On the Face of the Waters Part 28

"Shah bash, brothers," cried one as they swept past, "we can breathe our beasts a bit at Begum-a-bad and let the others come up; no need to reach Delhi ere dawn. The Palace would be closed."

Delhi! The Palace! And who were the others? That, if they were coming behind, could soon be settled. He turned the Belooch and trotted her back in the shadow, straining eyes and ears down the tree-fringed road which lay so still, so white, so silent.

Something was on it now, but something silent, almost ghost-like,--an old man, muttering texts, on a lame camel which b.u.mped along as even no earthly camel ought to b.u.mp. That could not be the "others."

No! Surely that was a thud, a jingle, a clatter once more. And once more the glitter of cold steel in the moonlight. Forty or fifty of the 3d this time, with stragglers calling to others still further behind, "To Delhi! To Delhi! To Victory or Death!"

As he stood waiting for them all to pa.s.s ere he moved, his first thought was, that with all these armed men at Begum-a-bad there would be no chance of a remount. Then came a swift wonder as to what had happened. A row of some sort, of course, and these men had fled. Ere long, no doubt, a squadron of Carabineers would come rattling after them. No! That was not cavalry. That was infantry in the distance.

Quite a number of men shouting the same cry. Men of the 20th, to judge by what he could see. Then the row had been a big one. Still the men were evidently fugitives. There was that in their recurring cry which told of almost hopeless, reckless enthusiasm.

And how the devil was he to get his remount? It was to be at the serai on the roadside, the very place where these men would rest. Yet he must get to Delhi, he must get there sharp! The possibility that Delhi was unwarned did not occur to him; he only thought how he might best get there in time for the row which must come. Should he wait for the English troops to come up, and chance his remount being coolly taken by the first rebel who wanted one? Or, Delhi being not more than fifteen miles off across country, should he take the mare as far as she would go, leave her in some field, and do the rest on foot? He looked at his watch. Half-past one! Say five miles in half an hour.

The mare was good for that. Then ten miles, at five miles an hour. The very first glimmer of light should see him at the boat-bridge if--if the mare could gallop five miles.

He must try her a bit slowly at first. So, slipping across the broad, white streak of road to the Delhi side, he took her slanting through the tall tiger gra.s.s, for they were close on a nullah which must be forded by a rather deep ford lower down, since the bridge was denied to him. About half a mile from the road he came upon the track suddenly, in the midst of high tamarisk jungle growing in heavy sand, and the next moment was on the shining levels of the ford. The mare strained on his hand, and he paused to let her have a mouthful of water. As she stood there, head down, a horseman at the canter showed suddenly, silently, behind him, not five yards away, his horse's hoofs deadened by the sand.

There was a nasty movement, an ominous click on both sides. But the moon was too bright for mistakes; the recognition was mutual.

"My G.o.d, Erlton!" he cried, as the other, without a pause, went on into the ford. "What's up?"

"Is it fordable?" came the quick question, and as Jim Douglas for an answer gave a dig with his spurs, the Major slackened visibly; his eye telling him that the depth could not be taken, save at a walk.

"What's up?" he echoed fiercely. "Mutiny! murder! I say, how far am I from Delhi?"

"Delhi!" cried Jim Douglas, his voice keen as a knife. "By Heaven! you don't mean they don't know--that they didn't wire--but the troops----"

"Hadn't started when I left," said the Major with a curse. "I came on alone. I say, Douglas," he gave a sharp glance at the other's mount and there was a pause.

"My mare's beat--been drugged," said Jim Douglas in the swish-swish of the water rising higher and higher on the horses' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and there was a curious tone in his voice as if he was arguing out something to himself. "I've a remount at the serai, but the odds are a hundred to one on my getting it. I'd given up the chance of it. I meant to take the mare as many miles across country as she'd go--more, perhaps--for she feels like falling at a fence, and walk the rest. I didn't know then----" He paused and looked ahead. The water, up to the girths, made a curious rushing sound, like many wings. The long, shiny levels stretched away softly, mysteriously. The tamarisk jungle reflected in the water seemed almost as real as that which edged the shining sky. A white egret stood in the shallows; tall, ghostly.

"I thought it was only--a row."

The voice ceased again, the breathings of the tired horses had slackened; there was no sound but that rushing, as of wings, as those two enemies rode side by side, looking ahead. Suddenly Jim Douglas turned.

"You ride nigh four stone heavier than I do, Major Erlton."

The heavy, handsome face came round swiftly, all broken up with sheer pa.s.sion.

"Do you suppose I haven't been thinking that ever since I saw your cursed face. And you know the country, and I don't. You know the lingo, and I don't. And--and--you're a deuce sight better rider than I am, d----n you! But for all that, it's my chance, I tell you. My chance, not yours."

A great surge of sympathy swept through the other man's veins. But the water was shallowing rapidly. A step or two and this must be decided.

"It's yours more than mine," he said slowly, "but it isn't ours, is it? It's the others', in Delhi."

Herbert Erlton gave an odd sound between a sob and an oath, a savage jag at the bridle as the little Arab, over-weighted, slipped a bit coming up the bank. Then, without a word, he flung himself from the saddle and set to work on the stirrup nearest him.

"How many holes?" he asked gruffly, as Jim Douglas, with a great ache in his heart, left the Belooch standing, and began on the other.

"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 rushing 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 shivers 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 shimmering, 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!"