I certainly did not feel disposed to enlighten him, but by watching his troubled face, and thinking of how valuable, if he had succeeded in well training his men, a troop of horse artillery would be, and how different our position would have been during that encounter if he had had half a dozen six-pounders well-served.
“But he has no guns,” I ended by saying to myself; “and we—I mean our people—have, and I cannot believe in our—I mean their—being swept away, so long as they hold such a supremacy as the guns afford to them.”
I was stopped short by the rajah re-buckling his sword-belt, and a minute later he was bending over me.
“Make haste,” he said in Hindustani. “I shall not be at peace till you are well once more.”
He pressed my hand warmly, and bade me order anything I wished, for I was in my own tent, and then, after smiling at me, and telling me to grow strong, he strode to the purdah, drew it aside, turned to look back, and then the curtain fell between us, and I was alone once more.
I lay listening to the stamping and plunging of horses, and in imagination could picture the whole scene with the restless, excitable animals, shrinking from being backed, and pretending to bite, but calming down the moment they felt a strong hand at the bit.
Then came an order, followed by the jingling of weapons and the snorting of the horses and their heavy trampling upon the soft earth, the sound gradually growing fainter, till it was like a distant murmur, one which had the effect of sending me, tired as I was, off into a heavy sleep.