On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Loh! hark to him!" jibed the corporal of the 20th, who was sticking to his prey like a leech. "Ask him, Havildar-jee, if he prefers a sweeper's broom to a sweeper's lips."

There was a roar of laughter from the group.

Soma gave a beast-like cry, looked as though he were about to spring, then--recognizing his own helplessness--flung himself away from all companionship and walked home moodily. They had driven him too far; he would not stand it. If that tale was spread abroad, he would side with the Huzoors who did not believe such things--with the Colonel who understood, like the Colonel before him who had gone home on pension; for the 11th had a cult of their officers. And these fools, his countrymen, thought to make him a butcher by threats; sought to make him take revenge for what deserved revenge. For it was the Sirkar's fault--it was the Sirkar's fault.

In truth a strange conflict was going on in this man's mind, as it was in many another such as his, between inherited traditions, making alike for loyalty and disloyalty. There was the knowledge of his forbears' pride in their victories, in their sahibs who had led them to victory, and the knowledge of their pride in the veriest jot or tittle of ceremonial law. A dull, painful amaze filled him that these two broad facts should be in conflict; that those, whom in a way he felt to be part of his life, should be in league against him. All the more reason, that, for showing them who were the better men; for standing up fairly to a fair fight. By all the delights of Swargal he would like to stand up fair, even to the master--the man who, in his presence, had shot three tigers on foot in half an hour--the demi-god of his hunting yarns for years.

And then, suddenly, he remembered that this hero of his might be shot like a dog on the 31st at Delhi--would be shot, since he was certain to be in the front of anything. Soma's heat-fevered, hemp-drugged brain seized on the thought fiercely, confusedly. That must not be! The master, at any rate, must be warned. He would go down when the sun set, and see if he were still where he had been the day before; and if not?--Why! then it must be two days leave to Delhi! He was not going to butcher the master for all the sweepers' brooms in the world. Fools! those others, to think to drive him, Soma, Chundrabansi! So he flung himself on his string bed to sleep till the sunset came, and the tyranny of heat be overpast.

But there was one, close by in the cantonment bazaar, who waited for sunset with no desire for it to bring coolness. She meant it to bring heat instead. And this was Nargeeza the courtesan. She was past the prime of everything save vice, a woman who, once all-powerful, could not hope for many more lovers; and hers, a man rich beyond most soldiers, lay in jail for ten years. No wonder, then, that as she lay half-torpid among a heap of tawdry finery in the biggest house of the lane set apart by regulation for such as she, there was all the venom of a snake in her drowsy brain. The air of the low room was deadly with a scent of musk and roses and orange-blossom-oil. The half-dozen girls and women who lounged in it, or in the balcony, were half undressed, their bare brown arms flung carelessly upon dirty mats and torn quilts. Their harvest time was not yet; that would come later when sunsetting brought the men from the lines. This, then, was the time for sleep. But Nargeeza, recognized head of the recognized regimental women, sat up suddenly and said sharply:

"Thou didst not tell me, Nasiban, what Gulâbi said. Is she of us?"

A drowsy lump of a girl stirred, yawned, and answered sullenly, "Yea! Yea! she is of us. She claims our right to kiss no cowards--no cowards."

The voice tailed off into sleep again, and Nargeeza lay back with a smile of content to wait also. So, after a time, folk began to stir in the bungalows. First in the rest-house, where, oddly enough, Jim Douglas occupied one end of the long low barrack of a place, and Herbert Erlton the other. The former having come back from the city in an evil temper to get something to eat before starting for Delhi, had found his horse, the Belooch, unaccountably indisposed; Jhungi, who had brought her there safely, professing entire ignorance of the cause, or, on pressure, suggesting the nefarious Bhungi. Tiddu asserting--with a calm assumption of superior knowledge, for which Jim Douglas could have kicked him--that the mare had been drugged. As if anybody could not tell that? And that the drug had been opium. To which the old scoundrel had replied affably that in that case the effects would pass off during the night, and the mare be none the worse; no one be any the worse, since the Huzoor was quite comfortable in Meerut, and could easily stay another day. It was a nicer place than Delhi; there were more sahibs in it, and the presence of the "ghora logue" (i. e., English soldiers) kept everyone virtuous.

His hearer looked at him sharply. Here was some other trick, no doubt, to cozen him out of another five rupees; for something, maybe, as useless as the yellow fakir. And there was really no reason for delay; it was only a case of walking the mare quietly. For the matter of that, the exercise would do her good, and help her to work off the effects of the drug. So he would start sooner, that was all. Nevertheless he gave an envious look at the Major's little Arab in the next stall. It would most likely be marching back to Delhi that night, and he would have given something to ride it again. But as he was returning from the stables, he learned by chance that the Major's plans had been altered. An orderly was coming from his room with letters and a telegram, and knowing the man, Jim Douglas asked him to take one for him also, and so save trouble. It did not take long to write, for it only contained one word, "No." It was in reply to one he had received a few hours before from the military magnate, asking him to do some more work. And as the orderly stowed away the accompanying rupee carefully, Jim Douglas--waiting to make over the paper--saw quite involuntarily that the Major's telegram also consisted of one word, "Come." And he saw the name also; big, black, bold, in the Major's handwriting. "Gissing, Delhi."