Chapter 10

It was difficult to talk at the speed that they were making, with their own horses breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against the blazing red within. One mile or less from the burning buildings they could see, too, the occasional flash of rifles where the two companies of the Thirty-third, Honorable East India Company's Light Infantry, held out against the mutineers.

“Why did they mutiny?” asked Bellairs.

“God knows! Nobody knows! Nobody knows anything! I'm thinking--”

“Thinking what?”

“Forrester-Carter is commanding. We'll settle this business pretty quickly, now you've come. Then--Steady, boy! Steady! Hold up! This poor horse of mine is just about foundered, by the feel of him. He'll reach Doonha, though. Then we'll ask Carter to make a dash on Hanadra and bring Mrs. Bellairs--maybe we'll meet her and the Risaldar half-way--who knows? The sepoys wouldn't expect that, either. The move'd puzzle 'em--it'd be a good move, to my way of thinking.”

“Let's hope Carter will consent!” prayed Bellairs fervently. “Now, what's the lay of things?”

“Couldn't tell you! When I left, our men were surrounded. I had to burst through the enemy to get away. Ours are all around the magazine and the sepoys are on every side of them. You'll have to use diagonal fire unless you want to hurt some of our chaps--sweep 'em cornerwise. There's high ground over to the right there, within four hundred yards of the position. Maybe they're holding it, though--there's no knowing!”

They could hear the roar of the flames now, and could see the figures of sepoys running here and there. The rattle of musketry was incessant. They could hear howls and yells and bugle-calls blown at random by the sepoys, and once, in answer as it seemed to a more than usually savage chorus from the enemy--a chorus that was punctuated by a raging din of intermittent rifle-fire--a ringing cheer.

“They must be in a tight hole!” muttered Bellairs. “Answer that, men! All together, now! Let 'em know we're coming.”

The men rose in their stirrups all together, and sent roaring through the blackness the deep-throated “Hip-hip-hur-r-a-a-a-a-a!” that has gladdened more than one beleaguered British force in the course of history. It is quite different from the “Hur-o-a-o-a-u-r-rh” of a forlorn hope, or the high-pitched note of pleasure that signals the end of a review. It means “Hold on, till we get there, boys!” and it carries its meaning, clear and crisp and unmistakable, in its note.

The two beleaguered companies heard it and answered promptly with another cheer.

“By gad, they must be in a hole!” remarked Bellairs.

British soldiers do not cheer like that, all together, unless there is very good reason to feel cheerless. They fight, each man according to his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs, until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their eyes, and the last ditch that they line has been known to be a grave for the enemy.

“Trumpeter! Sound close-order!”

The trumpet rang. The advance-guard drew rein for the section to catch up. The guns drew abreast of one another and the mounted gunners formed in a line, two deep, in front of them. The ammunition-wagon trailed like a tail behind.

“That high ground over there, I think!” suggested O'Rourke.

“Thank you, sir. Section, right! Trot, march! Canter!”

Crash went the guns and the following wagon across the roadside ditch. The tired horses came up to the collar as service-horses always will, generous to the last ounce of strength they have in them.

“Gallop!”

The limbers bumped and jolted and the short-handled whips cracked like the sound of pistol-practise. Blind, unreconnoitered, grim--like a black thunderbolt loosed into the blackness--the two guns shot along a hollow, thundered up a ridge and burst into the fire-light up above the mutineers, in the last place where any one expected them. A howl came from the road that they had left, a hundred sepoys had rushed down to block their passage the moment that their cheer had rung above the noise of battle.

“Action--front!” roared young Bellairs, and the muzzles swung round at the gallop, jerked into position by the wheeling teams.

“With case, at four hundred!”

The orders were given and obeyed almost before the guns had lost their motion. The charges had been rammed into the greedy muzzles before the horses were away, almost--and that takes but a second--the horses vanish like blown smoke when the game begins. A howl from the mutineers told that they were seen; a volley from the British infantry announced that they were yet in time; and “boom-boom!” went both guns together.

