So, through the sun-bright, sun-dried air, while George Dillon walked back to his fifteen hundred malefactors, the little trail of spear-points and bayonets, men and horses, drifted at a foot-pace across the frail bridge towards the town; drifted unsteadily, the yielding boats swaying, the wooden girders giving and groaning over their burden. Seen so, with but a plank between it and the milky water creased by the faint current, there was something unreal in the gay troop of colour and glitter making its way to the quaint, storeyed town, ablaze in the sunlight, which turned each golden temple-spike to a star. A cool breeze fluttered the lance-pennants, and brought that faint film of white to horse and man, warm flesh, and cold steel.
And far away on that pale peak, a little white cloud had rested, hiding the "Cradle of the Gods."
"There must be fish here," remarked Lance dogmatically. "I'll get out my rods to-morrow and try for a 'mahseer.'" And the earnestness of his face, as he lifted his eyes skyward to watch a couple of cormorants, would have suited a knight-errant of old on the quest of the Holy Grail.
"It won't be half bad, I expect--for a time, at any-rate," assented Vincent Dering, still with that content upon his face. "We will get up some fun while the camp is here, of course; and after that--" he paused, and the content became greater--"we'll manage for the month or so we have to stop. At least I shall."
His voice was soft. He might have been another knight-errant of old, riding across to the enchanted castle of his beloved.
"I beg pardon, sir," said a voice behind him; a voice with a strong native accent, yet with a curiously English phrasing in it, "but by dismounting here you will reach the Fort in a few minutes on foot. The road is longer."
Captain Dering turned, as if surprised, to the speaker, a native officer who sat his horse at the salute; then smiled, and with a clatter of accoutrements slipped to the ground.
"Come along, Carlyon. I was forgetting that Roshan Khân is up to the ropes here. You belong to Eshwara, don't you, risaldar sahib?"
The man to whom he spoke had slipped from his saddle also, and stood, smart as uniform could make him, still as discipline could hold him. He was a good-looking young Mahomedan of about thirty, curiously English in his movements, curiously native in his exaggeration of martial airs.
"Huzoor!" he assented. "We are connected with the late Nawab's house."