Rung Ho! Part 38

"Rung Ho! See you again, Mahommed Gunga!"

CHAPTER x.x.x

Sabres and spurs and jingling bits-- (Ho! But the food to feed them!) Sinews and eyes and ears and wits-- (Hey! But the troopers need them!) Sahib, mount! Thy chargers fling Foam to the night--thy trumpets sing-- Thy lance-b.u.t.ts on the stirrups ring-- Mount, sahib! Blood them! Lead them!

IT was arranged that the McCleans, with old Joanna, should start at dawn for Howrah City, and they were, both of them, too overcome with mingled dread and excitement to even try to sleep. Joanna, very much as usual, snoozed comfortably, curled in a blanket in a corner.

They would run about a hundred different risks, not least of which was the chance of falling in with a party of Howrah's men. In fact, if they should encounter anybody before bringing up at Jaimihr's palace it was likely that the whole plan would fizzle into nothing.

Cunningham, after fossicking for a long time in Aliva's armory--that contained, besides weapons of the date, a motley a.s.sortment of the tools of war that would have done great credit to a museum of antiquities--produced two pistols. He handed, one to the missionary and one to Miss McClean, advising her to hide hers underneath her clothing.

"You know what they're for?" he asked. "No. You'd gain nothing by putting up a fight. They're loaded. All you've got to do is jerk the hammer back and pull the trigger, and the best way not to miss is to hold the muzzle underneath your chin--this way--keeping the b.u.t.t well out from you. You make sure when you do that. The only satisfaction you'll have, if it comes to suicide as a last resource, will be that you've tried to do your duty and the knowledge that you'll be avenged. I promise that. But I don't think you'll have any need to do it--if I did think it I'd have thought twice before sending you."

"How does such a very young man as you come to have all this responsibility?" asked Rosemary, taking the pistol without a shudder.

She laughed then as she noticed Cunningham's discomfort and recognized the decency that hates to talk about itself.

"I suppose I know my own mind," he answered. "These other awfully decent fellows don't, that's all--if you except Mahommed Gunga. That chap's a wonder. 'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and picked me from the start to take charge over here. Seems, owing to my dad's reputation, these Rangars think me a sort of reincarnation of efficiency. I've got to try and live up to it, you know--same old game of reaping what you didn't sow and hoping it'll all be over before you wake up! Won't you try and get some sleep before morning? No? Come and sit over by the parapet with me, then."

He carried chairs for both of them to a point whence he could sit and watch the track that led to Howrah and so help out the very meagre garrison. There, until the waning moon dipped down below the sky-line, they talked together--first about the task ahead of each of them; then about the sudden ghastliness of the rebellion, whose extent not one of them could really grasp as yet; last, and much longest, as familiarity gradually grew between them, of youthful reminiscences and home--of Eton and the Isle of Skye.

In the darkness and the comparative coolness that came between the setting of the moon and dawn Rosemary fell asleep, her head pillowed in her father's lap. For a while, then, seeing her only dimly through the night, but conscious, as he could not help being, of her youth and charm and of the act of self-sacrifice that she had undertaken without remonstrance, he felt ashamed. He began to wonder whether there might not have been some other way--whether he had any right, even for his country's sake, to send a girl on such a mission. Misgiving began to sap his optimism, and there was no Mahommed Gunga to stir the soldier in him and encourage iron-willed pursuance of the game. He began to doubt; and doubt bred silence.

He was wakened from a revery by Duncan McClean, who raised his daughter tenderly and got up on his feet.

"The dawn will be here soon, Mr. Cunningham. We had better get ready.

Well--in case we never meet again--I'm glad I met you."

"Better start before the sun gets up," he answered, gripping the missionary's hand. He was a soldier again. He had had the answer to his thoughts! If the man who was to sacrifice his daughter--or risk her sacrifice--was pleased to have met him, there was not much sense in harboring self-criticism! He shook it off, and squared his shoulders, beginning again to think of all that lay ahead.

"Trust to the old woman to guide you and show you a place to rest at, if you must rest. You ought to reach Howrah at dusk tomorrow, for you'll find it quite impossible to travel fast--you're both of you too stiff, for one thing. Lie up somewhere--Joanna will know of a place--until the old woman has taken in a message to Jaimihr, and wait until he sends you some men to escort you through the outskirts of the city. I've got disguises ready for you--a pugree for you, Mr. McClean, and a purdah for your daughter--you'll travel as a Hindoo merchant and his wife. If you get stopped, say very little, but show this."

He produced the letter written once by Maharajah Howrah to the Alwa-sahib and sent by galloper with the present of a horse. It was signed, and at the bottom of it was the huge red royal seal. "Now go and put the disguise on, while I see to the horses; I'm going to pick out quiet ones, if possible, though I warn you they're rare in these parts."

