That decided her. She had been counting costs as she listened. An hour, say, back to Herrnhut. Even if anyone were there, which was uncertain, half an hour at least to start a messenger. Then the boat might be at the other side of the river. Then all those miles, on a rough road at night!
"When shall we get to Eshwara?" she asked.
"At the turn of the night and day if the river is kind," said Am-ma, but he looked doubtfully into a copper tint that remained in the sky, though the sun must have set behind the mountains. It had a curious effect, that copper-coloured dome above the rim of almost black hills, with the river, dark, mysterious, already beginning to slide towards the narrowing ravine. It did not strike her that she herself, adrift on that river in what was to be her wedding dress, with prehistoric, aboriginal Am-ma as pilot to her and a lumber raft, would have had a still more curious effect to a spectator's eyes. But there were none, and it was already almost dark.
"Am-ma," she said, "I will give you fifty rupees, and keep my hand on the son's head, if you will leave the raft here, and take me as quick as you can to Eshwara--to the little steps below the fort--fifty whole rupees!"
He shook his head and grinned, partly at his own superlative honesty. "We should not go so fast, Huzoor, now the slide is near," he said; "for, see you, the raft is the wood-sahib's new shape. It is a good shape; it came down the rapids above the valley like a boat, faster than this, when the paddle cannot be used. It will take us with it. I will fasten this behind, and steer. Then in the slacker water when the paddle is possible, we will leave it; if the Miss-sahiba is in a hurry. But there is none. The Huzoors are Light-bringers." He had already paddled alongside the raft,--a boat-shaped mass of huge logs rising towards the back--and, leaping to it, came back, after a moment, with the tow-rope.
"It shall do the work," he said, with another grin, as he fastened the air-buoyed bed to a ring placed for the purpose in one of the logs. Then he clucked emphatically. "Lo! who would grudge men's brains to the Masters when they are clever as the Gods themselves? The Miss will see how fast this goes. We shall be at Eshwara before the night turns to day."
Something in his tone warned her that the recurrence of the phrase was not pure chance.
"That is when the prisoners were to escape?" she said quickly.
He did not affirm or deny it. "So many things happen in the fight of Dawn," he said affably. That was all; but she thought rapidly. The rising, or whatever the conspiracy aimed at, could scarcely have happened just after they left Eshwara the night before. In that case the news must have followed them on the road. Therefore, if it was to happen at all, if this were not all talk--and Father Ninian's words came to make her doubt its being so--it would happen in a few hours. So she must be there in time to give warning.
As she thought this, a sudden strain at the tow-rope, a quick dip of the boat-shaped prow of the raft, a louder swish of the water as it curved out from its rising stern, told her she was adrift, indeed, on the way to Eshwara! It seemed almost more incredible than what had gone before. But there was nothing to be ashamed of here. It was the only possible thing to do under the circumstances. Her journey might prove unnecessary, but it might not; and supposing anything should really happen--to--to anybody--she would never be able to forgive herself if, knowing this chance of danger, she had not done her best to avert it.