Sabres and spurs and jingling bits--
(Ho! But the food to feed them!)
Sinews and eyes and ears and wits--
(Hey! But the troopers need them!)
Sahib, mount! Thy chargers fling
Foam to the night--thy trumpets sing--
Thy lance-butts on the stirrups ring--
Mount, sahib! Blood them! Lead them!
IT was arranged that the McCleans, with old Joanna, should start at dawn
for Howrah City, and they were, both of them, too overcome with mingled
dread and excitement to even try to sleep. Joanna, very much as usual,
snoozed comfortably, curled in a blanket in a corner.
They would run about a hundred different risks, not least of which was
the chance of falling in with a party of Howrah's men. In fact, if they
should encounter anybody before bringing up at Jaimihr's palace it was
likely that the whole plan would fizzle into nothing.
Cunningham, after fossicking for a long time in Aliva's armory--that
contained, besides weapons of the date, a motley assortment of the
tools of war that would have done great credit to a museum of
antiquities--produced two pistols. He handed, one to the missionary and
one to Miss McClean, advising her to hide hers underneath her clothing.
“You know what they're for?” he asked. “No. You'd gain nothing by
putting up a fight. They're loaded. All you've got to do is jerk the
hammer back and pull the trigger, and the best way not to miss is to
hold the muzzle underneath your chin--this way--keeping the butt well
out from you. You make sure when you do that. The only satisfaction
you'll have, if it comes to suicide as a last resource, will be that
you've tried to do your duty and the knowledge that you'll be avenged. I
promise that. But I don't think you'll have any need to do it--if I did
think it I'd have thought twice before sending you.”
“How does such a very young man as you come to have all this
responsibility?” asked Rosemary, taking the pistol without a shudder.
She laughed then as she noticed Cunningham's discomfort and recognized
the decency that hates to talk about itself.
“I suppose I know my own mind,” he answered. “These other awfully decent
fellows don't, that's all--if you except Mahommed Gunga. That chap's
a wonder. 'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and picked
me from the start to take charge over here. Seems, owing to my
dad's reputation, these Rangars think me a sort of reincarnation of
efficiency. I've got to try and live up to it, you know--same old game
of reaping what you didn't sow and hoping it'll all be over before you
wake up! Won't you try and get some sleep before morning? No? Come and
sit over by the parapet with me, then.”
He carried chairs for both of them to a point whence he could sit and
watch the track that led to Howrah and so help out the very meagre
garrison. There, until the waning moon dipped down below the sky-line,
they talked together--first about the task ahead of each of them; then
about the sudden ghastliness of the rebellion, whose extent not one of
them could really grasp as yet; last, and much longest, as familiarity
gradually grew between them, of youthful reminiscences and home--of Eton
and the Isle of Skye.
In the darkness and the comparative coolness that came between the
setting of the moon and dawn Rosemary fell asleep, her head pillowed in
her father's lap. For a while, then, seeing her only dimly through the
night, but conscious, as he could not help being, of her youth and
charm and of the act of self-sacrifice that she had undertaken without
remonstrance, he felt ashamed. He began to wonder whether there might
not have been some other way--whether he had any right, even for his
country's sake, to send a girl on such a mission. Misgiving began to sap
his optimism, and there was no Mahommed Gunga to stir the soldier in him
and encourage iron-willed pursuance of the game. He began to doubt; and
doubt bred silence.
He was wakened from a revery by Duncan McClean, who raised his daughter
tenderly and got up on his feet.
“The dawn will be here soon, Mr. Cunningham. We had better get ready.
Well--in case we never meet again--I'm glad I met you.”
“Better start before the sun gets up,” he answered, gripping the
missionary's hand. He was a soldier again. He had had the answer to
his thoughts! If the man who was to sacrifice his daughter--or risk
her sacrifice--was pleased to have met him, there was not much sense in
harboring self-criticism! He shook it off, and squared his shoulders,
beginning again to think of all that lay ahead.
“Trust to the old woman to guide you and show you a place to rest at,
if you must rest. You ought to reach Howrah at dusk tomorrow, for you'll
find it quite impossible to travel fast--you're both of you too stiff,
for one thing. Lie up somewhere--Joanna will know of a place--until the
old woman has taken in a message to Jaimihr, and wait until he sends
you some men to escort you through the outskirts of the city. I've got
disguises ready for you--a pugree for you, Mr. McClean, and a purdah for
your daughter--you'll travel as a Hindoo merchant and his wife. If you
get stopped, say very little, but show this.”
He produced the letter written once by Maharajah Howrah to the
Alwa-sahib and sent by galloper with the present of a horse. It was
signed, and at the bottom of it was the huge red royal seal. “Now go and
put the disguise on, while I see to the horses; I'm going to pick out
quiet ones, if possible, though I warn you they're rare in these parts.”
Some twenty minutes later he led their horses for them gingerly down the
slippery rock gorge, and waited at the bottom while six men wound the
gate up slowly. Rosemary McClean was quite unrecognizable, draped from
head to foot in a travelling veil that might have been Mohammedan or
Hindoo, and gave no outward sign as to her caste, or rank. McClean, in
the full attire of a fairly prosperous Hindoo, but with no other mark
about him to betoken that he might be worth robbing, rode in front of
her, high-perched on a native saddle. In front, on a desert pony, rode
Joanna, garbed as a man.
“She ought to be travelling in a carriage of some kind,” admitted
Cunningham, “but we haven't got a single wheeled thing here. If any one
asks pertinent questions on the road, you'd better say that she had an
ekka, but that some Rangars took it from you. D'you think you know the
language well enough to pass muster?”
