'My little Basil—my little Basil!' she kept repeating; 'my little sunbeam gone! But safe now—safe from peril and suffering—safe with the Good Shepherd. And I am here!'
As if to show his weariness or contempt of this, the ferocious Buktawur Sing snatched the child from her, and, with an imprecation, cast it into the alligator tank in the centre of the garden. She uttered a wild shriek and fell forward on her face senseless. Macgregor started to her assistance, but was driven back by the sharp bayonet of a Sepoy sentry; and Brierly, finding that he was powerless to give any aid whatever, quitted the place, and with a sob for vengeance in his throat, took the way back to Jubbulpore.
Bill mercifully remained silent as to the fate of the child; but poor young Captain Heron was never weary of questioning him as to it and the unhappy mother.
'It is a sore trial to me, Brierly,' said he, in a broken voice.
'Yes, sir,' he replied; 'but He who sends the trial sends the strength to bear it too.'
'Bear it like a man,' urged Drayton.
'But I must also feel it as a man,' replied poor Heron, unconsciously quoting the words of Macduff.
And now came tidings that filled us all with grim and stern joy. The movable column of the Madras troops, under General Miller, was on the march from Dumoh to attack the rebels in Kuttingee, and drawing out from the Residency every man fit for service, Captain Heron set off to join him; and I can remember how, on the march, he kept near the section where Brierly was, for the latter had seen and spoken with the creature he loved most on earth. A ghastly and haggard man Heron looked now—the shadow of his former self.
Though it was only a ten-miles tramp, and, leaving knapsacks behind, we had only our great-coats and blankets to carry, I shall never forget that day's march to Kuttingee! It was one of thirst and toil, with all our canteens and water-bottles empty. We pushed on under a noonday sun, under which the parched earth seemed to pant like a living creature. The streams were dried up, and all that was green had become yellow and sickly in hue; the sky seemed a furnace—the sun a globe of fire. Clouds of dust surrounded our line of march, and sand-spouts rose at times; the ravens and kites gaped with wide-open beaks by the wayside, and the alligators lay hidden to the muzzle in their oozy tanks. Fissures gaped in the soil; the birds were hushed, and insect-life stood still; the 'burra choop,' or Great Silence, as the Hindoos call it, reigned around us, and we had three cases of sunstroke; yet we pushed manfully on, and when evening drew near found ourselves in front of Kuttingee.
The first shot might be the death-knell of Mrs. Heron and all other Christian prisoners, so the emotions with which her husband surveyed it as he marched the remains of his company into the assigned position may be imagined.