suffered, and Dr. Bellew's drastic treatment. But Ahmed only half
listened: he was more interested in Lumsden Sahib, the commander of this
corps of Guides. He saw a tall, athletic figure, surmounted by a fine
head--much handsomer than Jan Larrens, he thought, almost as handsome as
Rahmut Khan. Ahmed was struck with a sudden fancy: allowing for
differences of dress, Rahmut must in his young manhood have borne a
striking resemblance to this Feringhi. Harry Burnett Lumsden was at this
time thirty-five years of age. He had come to India at the age of
seventeen, with a cadetship in the Company's service, and while still a
lieutenant, at the age of twenty-five, had been ordered by Sir Henry
Lawrence to raise the corps of Guides, which he had commanded ever since
except for a brief period when Lieutenant Hodson held the command. His
rank was now that of captain, with a brevet majority.
Sherdil was so taken up with his task of showman that he did not at once
ask Ahmed's purpose in visiting him. But when he learnt what had
happened at Shagpur since the capture of the chief, he cried--
"Wah! Ahmed-ji, I will get leave and go and kill that dog Dilasah. It
cannot be yet, alas! for I have already had my leave for this year. But
Dilasah shall die, and you shall be chief; by my beard, it shall be so."
"I do not want to be chief, Sherdil," said Ahmed; then, brought face to
face with his thoughts, "I want to join the Guides--if I lose no caste
by it."
"Hush! do not speak of caste. We are all high caste--we Guides."
"But you, Sherdil?"
"Hush! no one knows. Lumsden Sahib will only take men of good caste. I
had to lie: lying is an honest man's wings, you know. Hai! you will lose
no caste. We are all good men. But you are young, Ahmed, and there are
many waiting. Those outside the walls: you saw them: they have encamped
there to wait until there is room for them. And they are good men--some
of the finest brigands of the hills, and sons of chiefs among them. I
fear me you are too young. There are thirty waiting, and they live out
there with their friends, spending their money in feeding themselves and
their horses; can you do the same?"
"For a month; no more."
Sherdil drew a long face.
"A month! it is very little. Yet it may be well. Wah! it shall be well.
Maybe there will be room for one or two in a month. And a month will
give us time. I will teach you."
"Teach me what?"
And then Sherdil explained Lumsden's way of filling the vacancies as
they occurred. He held a competition among the candidates, and took them
to the rifle range to shoot it off among themselves: the best shots got
the places.
"And if there are some who shoot equally well, what then?" asked Ahmed.
"Oh, then he does as Hodson Sahib did. He makes them ride unbacked
horses, and the man that rides furthest before being thrown off, that is
the man for the Guides."
"I can shoot, and I can ride, Sherdil," said Ahmed, with a smile. "I do
not fear the tests."
"That may well be: but you are young, we have no boys in the Guides. Yet
it may be possible. If we could give you a moustache and the beginnings
of a beard!"
"That may not be until Allah wills."
"Nay, there is a very cunning magician in the bazar at Peshawar, who
with some few touches of a stick can make the semblance of hair on the
face. So we might add a few years to you till the tests are over: after
that it will be as Heaven wills."
Ahmed thought over this suggestion for a minute, and then said--
"Nay, it cannot be so, Sherdil. Dost thou want me to be shamed? What if
the shooting and riding be good and then it is proved that the hair is
false? It would make my face fall before my countrymen."
"Thy countrymen! Hai! If thou thinkest so, better go straightway to
Lumsden Sahib and say, 'I am a Feringhi, of the sahib-log like yourself.
Give me clothes such as the sahibs wear, and a portion of pig to eat.'"
"Silence, son of a dog!" cried Ahmed. "I will tell all at a fitting
time. And thou, Sherdil, wilt lock thy tongue and say nothing of these
matters, or verily it will be a sad day for thee. Swear by the grave of
thy grandmother."
Sherdil looked astonished at the sudden vigour of Ahmed's speech. He
took the oath required. Then ensued a long conversation, at the end of
which Ahmed rode back to Peshawar and Sherdil sought an interview with
his commander.
"Well, what can I do for you?" shouted Lumsden in his breezy way as
Sherdil stood before him, saluting humbly.
"If it please the heaven-born," said Sherdil, "I have a friend who
wishes to put on the khaki and serve the Kumpani."
"Aha! another son of a dyer, like Sherdil, son of Assad?"