Some twenty minutes later he led their horses for them gingerly down the slippery rock gorge, and waited at the bottom while six men wound the gate up slowly. Rosemary McClean was quite unrecognizable, draped from head to foot in a travelling veil that might have been Mohammedan or Hindoo, and gave no outward sign as to her caste, or rank. McClean, in the full attire of a fairly prosperous Hindoo, but with no other mark about him to betoken that he might be worth robbing, rode in front of her, high-perched on a native saddle. In front, on a desert pony, rode Joanna, garbed as a man.

"She ought to be travelling in a carriage of some kind," admitted Cunningham, "but we haven't got a single wheeled thing here. If any one asks pertinent questions on the road, you'd better say that she had an ekka, but that some Rangars took it from you. D'you think you know the language well enough to pa.s.s muster?"

"It's a little late to ask me that!" laughed McClean. "Yes--I'm positive I do. Good-by."

They shook hands again and the three rode off, cantering presently, to make the most of the coolness before the sun got up. Cunningham climbed slowly up the hill and then watched them from the parapet--wondering, wondering again--whether he was justified. As he put it to himself, it was "the h.e.l.l of a position for a man to find himself in!" He caught himself wondering whether his thoughts would have been the same, and whether his conscience would have racked him quite as much, had Rosemary McClean been older, and less lovely, and a little more sour-tongued.

He had to laugh presently at the absurdity of that notion, for Jaimihr would never have bargained for possession of a sour-faced, elderly woman. He came to the conclusion that the only thing he could do was to congratulate the Raj because, at the right minute, the right good-looking woman had been on the spot! But he did not like the circ.u.mstances any better; and before two hours had pa.s.sed the loneliness began to eat into his soul.

Like any other man whose race and breed and training make him self-dependent, he could be alone for weeks on end and scarcely be aware that he had n.o.body to talk to. But his training had never yet included sending women off on dangerous missions any more than it had taught him to resist woman's attraction--the charm of a woman's voice, the lure of a woman's eyes. He did not know what was the matter with him, but supposed that his liver must be out of order or else that the sun had touched him.

Taking a chance on the liver diagnosis, he had out the attenuated garrison, and drilled it, both mounted and dismounted, first on the hilltop--where they made the walls re-echo to the clang of grounded b.u.t.ts--and then on the plain below, with the gate wide open in their rear and one man watching from the height above. When he had tired them thoroughly, and himself as well, he set two men on the lookout and retired to sleep; nor did the droning and the wailing music of some women in the harem trouble him.

They called him regularly when the guard was changed, but he slept the greater part of that day and stood watch all night. The next day, and the third day, he drilled the garrison again, growing horribly impatient and hourly more worried as to what Byng-bahadur might be doing, and thinking of him.

It was evening of the fourth day when a Rangar woke him, squeezing at his foot and standing silent by the cot.

"Huzoor--Mahommed Gunga comes!"

"Thank G.o.d!"

He ran to the parapet and watched in the fading light a little dust cloud that followed no visible track but headed straight toward them over desert.

"How d'you know that's Mahommed Gunga?" he demanded.

"Who else, huzoor? Who else would ride from that direction all alone and straight for this nest of wasps? Who else but Alwa or Mahommed Gunga?

Alwa said he would not come, but would wait yonder."

"It might be one of Alwa's men."

"We have many good men, sahib--and many good horses--but no man or horse who could come at that pace after traversing those leagues of desert!

That is Mahommed Gunga, unless a new fire-eater has been found. And what new man would know the way?"

Soon--staccato, like a drum-beat in the silence--came the welcome, thrilling cadence of the horse's hoofs--the steady thunder of a horse hard-ridden but not foundered. The sun went down and blackness supervened, but the sound increased, as one lone rider raced with the evening wind, head on.

It seemed like an hour before the lookout challenged from the crag that overhung the gate--before the would-be English words rang out; and all Asia and its jackals seemed to wait in silence for the answer.

"Howt-uh! Hukk.u.ms-thar!"

"Ma--hommed--Gunga--hai!"

"Hurrah!"

The cheer broke bonds from the depth of Cunningham's being, and Mahommed Gunga heard it on the plain below. There was a rush to man the wheels and sweat the gate up, and Cunningham started to run down the zigzag pathway. He thought better of it, though, and waited where the path gave out onto the courtyard, giving the signal with the cords for the gate to lower away again.

"Evening, Mahommed Gunga!" he said, almost casually, as the weary charger's nose appeared above the rise.

"Salaam, bahadur!"

He dismounted and saluted and then leaned against his horse.

"I wonder, sahib, whether the horse or I be weariest! Of your favor, water, sahib!"

Cunningham brought him water in a dipper, and the Rajput washed his horse's mouth out, then held out the dipper again to Cunningham for fresh charge for himself.

"I would not ask the service, sahib, but for the moment my head reels. I must rest before I ride again."

"Is all well, Mahommed Gunga?"

"Ay, sahib! More than well!"