"What are the injuries? Let us see to them now while we are halted."
The officer dropped from his saddle and took Owen from Mulha. Then, with the light of the moon to help them, they exposed the wound in his side and dressed it as well as they were able.
"With care, he will recover," said Mulha with authority. "But he must have rest. To ride far will be to kill him."
"While to halt will lead to his death with equal certainty. We must ride, but not in this direction. We will make for Agra."
Turning their horses, they trotted on into the night, and, managing to elude the swarms of horsemen sent to pursue them, finally came to a halt in a shady wood some twenty miles away.
"He shall ride in a litter," said Mulha, as he and the[Pg 309] native officer discussed the question. "The journey will do no harm if taken slowly, for the injury is not so grave as appeared at first. We will construct a stretcher to be borne by two of the horses."
Two days later when they set out, Owen, now quite conscious, lay snugly in a long litter made of bamboos, the side members of which were fastened in front and behind to a saddle in such manner that even if the troopers who rode the two horses happened to let their beasts get somewhat far from one another the stretcher could not fall. And in this way they came at length to Agra and fell in with the division under command of the famous General Lake. Owen was at once transferred to the hospital.
[CHAPTER XIX]
The Deccan Invincibles
"Bedad, now, if it wasn't that ye've the thickest hide and the sthrongest bones of enny Oi iver come across, me bhoy, ye'd be dead! 'Tis mighty lucky ye are, so ye are, and ye'll never meet wid the same again. Ye'll be dead, as dead as a donkey."