Sherdil gasped. Was his origin known after all?
"The heaven-born knows everything," he said, with a sigh. "No; this
friend is of high caste and the son of a chief--a good man."
"His name?"
"Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan."
"The villain we chased not long ago!"
"The heaven-born says; and the same villain is my own chief, and is now
laid up in the sahibs' prison, and can make no more trouble; but there
is trouble in the village----"
"Disputed succession, I suppose?"
"Hazur! Dilasah, a fat rascal, makes himself chief until I can slay him,
and Ahmed wishes to serve the heaven-born until such time as his father
is mercifully set free."
"How old is he?"
"I cannot tell that to a day, heaven-born. He seems somewhat younger
than Sherdil thy servant, but he is well-grown, and can ride a horse and
hit a mark. Moreover, he is exceeding skilful in the nazabaze."
"Well, well, I have put his name down. He makes the thirty-second. Is he
here? Is he the boy I saw with you on the parade-ground?"
"Heaven-born, how could it be? Ahmed is in Peshawar: that boy was his
cousin." Sherdil lied without a blush.
"Well, take yourself off now. I will let you know when a vacancy occurs,
and then your friend must take his chance with the rest."
And next day, in the serai where he had put up in Peshawar, Ahmed learnt
from Sherdil that his name stood thirty-second on the list of candidates
for the Guides.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
A Competition Wallah
Sherdil did not do things by halves. He was now as keen as Ahmed himself
that the boy should become one of the Guides. During the next fortnight
he devoted every spare moment to coaching him in the shooting tests.
Ahmed had never shot with a carbine, but only with the heavy jazail of
the tribesmen. Sherdil sought out a secluded spot among the lower hills
where practising could be carried on without attracting attention, and
lent Ahmed his own carbine to practise with. And since it was impossible
to obtain ammunition belonging to the corps, he spent some of his saved
pay in buying powder, shot, and percussion caps in Peshawar, and
refilled some old cartridge cases. He drew a rough target on the face of
a rock, and diligently played musketry instructor until he could declare
that Ahmed was as good a shot as any of the candidates was likely to be
at various ranges.
About three weeks after Ahmed's arrival, Lumsden Sahib announced one day
that there was a vacancy in the cavalry. One of the men had overstopped
his leave, and was summarily dismissed. It appeared later that the
trooper had employed his leave in hunting down a hill-man whose father
had spoken disrespectfully of his own grandmother, and until the slight
was avenged the man had no other object in life.
Sherdil lost no time in conveying the news to Ahmed. There was great
bustle among the candidates and their friends, and as the day appointed
for the competition drew near, the camp outside the walls of the fort
became monstrously swollen with relatives of the competitors and people
who had come from Peshawar for the mere pleasure and excitement of the
event. Among them were representatives of every race of the borderland,
speaking a variety of dialects, and keen partisans of the men of their
own blood among the competitors.
The men of the Guides were as much excited as the rest. The corps was
divided into companies, each of which consisted of men of one race; and
though all were as loyal as any European soldiers could be, and had as
high an ideal of soldierly duty and the honour of the corps, the men of
one company would, on slight provocation, have flown at the throats of
those of another if they met when on leave. The vacancy being for a
cavalryman, the competitors were almost all exceptionally tall,
strapping fellows, and the little Gurkhas among the candidates were
vastly disappointed that the defaulting Guide had not been an
infantryman.
On a fine October morning, with a light cold wind blowing down from the
hills--herald of the winter--the competitors marched to the rifle range,
accompanied by three of the English officers--Lumsden himself, Quintin
Battye, the second in command, and Kennedy, commandant of the cavalry.
Behind them came a rabble of spectators, laughing and yelling with
excitement, and almost the whole of the corps. Arrived at the range, the
competitors, twenty-five in all, were drawn up in line--Afridis and
Sikhs, Hazaras and Waziris, Afghans and Pathans of different clans--and
answered to their names as Lumsden Sahib called over the list. Ahmed's
name came last, and as he, like the rest, answered "Hazur! I am here,"
he caught the eyes of all the officers fixed on him, and felt a strange
nervousness under the scrutiny.
"Where is that rascal Sherdil?" cried Lumsden.
"Hazur! I am here," replied the man, saluting as he stepped out from the
throng, and looking very like a dog that expected a whipping.
"What does this trick mean? This Ahmed of yours is a mere boy; you said
he was a little younger than yourself. You seem to be playing up for a
flogging, my man."
