"But we want to get over to the camp as quickly as we can," said Ramanund, interrupting an impatient retort of Roshan Khân's, with an aside to the effect that they had better not alienate their only hope. The river was lower than he had expected, or he would never have suggested crossing in the boat, as quicker than the bridge; yet there was not time to go back.
Am-ma smiled cunningly. "None will get quicker than he can, my masters; that much is certain." Being pleased with his own wit, he laughed, and kicking up his heels, ducked his head, to come up again a few yards nearer in shallower water, where he could stand and salaam.
"The noble people," he said gravely, "must surely follow the stream if they go in company; but if they will quit comfort, and wade, carrying their boat here and there, I, Am-ma, will show them. But it is annoyance. Without going with the stream there is always annoyance."
"It is better than going back or sticking still, anyhow!" remarked Roshan Khân to his companion; adding in Hindustani--"Then come quick--there is room for thee and thy net, and we will pay thee."
Am-ma shook his head. "There is weight enough for difficulties without me, my masters; and here or there is one to a fisher." So saying, he closed his net with one dexterous twist, slipped his arms through it so that it hung behind his back, and struck across the shallows.
"Yonder is our aim," he said briefly, pointing to a blue thread of smoke rising from the water's edge a good way down stream. "They burn a dead man there to-day; it is ever a good guide to the living."
"'Twill be the Brahmin lad the Huzoors killed by mistake with their Dee-puk-râg. Didst hear the tale?" asked Ramanund. Why, he would have been puzzled to tell, since he had no definite desire to foster ill-feeling or fear; but it had been the talk of the town till those small hours which end gossip, even in India, and the talk had confirmed the theory, which so many of his kind hold firmly, if vaguely, that the mass of the people feel the English rule to be unjust.
But Am-ma was not of the people. He was of the six million and odd barbarians. He turned, showing his broad white teeth in a grin. "Ay! 'Twas well done. Now, as in old days, folk will know who is true leader." There was no doubt, no fear in his mind. Had not his tribe always, of old, chosen as its chief and God the man who could hold a torch in each hand at arms' length, one lighted, the other unlit, and bid the flame pass from one to the other seven times? And as for a man's life, was it not always expedient that one should die for the people upon occasions?
Ramanund frowned; perhaps because Am-ma concluded by ordering the crew out of the boat, and the water was cold. It could scarcely have been anything else which brought annoyance, since he, like most of his kind, prided himself on being truly a British subject.
So, paddling and pushing, wading, and even carrying, they crossed from shallow to shallow, from sand-bank to sand-bank, led by Am-ma, swimming and diving like a duck, or walking on ahead unconcernedly, his eyes fixed in keen-sighted approval on that group close to the water's edge, towards which he steered.