"Forget it!" exclaimed the Lieutenant. "Forget it! A native—especially a native commissioned officer—forget a grievance! Catch that old man forgetting the slightest unpleasantness that has occurred to him during this march. He will, it is true, forget his present grievance to-morrow, when he has a fresh one; but at the end of the journey they will be forthcoming in a lump."
This prophecy was destined not to be fulfilled; for, presently, a Sepoy came to the Lieutenant, and reported that the Soubahdar was very ill. We hastened to the old man's tent, and found him, strange to say, in the last extremity. He was going very fast; but, nevertheless, he continued to gurgle forth a grievance. He demanded, with his last breath—why the East India Company did not give him his pay, as in Lord Lake's time, in sicca rupees?
"You shall, in future, receive it in sicca rupees," said the Lieutenant, bending over the old man, whose hand he grasped tightly.
"And will my losses be made good?" he asked, with awful energy.
"Yes," said the Lieutenant.
"It is well!" and the old man slipped almost imperceptibly from one world to another.
That the old Soubahdar, who was upwards of eighty, had died of natural causes, there could be no question; but, clamorous as was the entire company for the interment of the body, the Lieutenant determined on taking it to Agra, for the purpose of a surgical examination. Meanwhile the old man's effects were scrupulously collected and put under seal.
We were now only twenty-six miles from Agra, the capital of the North West Provinces, and it was agreed to perform the distance in one march. We therefore started at sundown, and travelled all night. The moon was shining brightly, the road was in excellent order, and, notwithstanding that the old Soubahdar was lying lifeless on the top of some of the treasure-boxes, the Sepoys were in high spirits, and on several occasions even jocular in respect to the deceased's weakness—that of perpetually grumbling.
Shortly after the day had dawned, I beheld on the distant horizon something like a large white cloud. Had we been at sea, I should have said it was a sail or an iceberg, to which it bore a striking resemblance. I pointed it out to the Lieutenant, who smiled.