"Heaven-born, is it a time to be unjust? Did I not answer truly? I said
I would not tell his age to a day, and the heaven-born would not have
had me say he is older than I. That would have been very foolish."
"But this is a boy: his beard is not grown; we have no place for such in
the corps."
"As for the beard, heaven-born, that will come. If I shave my beard and
moustache--which Allah forbid!--my face will be even as Ahmed's. Shoes
are tested on the feet, sahib, and a man in a fight. Behold him; his
forehead is bright, since his sword-tip is red with blood. He has slain
beasts and men; did he not come with me and blow up Minghal's tower? And
then, to be sure, he had a moustache and the shadow of a beard, and if
the heaven-born pleases we can get the conjurer in Peshawar to furnish
him very quickly with the necessary hair. And he can shoot; if I do not
offend to say it, he can shoot as well as the heaven-born himself; and
he is a good shikari; and as for riding a horse--wah! let Kennedy Sahib
judge of that. Look at a man's deeds, heaven-born, not whether he is
tall or short. The thorn which is sharp is so from its youth, and----"
"Chup!" said Lumsden, who, with the other officers, had scarcely been
able to keep his countenance during this address. "You have a moist
tongue. You quote your proverbs at me; I'll give you one: 'A closed
mouth is better than talking nonsense.'"
"True, sahib," said Sherdil quickly, "and there is yet another: 'If you
are not a good judge of beasts, choose a young one.'"
At this, and Sherdil's sententious look, as of one who says "That's a
clincher," Lumsden laughed outright.
"'The child is father of the man,'" said Battye, with whom quoting was a
habit. "Give the boy a trial; we'll soon see whether this man's talk is
all froth."
And so Ahmed was admitted to the competition. The spectators had been
growing restless and restive during the colloquy, but now that the first
man took post opposite the target, and lay flat on the ground, they
hushed their noise and awaited the issue breathlessly. The range was
three hundred yards; the marksman was a tall, grave-looking Sikh, and as
his musket flashed and the marker signalled a bull's-eye, a great shout
arose from his compatriots.
"Shahbash! Bravo! That's a fine shot. Thou'lt surely win, Faiz."
And then the partisans of the other men tried to shout the Sikh's
friends down.
"Bah! what is that? A bull's-eye, you say. But it was an accident; the
wind carried the bullet. Allah willing, he will miss next time. Courage,
Sula; look not at the cock on his dunghill."
Similar cries, varying as the result of the shots, greeted the Sikh's
succeeding attempts. Then came Sula's turn.
"Hai! Now he shoots!" cried his friends. "What is the marker about? A
miss? Truly the jins are spiteful, the musket is bewitched. Do not lose
heart, O Sula, the sahib will give thee another musket, and then wilt
thou show thyself more than a match for that son of a pig."
And Sula, having taken another musket, fired off his six shots and
retired.
The next came along, an Afghan, with features of a markedly Semitic
cast, and with him a flock of his partisans. The same scene was enacted,
the same yells of delight and howls of derision, the same words of
flattery and of abuse--all kept within certain bounds, however, by the
presence of the sahibs.
At last it came to Ahmed's turn. The colloquy between Lumsden Sahib and
Sherdil had drawn particular attention to him, and the Pathans of the
Guides, who outnumbered men of other races in the corps, were specially
interested in the doings of this young candidate. For ten days past
Sherdil had boasted of his pupil's ability, and Sherdil having a moist
tongue, as Lumsden Sahib had put it, and being something of a favourite,
the Pathans were prepared to open their lungs in vociferous plaudits.
Ahmed fired and missed. A growl of dismay broke from the Pathans' lips;
the other men, who resented the cocksureness of Sherdil and his friends,
leapt about with shrieks of delight. Sherdil himself looked a little
blue; and as for Ahmed, he was quivering with excitement and
nervousness, as the Englishmen perceived.
"Chup! you sons of dogs!" cried Kennedy Sahib. "Let the boy have fair
play. This din of cats would spoil any man's eye. Chup! The boy has five
more shots."
And Ahmed, pulling himself together, took careful aim amid a breathless
stillness, drew the trigger--and the marker signalled a bull's-eye.
"Shahbash! Shahbash!" cried Sherdil, pirouetting like a mad fakir,
brandishing his sword, hurling abuse at the friends of the other
candidates. "Wah! did I not say he could shoot? How should he not, when
I am his teacher? Of a truth, he is the man for the Guides."
