"Oliver! Oliver!" she entreated.
He came to her help with a laugh, which seemed so out of place in the mournful house he felt ashamed of himself the next minute. He knelt down beside Kathleen. "I like you, my little woman," he whispered. "You took the blame on your own shoulders, like a brick. Oh, what little shoulders they are! Of course, a boy would have done so. Don't fret about how the wolf got in too much. They are awful creatures. I am a sailor boy. Terrible things happen at sea. My father was captain of a merchant vessel. I have been to Calcutta before with him. He died at sea. The mate brought the ship into port. Bona is only a school-girl, fresh from England. She was coming out to uncle, so they sent me on with her. Never mind her, she is such a fuss-fuss!"
Awkward as Oliver's attempts at consolation were, Kathleen felt they were sincere. She looked into his honest brown eyes and repeated her question—the question every one shrank from answering—"What will the big wolf do with Carly?"
"Iffley," called Mr. Desborough from the other side of the chintz curtain which did duty for a door, "stop those children's tongues, or I shall go mad."
The major laid an imperative hand on Oliver's arm and marched him off into the veranda, where a mat in a shady corner invited him to take the siesta he so much needed after his night-journey. The ayah carried Kathleen away in her powerful arms.
The stifling, burning heat grew more and more intense. The heavy sleep of sorrow slowly stole over the desolated household, and the weary day wore on. The coolies, who had been abroad since the dawn, returned one by one to eat their rice and repeat the same tale—"No trace! no hope!" There was nothing more to be done. There is no land like India for sudden calamity. Those of us who pass many years among its rice-fields and banyan trees learn a resignation and a promptitude in action not common elsewhere. To do quickly all that ought to be done, before it is too late, is so imperative that no one was surprised when Mr. Desborough announced his determination to send Mrs. Desborough and the two children still left to them to the hills immediately.
"This very night, if it were possible!" he exclaimed, as he caught up Racy, only to grieve the more over the loss of poor little Carly. A terrible fear of another midnight alarm oppressed the whole household. The syces lighted fires close outside the compound, to scare away any wild beasts which might be prowling about in the groves and thickets. Every precaution was taken.
The sun was sinking. The brief ten minutes of summer twilight had come when every one in India hurries into the open air. The long white line of road winding between the shady rows of trees was alive with traffic. Bona and Oliver stood ready for departure, watching the novel scene.
Straggling groups of workers from the indigo factory loitered round the gates of Mr. Desborough's compound—hideous-looking creatures with waist-clothes, hands and faces all blue: a whole troop of Bluebeards, which Bona thought would haunt her very dreams. They meekly drew aside and salaamed to the ground, as a gilded carriage, drawn by a pair of white humped oxen, swept by. A long line of carts, creaking under their loads of indigo pulp, quickly followed. The scantily-clothed villagers who accompanied them were uttering most unearthly cries to encourage their weary beasts. A deafening sound of splashing of water and stamping of feet told of the near neighbourhood of a drove of buffaloes returning to their homes for the night.
Oliver looked for them in vain. They were making a pathway through the pool, and only the tips of their noses were to be seen as they sniffed the evening air, or snatched a mouthful of lily-leaves with snorts of rejoicing; while groups of merry children on the opposite bank were washing all the clothing they had—a broad white calico sash or waist-cloth. Their washing was a curious performance. They banged one end of the sash on a smooth stone, just under the water, until it fluttered before them white as snow, then they turned it and washed the other end.