Barclay of the Guides

by Herbert Strang

"Shall it be a knife, holy one?" asked one of the men.

"Nay, nay," said another, "a knife means blood on the floor. And how could we carry him from the lines? Within a little the gun will signal for 'lights out,' and the gates will be closed. We could not carry a dead man without being seen by the sentry. 'Tis easier to carry a man alive than dead."

"But we cannot keep him here," said the third. "'Tis Ahmed, the child who puts his elders to shame at man's work, and licks the boots of the sahibs. Search will be made for him; the braggart Sherdil, who shares his hut, will raise a cry when he is missed. This is evil work: he will betray us."

"Listen to me," said the fakir. "When the gun fires I go. But I will remain without, at the foot of the wall. When the night is far spent, do you lift him and throw him over the wall. Then will I take him and cast him into the river, and none will know."

"But the sentry!" said one of the men.

"Bah! has he eyes all round? The night is dark; none will see. Brothers, he is a kafir; he is a Feringhi who has come among you to learn your secrets and betray you. He shall die. So may all perish that stand in the way of the faithful."

And then Ahmed knew that the fakir was in very truth his enemy, Minghal. The voice, the glance of hate, the knowledge that he was an Englishman—all proved that his first suspicion was just. At the fakir's words one of the men spat upon him; then he was cast to the floor behind a charpoy that lay on one side of the entrance. Another charpoy was on the opposite side. It was near this that the conspirators had been squatting. The charpoy behind which he had been flung concealed him from the view of any one who should enter the doorway, and one of the men now placed the little lamp on the floor near the end of the charpoy, so that a shadow was cast on the place where Ahmed lay.

His hands and feet being tied, and his mouth gagged, the men felt free to listen to the fakir as he told them their prisoner's history. Ahmed felt that that history would soon come to an end. Even if a friend should enter the hut, he was so well concealed that he might escape observation. He had no means of giving an alarm; he saw no way of escape: and when the lights were out and the fort was in darkness, it would be no difficult matter for the men to do as the fakir had suggested. And should the sound of his fall from the wall attract the notice of a sentry, and bring any one to the spot, he knew that Minghal would certainly dispatch him even though he should himself be seized. A knife-thrust would take but the fraction of a second; and Minghal was such an adept in cunning that he might make good his escape.

And so he lay helpless while his captors planned how they would lower him over the wall by a rope, so that no sound of falling should catch the sentry's ear. They agreed that they ran a risk; but there was greater risk in any other course. To dispose of him was imperative, or they themselves were doomed. The safest time would be two hours after "lights out," when the sentries had been changed; it would not be many minutes before the signal gun was fired.

Ahmed tried again and again to think of some way of escaping the impending doom. If only he could attract the attention of some of his friends in the corps, all might be well. He longed that Sherdil, or Dilawur, or Rasul, all good friends of his, might be brought by some lucky chance into the hut. There was a possibility that he might then raise himself above the charpoy and be seen. With all his heart he hoped that the men would not extinguish the lamp before the signal was given, and he felt that if no help should come while it still burned he was lost indeed.