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

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Where is Tara?" asked Jim Douglas peremptorily, still holding to the door jamb for support.

"She went--to look for you--we thought--what has happened?--what is the matter?" she faltered.

"Fool! as if that would do any good! Nothing's the matter, Mrs. Erlton. I hurt my ankle, that's all." He tried to step over the threshold as he spoke, but even that short pause, from sheer dogged effort, had made its renewal an agony, and he put out his hand to her blindly. "I shall have to ask you to help me," he began, then paused. Her arm was round him in a second, but he stood still, looking up at her curiously, "To--to help," he repeated. Then she had to drag him forward by main force so that he might fall clear of the door and enable her to close it swiftly. For who could tell what lay behind?

One thing was certain. That hand on her arm had almost scorched her--the ankle he had spoken of must have been agony to move. Yet there was nothing to be done save lay cold water to it, and to his burning head, settle him as best she could on a pillow and quilt as he lay, and then sit beside him waiting for Tara to return; for Tara could bring what was wanted. But if Tara was never to return? Kate sat, listening to the heavy breathing, broken by half-delirious moans, and changing the cool cloths, while the stars dipped and the gray of dawn grew to that dominant bubble of the mosque; and, as she sat, a thousand wild schemes to help this man, who had helped her for so long, passed through her brain, filling her with a certain gladness.

Until in the early dawn Tara's voice, calling on her, stole through the door.

It was still so dark that Kate, opening it with the quick cry--"He is here, Tara, he is here safe," did not see the tall figure standing behind the woman's, did not see the menace of either face, did not see Tara's quick thrust of a hand backward as if to check someone behind.

So she never knew that Jim Douglas, helpless, unconscious, had yet stepped once more between her and death; for Tara was on her knees beside the prostrate figure in a second, and Soma, closing the door carefully, salaamed to Kate with a look of relief in his handsome face. This settled the doubtful duty of denouncing the hidden Mlechchas. How could that be done in a house where the master lay sick?

And he lay sick for days and weeks, fighting against sun-fever and inflammation, against the general strain of that month of inaction, which, as Kate found with a pulse of soft pity, had sprinkled the hair about his temples with gray.

"He would die for her," said Tara gloomily, grudgingly, "so she must live, Soma----"

"Nay! 'twas not I----" began her brother, then held his peace, doubtful if the disavowal was to his praise or blame; for duty was a puzzle to most folk in those hot, lingering days of June, when the Ridge and the City skirmished with each other and wondered mutually if anything were gained by it. Yet both Men and Murderers were cheerful, and Major Erlton going to see the hospital after that fifteen hours' fight of the 23d of June, when the centenary of Plassey, a Hindoo fast and a Mohammedan festival, made the sepoys come out to certain victory in full parade uniform, with all their medals on, heard the lad whose girl had been killed at Meerut say in an aggrieved tone, "And the nigger as stuck me 'ad 'er Majesty's scarlet coatee on 'is d----d carcass, and a 'eap of medals she give him a-blazin' on his breast--dash 'is impudence."