Gil the Gunner Part 52

This thought made me listen intently for the sound of guns; but all was still, and my impatience began to get the mastery, and the feeling that I had taken up the wrong idea to make itself clear; for there could be no serious fighting such as would keep the doctor away, or else I must have heard the firing.

Still the doctor did not come, and in consequence I began to think that my wound was hot and fretful; and this brought up the fight on that eventful day about which I had lost count, save that it must be going on for three weeks since it occurred; and all that time I had been lying there, a miserable, wounded prisoner. So I was proceeding to silently bemoan my fate, when my common sense stepped in to point out that the enemy who had captured me evidently respected the British, and that no one could have been better treated than I.

But I wanted news. I was burning to hear what had taken place since I had been cut down; whether the fire of revolt had been checked, but was still holding its own, or spreading--and I knew nothing.

"But I will know," I said, as my ear, grown quick by constant listening, detected distant sounds, followed by a hurried rustling, as of people leaving the adjoining tent.

"They heard the doctor coming," I said to myself. "I'll make him speak somehow; and, by the way, I've never asked him where they have put my uniform and sword."

I strained my ears and listened, for the sound was drawing nearer, and a feeling of disappointment stole over me as I made out that it was the trampling of horses; and I had never heard that when the doctor came before. I had always believed that he came in a palanquin; while these certainly were horses' feet--yes, and the jingling of accoutrements.

"Why, it must be our troop," I thought, but crushed the delightful thought on the instant, for there was none of the peculiar rattle made by the guns and limbers. Could it be a body of sowars? If softly thoughts went back to the wild gallop I had had in their company, and one hand stole to my wounded arm, which was there as a reminder of what I might expect from them.

No wonder my heart beat fast as recollections of their merciless treatment of their officers came flooding my brain, and I felt that if they behaved like this to their officers, whom they had sworn to obey, there would be scant mercy for a prisoner.

The trampling and jingling came nearer, and there was the familiar snorting of horses, while I was now experienced enough to be able to say that there was a body of forty or fifty mounted men approaching nearer, nearer, till a loud order rang out, such as would be given by a native cavalry officer; a sudden halt; a fresh order, and then one for the men to dismount, and I was listening for the next ordering the men to draw swords, when I felt with beating heart that it need not come, for the men would be lancers. "I'll try and meet it like a man," I said to myself, "for father's sake, and that of my mother and sister;" but I could not feel brave, and my eyes were fixed upon the purdah which screened the entrance to the tent, and, in spite of my weakness, I struggled up on one arm looking wildly round for a weapon that I could not have used.

Then there was a quick footstep. The doctor's? No; that of an armed man. The purdah was swept aside, and a gorgeously dressed chief, robed in white muslin and shawls of the most delicate fabric, and richly ornamented with gold, strode into the tent. His white turban glittered with pearls and diamonds, while his breast and sword-belt and slings were also encrusted with the same rich gems, so that at every movement some cl.u.s.ter of precious stones scintillated in the subdued light.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

He crossed at once to my couch, and stood looking down at me, his handsome, thoughtful face, with its dark eyes, being wonderfully familiar, as he bent over me; and as he gazed, a smile crossed his lips, and there was a look of sympathy in his countenance which was unmistakable.

But there was no smile on mine, for as I met his eyes I saw in him, in spite of his gallant bearing and gorgeous dress, the bloodthirsty traitor and schemer who had risen against us and headed the mad savages who had cut down my brother-officers and friends. He was the man, too, who held me prisoner, and my resentment was growing when, in an indistinct dreamy way, the scene in the desperate charge came back, and those moments when, half-stunned by the bullet which had struck my helmet, and of which I was not conscious then, I had been galloping away surrounded by sowars, one of whom was about to cut me down, giving me a second blow sufficient to destroy the little life left in me. And I saw it clearly now; it was this man who bent over me--this chief, all gorgeous in gold and gems, whose arm had been stretched out to save me, and had undoubtedly brought me where I was, and had me carefully tended back to life.

And with these thoughts filling my mind, I lay looking up at him angry, and yet grateful, wondering, too, at the change from the slightly clothed syce whom I had so often seen ill-used by his master, Barton; and as he watched me, I shuddered slightly, for I seemed to know that he had taken deadly vengeance upon my brother-officer in return for months of harsh treatment, insult, and wrong.

We neither of us spoke, he evidently contenting himself with watching me, and enjoying the surprise I felt at recognising him as the disguised chief--the groom no longer, but as the powerful leader of a large native force; I, in my weak state, fascinated by his peculiar smiling eyes, that were one moment haughty and fierce and full of triumph, the next beaming with friendliness.

At last he bent down on one knee, and as he did so his magnificently jewelled tulwar fell forward naturally enough from the point of the scabbard touching the carpet right between us, and he started as if the sword between us had come as a strange portent to show that we were enemies, always to be kept apart by the deadly blade.

