Rujub, the Juggler

by G. A. Henty

“It will be light in another hour,” he said to himself, and he again sat down. Suddenly he started. Had someone spoken, or had he fancied it?

“Wait till I come.”

He seemed to hear the words plainly, just as he had heard Rujub's summons before.

“That's it; it is Rujub. How is it that he can make me hear in this way? I am sure it was his voice. Anyhow, I will wait. It shows he is thinking of me, and I am sure he will help me. I know well enough I could do nothing by myself.”

Bathurst assumed with unquestioning faith that Isobel Hannay was alive. He had no reason for his confidence. That first shower of grape might have killed her as it killed others, but he would not admit the doubt in his mind. Wilson's description of what had happened while he was insensible was one of the grounds of this confidence.

He had heard women scream. Mrs. Hunter and her daughter were the only other women in the boat. Isobel would not have screamed had those muskets been pointed at her, nor did he think the others would have done so. They screamed when they saw the natives about to murder those who were with them. The three women were sitting together, and if one had fallen by the grape shot all would probably have been killed. He felt confident, therefore, that she had escaped; he believed he would have known it had she been killed.

“If I can be influenced by this juggler, surely I should have felt it had Isobel died,” he argued, and was satisfied that she was still alive.

What, however, more than anything else gave him hope was the picture on the smoke. “Everything else has come true,” he said to himself; “why should not that? Wilson spoke of the Doctor as dead. I will not believe it; for if he is dead, the picture is false. Why should that thing of all others have been shown to me unless it had been true? What seemed impossible to me—that I should be fighting like a brave man—has been verified. Why should not this? I should have laughed at such superstition six months ago; now I cling to it as my one ground for hope. Well, I will wait if I have to stay here until tomorrow night.”

Noiselessly he moved about in the little wood, going to the edge and looking out, pacing to and fro with quick steps, his face set in a frown, occasionally muttering to himself. He was in a fever of impatience. He longed to be doing something, even if that something led to his detention and death. He said to himself that he should not care so that Isobel Hannay did but know that he had died in trying to rescue her.

The sun rose, and he saw the peasants in the fields, and caught the note of a bugle sounding from the lines at Cawnpore. At last—it had seemed to him an age, but the sun had been up only an hour—he saw a figure coming along the river bank. As it approached he told himself that it was the juggler; if so, he had laid aside the garments in which he last saw him, and was now attired as when they first met. When he saw him turn off from the river bank and advance straight towards the wood, he had no doubt that it was the man he expected.