I spoke now for the first time, and my voice sounded feeble, I felt, compared to his.
“Yes, I know you again, Ny Deen.”
His eyes flashed, and his face lit up strangely as he exclaimed—
“Yes; Ny Deen, the syce, beaten, kicked, trampled upon; Ny Deen, the dog—the—”
He paused for a moment or two, and then with an emphasis that would have made the term of reproach sound absurd, but for the fierce revengeful look in his countenance, he added—
“Nigger!”
There was an intensity of scorn in his utterance of the word that was tragic; and as I lay back there on my cushion I read in it the fierce turning at last of the trampled worm—the worm as represented by the venomous serpent of the conquered land, and I knew from my own experience what endless cases there were of patient, humbled, and crushed-down men, no higher in position than slaves, ill-used, and treated with contempt by my insolent, overbearing countrymen of that self-assertive class who cannot hold power without turning it to abuse.
The silence in the tent as my captor knelt by me was intense, and I could hear his hard breathing, and see how he was striving to master the fierce emotion in his breast. His eyes were mostly fixed on me with a savage scowl, and for a moment or so I fancied that he must have saved my life so as to take it himself in some way which would add torture and throw dismay amongst the English ranks.
But I was ready to smile at my own vanity as I thought to myself of what a little consequence the life of a young artillery subaltern would be in the great revolt now in progress.
Then I felt a strong desire to speak, to make some great utterance such as would impress him and raise me in his estimation sufficiently to make him treat me with the respect due to an English officer; but no such utterance would come. I felt that I was only a poor, weak, wounded lad, lying there at the mercy of this fierce rajah, and when at last my lips parted, as if forced to say something in answer to his searching gaze, I writhed within myself and felt ashamed of the contemptible words. For his utterance of that term of contumely so liberally used toward one of a race of people who had been for countless generations great chiefs in their own land, and whose cities were centres of a civilisation, barbaric, perhaps, but whose products we were only too glad to welcome in England.