The grapeshot whined and shrieked, and the ranks of the sepoys wilted, mown down as though a scythe had swept them. Once, and once only, they gathered for a charge on the two guns; but they were met half-way up the rise by a shrieking blast of grape that ripped through them and took the heart out of them; and the grape was followed by well-aimed volleys from behind. Then they drew off to sulk and make fresh plans at a distance, and Bellairs took his section unmolested into the Thirty-third-lined rampart round the magazine.

“What kept you, sir?” demanded Colonel Forrester-Carter, nodding to him in answer to his salute and holding out his right arm while a sergeant bandaged it.

“My wife, sir--I--”

“Where is she? Didn't you bring her?”

“No, sir--I--”

“Where is she?”

“Still at Hanadra, sir--I--”

“Let the men fall in! Call the roll at once!”

“There was nothing in my orders, sir, about--” But Colonel Carter cut him short with a motion and turned his back on him.

“Much obliged, Sergeant,” he said, slipping his wounded arm into an improvised sling. “How many wagons have we here?”

“Four, sir.”

“And horses?”

“All shot dead except your charger, sir.”

“Oh! Ask Captain Trevor to come here.”

The sergeant disappeared into the shadows, and a moment later Captain Trevor came running up and saluted.

“There are seven wounded, sir, and nineteen dead,” he reported.

“Better than I had hoped, Trevor! Will you set a train to that magazine, please, and blow it up the moment we are at a safe distance?”

Trevor seemed surprised, but he saluted and said nothing.

“O'Rourke! Please see about burying the dead at once. Mr. Bellairs, let me have two horses, please, and their drivers, from each gun. Sergeant! See about putting the wounded into the lightest of the wagons and harness in four gun-horses the best way you can manage.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Which is your best horseman, Mr. Bellairs? Is his horse comparatively fresh? I'll need him to gallop with a message. I'll dictate it to Captain O'Rourke as soon as he is ready. Let the gunner stay here close to me.”

Bellairs sought out his best man and the freshest-seeming horse in wondering silence. He felt sick with anxiety, for what could one lone veteran Risaldar do to protect Mrs. Bellairs against such a horde as was in Hanadra? He looked at the barracks, which were still blazing heavenward and illuminating the whole country-side, and shuddered as he wondered whether his quarters at Hanadra were in flames yet.

“It's a good job old Carter happened to be here!” he heard one of his men mumble to another. “He's a man, that is--I'd sooner fight under him than any I know of!”

“What d'you suppose the next move is?” asked the other man.

“I'd bet on it! I'll bet you what you like that--”

But Bellairs did not hear the rest.

A bugle rang out into the night. The gunners stood by their horses. Even the sentries, posted outside the rampart to guard against alarm, stood to attention, and Colonel Carter, wincing from the pain in his right arm, walked out in front of where the men were lined up.

Captain O'Rourke walked up and saluted him.

“I've arranged to bury them in that trench we dug this evening, sir, when the trouble started. It's not very deep, but it holds them all. I've laid them in it.”

“Are you sure they're all dead?”

“I've burnt their fingers with matches, sir. I don't know of any better way to make sure.”

“Very well. Can you remember any of the burial service?”

“'Fraid not, sir.”

“Um! That's a pity. And I'm afraid I can't spare the time. Take a firing-party, Captain O'Rourke, and give them the last honors, at all events.”

A party marched away toward the trench, and several minutes later O'Rourke's voice was heard calling through the darkness, “All ready, sir!”

“Present arms!” ordered the colonel, and the gunners sat their horses with their hilts raised to their hips and the two long lines of infantry stood rigid at the general salute, while five volleys--bulleted--barked upward above the grave. They were, answered by sniping from the mutineers, who imagined that reprisals had commenced.

