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

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Chance! There was a spell in the very word. A minute after logs jammed the door again, and even had it been set wide, none would have guessed that a woman, full of courage, ay! and hope, crouched behind the piles of brushwood. So she lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others, what was passing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of "Deen! Deen!" or "Jai Kali ma!" For faith is one of the two great passions which make men militant, The other, sex. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights silently, giving and asking no words--only works.

So fought young Mainwaring, who, with his back to that same wall against which Kate had found him leaning, was using his sword to a better purpose than digging holes in the dust; or rather had adopted a new method of doing the task. He had not tried to escape as the others had done; not from superior courage, but because he never even thought of it. When he was free to choose, how could he think of leaving those devils unpunished, leaving them unchecked to touch her dead body, while he lived? He gave a little faint sob of sheer satisfaction as he felt the first soft resistance, which meant that his sword had cut into flesh and blood; for all his vigorous young life made for death, nothing but death. Was not she dead yonder?

So, after a bit, it seemed to him there was too little of it there--that it came slowly, with his back to the wall and only those who cared to go for him within reach--for the crowd was dense, too dense for loading and firing. Dense with a hustling, horrified wonder, a confused prodding of bayonets. So, without a sound, he charged ahead, hacking, hewing, never pausing, not even making for freedom, but going for the thickest silently.

"Amuk! Sayia! A-muk!" The yell that he was mad, possessed, rang hideously as men tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape, their hurry to have at this wild beast, this devil, this horror. And they were right. He was possessed. He was life instinct with death; filled with but one desire--to kill, or to be killed quickly.

"Saiya! Amuk! Saiya!--out of his way--out of his way! Amuk! Saiya! Fate is with him! The gods are with him. Saiya! Amuk!"

So, by chance, not method; so by sheer terror as well as hacking and hewing, the tall figure found itself, with but a stagger or two, outside the wooden gates, out on the city road, out among the gardens and the green trees. And then, "Hip, hip, hurray!" His ringing cheer rose with a sort of laugh in it. For yonder was her house!--her house!

"Hip, hip, hurray!" As he ran, as he had run in races at school, his young face glad, the fingers on the triggers behind him wavered in sheer superstitious funk, and two troopers coming down the road wheeled back as from a mad dog. The scarlet coat with its gold epaulettes went crashing into a group red-handed with their spoil, out of it impartially into a knot of terrified bystanders, while down the lane left behind it by the hacking and hewing came bullet after bullet; the fingers on the triggers wavered, but some found a billet. One badly. He stumbled in the dust and his left arm fell oddly. But the right still hacked and hewed as he ran, though the crowd lessened; though it grew thin, too thin for his purpose; or else his sight was failing. But there, to the right, the devils seemed thicker again. "Hip, hip, hooray!" No! trees. Only trees to hew--a garden--perhaps the garden about her house--then, "Hip, hip----"

He fell headlong on his face, biting the soft earth in sheer despite as he fell.

"Don't touch him, brothers!" said one of the two or three who had followed at a distance, as they might have followed a mad dog, which they hoped others would meet and kill. "Provoke him not, or the demon possessing him may possess us. 'Tis never safe to touch till they have been dead a watch. Then the poison leaves them. Krishnjee, save us! Saw you how he turned our lead?"

"He has eaten mine, I'll swear," put in another sepoy boastfully, pointing gingerly with his booted foot to a round scorched hole in the red coat. "The muzzle was against him as I fired."