I did not say anything about hoping for the best. Fitz and I had left all that nonsense behind us years before. We did our business amidst battle, murder, and sudden death. Perhaps we were callous, perhaps we had only learnt to value the thing at its true worth, and did not set much fear on death.
And then, I must ask you to believe, we fell to talking “shop.” I knew a little more about cholera than did Fitz, and we got quite interested in our conversation. It is, I have found, only in books that men use the last moment to advantage. Death has been my road-fellow all through life, and no man has yet died in my arms saying quite the right thing. Some of them made a joke, others were merely commonplace, as all men really are whether living or dying.
When the time came for me to turn back, Fitz had said nothing fit for post-mortem reproduction. We had talked unmitigated “shop,” except the few odd observations I have set down.
We shook hands, and I turned back at once. As I galloped I looked back, and in the light of the great tropical moon I saw Fitz sitting forward in his saddle as the horse rose to the slope of a hill, galloping away into the night, into the unknown, on his mission of mercy. At his heels rode the Sikh, enormous, silent, soldierly.
During my steady run home I thought of those things concerning my craft which required immediate consideration. Would it be necessary to send down to India for help? Cholera at Capoo might mean cholera everywhere in this new unknown country. What about the women and children? The Wandering Jew was abroad; would he wander in our direction, with the legendary curse following on his heels? Was I destined to meet this dread foe a third time? I admit that the very thought caused a lump to rise in my throat. For I love Thomas Atkins. He is manly and honest according to his lights. It does not hurt me very much to see him with a bullet through his lungs or a sabre cut through the collar-bone down to the same part of his anatomy. But it does hurt me exceedingly to see honest Thomas die between the sheets—the death of any common civilian beggar. Thomas is too good for that.
It was nearly three o'clock in the morning when I rode into the palace square. All round I saw the sentinels, their bayonets gleaming in the moonlight. A man was walking backwards and forwards in the middle of the square by himself. When he heard me he came towards me. At first I thought that it was my servant waiting to take the horse, but a moment later I recognized Charlie Thurkow—recognized him by his fair hair, for he was hatless. At the same time my syce roused himself from slumber in the shadow of an arch, and ran forward to my stirrup.
“Come to the hospital!” said Thurkow, the moment I alighted. His voice was dull and unnatural. I once heard a man speak in the same voice while collecting his men for a rush which meant certain death. The man was duly killed, and I think he was trembling with fear when he ran to his death.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
We walked—almost ran—to the hospital, a long low building in the palace compound. Charlie Thurkow led the way to a ward which we had never used—a ward I had set apart for infectious cases. A man was dozing in a long chair in the open window. As we entered he rose hastily and brought a lamp. We bent over a bed—the only one occupied. The occupant was a man I did not know. He looked like a Goorkha, and he was dying. In a few moments I knew all that there was to know. I knew that the Wandering Jew had passed our way.