I saw that he changed colour and hesitated, influenced by his superst.i.tious eastern nature and education; but the next moment he laughed contemptuously, and unbuckled his jewelled belt, and threw it and the sword two or three yards away, before going down on one knee by my pillow, laying his hand upon my head and gazing intently in my eyes.

"Hah!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, speaking for the first time, and in excellent English. "You are getting well fast now. You are weak, but you will live and soon be well. I thought once you would die. You know me?" he added, with a smile.

I spoke now for the first time, and my voice sounded feeble, I felt, compared to his.

"Yes, I know you again, Ny Deen."

His eyes flashed, and his face lit up strangely as he exclaimed--

"Yes; Ny Deen, the syce, beaten, kicked, trampled upon; Ny Deen, the dog--the--"

He paused for a moment or two, and then with an emphasis that would have made the term of reproach sound absurd, but for the fierce revengeful look in his countenance, he added--

"n.i.g.g.e.r!"

There was an intensity of scorn in his utterance of the word that was tragic; and as I lay back there on my cushion I read in it the fierce turning at last of the trampled worm--the worm as represented by the venomous serpent of the conquered land, and I knew from my own experience what endless cases there were of patient, humbled, and crushed-down men, no higher in position than slaves, ill-used, and treated with contempt by my insolent, overbearing countrymen of that self-a.s.sertive cla.s.s who cannot hold power without turning it to abuse.

The silence in the tent as my captor knelt by me was intense, and I could hear his hard breathing, and see how he was striving to master the fierce emotion in his breast. His eyes were mostly fixed on me with a savage scowl, and for a moment or so I fancied that he must have saved my life so as to take it himself in some way which would add torture and throw dismay amongst the English ranks.

But I was ready to smile at my own vanity as I thought to myself of what a little consequence the life of a young artillery subaltern would be in the great revolt now in progress.

Then I felt a strong desire to speak, to make some great utterance such as would impress him and raise me in his estimation sufficiently to make him treat me with the respect due to an English officer; but no such utterance would come. I felt that I was only a poor, weak, wounded lad, lying there at the mercy of this fierce rajah, and when at last my lips parted, as if forced to say something in answer to his searching gaze, I writhed within myself and felt ashamed of the contemptible words. For his utterance of that term of contumely so liberally used toward one of a race of people who had been for countless generations great chiefs in their own land, and whose cities were centres of a civilisation, barbaric, perhaps, but whose products we were only too glad to welcome in England.

"n.i.g.g.e.r" still seemed to ring in my ears, as I gazed still as if fascinated in the handsome pale-brown eastern face, and I said feebly, just about in the tone of voice in which some contemptible young found-out sneak of a schoolboy, who was trying to hide a fault with a miserable lie, might say, "Please, sir, it wasn't me--"

"I never insulted you, or called you so."

His face changed like magic, and he bent low over my pillow, as he cried excitedly, and with a pa.s.sionate fervour in his voice, which almost startled me--

"Never! never, sahib."

He paused, frowned, and then his face lit up again, and he uttered a merry laugh.

"You see," he cried, "I am one of the conquered race. You have been our masters so long that it comes natural to say _sahib_. But that is at an end now; we are the masters, and the reign of the great Koompanni is at an end."

A pang of misery ran through me at these words, which were uttered with so much conviction that I felt they must be true.

After a few moments, and from a desire to say something less weak than my last poor feeble utterance, I said--

"Was it not you who saved my life when that sowar was going to cut me down?"

"Yes," he cried excitedly. "If he had killed you, he should not have lived another hour."

"Why?" I said, with a smile. "I was his enemy fighting against him."

"But you were my friend," he said, in a soft low voice, full of emotion; "almost the only one who treated me as if I were something more than a pariah dog. Yes, always my friend, who softened those bitter hours of misery and despair when I was suffering for my people, that some day we might cast off the heel which held us crushed down into the earth. My friend, whom I would have died to save."

"Ny Deen!" I cried, for his words moved me, and I stretched out my hand to him.

"Hah!" he cried, seizing it tightly between his own. "I could not ask you to give me the hand of friendship, but it has come from you."

"And yet how can I shake hands with you, rajah?" I said sadly; "we are enemies."

His eyes flashed with pride as I called him rajah, and he retained my hand firmly.

"Enemies?" he said. "Yes, in the field, when face to face; but you are wounded, and there is a truce between you and me. We can be friends, and eat salt together. You are my guest, my honoured guest. This tent is yours; the servants are yours; order them, and they will obey you.

As soon as you are well enough, there is a palanquin waiting with willing men to bear you. When you are better still, there is your elephant and a horse."

"My horse, my Arab?" I cried. "Is he safe?"

He smiled.

"Yes, quite safe, with two syces to care for him; the horse of their rajah's friend. What can I get you? Ask for anything. I am _very_ rich, and it shall be yours."