So the wave surged on, to what end it scarcely knew, leaving behind it groups of sullen, startled faces.
"Whose fault but their own?" muttered an old man fiercely; an old man whose son served beside him in the regiment, whose grandson was on the roster for future enlistment. "Why were we left helpless as new-born babes?"
"Why?" echoed a scornful voice from the gathering clusters of undecided men, waiting, with growing fear, hope, despair, or triumph, for what was to come next: waiting, briefly, for the master to come, or not to come. "Why? because they were afraid of us; because their time is past, baba jee. Let them go!"
Let them go. Incomprehensible suggestion to that brave worn stiff in the master's service; so, with a great numb ache in an old heart, an old body strode away, elbowing younger ones from its path savagely.
"Old Dhurma hath grown milksop," jeered one spectator; "that is with doing dry-nurse to his Captain's babies."
The words caught the old man's ear and sent a quick decision to his dazed face. The baba logue! Yes; they must be safeguarded; for ominous smoke began to rise from neighboring roof-trees, and a strange note of sheer wild-beast ferocity grew to the confused roar of the drifting, shifting, still aimless crowd.
"Quick, brothers, quick! Kill, root and branch! Why dost linger? Art afraid? Afraid of cowards? Quick--kill everyone!"
The cry, boastful, jeering, came from a sepoy in the uniform of the 20th, who, with a face ablaze with mad exultation, forced his way forward. There was something in his tone which seemed to send a shiver of fresh excitement through his comrades, for they paused in their strange, aimless tumult, paused and listened to the jeers, the reproaches.
"What! art cowards too?" he went on. "Then follow me. For I began it--I fired the first shot--I killed the first infidel. I----"
The boast never ended, for above it came a quicker cry: "Kill, kill, kill the traitor! Kill the man who betrayed us."