Part 2 (1/2)
”Whose blood?”
”Yours and that of others He says, did you not see the sunset?”
”What of the sunset?”
Brown looked about hiht on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes failed to pierce the gloom The sunset was a memory In that heavy, death-darkness silence it seeh there had never been a sun
”'A blot of blood,' he says He says the order has been given He says that half of India shall run blood within a day, and the whole of it within a week!”
”Who gave the order?”
”He answers 'Hooku more does the holy fakir say”
”To the clink with him!” commanded Brown ”I's That's the third useless Hindu fanatic within a ho has talked about India being drenched in blood Let hi there! Bring hiain and threatened business The Beluchi gave a warning cry, and the fakir tu on ahead with the lantern, and Brown and the sentry urging from behind, the fakir jumped and squiruardroooat had bleated, the Punjabi skin-buyer rose up, took one long look at the fakir and ran
”Well, I'll be!” exclaimed the sentry
”You'll be worse than that,” said Brown, ”if you use that language anywhere where I'm about! I'll not have it, d'you hear? Get on ahead, and open the door of the clink!”
The sentry obeyed him, and a moment later the fakir was thrust into a four-square mud-walled room, and the door was locked on him
”Back to your post,” co, I'll treat you to a double-trick, ed off without daring to answer hih the iron bars that protected the top half of the door Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee His soul revolted at the thought of it, but it was his duty to eat it and set an exa that s
”Maybe it's true,” heMaybe India's going to run blood, as these fakirs seem to think, and maybe it isn't There'll be more blood shed than mine in that case! 'Hookum hai'-'It is orders,' heh? Well-there's ot uard, when supper bad been eaten and the guardroom had been swept and the pots and kettle had been burnished until they shone Then he tossed a chupatty to the iust, lit his pipe and went and sat where he could hear the footbeats of the sentries
”They can't help their religion,” he muttered ”The poor infidels don't know no better And they've got a right to think what they please 'about me or the Co any way you look at it That critter can't see straight for the dirt on hirace to humanity Priest or fakir or whatever he is, if I live to see touard and have hi forhts of the fakir His e on the Sussex Downs, and the clean white girl who once on a time had waited for hied, the only signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the steady footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings frouard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly discomfort
II
Bill Broith his twelve, had not been set to watch a lonely crossroad for the fun of it One road was a well-hway, and led froht of England, to another city, where five thousand arlish uniforms
The other road was a snake-like trail, nearly as wide but not nearly so well kept It twisted here and there aes, and was used alhtful business was neither war nor peace nor the contriving of either of the born, and the laden ox-carts creaked along it still, as they had always done and alill do until India awakes
But there are few htful business, and there are even lect their own affairs and stir up sedition a that host They are priests for the most part or fakirs or make-believe pedlers or confessed and sha for the trunk roads, where the tangible evidence of Might and Majesty ht-hundred- the byways, and set other people drea They lead, when the crash coh the men who made the policies of the Honorable East India Coer on the wall, and chose to i of the h most of their military officers were blinder yet, and failed to read the temper of the native troops in their immediate coroping, at least two years before the Mutiny of '57 They were groping for so which they felt was there in a darkness, but which one could not see