When Ahmed had finished his round, he was equal with four others. Amid
the din of altercation which ensued, Lumsden Sahib's voice was heard
calling for order. The competitors had still to shoot at the longer
ranges of five hundred and seven hundred yards. The excitement grew to
fever heat as the number gradually thinned, until the choice clearly
rested between Ahmed and a Rajput named Wahid. They were to have six
shots at seven hundred yards to finish the match. Ahmed had now lost his
first nervousness, and waited quietly with Sherdil and a group of his
friends while Wahid fired his round. The spectators watched in dead
silence as the man took aim. The first shot was a bull's-eye. "Wahid
will win! Wahid will win!" roared a hundred throats. The second was an
inner, the third an outer, and now Sherdil's party were hilarious,
crying that Wahid's eye was crooked, his arm was as weak as a woman's;
what was he good for, except to play the fiddle at a Hindu wedding? But
their jubilation was checked when with his last three shots he scored
three bull's-eyes.
"Wah! where is the Pathan now?" shouted the Rajput's partisans. "Sherdil
eats greens and breathes pulao. A great sound and an empty pot. Come,
let us see what the smooth-faced boy can do."
Ahmed took his place. Four times he scored a bull's-eye, and his friends
fairly shrieked with delight.
"Wah! he will eat up Wahid till not a little bit is left. Let Wahid tend
asses, that is all that he is good for."
The fifth shot was an inner.
"Hai!" said Sherdil. "Some low-born Rajput is breathing, and his foul
breath blows the bullet away. But the next will be a bull's-eye; be
ready, brothers, for Ahmed will win."
But when the marker signalled an outer the uproar became deafening. The
scores of Wahid and Ahmed were equal. The partisans of each clamoured
for the choice to fall on their man. Wahid was the father of two boys:
therefore he was the better candidate. Ahmed was not so fat: therefore
he would prove the better Guide. Wahid had stolen horses for twenty
years: who so fit to catch horse-thieves? Ahmed had blown up fifty men
with gunpowder (Sherdil did not stick at trifles): where would they find
a Rajput who could say the same? Thus they bellowed against one another,
urging more and more ridiculous reasons on behalf of their favourites,
and then Lumsden cried for silence.
"There is only one place," he said, "and these two are equal as shots.
For the life of me I don't know which of them to give it to. Come along,
we'll try the riding test. Fetch out that unbroken colt; jaldi karo!"
The jabbering began afresh, while a sais went off to fetch the colt. The
whole company repaired to a level stretch of about three hundred yards,
where the men practised the game of nazebaze. A post stood at the
further end. When the colt was brought up--a mettlesome beast with arab
blood in it--Lumsden ordered the course to be cleared, and the excited
throng having been pressed back on either side, told Ahmed to mount and
ride the animal bareback to the post and back. Ahmed sprang on to the
quivering horse, which bucked and reared, making frantic efforts to
throw him. But the boy had been given his first lesson in riding in just
this way; Rahmut Khan had set him on horseback and bade him look after
himself. So now, gripping the reins firmly and pressing his knees into
the animal's flanks, at the same time speaking soothing words that he
used with his own horse Ruksh, he succeeded in turning its head towards
the post, and in another moment was off like the wind. The shouts of the
crowd terrified the horse; it reared and plunged, and then made a dash
for the centre of the yelling mob on the right, which broke apart and
scattered with shrieks of alarm. But Ahmed controlled his steed before
it reached the edge of the course. He turned it once more into the
straight; it ran on past the post at a mad gallop, which was only
checked by a hillock in front of it. Then, giving it a minute to
recover, Ahmed patted it and coaxed it, wheeled round, and rode straight
back to the starting-point.
Sherdil and the Guides roared with applause.
"By Jove!" said Lieutenant Battye, turning to Kennedy, "what a seat the
fellow has got! Better make him your riding-master, old chap."
"Don't want one," was the answer. "All my fellows can ride. Let's see
what the Rajput can do."
