally haven't seen them
since.”
“Will the women know you?”
“One of them will, sir.”
“Which one?”
“Jane Emmett, sir.”
“Well, we'll see!”
The colonel called an orderly, and sent the orderly running for Jane
Emmett. A minute later two strong arms were thrown round Bill Brown from
behind, and he was all but carried off his feet.
“Oh, Bill--Bill--Bill! I knew you'd be all right! Turn round, Bill! Look
at me!”
She was clinging to him in such a manner that he could not turn, but he
managed to pry her hands loose, and to draw her round in front of him.
“I knew, Bill! I felt sure you'd come! And I recognized your voice the
minute that the trapdoor opened and I heard it! I did, Bill! I knew you
in a minute! I didn't worry then! I knew you wouldn't come and talk to
me as long as there was any duty to be done. I just waited! They said
you were killed in the explosion, but I knew you weren't! I knew it! I
did! I knew it!”
“Face me, please!” said Colonel Kendrick. “Now, Jane Emmett, is that man
Sergeant William Brown, of the Rifles?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he the man who entered Jailpore with nine men and a Rajput, and came
to your assistance?”
“Yes, sir! He's the same man who spoke in the powder-magazine;”
“Do you confirm that?” he asked Brown.
“Under favor, sir, my men must be somewhere, if they're not all killed.
They'll recognize me. And there's the other lot I led all last night and
all today. They'll tell you where they found me!”
“Never mind! I've decided I believe you! D'you realize that you're
something of a marvel?”
“No, sir--except that I've had marvelous luck!”
“Well, I shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in
despatches. It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen!
There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what
you dared in the first place. But, more than that, there are even fewer
men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else's care while they blew
up a powder-magazine with themselves on top of it, in order to make
a breach for the army to come in by! My right hand's out of action
unfortunately--you'll have to shake my left!”
The colonel rose, held his uninjured hand out and Brown shook it, since
he was ordered to.
“I consider it an honor and a privilege to have shaken hands with you,
Sergeant Brown!” said Colonel Kendrick.
“Thank you, sir!” said Brown, taking one step back, and then saluting.
“May I join my regiment, sir?”
He joined his regiment, when he had helped to sort out the bleeding
remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And
the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off
at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his
regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was once more mentioned in
despatches.
When the Mutiny was over, and the country had settled down again to
peace and reincarnation of a nation had begun, Brown found himself
hoisted to a civil appointment that was greater and more highly paid
than anything his modest soul had ever dreamed of.
He never understood the reason for it, although he did his fighting-best
consistently to fill the job; and he never understood why Queen Victoria
should have taken the trouble to write a letter to him in which she
thanked him personally, nor why they should have singled out for praise
and special notice a fellow who had merely done his duty.
Perhaps that was the reason why he was such a conspicuous success in
civil life. They still talk of how Bill Brown, with Jane his wife and
Juggut Khan the Rajput to advise him, was Resident Political Adviser to
a Maharajah, and of how the Maharajah loathed him, and looked sidewise
at him--but obeyed. That, though, is not a war-story. It is a story of
the saving of a war, and shall go on record, some day, beneath a title
of its own.