Heg. 1035 (1626).—Mohabet was accused of treason, and summoned before the Emperor. He obeyed, was grossly insulted, surprised Jehangire in his tent, made him prisoner, and carried him off to his own camp. The Vizier attempted a rescue, but was defeated with great slaughter. Mohabet resigned his power, was obliged to fly, and declared himself in favour of Shah Jehan.
Heg. 1036 (1627).—Jehangire died. Dawir Buxsh, grandson of the late Emperor, was raised to the throne, deposed, and murdered. Shah Jehan arrived at Agra, and was proclaimed Emperor.
Heg. 1037 (1628).—Shah Jehan ascended the throne of the Moguls.
The Light of the World
CHAPTER I.
The morning dawned upon two travellers in the midst of a blighted wilderness. As the sun threw its level rays over the horizon, they flooded a plain where no boundary could be traced but the sky, and from which the dominion of vegetation was almost wholly withdrawn; there being nothing to relieve the dull, uniform sterility of the scene but occasionally the trunks of a few stunted trees, which appeared to stand there only as so many legible records of the utter barrenness of the spot. These sad wayfarers rose from beneath the scanty shades of one of those skeletons of the wilderness to pursue a journey with a deplorable prospect before them. They were far advanced upon a wide inhospitable desert, where no welcome serai was to be seen, and where the passenger was seldom met. The refreshing well was nowhere found in these dreary and unfruitful solitudes.
The travellers were a Tartar and his wife, who, in consequence of a marriage not approved of by their respective families, had fled from their country to seek that home in another which was denied to them in their own. The man was handsome, of noble carriage, possessing all the generous qualities of his race; bold, active, enterprising, with great capability of endurance, and withal of a mild and placable spirit. The woman was young, beautiful, but extremely delicate; and to crown her husband’s misery and her own, she was about to become a mother. When they arose on this sad morning, they consumed the last of their provisions. They had only a small quantity of water in a leathern bottle, which the Tartar made his fainting wife drink before they proceeded on their way. What a deplorable condition! To linger was certain death, and to advance seemed only a dallying with hope—there appeared no chances of relief. They had several days’ journey to perform, without being provided with any sustenance for so long and arduous a travel; and the chances of meeting with passengers were so remote as to render their perishing in the wilderness almost a certainty.
The Tartar’s wife was mounted upon a small lean horse, which for the last several days had been so sparingly fed that it could scarcely proceed. The wretched woman was unconscious of the extent of her danger. She knew not that the whole of their provisions were exhausted, save one small rice cake which the tender husband had reserved for her use. He kept from her the awful fact of their utter destitution, lest in her precarious condition it should bring on premature labour where no assistance could be obtained, and she would thus probably perish. In spite of the misery of his situation, he still entertained the hope that he should obtain relief; and trusting in the mercy of Him who guides the wanderer as well in the wilderness as in the populous country, he pursued his journey though with a heavy and foreboding heart. As the sun rose, the heat became intolerable. There was no shelter from its scorching rays. The anxious Tartar held an umbrella over the head of his wife as he walked painfully along by the side of her lean ambling pony; but after a while his arm became so cramped that it was with difficulty he could bear the weight of the chatta. This, though not great, was the more sensibly felt from the elevated position in which he was obliged to keep his arms. He was, however, marvellously sustained by the excitement of his anxiety for the dear object near him, who bore with unrepining endurance privations which in her state were especially deplorable. They travelled through a long and toilsome day. The rice cake was consumed long before they halted for the night.
There being no shelter near, the husband fixed the handle of his umbrella into the ground, and throwing over it a thin palampore,[33] formed a kind of rude tent, under which his wife might repose without immediate exposure to the unwholesome night air. She was exhausted with fatigue; her tongue was parched with thirst, and the rapid increase of circulation too plainly told that fever was fast coming on. To attempt to depict the husband’s agony were a vain endeavour. Without food—without water—his wife actually in the pains of labour—with no hope of relief—in the midst of a vast wilderness, which even the wild beasts shunned as a solitude where only death and desolation reigned—he had no thought but that both must lie down and die. The sufferings of his hapless companion were appalling, yet she bore them without a murmur. The severity of her pangs aggravated that thirst by which she had been so long and so grievously oppressed. He had but one alternative, and did not hesitate to adopt it in such a trying emergency. His wife’s agonies were every moment increasing. He quitted the insecure canopy which he had erected for her temporary accommodation, seized his dagger, ran to the pony, and, in a paroxysm of tumultuous anxiety to save the life of the object dearest to him upon earth, plunged it desperately into the animal’s throat. Having caught the blood in a wooden trencher, he bore it to the tent.
During his short absence, his wife had become a mother. The cry of the poor babe raised within him, at this moment, emotions of parental joy; but these were in an instant stifled by the consciousness of those awful perils by which he was surrounded. He put the bowl to the lips of the suffering mother; she took a small quantity, and was in a slight degree refreshed. He now kindled a fire upon the wide blasted desert, and broiled some flesh of the animal which he had just slaughtered. It was tough and rank. The juices, however, of this unpalatable repast subdued in a degree the yearnings of hunger and the dreadful pangs of thirst.