"So they were at Loodiana the day after you arrived? Then someone must have sent off word of the object of your mission as soon as you started. We must find out these traitors, Nand Chund, and make an end of them. However, we will talk that over afterwards."
By this time the horses had been led out from the thicket. The colonel watched Percy critically as he mounted, and nodded approvingly as he sprang into the saddle.
"That is right, lad; I see that you are at home on a horse. We shall make a Sikh of you before long. How have you got on with him, Nand Chund? You must have been quite in a fog, Percy, as to what was going on. Your tongue must have had quite a holiday since you left Loodiana."
"The young sahib speaks Punjaubi very fairly, colonel, and we had no difficulty in understanding each other."
"Speaks Punjaubi!" the colonel repeated. "You must be dreaming, Nand Chund. How can the boy have learned the language. I suppose you mean Hindustani—though how he could have picked that up in an English school is more than I can understand. There was no such thing heard of when I was a boy."
"It is Punjaubi he speaks, colonel, though he told me he could also make himself understood in Hindustani," the officer said in the native language.
"Nand Chund tells me that you can speak Punjaubi, Percy, but in truth I can hardly believe him."
"I don't speak it very well yet, uncle, but I can get on with it. I worked five or six hours a day on the voyage out with a Punjaubi servant of Mr. Fullarton. I thought it would be of great use for me to know something of the language when I arrived. As to the Hindustani, I have had a master at school twice a week for more than a year before I sailed."
"I am delighted, Percy. You must have worked hard indeed to speak as fluently as you do, and it does you tremendous credit. I own I should never have thought of spending my time on board ship learning a language. You do take after your father more than me, after all; it is just the sort of thing he would have done. Well, I am pleased, boy,—very pleased. Mr. Fullarton spoke in very favourable terms about you when he wrote. I wondered then how he should know anything about a boy of your age who chanced to be a fellow-passenger, but thought it was merely a bit of civility on his part, and meant nothing, I suppose he heard from his servant that you were working up the language with him, and so came to take an interest in you. Perhaps you sat near him at table?"
"No, uncle; I took my meals with the second and third officers and the midshipmen. The captain offered to put me there; it was so much nicer than going among a lot of grown-up people, and of course it gave me a great deal more time for work. But towards the end of the voyage I came to know most of the passengers. Mr. Fullarton was the first to be kind to me. He used very often to come forward to where I was working with Ram Singh—that was the name of his servant,—and he would explain things about the grammar that I could not understand and Ram Singh could not tell me, for of course he didn't know anything about grammar."