“Mine,” I said half wonderingly, and then I grasped what it meant. “Did that syce, Lieutenant Barton’s man, bring this just now?”
“Yes, sahib. Ny Deen.”
“That will do,” I said; and I lay back thinking of the morning when I saw the man come out of Barton’s quarters bleeding, and bound up the cut.
“A set of black scoundrels, are they,” I said to myself. “Well, some of them have feeling, and a way of showing their gratitude.”
I took up and smelt the fragrant white blossoms thoughtfully; and then I remember saying to myself, for those events were stamped pretty deeply in my memory—
“An Englishman would never have dreamed of sending flowers like that. I dare say it means something, if one only knew.”
A few days after, when I had almost forgotten the incident, save that I always politely returned Ny Deen’s salute when I passed him, I was returning to my quarters one evening, when—not at all an uncommon thing—I heard loud voices in front, and saw that three of our men were going unsteadily along, evidently after too long a stay at one of the wretched places where they were supplied with the poisonous arrack which was answerable for the miserable death of so many British soldiers. One of the men in particular was in that noisy, excited state when reason seems to have run riot, and folly and madness have been taken for companions.
The man’s two companions were greatly under the influence of drink, but they had sense enough left to try and control their drunken friend; and as I kept back unseen in the darkness, I saw them check the fellow when an insane desire had come upon him to kick and hammer at the officers’ quarters; and later on they engaged in a struggle, when he swore that he would go and let loose every horse in the troop.
All this made me so indignant with the idiot that I was several times on the point of interfering, but I thought that nature would punish the fellow enough the next day, and kept back, waiting to see the others get him to his quarters.
But, in spite of my determination, I found myself unexpectedly dragged into the affair; for, just as they were near Lieutenant Barton’s quarters, two of the syces’ wives came by, and with a shout the man escaped from his comrades’ grasp, made a rush at the two frightened women, and caught one of them in his arms.