“Now, men!” said Colonel Carter, raising his voice until every officer and man along the line could hear him, “as you must have realized, things are very serious indeed. We are cut off from support, but now that the guns are here to help us, we could either hold out here until relieved or else fight our way into Jundhra, where I have no doubt we are very badly needed. But”--he spoke more slowly and distinctly now, with a distinct pause between each word--“there is an officer's lady alone, and practically unprotected at Hanadra. Our duty is clear. You are tired--I know it. You have had no supper, and will get none. It means forced marching for the rest of this night and a good part of tomorrow and more fighting, possibly on an empty stomach; it means the dust and the heat and the discomfort of the trunk road for all of us and danger of the worst kind instead of safety--for we shall have farther to go to reach Jundhra. But I would do the same, and you men all know it, for any soldier's wife in my command, or any English woman in India. We will march now on Hanadra. No! No demonstrations, please!”

His uplifted left hand was just in time to check a roar of answering approval.

“Didn't I tell you so?” exclaimed a gunner to the man beside him in an undertone. “Him leave a white woman to face this sort o' music? He'd fight all India first!”

Ten minutes later two companies of men marched out behind the guns, followed by a cart that bore their wounded. As they reached the trunk road they were saluted by a reverberating blast when the magazine that they had fought to hold blew skyward. They turned to cheer the explosion and then settled down to march in deadly earnest and, if need be, to fight a rear-guard action all the way.

And in the opposite direction one solitary gunner rode, hell-bent-for-leather, with a note addressed to “O. C.--Jundhra.” It was short and to the point. It ran:

Have blown up magazine; Mrs. Bellairs at Hanadra; have gone to rescue her. (Signed) A. FORRESTER-CARTER (Col.) per J. O'Rourke

V.

The red glow of barracks burning--an ayah from whom a dagger has been taken locked in another room--the knowledge that there are fifty thousand Aryan brothers, itching to rebel, within a stone's throw--and two lone protectors of an alien race intent on torturing a High Priest, each and every one of these is a disturbing feature. No woman, and least of all a young woman such as Ruth Bellairs, can be blamed for being nervous under the stress of such conditions or for displaying a certain amount of feminine unreasonableness.

She stood shivering for a minute and watched spellbound while Mahommed Khan held the hot coal closer and even closer to the High Priest's naked foot. The priest writhed in anticipation of the agony and turned his eyes away, and as he turned them they met Ruth's. High priests of a religion that includes sooth-saying and prophecy and bribery of gods among its rites are students of human nature, and especially of female human nature. Knowledge of it and of how it may be gulled, and when, is the first essential of their calling. Her pale face, her blue eyes strained in terror, the parted lips and the attitude of tension, these gave him an idea. Before the charcoal touched him, he screamed--screamed like a wounded horse.

“Mahommed Khan, stop! Stop this instant! I won't have it! I won't have my life, even, on those terms! D'you hear me, sir!”

“Have courage, heavenborn! There is but one way to force a Hindu priest, unless it be by cutting off his revenues--he must be hurt! This dog is unhurt as yet--see! The fire has not yet touched his foot!”

“Don't let it, Mahommed Khan! Set that iron down! This is my room. I will not have crime committed here!”

“And how long does the heavenborn think it would be her room were this evil-living pig of a priest at large, or how long before a worse crime were committed? Heavenborn, the hour is late and the charcoal dies out rapidly when it has left the fire! See. I must choose another piece!”

He rummaged in the brazier, and she screamed again.

“I will not have it, Risaldar! You must find another way.”

“Memsahib! Thy husband left thee in my care. Surely it is my right to choose the way?”

“Leave me, then! I relieve you of your trust. I will not have him tortured in my room, or anywhere!”

Mahommed Khan bowed low.

“Under favor, heavenborn,” he answered, “my trust is to your husband. I can be released by him, or by death, not otherwise.”

“Once, and for all, Mahommed Khan, I will not have you torture him in here!”

“Memsahib, I have yet to ride for succor! At daybreak, when these Hindus learn that the guns will not come back, they will rise to a man. Even now we must find a hiding-place or--it is not good even to think what I might find on my return!”

He leaned over the priest again, but without the charcoal this time.

“Speak, thou!” he ordered, growling in Hindustanee through his savage black mustache. “I have yet to hear what price a Hindu sets on immunity from torture!”

