Part 26 (1/2)

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 a.s.serting--with a calm a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.t, 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 cla.s.s--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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sed 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.