In the Guardianship of God Part 6

He did. Step by step, slowly, confidently, in the footsteps of others.

And the great cry of "Bravo, brother, bravo!" which went up from both sides of the gap as he and his torch stepped on to firm ground, brought him as much surprise as a voice from heaven might have done.

"Pressure on the brain!" said Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, about three weeks after this, when he and Dr. Pringle had had a consultation over the _shahbash wallah_. He was not only blind now, but there was a drag in the good leg as he limped about, over which both doctors shook their heads. "And there's nothing to be done that I can see. The bhoys will miss him!"

That was true. Alley Taw had come into favour since the night when, as Terence phrased it, "he had done a brave deed without doing it," and by failing to see the evil, had enabled other men to do good. For the torch had not disclosed irretrievable disaster, and by timely rescue not a life had been lost.

Surgeon-Major Pringle frowned. He was beginning to understand his India a little, but the idea of the _shahbash wallah_ being a useful member of society was still as a red rag to a bull. And so, out of sheer contrariety, he began to talk doctor's talk as to the possibility of this or that.

"It's life or death, annyhow," said the junior, shaking his head, "but I don't see it. I wouldn't thry it myself--not now at any rate."

Perhaps not then. But after a month or two more he said, "It's your suggestion; I don't belave it can be done; but you may as well thry."

For the _shahbash wallah_, half paralysed, had even given up his cry.

So, part of the hospital being still under repair, they took him to the pink _post-mortem_ house and set all the doors and windows wide for more light. He was quite unconscious by that time, so Terence O'Brien only had the chloroform handy, and kept his finger on the pulse. Half-a-dozen or more of the boys were on the mud steps over against the hospital compound waiting to hear the _shahbash wallah's_ fate. But you might have heard a pin drop in the _post-mortem_, save for the occasional quick request for this or that as the Surgeon-Major, with the Surgeon-Captain's eyes watching him, set his whole soul and heart and brain on doing something that had never been done before.

So the minutes pa.s.sed. Was it to be failure or success? The Surgeon-Major's fingers were deft--none defter.

The minutes pa.s.sed to hours. That which had to be done had to be done with one touch light as a feather, steady as a rock, perfect in its performance, or not at all.

And still the minutes pa.s.sed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard.

Only the _shahbash wallah_ cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.

It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success?

Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain, bringing unsteadiness to both.

"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids.

But ere the deadening drug did its work, the _shahbash wallah's_ brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--

"_Shahbash, bhaiyan, shahbash!_"

In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot.

But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.

And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the _shahbash wallah's_ verdict put courage into him.

THE MOST NAILING BAD SHOT IN CREATION

This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way.

It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall.

And with him, as the catch phrase runs, "lay" Joe Banks, the Yorkshireman; tall, stolid, silent. Good-looking also, with a thick close crop of curly brown hair and hard, honest blue eyes. He was not stupid by any means; only phenomenally silent, except when the talk turned on women, and then, as Craddock put it tersely, he "d.a.m.ned free"; perhaps because, as the latter worthy used to add with a suspicion of sympathy in his drink-blurred face, he had "cared a sight deal too much for one woman to 'ave much likin' left for the lot."

To one side of the breastwork lay a dry ravine where every day the vipers used to sun themselves on the hot red rocks. Just across it, within range, rose a small Mahomedan shrine amid spa.r.s.e brushwood, which thickened a bit till it was barred by the ruined wall of a garden where the slow oxen circled round the well, sending runnels of slippery-looking water to the scented shade of citrons, roses, and mangoes, heedless of the great cannon-b.a.l.l.s which sometimes came trundling, like playthings, down the wide walks. Not often, though, for the stress of strife lay at the other angle of the breastwork which faced the city wall.

Still, those who came to smoke a hard-earned pipe in what was the safest spot in the outpost, soon found that the pious-looking shrine, the peaceful garden, were not always so innocent as they looked. In the dusk of dark or dawn they were tenanted by what, after a time, the men agreed to call the "most nailin' bad shot in creation." "The direction wasn't, so to speak, so bad, sir," Craddock used to explain to me. "'E'd about 'ave 'it the sea-serpent for length; it was the elevation which, as Bull's-eyes said, savin' your presence, sir, was d----ficient. The top o' the Monument was about in it, sir, an' that was why the only feller as really use langwidge was Joe Banks; for 'e was a 'ead and shoulders higher than the lot o' us." So when, in the dark, a flash used to glimmer for a second among the brushwood like a firefly, the men learnt to sing out, "That's for you, Joey," "Duck, my darlin', duck," and other witticisms of that kind, until the big Yorkshireman's face darkened beyond jesting-point: for he had the devil's own temper when roused. It was this, joined to his extreme good looks and a somewhat hazy recollection of the Bible and the cla.s.sics among the volunteers, which earned him the nickname of Apollyon. So to soothe him, some of the wilder spirits would organise a charge over the ravine, scattering, perhaps, a few drowsy adders which had forgotten to go to bed; but nothing else. The blind old fakeer in the shrine was always fast asleep, the bullocks in the garden circling slowly, driven by a drowsy lad curled up behind them.

