"Well, I'm going, anyhow," he said.
The twelve remaining officers of the 65th assented. Armstrong himself had already hurried on in front of Compton. He was a staid, humdrum type of man, but in that moment the fire was in his blood. None of them remembered that this same Boucicault was the source of the very evil which he had set out to master.
He was the Bagh Sahib.
That was all they knew of him.
They reached the compound gates as Boucicault, with Tristram at his heels, came in sight of the mutiny leaders. It was still pitch dark, but the rain had stopped and the torches burnt up luridly in the still air. Separate from the rest, a gaunt, spectral figure on the ungainly horse, Boucicault waited tranquilly. He was so motionless, so unexpected that the seething mass of soldiers came to a sudden halt. A shot rang out from somewhere in the rear, but those in the first ranks wavered. The superstition which was a very part of their blood chilled them to silence. The roll of drums died away to a faint beat, like the throb of a dying pulse. The trumpet no longer sounded. Boucicault's eyes passed from one dark, uncertainly lit face to another. Then he laughed.
"Well, what have you got to say for yourselves?"
He spoke clearly now. His voice had a metallic ring in it which awoke old memories. But it broke the spell. There were, perhaps, ten yards between him and the leaders, and they rushed, five of them, with a howl of triumph—then again halted—as though they had flung themselves against an invisible barrier. A shot whizzed past Boucicault's head. He grinned mockingly. He touched Arabella's sides and rode forward, till the last five yards were covered, and he stared down straight into their faces. "You don't shoot as well as you did, men. That sort of thing won't do. You want drilling, and, by God, you shall get it! That fellow who missed me shall have my special attention. The 65th wants polishing." He removed his helmet, so that the light flickered on his features. "And I shall polish it," he said.
They recognized him. It was the thought of him which had goaded them to their revolt. Yet now he sat there on his horse—the man whom they believed helpless and stricken—and gibed at them. For them, too, he was as one risen from the dead. A sergeant in the foremost line drew back, cowering from him.
"Bagh Sahib!" he muttered.
Boucicault leant forward and seized the man roughly by his ear.