Wahid was about the same height as Ahmed, but broader and heavier. He
leapt on to the horse's back nimbly enough, and kept his seat, as it
seemed, by sheer muscular force. The horse appeared to fear him, and
started for the post with a docility that surprised everybody, and sent
Sherdil's hopes once more down to zero. Wahid reached the post; then,
instead of galloping past, he pulled the horse up with a violent tug on
the reins, and wheeled it round to return. But the animal had a temper;
this treatment did not please it at all; and when it had got half-way
back to the starting-point, and the crowd was already yelling that the
prize was to Wahid, because he had shown the better management, suddenly
the horse stopped dead, planting his fore feet firmly in the sand; up
flew its hind hoofs, and the Rajput went clean over its head, falling
with a thwack just in front of its nose.
The roar that went up from the crowd might almost have been heard at
Peshawar. The Guides to a man shouted Ahmed's name; the Pathans among
the spectators danced a kind of war-dance, and some, losing their heads,
fired off their jazails with imminent risk of blowing some one to
pieces. Sherdil, after a glance at his commander's face, in which he
read the verdict, called to a comrade, and Ahmed was hoisted on to their
shoulders and carried in triumph back to the fort.
"Wah! Did I not say it?" cried Sherdil. "What a man seeketh happens to
him. I said 'I, Sherdil, will teach thee, Ahmed, the right way and make
thee a Guide.' And now we will have a tamasha. Lumsden Sahib will give
us a sheep or a goat, and we will be very merry."
Thus Ahmed became a trooper of the Guides.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
A Fakir
Ahmed had enlisted in the Guides with two very definite purposes--the
one closely connected with the other. The first was, to achieve
something that would establish a claim on the sahibs; the second, to
effect the release of Rahmut Khan, or at least to shorten his
imprisonment. Since the possibility of the second depended on the first,
he bent his whole energies, from the moment he donned the khaki, to the
mastery of his duties. The circumstances of his admission to the corps
were such that many eyes were watching him. Some of the men were
curious; others, Sherdil's friends, were jealous that he should justify
them; the British officers were interested, not merely in observing the
result of the experiment of enlisting one much below the average age,
but in the boy himself. There was in him a nameless something that
attracted them, and all of them, from Lumsden downwards, kept a special
eye upon his progress.
He showed himself quick at drill, and at exercise with the sword and
lance. Assad had reported quite accurately about the goose-step; but
Ahmed, so far from feeling any indignity in standing on one foot, found
it amusing to watch the lines of men lifting and setting down their feet
like automata at the word of the officers, and gravely balancing
themselves like herons at a pond. He had nothing to learn in "stables"
save some small matters of routine, and in three months passed as a
thoroughly efficient sowar. Furthermore, he was on good terms with his
comrades. Sherdil treated him as a show pupil, and one day took an
opportunity of asking Lumsden Sahib whether his praise of Ahmed had not
been well deserved.
"Do you want us to make him a risaldar at once?" said Lumsden, with a
laugh.
"The heaven-born knows that I, Sherdil, am not yet a naik," said the man
readily. Lumsden owed a great part of his influence with the men to the
freedom he permitted in his intercourse with them. His attitude towards
them was that of one brave man to another; it made for mutual respect;
yet no man forgot that the commander was a hazur or presumed on his
_bonhomie_.
Ahmed was one of the escort that accompanied Lumsden and Sir John
Lawrence to their interview with Dost Muhammed, the Amir of Kabul, at
the entrance to the Khaibar Pass on the first day of the New Year. He
wondered whether Jan Larrens would recognize him, but the great man was
too preoccupied to notice a trooper. When it became known that in
pursuance of the agreement made at that meeting Lumsden was to go before
long on a mission to Kandahar, Ahmed hoped that he would be chosen among
the escort on that occasion. Proximity day after day to the British
officers would provide him with many opportunities of picking up their
language. But before the time came for the mission to start he had
reason to change his mind.
One evening, as he was passing alone through the Pathan lines of the
infantry, he heard through the kusskuss matting which formed the doorway
of one of the huts, and which had been blown aside for a second by a
gust of wind, a voice that sounded strangely familiar. It was not the
voice of any of his comrades, and for a moment he could not remember to
whom it belonged. Not greatly concerned, he was passing on when he
recalled it in a flash; it was certainly very much like the voice of
Minghal, ex-chief of Mandan, and his father's enemy. He paused; if the
speaker was indeed Minghal, what had brought him to Hoti-Mardan? Ahmed
wondered whether the defeated chief had heard of his enlistment in the
Guides, and had come on his own or Dilasah's behalf to do him a
mischief. It occurred to him that he might be mistaken; but it was as
well to make sure.