So the days pa.s.sed; and, despite practice, the Most Nailin' Bad Shot shot badly as ever. The odds, however, as the men pointed out gravely to Apollyon, kept on improving; so that sooner or later there must be a "casualty" in the garrison of Number One outpost. Joey, too, would get careless; he wouldn't smart enough, etc., etc. And, sure enough, one evening just as the moonlight was mixing with the daylight, and Joey Banks had risen to his full height in a huff because Craddock for once had sided against him in the perennial argument as to whether it was worth while fighting for women who didn't know what they would be at, and hadn't the pluck of a mouse, one of these firefly flashes was followed by a sudden clapping of the giant's hands to the very crown of his head.

"We looked, sir," Craddock used to say gravely, with that reminiscent biblical knowledge of his which had doubtless supplied Apollyon, "for 'im to fall dead; as 'e deserve rich; for 'e'd been d.a.m.nin' uncommon free, sir. But 'e only use it worse. And then, savin' your presence, sir, we see that 'e'd 'ad, so ter speak, a narrer-gauge line laid down thro' 'is jungle--right through 'is curls, sir. Lordy! 'ow we laughed.

It was a lady, we told 'im, as wanted some locks an' no mistake. It sorter made 'im mad, for 'e just stooped and gathered the lot--bein'

fair, you could see it shinin' in the dust--together.

"'She shall 'ave 'em, never fear,' 'e says, quiet like. 'Yes! the person who fired that shot shall 'ave more o' my 'air than he reckons for.'"

Just at that moment, however, one of those sudden alarms which for three months kept the men and officers before Delhi on the alert by day and night broke up the company, and so Joe Banks' loss pa.s.sed out of most minds. Except his own, of course. It lingered there, aided by that narrow gauge over his brain on which the cool night wind blew pleasantly.

So when the alarm pa.s.sed, instead of coming back to rest, he crept out surrept.i.tiously by the back of the breastwork, for such sorties were strictly out of order, and so by a slant downwards across the ravine.

It was a brilliant moonlight night, and he caught the sparkle of many a deadly pair of eyes among the rocks. But he was in no mood to step aside from any danger, and once beyond fear of recall he strode along straight as if the whole place belonged to him; it might have, for all the opposition he met. The fakeer was asleep as usual, the oxen circling round the well, and in the scented shade of the roses and citrons he could find nothing save some drowsy birds who fluttered and twittered helplessly as his tall head forced a way through the thickets.

Feeling ill-used, he set his face back towards the breastwork, until the extraordinary peace of the moonlit scene, which, as Craddock a.s.serted, used in the interval of onslaught to make the beleaguered city look like the New Jerusalem, brought him to a standstill; first to look, then to take out his pipe; finally to sit on a rock and think vaguely of the Yorkshire wolds and of some one, no doubt, who had not had the courage of her convictions, for after a bit he murmured, "She were a raight down coward, that's where it is, aw'm thinkin'."

He had not much time for reflection, however, for at that moment there was a flash, a crack, and something whizzed past his left ear. The Most Nailin' Bad Shot was better at close quarters. His blood was up in a second, and without pausing to pick up his musket, which he had laid aside, he was off to the spot whence the flash had come. And there! _whoop forward! gone away!_ was his quarry for sure, running like a hare for some hiding-place, no doubt, among the rocks. It might have been reached, for romance tells of many secret pa.s.sages between palaces inside the city and gardens without, but for a true lover's knot of viper which refused to budge from the path; which made the flying figure give a screech, and the flying feet, in their effort to overleap it, miss footing and fall.

The next instant Joe Banks was on it as it lay, and conscious even in his hurry that what he gripped was something young and soft--a boy, no doubt--devil's sp.a.w.n.

"Aw'm go[=a]n ter choak ye on t' hair," he said grimly. "Open yer domed mouth, d'ye hear?"

It was almost as if the prostrate figure understood; but the next instant a set of gleaming white teeth had closed like a squirrel's round Joe Banks' first finger. He let off an echoing yell to the previous screech, and an oddly satisfied smile came to the fierce little face he could scarcely see for his big hand. It was an oval face, smooth as a girl's.

"That's nowt to Joey Banks, lad, he can kill anoother waay," he growled savagely, as he shifted a knee to press his prisoner down, loosened his left hand, his right being detained, and deliberately drew out one of the many knives stuck in his enemy's waistband. "Aw'll lay t' hair abun tha' heaart, tha' wrigglin' worm, and driv it ho[=a]m--that aw wull."

In pursuance of which plan, he undid an embroidered satin waistcoat, and began to push aside an inner muslin vest. A whiff of musk and roses mingled with the moonlight.

"Stinks and bites like a foumart," he muttered. "Soa lie thee still, will tha? an' tak' that to thissen ma--gor amoighty!"

Joe Banks was on his feet; so was his enemy. Both dazed, uncertain.

Flight seemed to come uppermost to the latter's thought, when the big man suddenly laughed a low chuckle of sheer amus.e.m.e.nt.

"An' t' coom like a wild cat at Joey Banks--that caps owt!"

The next instant he was grappling with a whirlwind of knives and nails, anything.

"Woa! woa! ma la.s.s! Hands off, tha little vixen, till a' git a look at tha!" he said soothingly, as he prisoned two small hands in one huge fist, and with the other held his adversary almost tenderly at arm's length. What he saw, as he afterwards described it to Craddock, was just a "moit o' pistols an' pouches."

"Well! well! _Aw'm,--aw'm_ jiggered!" he exclaimed at last; adding argumentatively, "Whatten iver mad tha' go fur t' do it, tha foolish la.s.s?"