"But one day, or rather night, it was still quite dark when my bearer roused me with his persistent drone of 'Saheeb, saheeb!' and I knew in an instant something was wrong. Graham, shortly after I left him, had got out of bed, dressed himself in his shikar clothes, taken his gun, and gone away from the camp. His bearer, a lad whom he had promoted to the place in one of his impulsive generous fits of revolt against things unjustifiable, had failed to take alarm until his master's prolonged absence had made him seek and rouse my man. The latter was full of apologies; but what else, he protested, could be expected of babes and sucklings promoted out of due season? The babe and suckling meanwhile was blubbering incoherently, and asserting that he was not to blame. The sahib had called for Bunder and Bunder had come; and they had gone off together.
"'Bunder?' I exclaimed. 'Impossible! He hasn't been near the camp for days. Did any one else see him?' But no one had. And as there was no time to be lost in inquiries I dismissed the idea as an attempt on the boy's part to relieve himself from responsibility, and organised the whole camp into a search party.
"It was a last-quarter moon, and I shall never forget the eeriness of that long, fruitless search. At first I kept calling 'Graham, Graham!' but after a time I felt this to be useless, and that he must be either unconscious, or delirious, or determined to keep out of our way. So I pushed on and on in silence, through the bushes and bents, expecting the worst. But after all it was the best. We found him at dawn lying under one of those stunted trees fast asleep. So sound asleep that he did not wake when we carried him back to camp on a litter of boughs. So sound that it was not until the afternoon, when he stirred and asked for beef-tea, that I discovered he wore round his neck a plaited cord of dirty red silk with a small bag attached to it.
"'How the deuce did that come there?' he asked drowsily, putting his hand up to feel it. How, indeed? He could never explain; and the bag held nothing but a bit of blank paper folded into four. He took the thing to England with him when he went home on sick leave the next month, and so far as I know is no wiser than he was then as to how it came round his neck."
Here my fellow-traveller paused, as a whistle from the engine told we were pulling up again. "Well," I said, a trifle plaintively, "but why should not I?"
He was already standing on the platform among a miscellaneous pile of belongings, such as Indian travellers delight to carry about with them, ere he replied:--
"Good-by. Glad to have met you--for you remind me awfully of Graham!"
I sometimes wonder if I should have taken his warning seriously or treated it as a traveller's tale. As it was, I had not the chance of testing its truth. For, at my destination, I found a telegram recalling me to England on urgent business. So, beyond that passing glimpse of the Skeleton Tree, I have no experience.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: Ghâzie--religious fanatic.