But the priest, it seemed, had formed a new idea. He had been looking through puckered eyes at Ruth, keen, cool calculation in his glance, and in spite of the discomfort of his strained position he contrived to nod.

“Kharvani!” he muttered, half aloud.

“Aye! Call on Kharvani!” sneered the Risaldar. “Perhaps the Bride of Sivi will appear! Call louder!”

He stirred again among the charcoal with his tongs, and Ruth and the High Priest both shuddered.

“Look!” said the High Priest in Hindustanee, nodding in Ruth's direction. It was the first word that he had addressed to them. It took them by surprise, and the Risaldar and his half-brother turned and looked. Their breath left them.

Framed in the yellow lamplight, her thin, hot-weather garments draped about her like a morning mist, Ruth stood and stared straight back at them through frightened eyes. Her blue-black hair, which had become loosened in her excitement, hung in a long plait over one shoulder and gleamed in the lamp's reflection. Her skin took on a faintly golden color from the feeble light, and her face seemed stamped with fear, anxiety, pity and suffering, all at once, that strangely enhanced her beauty, silhouetted as she was against the blackness of the wall behind, she seemed to be standing in an aura, shimmering with radiated light.

“Kharvani!” said the High Priest to himself again, and the two Rajputs stood still like men dumfounded, and stared and stared and stared. They knew Kharvani's temple. Who was there in Hanadra, Christian or Mohammedan or Hindu, who did not? The show-building of the city, the ancient, gloomy, wonderful erection where bats lived in the dome and flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue, where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin--the ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every blackmail-wrung rupee!

They knew, too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well employed in painting but one picture of her--Kharvani the sorrowful, grieving for the wickedness of earth; Kharvani, Bride of Siva, ready to intercede with Siva, the Destroyer, for the helpless, foolish, purblind sons of man.

And here, before them, stood Kharvani--to the life!

“What of Kharvani?” growled Mahommed Khan.

“'A purblind fool, a sot and a Mohammedan,”' quoted the priest maliciously, “'how many be they, three or one?'”

The Risaldar's hand went to his scabbard. His sword licked out free and trembled like a tuning-fork. He flicked with his thumbnail at the blade and muttered: “Sharp! Sharp as death itself!”

The Hindu grinned, but the blade came down slowly until the point of it rested on the bridge of his nose. His eyes squinted inward, watching it.

“Now, make thy gentle joke again!” growled the Risaldar. Ruth Bellairs checked a scream.

“No blood!” she exclaimed. “Don't hurt him, Risaldar! I'll not have you kill a man in here--or anywhere, in cold blood, for that matter! Return your sword, sir!”

The Risaldar swore into his beard. The High Priest grinned again. “I am not afraid to die!” he sneered. “Thrust with that toy of thine! Thrust home and make an end!”

“Memsahib!” said the Risaldar, “all this is foolishness and waste of time! The hour is past midnight and I must be going. Leave the room--leave me and my half-brother with this priest for five short minutes and we will coax from him the secret of some hiding-place where you may lie hid until I come!”

“But you'll hurt him!”

“Not if he speaks, and speaks the truth!”

“Promise me!”

“On those conditions--yes!”

“Where shall I go?”

The Risaldar's eyes glanced toward the door of the inner room, but he hesitated. “Nay! There is the ayah!” he muttered. “Is there no other room?”

“No, Risaldar, no other room except through that door. Besides, I would rather stay here! I am afraid of what you may do to that priest if I leave you alone with him!”

“Now a murrain on all women, black and white!” swore Mahommed Khan beneath his breath. Then he turned on the priest again, and placed one foot on his stomach.

“Speak!” he ordered. “What of Kharvani?”

