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

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

The city was still asleep; though here and there a widow was stealing out in her white shroud for that touch of the sacred river without which she would indeed be accursed. And in a little mosque hard by the road from the boat-bridge a muezzin was about to give the very first call to prayer with pious self-complacency. But someone was ahead of him in devotion, for, upon the still air, came a continuous rolling of chanted texts. The muezzin leaned over the parapet, disappointed, to see who had thus forestalled him at heaven's gate; stared, then muttered a hasty charm. Were there visions about? The suggestion softened the disappointment, and he looked after the strange, wild figure, half-seen in the shimmering, shadowy dawn-light, with growing and awed satisfaction. This was no mere mortal, this green-clad figure on a camel, chanting texts and waving a scimitar. A vision has been vouchsafed to him for his diligence; a vision that would not lose in the telling. So he stood up and gave the cry from full lungs.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

The echo from the rose-red fortifications took it up first; then one chanting voice after another, monotonously insistent.

"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"

And the city woke to another day of fasting. Woke hurriedly, so as to find time for food ere the sun rose, for it was Rumzân, and one-half of the inhabitants would have no drop of water till the sun set, to assuage the terrible drought of every living, growing thing beneath the fierce May sun. The backwaters lay like a steel mirror reflecting the gray shadowy pile of the Palace, the poojari--waist-deep in them--was a solitary figure flinging water to the sacred airts, absorbed in a thorough purification from sin.

Then from the serrated line of the Ridge came a bugle followed by the roll of a time gun. All the world was waking now. Waking to give orders, to receive them; waking to mark itself apart with signs of salvation; waking to bow westward and pray for the discomfiture of the infidel; waking to stand on parade and salute the royal standard of a ruler, hell-doomed inevitably, according to both creeds.

A flock of purple pigeons, startled by the sound, rose like cloud flakes on the light gray sky above the glimmering dome of the big mosque, then flew westward toward the green fields and groves on the further side of the town. For the roll of the gun was followed by a reverberating roll, and groan, and creak, from the boat-bridge. The little cloud on the Meerut road had grown into five troopers dashing over the bridge at a gallop recklessly. The poojari, busy now with his pigments, followed them with his eyes as they clattered straight for the city gate. They were waking in the Palace now, for a slender hand set a lattice wide. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps simply to let in the cool air of dawn. It was a lattice in the women's apartments.

The poojari went on rubbing up the colors that were to bring such spiritual pride to the wearers, then turned to look again. The troopers, finding the city gate closed, were back again; clamoring for admittance through the low arched doorway leading from Selimgarh to the Palace. And as the yawning custodian fumbled for his keys, the men cursed and swore at the delay; for in truth they knew not what lay behind them. The two thousand from Meerut, or some of them, of course. But at what distance?

As a matter of fact only one Englishman was close enough to be considered a pursuer, and he was but a poor creature on foot, still dazed by a fall, striking across country to reach the Raj-ghât ferry below the city. For when Jim Douglas had recovered consciousness it had been to recognize that he was too late to be the first in Delhi, and that he could only hope to help in the struggle. And that tardily, for the Arab was dead lame.

So, removing its saddle and bridle to give it a better chance of escaping notice, he had left it grazing peacefully in a field and stumbled on riverward, intending to cross it as best he could; and so make for his own house in Duryagunj for a fresh horse and a more suitable kit. And as he plodded along doggedly he cursed the sheer ill-luck which had made him late.