Part 28 (2/2)

”Three; you're a good bit longer in the leg than I am.”

”I suppose I am,” said the Major sullenly; but he held the stirrup for the other to mount.

Jim Douglas gathered the reins in his hand and paused.

”You had better walk her back. Keep more to the left; it's easier.”

”Oh! I'll do,” came the sullen voice. ”Stop a bit, the curb's too tight.”

”Take it off, will you? he knows me.”

Major Erlton gave an odd, quick, bitter laugh. ”I suppose he does.

Right you are.”

He stood, putting the curb chain into his pocket, mechanically, but Jim Douglas paused again.

”Good-by! Shake hands on it, Erlton.”

The Major looked at him resentfully, the big, coa.r.s.e hand came reluctantly; but the touch of that other like iron in its grip, its determination, seemed to rouse something deeper than anger.

”The odds are on you,” he said, with a quiver in his voice. ”You'll look after her--not my wife, she's in cantonments--but in the city, you know.”

The voice broke suddenly. He threw out one hand in a sort of pa.s.sionate despair, and walked over to the Belooch.

”I'll do everything you could possibly do in my place, Erlton.”

The words came clear and stern, and the next instant the thud of the Arab's galloping hoofs filled the still night air. The sound sent a spasm of angry pain through Major Erlton. The chance had been his, and he had had to give it up because he rode three stone heavier; and, curse it! knew only too well what a difference a pound or two might make in a race.

Nevertheless Jim Douglas had been right when he said the chance was neither his nor the Major's. For, less than an hour afterward, riding all he knew, doing his level best, the Arab put his foot in a rat hole just as his rider was congratulating himself on having headed the rebels, just as, across the level plain stretching from Ghazeabad to the only bridge over the Jumna, he fancied he could see a big shadowy bubble on the western sky, the dome of the Delhi mosque. Put its foot in a rat hole and came down heavily! The last thing Jim Douglas saw was--on the road which he had hoped to rejoin in a minute or two--a strange ghostlike figure. An old man on a lame camel, which b.u.mped along as even no earthly camel ought to b.u.mp.

As he fell, the rus.h.i.+ng roar in his ears which heralds unconsciousness seemed by a freak of memory to take a familiar rhythm:

”La! il-lah-il-Ullaho! La! il-lah-il-Ul-la-ho!”

CHAPTER II.

DAWN.

The chill wind which comes with dawn swayed the tall gra.s.s beyond the river, and ruffling the calm stretches below the Palace wall died away again as an oldish man stepped out of a reed hut, built on a sandbank beside the boat-bridge, and looked eastward. He was a poojari, or master of ceremonial at the bathing-place where, with the first streak of light, the Hindoos came to perform their religious ablutions. So he had to be up betimes, in order to prepare the little saucers of vermilion and sandal and sacred gypsum needed in his profession; for he earned his livelihood by inherited right of hallmarking his fellow-creatures with their caste-signs when they came up out of the water. Thus he looked out over those eastern plains for the dawn, day after day. He looks for it still; this account is from his lips. And this dawn there was a cloud of dust no bigger than a man's hand upon the Meerut road. Someone was coming to Delhi.

But someone was already on the bridge, for it creaked and swayed, sending little s.h.i.+vers of ripples down the calm stretches. The poojari turned and looked to see the cause; then turned eastward again. It was only a man on a camel with a strange gait, b.u.mping noiselessly even on the resounding wood. That was all.

The city was still asleep; though here and there a widow was stealing out in her white shroud for that touch of the sacred river without which she would indeed be accursed. And in a little mosque hard by the road from the boat-bridge a muezzin was about to give the very first call to prayer with pious self-complacency. But someone was ahead of him in devotion, for, upon the still air, came a continuous rolling of chanted texts. The muezzin leaned over the parapet, disappointed, to see who had thus forestalled him at heaven's gate; stared, then muttered a hasty charm. Were there visions about? The suggestion softened the disappointment, and he looked after the strange, wild figure, half-seen in the s.h.i.+mmering, shadowy dawn-light, with growing and awed satisfaction. This was no mere mortal, this green-clad figure on a camel, chanting texts and waving a scimitar. A vision has been vouchsafed to him for his diligence; a vision that would not lose in the telling. So he stood up and gave the cry from full lungs.

”Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!”

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