Part 21 (1/2)
Here was a catastrophe! The fabric of joyous antic.i.p.ation which the father had been painfully building up within his child's breast had collapsed completely, and in a moment, when he found that they were ”going without mother!” Gaunt argued and reasoned with the little fellow for a full half-hour, taxing his ingenuity to its utmost extent to recover the advantage he had lost, but it was all unavailing; to this poor child it seemed that heaven itself could not be heaven ”without mother.” His father was fast giving way to despair when a brilliant idea shot through the childish brain.
”Father,” he exclaimed suddenly, looking up with renewed hope, ”cannot G.o.d make the Malays not kill us?”
”Certainly He can, if He chooses,” was the ready answer.
”Then let us ask Him,” was the triumphant rejoinder. ”I am quite sure He will let us wait and go all together if we tell Him we would rather.”
What could the father do but acquiesce in a request founded upon such perfect trust in the love and mercy of the Almighty? Indeed, it was no sooner made than he wondered how it was that he had been so utterly faithless as never to have thought of it himself. So he forthwith offered up, audibly, just such a pet.i.tion as the child had suggested, taking care to clothe it in language which the little fellow could fully comprehend; and, though it must be admitted that the prayer was begun more to satisfy the child than from any feeling or belief that it would be answered, yet, as Gaunt proceeded, with all the earnestness of which he was capable, hope revived in his heart, and his conscience began to rebuke him for his practical infidelity.
The prayer concluded, Percy expressed himself as perfectly happy and satisfied; but it distressed his father not a little to find that the child's thoughts now persistently turned in a direction precisely opposite to that in which he wished them to incline; over and over and over again did Gaunt strive to rekindle the little fellow's enthusiasm about heaven, but it would not do; life, not death, was what the child was now looking forward to; and all his father's most earnest exhortations failed to elicit from him anything beyond the question:
”When do you think they will come and set us free, father?”
”I do not know that they _will_ set us free, dear boy; it may not be G.o.d's will,” was the substance of Gaunt's reply to this oft-repeated question; at which the little fellow would look at his father in surprise and retort:
”But, father, you used to tell me that G.o.d is _always_ pleased to hear and answer the prayers of little children!”
In short, the child at length got the better of the man in this curious theological discussion, and Gaunt was finally obliged to give in.
”He is right,” the father at length admitted to himself, ”and I am wrong. After striving with all my might during the whole of his brief little life to inculcate in him an absolute belief in the unalterable truth of G.o.d's promises, why should I now allow the weakness of my own faith to undermine his? My child is in the hands of a merciful G.o.d; there will I leave him.”
And so, when, from time to time, after that, the little fellow repeated his question of ”When do you think they will come and set us free, father?” Gaunt would reply hopefully:
”Oh, very soon now, I should think, dear boy; very soon.”
The long, weary, trying night was wearing to its close. The moon hung low in the western sky; the horizon to the eastward was paling from violet-black to pearly-grey; and the stars in that quarter were beginning to lose their l.u.s.tre. The air, which during the earlier hours of the night had been oppressively sultry, now came cool and refres.h.i.+ng to the fevered brows of the anxious watchers; the insects had subdued their irritating din, as is their wont toward the dawn; the watch-fire had smouldered down to a heap of grey, feathery, faintly-glowing ashes; the two sentinels at the entrance of the bush-path had ceased their alert pacing to and fro, and, having grounded their muskets, were now drooping wearily upon them with their hands crossed over the top of the barrels; whilst the Malay who had been detailed to watch the prisoners, having some half a dozen times during the earlier hours of the night tested their bonds and satisfied himself of their perfect security, was now seated on the ground before his charges, with his ringers interlocked across his knees and his head bowed forward, manifestly napping. The weariness of the long night had told upon both the prisoners; their conversation had first languished and then ceased altogether; but now the cool, fresh, sweet-smelling breeze had aroused them both, Gaunt first, and the poor, tired-out, suffering child soon afterwards; and whilst the first was looking abroad over the tree-tops at the brightening sky to the eastward and thinking that _now_, surely, their fate must be drawing very nigh, the little fellow by his side stirred uneasily, roused himself, and once more put the stereotyped question:
”_Now_, father, when do you think they will come and set us free?”
Gaunt, with their probable fate now apparently so near at hand, was debating within himself what answer to return, when his attention was arrested by a curious vibrating movement of his bonds, as though they were being tampered with from behind the tree to which he was bound; and ere he could collect his faculties sufficiently to even ask himself what it meant, a low whisper from behind him caught his ear:
”Hus.h.!.+ it is I--Henderson!”
And at the same instant the ropes which bound him suddenly slackened about his limbs and disappeared behind him. Then an arm appeared round the bole of the tree, and Gaunt felt the cold barrel of a rifle being thrust into his hand, whilst the voice again whispered:
”Your own repeater fully loaded. Now to loose poor little Percy.”
Then Gaunt turned to his child--how white and haggard the dear little fellow looked in the pallid light of the dawn--and, with a heart brimful of grat.i.tude to G.o.d for His priceless gift of restored freedom, said, in reply to his question:
”_Very_ soon, now, my precious darling--now, _at once_, in fact. But Percy, dear boy, take care that you do not move or cry out when you feel the rope loosening; stand perfectly still and quiet, my son, until I tell you what to do.”
The little fellow looked eagerly up into his father's face, and whispered, ”Yes, father.” And then Gaunt saw his look of surprise as he felt Henderson's hand releasing him. The bonds fell away; the child was free; and presently Gaunt saw a shadowy figure bend forward and whisper in the little fellow's ear. There was a start, a faint cry of rapture, the little arms were flung lovingly round the neck of the bending figure, and Gaunt caught the murmured words:
”Thank you, dear doctor, oh, _thank you_!” followed by the soft sound of a kiss.
But that childish involuntary cry of delight, faint as it was, had caught the quick ear of the dozing guard; the fellow raised his head, and, seeing that something was wrong--though he was still too drowsy to distinguish what it was--scrambled to his feet and advanced toward Gaunt. Up to that moment the engineer had not moved; he was waiting for the blood to circulate once more in his cramped limbs, and also for Henderson to give him the cue for their next movement. He remained perfectly still until the Malay had approached within arm's-length of him, and then, with a single lightning-like blow of his fist fair between the eyes, he dropped the fellow senseless upon the gra.s.s at his feet.
Then, swift as light, he glided behind the tree, where Henderson stood with Percy in his arms, and, convulsively gripping the other's outstretched hand, he murmured:
”A thousand thanks, old fellow! Now, which way are we to go?”
”I arranged for Manners and Nicholls to join us in the bush-path yonder; never dreaming that those two men would be posted there,” whispered Henderson in return.