'Courage, Excellency!' said Ganesh. 'He has done it in the hope of reward.'
'Reward? Vengeance!' cried the unfortunate young fellow. 'Here! For God's sake let me out! I will kill that fiend with my own hands; I will force her to tell me the truth. Ganesh—Hoosanee, wretches! what do you mean? Have you turned against me too? Loose me, or I will slay you both!'
'Let my lord have patience!' murmured Hoosanee.
'Patience?' echoed Tom, with a hoarse laugh. 'There! This is my patience!'
With one mighty effort he had thrown them off. They lay on the ground—stunned by the force with which they had fallen. Tom picked up his weapons and bounded, like a wild creature escaped from captivity, across the room. For a few moments they lost him.
When Hoosanee came to himself, the room was empty. He had fallen with more force than Ganesh, who had already followed his master, and he had not the least idea how long he had been insensible. It would have been natural for the good fellow, who was conscious of nothing but devotion and rectitude, to be indignant at the treatment he had received; but it was not so. Sorrow and compassion for his master, with shame that he could not hold him back from what, enlightened by a few awful words from Ganesh, would, he believed, be his destruction, made up the whole of his feeling. His head had struck violently against a corner of the charpoy as he fell, and, with recovered consciousness, came violent pain. He raised himself with difficulty to a sitting posture, crept to the door and looked out.
The confusion had not ceased. From every hole and corner armed men were hurrying out to man the walls, and there came, from a little distance, the rattle of musketry. There was another sound—more awful in its significance—the dull boom of cannon, and the crash of falling masonry. But it was not for this that the unarmed, terror-stricken man was listening. It was not to hear this that he laid his ear upon the ground. Ha! what is that? He springs to his feet, gazes into the lurid, torch-lit enclosure, and then, putting his hands to his mouth, trumpet-wise, shrieks out, 'Fly! fly! The magazine is undermined.' The words act like magic. In less than a moment the court is full of flying figures. There is a subterranean exit. The Europeans will not discover it in the darkness. Hundreds fling themselves into it, casting away their weapons, and hundreds are crushed out of all similitude of men. But, amongst the flying figures, Hoosanee does not see those whom he seeks. There comes to his ear a low rumble, and he flings himself down with his face to the ground. In the next instant the earth seems to rock like a drunken man, and there is a sound mightier far than the roll of artillery or the thunder of a storm. Crash! crash! A wild shriek! a low, piteous wailing! Another crash as the masonry gives way, hurling down those who had been defending it into the trenches, men no longer now. A splinter strikes Hoosanee as he lies, and his lips part in a groan. If he is not in safety here, what must their fate be? And is this—is this—to be the end of all his hopes? Has he been deceived all along? Was the master he served as the true representative of him who had gone but a simulacrum and no true man? Surely, if what he had so fondly believed was true, they would not have suffered him to perish thus! Such were the ideas that were thronging his troubled brain in those dreadful moments. How many they were he could never tell. He plucked up courage to look up presently. The court was deserted. Where the rebel chief's vast magazine and treasure-house of arms and gold had been, a column of flame and smoke was rising into the air. The buildings adjacent to it—one of which, as he knew, was Dost Ali Khan's house—were beginning to burn. The boom of artillery had ceased—there was no need for it now; but from outside he could hear the clatter of arms, and he knew that, in a short time, the fort would be taken by assault. In such case what would their fate be—his own—Ganesh's—his master's—if he was still alive? Might they not be killed by the angry English soldiers, before they could make themselves known?
Deeper and deeper grew the silence about him. Those who were not dead or wounded had crowded into the subterranean exit. It would be strange, thought Hoosanee, if the English soldiers were to come in presently and find only him.
The torches that had lit the courtyard had died down. There was nothing now to illuminate it but the fiery column. By its light he saw dimly three figures, that seemed to come out miraculously from the very heart of the burning mass. He ran forward with a cry. If this was his master, then everything was true, for not Rama himself could boast such an adventure! The Divine Ones had cared for their own.