Rujub, the Juggler

by G. A. Henty

“But they were only your instruments, Mr. Bathurst; they had no interest in saving me. You had bought their services at the risk of your life, and in saving me they were paying that debt to you.”

At three o'clock they prepared for the start. Bathurst had exchanged the warder's dress for one of a peasant, which they had brought with them. The woods were of no great width, and Rujub said they had better follow the road now.

“No one will suspect us of being anything but what we seem,” he said. “Should we meet any peasants, their talk will be with you and me. They will ask no questions about the women; but if there is a woman among them, and she speaks, Rabda will answer her.”

For hours they had heard dull sounds in the air, which Bathurst had recognized at once as distant artillery, showing that the fight was going on near Dong.

“The Sepoys are making a stout resistance, or the firing would not last so long,” he said to Rujub, as they walked through the wood towards the road.

“They have two positions to defend, sahib. The Nana's men will fight first at a strong village two miles beyond Dong; if they are beaten there, they will fight again at the bridge I told you of.”

“That would partly account for it; but the Sepoys must be fighting much better than they did at Futtehpore, for there, as you said, the white troops swept the Sepoys before them.”

When they reached the edge of the wood Bathurst said, “I will see that the road is clear before we go out. If anyone saw us issuing out of the wood they might wonder what we had been after.”

He went to the edge of the bushes and looked down the long straight road. There was only a solitary figure in sight. It seemed to be an old man walking lame with a stick. Bathurst was about to turn and tell the others to come out, when he saw the man stop suddenly, turn round to look back along the road, stand with his head bent as if listening, then run across the road with much more agility than he had before seemed to possess, and plunge in among the trees.

“Wait,” he said to those behind him, “something is going on. A peasant I saw in the road has suddenly dived into the wood as if he was afraid of being pursued. Ah!” he exclaimed a minute later, “there is a party of horsemen coming along at a gallop—get farther back into the wood.”