His words seemed to cut through me with an agonising pain, as I mentally repeated his words—wives and daughters; and then I felt giddy, and as if I should fall from the howdah. “Wives and daughters!” I said aloud, and then, with a horrible feeling of despair, I pictured trouble at Nussoor, where my father’s regiment was stationed, and thought of my mother and sister face to face with the horrors of a revolt.
“Hold up, Vincent,” said Brace, in a sharp whisper. “What’s the matter? Feel the sun too much? Take some water, lad. I want your help. You must not break down.”
“No, no,” I said quickly; “I’m better now.”
“That’s right! We must get back and learn the full extent of the mischief. Yon poor fellow was excited, and he may have exaggerated the affair. He is as bad as can be, and perhaps he imagines that the rest were the same. Cheer up, lad! Lacey is too clever and experienced an officer to have been cut up like that. I dare say we shall find him looking out for us anxiously. Perhaps we shall meet an escort sent to meet us.”
Just then the rajah’s elephant came abreast, and its master reached out his hand with refreshments, which Brace declined, but the next moment took eagerly.
“Thank you,” he said quickly. “Eat, drink, Vincent,” he half whispered; “we shall want all our strength.”
“And you?” I said.
“Oh, I shall do the same,” he said bitterly; and then he held out his hand, and whispered softly, “We have been very poor friends lately, my lad, but shake hands now, for perhaps we are very near the end of life’s journey.”
“Brace,” I gasped as I snatched at his hand and gripped it hard.
“I hope not, for your sake, boy,” he said in a low voice; “for you have your young life before you. I hope not for my own. I may be very useful now. There may be a great deal to do, and if there is, my lad,” he said, smiling, “I am going to try not to be such a coward as to shrink from that duty; though you thought me one, because I would not fight the man who, perhaps, has had much to do with the rising.”