The Air Patrol: A Story of the North-west Frontier

by Herbert Strang

The party had been marching for about an hour when they were met by three other Kalmucks, tramping wearily up the track on foot. Lawrence recognized them as miners. They had either not been furnished with horses by the advanced guard beyond the mine, or had had their steeds shot under them during the scamper in the darkness. Nurla Bai gave these hungry men a portion of the provisions that were still left, and they turned about and marched with the rest down-stream. The journey was continued until the growing darkness rendered further advance impossible. Mooring the raft to a tree on the bank, the men prepared to camp for the night, on a moss-covered space just above. Lawrence was lifted from the horse; his feet were again tied; and he was laid in the centre of the encampment. The horses were tethered in a copse hard by, and when a fire had been lighted a few yards northward of the bivouac, the men disposed themselves in a wide circle about their prisoner, and devoted themselves to the remnants of the provisions. No one offered Lawrence a share--a lack of courtesy which did not trouble him. No one spoke to him; but there was no charm in their conversation. They scarcely even looked at him; he suffered nothing from their neglect. He wished they would not eat so noisily; and when, having gobbled the last scraps of the food intended for Major Endicott and his party, they sat with their knees up, and chattered across him in their rasping voices, he felt that no one could be said to have a complete experience of the minor troubles of life who had not been an enforced companion of Kalmucks.

A great deal of what they said was incomprehensible to him, but he caught a phrase now and then that interested him in spite of himself. One concerned his uncle. Nurla Bai was apparently relating, for the benefit of the strangers from the north, the doughty deeds he had recently performed. Among them he ranked the shooting of the Englishman who had been his employer. From what he said, Lawrence gathered that the disappearance of Mr. Appleton was as great a disappointment to the miners as to himself. They joked about it, however; Nurla Bai became facetious as he described the consternation of the fishes as they beheld the body of an Englishman, strange monster, sinking into their midst. It was fortunate that Lawrence did not understand the idiomatic beastliness with which the man depicted the gruesome feast then celebrated on the stony bottom of the river.

Another flight of the Kalmuck's fancy afforded him much amusement. Nurla Bai gave rein to his eloquence in picturing the scenes that Delhi was soon to witness: Ubacha Khan sitting in state on the ancient throne of the Moguls, withering with his frown the throng of cowed and shivering Englishmen who grovelled at his feet, and beslobbered them with tears as they pleaded vainly for mercy. Lawrence heard for the first time of the exquisite tortures which Mongol ingenuity could devise for helpless prisoners; and while he was amused at the picture conjured up of British officers suing a new Mogul emperor for pardon, he was horrified at the mere imagination of the cruelties which these wretches discussed with such gloating inhumanity.

Lying on his back, he could see half the ring of his captors, their squat forms silhouetted against the glow of the camp-fire, their yellow faces blanched by the moonlight now flooding the valley. He raised his eyes to the hills beyond, watching the magical play of the silvery radiance upon the peaks and promontories, making the snow sparkle; searching, as it were, the black crannies and caverns. But he soon found his interest in this wonderful illumination yield to his sense of cold. This region was one of extremes of temperature: the torrid heat of day being succeeded by Arctic cold at night. The Kalmucks did not appear conscious of it; they were inured to the climate; but to Lawrence, compelled to lie motionless, the chilliness became painful, and the warm glow of the camp-fire mocked him tantalizingly.

He was to prove, this night, the contrariness of fate. Twice before, when he had wished above all things to keep awake, drowsiness had overcome him; now, when he would have given anything for the oblivion of sleep, physical discomfort and the burden of his thoughts banished sleep from his eyes. The Kalmucks became less talkative as the night wore on; presently their voices ceased altogether, and they slept. Lawrence preferred their snores to their conversation; they formed a descant to the unvarying ground bass of the river droning below. Every now and then the cry of a night-bird in the mountains added its shrill treble to the harmony.

The moon sank behind the crest of the hills; black darkness stole over the valley; and the untended watch-fire sank lower and lower, until its glow was too faint even to show up the slumbering forms of the Kalmucks. Lawrence might have wondered that they had not set a watch but for his knowledge that they were quite unsuspicious of the enemy higher up the stream, and that his bonds were only too firm. His thoughts flitted to Major Endicott and his little band; where were they now? How did they regard his failure to return to them? Had they, too, encamped for the night? Was there the least possibility that the hours spent in stalking him and in constructing the raft would have given them time to draw so near that with morning light they would come upon the encampment, or overtake the Kalmucks during the ensuing day? And what was to be the final issue of all these strange events? Would he, or Bob, ever come out of the entanglement in which they had been so suddenly involved?

His anxious meditation was broken short by a slight sound behind him. He turned his head--it was the only part of his body that he could move--and stretched his ear towards the spot whence the sound had seemed to come. Perhaps it was one of the Kalmucks stirring in his sleep--rising, possibly, to cast fuel upon the dying fire. He could see nothing. Twisting his neck until it ached, he tried to pierce the blackness, listening keenly for a repetition of the sound. He heard only the regular snores of the men sleeping nine or ten feet away.

But there seemed to be something moving between him and them--a something darker than the night itself, creeping along the ground. It could not be a wild animal; no ibex, nor even a bear unless pressed by hunger, would have come within the scent of him; there were no tigers or leopards in these regions; could it be a man?--one of his own people? Tingling with a flush of hope, he lay perfectly still, fearful lest even the beating of his heart should betray his excitement to the enemy.

There was a rustling movement near him; it seemed to come nearer; then he shuddered involuntarily as he felt something touch him. It flashed upon him that one of the Kalmucks was going to murder him, and for a moment he had to exercise stern control over his nerves to repress a cry. A cold shiver trickled down his back, and he broke out in a clammy sweat as he felt a rough hand pass over him--over his face, aside to his arms, down to his feet. He durst not utter a sound, hope and fear jostling in his brain.

The hand left him. There was a moment of suspense. Then in his ear breathed a whisper.