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

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

And now he was dreaming that he was inside them also, sword in hand.

There seemed some chance of it indeed, men were saying to each other, as they looked after John Nicholson's tall figure as it wandered into every post and picket; asking brief questions, pleased with brief replies. Every now and again pausing, as it were, to come out of his absorption and take a sudden, keen interest in something beyond the great question. As when, passing the tents of the only lady in camp, he saw Sonny, who had been made over to her till he could be sent back to his mother, who had escaped to Meerut, during which brief time he was the plaything of a parcel of subalterns who delighted in him, tinsel cap, anklets, and all. Major Erlton had at first rather monopolized the child, trying to find out something definite from him; but as he insisted that "Miffis Erlton lived up in the 'ky wif a man wif a gween face, and a white face, and a lot of fwowers, and a bit of tring," and spoke familiarly of Tiddu, and Tara, and Soma, without being able to say who they were, the Major had given it up as a bad job, and gone back to the walls. So the subalterns had the child to themselves, and were playing pranks with him as the General passed by.

"Fine little fellow!" he said suddenly. "I like to see children's legs and arms. Up in Bunnoo the babies were just like that young monkey. Real corn-color. I got quite smitten with them and sent for a lot of toys from Lahore. Only I had to bar Lawrence from peg-tops, for I knew I should have got peg-topping with the boys, and that would have been fatal to my dignity as D. C. That is the worst of high estates. You daren't make friends, and you have to make enemies."

The smile which had made him look years younger faded, and he was back in the great problem of his life: how to keep pace with his yoke-fellows, how to scorn consequences and steer straight to independent action, without spoiling himself by setting his seniors and superiors in arms against him. He had never solved it yet. His career had been one long race with the curb on. A year before he had thrown up the game in disgust, and begged to be transferred from the Punjab while he could go with honor, and even his triumphant march Delhi-ward--in which he found disaffection, disobedience, and doubt, and left fear, trembling, and peace--had been marred by much rebuking. So that once, nothing but the inner sense that pin-points ought not to let out the heart's blood, kept him at his post; and but two days before, on the very eve of that hundred-and-twenty mile rush to Delhi, he had written claiming definitely the right of an officer in his position to quarrel with anybody's opinion, and asserting his duty of speaking out, no matter at what risk of giving offense.

And now, a man years younger than those in nominal command,--he was but six-and-thirty,--and holding views diametrically opposed to theirs, he had been sent here, virtually, to take Delhi because those others could not. No wonder, then, that the question how to avoid collision puzzled him. Not because he knew that his appointment was in itself an offense, that some people affected to speak of him still as Mr. Nicholson--that being his real rank; but because he knew in his heart of hearts that at any moment he might do something appalling. Move troops under someone else's command, without a reference, as he had done before, during his career! Then, naturally, there must be ructions. He had a smile for the thought himself. Still, for the present, concord was assured; since until his column arrived, the repose of the lion crouching for a spring was manifestly the only policy; though it might be necessary to wag the tail a bit--to do more than merely forbid sorties and buglings. The fools, for instance, who harrassed the Metcalfe House picket might be shown their mistake and made to understand that, if the Ridge called "time!" for a little decent rest before the final round, it meant to have it. So he passed on his errand to inculcate Headquarters with his decision, leaving Sonny playing with the boys.

Meanwhile one of the garrison, at least, had found the benefit of his keen judgment. Herbert Erlton had passed from dreams of conflict to the real rest of unconscious sleep, oblivious of everything, even those rose-red walls.

But within them another man, haggard and anxious as he had been, was still allowing himself none in his search for Kate Erlton. Tara, as much at a loss as he, helping him; for though at first she had been relieved at the idea of the mem's disappearance, she had soon realized that the master ran more risk than ever in his reckless determination to find some trace of the missing woman. And Tiddu, who had returned, helped also. The mem, he said, must have found friends; must be alive. Such a piece of gossip as the discovery and death of an English woman could not have been kept from the Thunbi Bazaar. Then those who had passed from the roof had been calm enough to hasp the door behind them; that did not look like violence. If the Huzoor would only be patient and wait, something would turn up. There were other kindly folk in the city besides himself! But, in the meantime, he would do well to allow Soma to slip into the sulky indifference he seemed to prefer, and take no notice of it. It only meant that he, and half the good soldiers in Delhi, were mad with themselves for having chosen the losing side. For with Nikalseyn on the Ridge, what chance had Delhi?