“It's a little late to ask me that!” laughed McClean. “Yes--I'm positive
I do. Good-by.”
They shook hands again and the three rode off, cantering presently, to
make the most of the coolness before the sun got up. Cunningham climbed
slowly up the hill and then watched them from the parapet--wondering,
wondering again--whether he was justified. As he put it to himself, it
was “the hell of a position for a man to find himself in!” He caught
himself wondering whether his thoughts would have been the same, and
whether his conscience would have racked him quite as much, had Rosemary
McClean been older, and less lovely, and a little more sour-tongued.
He had to laugh presently at the absurdity of that notion, for Jaimihr
would never have bargained for possession of a sour-faced, elderly
woman. He came to the conclusion that the only thing he could do was
to congratulate the Raj because, at the right minute, the right
good-looking woman had been on the spot! But he did not like the
circumstances any better; and before two hours had passed the loneliness
began to eat into his soul.
Like any other man whose race and breed and training make him
self-dependent, he could be alone for weeks on end and scarcely be aware
that he had nobody to talk to. But his training had never yet included
sending women off on dangerous missions any more than it had taught him
to resist woman's attraction--the charm of a woman's voice, the lure
of a woman's eyes. He did not know what was the matter with him, but
supposed that his liver must be out of order or else that the sun had
touched him.
Taking a chance on the liver diagnosis, he had out the attenuated
garrison, and drilled it, both mounted and dismounted, first on the
hilltop--where they made the walls re-echo to the clang of grounded
butts--and then on the plain below, with the gate wide open in their
rear and one man watching from the height above. When he had tired
them thoroughly, and himself as well, he set two men on the lookout
and retired to sleep; nor did the droning and the wailing music of some
women in the harem trouble him.
They called him regularly when the guard was changed, but he slept the
greater part of that day and stood watch all night. The next day, and
the third day, he drilled the garrison again, growing horribly impatient
and hourly more worried as to what Byng-bahadur might be doing, and
thinking of him.
It was evening of the fourth day when a Rangar woke him, squeezing at
his foot and standing silent by the cot.
“Huzoor--Mahommed Gunga comes!”
“Thank God!”
He ran to the parapet and watched in the fading light a little dust
cloud that followed no visible track but headed straight toward them
over desert.
“How d'you know that's Mahommed Gunga?” he demanded.
“Who else, huzoor? Who else would ride from that direction all alone and
straight for this nest of wasps? Who else but Alwa or Mahommed Gunga?
Alwa said he would not come, but would wait yonder.”
“It might be one of Alwa's men.”
“We have many good men, sahib--and many good horses--but no man or horse
who could come at that pace after traversing those leagues of desert!
That is Mahommed Gunga, unless a new fire-eater has been found. And what
new man would know the way?”
Soon--staccato, like a drum-beat in the silence--came the welcome,
thrilling cadence of the horse's hoofs--the steady thunder of a
horse hard-ridden but not foundered. The sun went down and blackness
supervened, but the sound increased, as one lone rider raced with the
evening wind, head on.
It seemed like an hour before the lookout challenged from the crag that
overhung the gate--before the would-be English words rang out; and all
Asia and its jackals seemed to wait in silence for the answer.
“Howt-uh! Hukkums-thar!”
“Ma--hommed--Gunga--hai!”
“Hurrah!”
The cheer broke bonds from the depth of Cunningham's being, and Mahommed
Gunga heard it on the plain below. There was a rush to man the wheels
and sweat the gate up, and Cunningham started to run down the zigzag
pathway. He thought better of it, though, and waited where the path gave
out onto the courtyard, giving the signal with the cords for the gate to
lower away again.
“Evening, Mahommed Gunga!” he said, almost casually, as the weary
charger's nose appeared above the rise.
“Salaam, bahadur!”
He dismounted and saluted and then leaned against his horse.
“I wonder, sahib, whether the horse or I be weariest! Of your favor,
water, sahib!”
Cunningham brought him water in a dipper, and the Rajput washed his
horse's mouth out, then held out the dipper again to Cunningham for
fresh charge for himself.
“I would not ask the service, sahib, but for the moment my head reels. I
must rest before I ride again.”
“Is all well, Mahommed Gunga?”
“Ay, sahib! More than well!”
“The men are ready?”
“Horsed, armed, and waiting, they keep coming--there were many when I
left--there will be three squadrons worthy of the name by the time we
get there! Is all well at your end, sahib?”
“Yes, all's well.”
“Did the padre people go to Howrah?”
“They started and they have not returned.”
“Then, Allah be praised! Inshallah, I will grip that spectacled old
woman of a priest by the hand before I die. He has a spark of manhood in
him! Send me this good horse to the stables, sahib; I am overweary. Have
him watered when the heat has left him, and then fed. Let them blanket
him lightly. And, sahib, have his legs rubbed--that horse ever loved to
have his legs rubbed. Allah! I must sleep four hours before I ride! And
the Miss-sahib--went she bravely?”
“Went as a woman of her race ought to go, Mahommed Gunga.”
“Ha! She met a man first of her own race, and he made her go! Would she
have gone if a coward asked her, think you? Sahib--women are good--at
the other end of things! We will ride and fetch her. Ha! I saw! My eyes
are old, but they bear witness yet!--Now, food, sahib--for the love of
Allah, food, before my belt-plate and my backbone touch!”
“I wonder what the damned old infidel is dreaming of!” swore Cunningham,
as Mahommed Gunga staggered to the chamber in the rock where a
serving-man was already heaping victuals for him.
“Have me called in four hours, sahib! In four hours I will be a man
again!”