“Listen, Mahommed Khan!” Ruth Bellairs laid one hand on his sleeve, and tried to draw him back. “Your ways are not my ways! You are a soldier and a gentleman, but please remember that you are of a different race! I can not let my life be saved by the torture of a human being--no, not even of a Hindu priest! Maybe it's all right and honorable according to your ideas; but, if you did it, I would never be able to look my husband in the face again! No, Risaldar! Let this priest go, or leave him here--I don't care which, but don't harm him! I am quite ready to ride with you, now, if you like. I suppose you have horses? But I would rather die than think that a man was put to the torture to save me! Life isn't worth that price!”

She spoke rapidly, urging him with every argument she knew; but the grim old Mohammedan shook his head.

“Better die here,” he answered her, “than on the road! No, memsahib. With thirteen blades behind me, I could reach Jundhra, or at least make a bold attempt; but single-handed, and with you to guard, the feat is impossible. This dog of a Hindu here knows of some hiding-place. Let him speak!”

His hand went to his sword again, and his eyes flashed.

“Listen, heavenborn! I am no torturer of priests by trade! It is not my life that I would save!”

“I know that, Mahommed Khan! I respect your motive. It's the method that I can't tolerate.”

The Risaldar drew his arm away from her and began to pace the room. The High Priest instantly began to speak to Ruth, whispering to her hurriedly in Hindustanee, but she was too little acquainted with the language to understand him.

“And I,” said the Risaldar's half-brother suddenly, “am I of no further use?”

“I had forgotten thee!” exclaimed the Risaldar.

They spoke together quickly in their own language, drawing aside and muttering to each other. It was plain that the half-brother was making some suggestion and that the Risaldar was questioning him and cross-examining him about his plan, but neither Ruth nor the High Priest could understand a word that either of them said. At the end of two minutes or more, the Risaldar gave an order of some kind and the half-brother grunted and left the room without another word, closing the door noiselessly behind him. The Risaldar locked it again from the inside and drew the bolt.

“We have made another plan, heavenborn!” he announced mysteriously.

“Then--then--you won't hurt this priest?”

“Not yet,” said the Risaldar. “He may be useful!”

“Won't you unbind him, then? Look! His wrists and ankles are all swollen.”

“Let the dog swell!” he grunted.

But Ruth stuck to her point and made him loosen the bonds a little.

“A man lives and learns!” swore the Risaldar. “Such as he were cast into dungeons in my day, to feed on their own bellies until they had had enough of life!”

“The times have changed!” said Ruth.

The Risaldar looked out through the window toward the red glow on the sky-line.

“Ha! Changed, have they!” he muttered. “I saw one such burning, once before!”

VI.

The most wonderful thing in history, pointing with the surest finger to the trail of destiny, has been the fact that in every tremendous crisis there have been leaders on the spot to meet it. It is not so wonderful that there should be such men, for the world keeps growing better, and it is more than likely that the men who have left their footprints in the sands of time would compare to their own disadvantage with their compeers of today. The wonderful thing is that the right men have been in the right place at the right time. Scipio met Hannibal; Philip of Spain was forced to meet Howard of Effingham and Drake; Napoleon Bonaparte, the “Man of Destiny,” found Wellington and Nelson of the Nile to deal with him; and, in America, men like George Washington and Grant and Lincoln seem, in the light of history, like timed, calculated, controlling devices in an intricate machine. It was so when the Indian Mutiny broke out. The struggle was unexpected. A handful of Europeans, commissioned and enlisted in the ordinary way, with a view to trade, not statesmanship, found themselves face to face at a minute's notice with armed and vengeful millions. Succor was a question of months, not days or weeks. India was ablaze from end to end with rebel fires that had been planned in secret through silent watchful years. The British force was scattered here and there in unconnected details, and each detail was suddenly cut off from every other one by men who had been trained to fight by the British themselves and who were not afraid to die.

The suddenness with which the outbreak came was one of the chief assets of the rebels, for they were able to seize guns and military stores and ammunition at the very start of things, before the British force could concentrate. Their hour could scarcely have been better chosen. The Crimean War was barely over. Practically the whole of England's standing army was abroad and decimated by battle and disease. At home, politics had England by the throat; the income-tax was on a Napoleonic scale and men were more bent on worsting one another than on equipping armies. They had had enough of war.