This was rather an exaggerated picture; still it was a fairly faithful presentment of the inward thoughts of many, who, long before this, had begun to ask themselves what the devil they were doing in that galley? Yet there they were, and there they must fight. Soma, however, was doubtful even of that. His heart positively ached as he listened to the tales told in the very heart of Delhi of the man whom other men worshiped--the man who took forts single-handed, and said that, given the powers of a provost-marshal, he would control a disobedient army in two days! The man who yoked bribe-taking tahseeldars into the village well-wheel to draw water for the robbed ryots, and set women of loose virtue, who came into his camp, to cool in muddy tanks. The man who flung every law-book on his office table at his clerks' heads, and then--with a kindly apologetic smile--paused while they replaced them for future use. The man who gave toys to children, and remorselessly hung two abettors of a vile murder, when he could not lay hands on the principal. The man, finally, who flogged those who worshiped him into promising adoration for the future to a very ordinary mortal of his acquaintance! Briefly the hero, the demi-god, who perhaps was neither, but, as Tiddu declared, had simply the greatest gift of all--the gift of making men what he wished them to be. Either way it was gall and wormwood to Soma--hero-worshiper by birth--that his side should have no such colossal figure to follow. So, sulky and sore, he held aloof from both sides, doing his bounden duty to both, and no more. Keeping guards when his fellows took bribes to fight, and agreeing with Tiddu, that since some other besides themselves knew of the roof, it was safer for the master to lock it up, and live for a time elsewhere.

So, all unwittingly, the only chance of finding Kate was lost. For what had happened was briefly this: Five minutes after Jim Douglas had left her, Prince Abool-Bukr, who had kept this renseignement--given him by a Bunjârah, who had promised to be in waiting and was not--to the last, because it was close to the haven where he would be, had come roystering up the stairs followed by his unwilling retainers, suggesting that the Most Illustrious had really better desist from violating seclusion since they were all black and blue already. But, from sheer devilry and desire to outrage the quarter, which by its complaints had already brought him into trouble, the Prince had begun battering at the door. Kate, running to bar it more securely, saw that the hasp, carelessly hitched over the staple, was slipping--had slipped; and had barely time to dash into the inner roof ere the Prince, unexpectant of the sudden giving way, tumbled headlong into the outer one. The fall gave her an instant more, but made him angry; and the end would have been certain, if Kate, seeing the new-made gap in the wall before her, had not availed herself of it. There was a roof not far below she knew; the débris would be on a slope perhaps--the blue-eyed boy had escaped by the roofs. All this flashed through her, as by the aid of a stool, which she kicked over in her scramble, she gained the top of the gap and peered over. The next instant she had dropped herself down some four feet, finding a precarious foothold on a sliding slope of rubble, and still clinging to the wall with her hands. If no one looked over, she thought breathlessly, she was safe! And no one did. The general air of decent privacy alarmed the retainers into remembering that two of their number had found death their reward for their master's last escapade in that quarter; so, after one glance round, they swore the place was empty, and dragged him off, feebly protesting that it was his last chance, and he had not bagged a single Christian.

Kate heard the door closed, heard the voices retreat downstairs, and then set herself to get back over the gap. It did not seem a difficult task. The slope on which she hung gave fair foothold, and by getting a good grip on the brickwork, and perhaps displacing a brick or two in the crack lower down, as a step, she ought to get up easily. It was lucky the crack was there, she thought. In one way, not in another, for, as in her effort she necessarily threw all her weight on the wall, another bit of it gave way, she fell backward, and so, half covered with bricks and mud, rolled to the roof below, which was luckily not more than eight or nine feet down. It was far enough, however, for the fall to have killed her; but, though she lay quite unconscious, she was not dead, only stunned, shaken, confused, unable absolutely to think. It was almost dawn, indeed, before she realized that her only chance of getting up again was in calling for help, and by that time the door of the roof above had been locked, and there was no one to hear her. The few square yards of roof on to which she had rolled belonged to one of those box-like buildings, half-turrets, half-summer houses, which natives build here, there, and everywhere at all sorts of elevations, until the view of a town from a topmost roof resembles nothing so much as the piles of luggage awaiting the tidal train at Victoria.