CHAPTER XVI.
"STOLEN FROM THE SEA!"
"Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair."
Much Ado About Nothing.
"Another fine, sunshiny day," is naturally of common recurrence in the East, and it was yet another magnificent afternoon at Ross—very bright, very warm, and very still. Underneath the long wooden pier vast shoals of little silver sardines were hurrying through the water, pursued by a greedy dolphin, and leaping now and then in a glittering shower into the air to escape his voracious jaws. Coal-black, stunted Andamanese were here and there squatting on the rocks, patiently angling with the most primitive of tackle, and two or three policemen, in roomy blue tunics and portentous turbans, were gossiping together about rupees and rice. Some half-dozen soldiers, with open coats and pipe in mouth, sat, with their legs dangling over the pier, fishing. Further on, with folded arms, and wistful eyes, a tall gaunt Bengalee stood, aloof and alone. He was a zemindar from Oude, and had been in the settlement since 1858 (an ominous date); now he was the holder of a ticket, was free to open a shop in the bazaar, and make a rapid fortune; free to accept a plot of the most fertile ground on the face of the globe, free to marry a convict woman, free within the settlement, but there his liberty ended. His body is imprisoned, but who can chain the mind? His is far away beyond those dim, blue islands, and the shining "Kala Panee!" In imagination he now stands, not upon Ross pier, but on wide-stretching plains far north; his horizon is bounded by magnificent forest trees, and topes of fragrant mangoes: once more he sees his native village, and the familiar well, his plot of land, his home; just as he saw it twenty years ago. But too well does he remember every inmate of those small, white-washed hovels; their faces are before him now—for, alas! what has been left to him but memory? Bitterly has he expiated those few frenzied weeks, when for a brief space, he and his neighbours felt that they had broken the accursed yoke, and trampled it beneath their feet—bitterer, ten times, is it to know that he was sold and betrayed by his own familiar friend!
At this maddening recollection, a kind of convulsive spasm contracts his features, and he mutters fiercely in his beard. He would gladly—nay, gratefully—give all that remains to him of life, just to have "Ram Sing" at his mercy for one short moment—ay, but one! These are some of the thoughts that flit through his mind, as he stands apart with folded arms, and his dark, hawk-like countenance immovably bent on the sea, deaf to the hoarse, loud laughter of Tommy Atkins, who has had a good "take"—to the screeching home-bound peacocks, and the discordant yells of the Andamanese at play.
They have no tragic memories, this group of young men coming down the pier in tennis garb; or, if they have, their faces much belie them—Mr. Quentin, Captain Rodney, Mr. Reid, and Dr. Malone (whose smooth, fair skin, and sandy hair disavow his thirty summers).
"I told you so!" he exclaimed, as he hitched himself up on the edge of the pier. "They are all gone out, every man Jack of them—the Creerys, the Homes, Dr. Parkes, and Mr. Latimer, not to speak of our two young ladies. They have gone down to Chatham to take tea with Mrs. Graham, and the island is a desert!"
"Fancy going three miles by water for a cup of hot water," said Mr. Quentin derisively; "but women will go anywhere for tea. Where are Jones and Lea?" he inquired.
"Where you ought to be, my boy: up decorating the mess for the dance this evening."