“We were betrayed by some children,” was the simple answer. “They saw our ayah’s mother baking chupatties, day by day, sufficient for four people. My sister and I lived nearly three weeks in a cow-byre, never daring, of course, to approach even the door. The children made some talk about the lavish food supply in the old woman’s hut, and the story reached the ears of their father. He, like all the other natives here, seems to hate Europeans as though they were his deadliest enemies. He spied on us, discovered our whereabouts, and yesterday morning we were dragged forth, while the poor creatures to whom we owed our lives were beaten to death with sticks before our very eyes.”
The speaker was a fair English girl of twenty. Her sister was eighteen, and their previous experience of the storm and fret of existence was drawn from an uneventful childhood in India, four years in a Brighton school, and a twelvemonth in a Brussels convent!
Malcolm choked back the hard words that rose to his lips, and sought such local information as the ryot could give him. It was little. The tiller of the Indian fields lives and dies in his village and has no interests beyond the horizon. This man visited the Ganges once a year on a religious feast, and perhaps twice in the same period in connection with the shipping of grain on his brother’s boat. To that extent, but no further, did his store of general knowledge pass beyond the narrower limits of those who dwelt far from a river highway.
Yet it was he who first espied a new and most active peril.
“Look, huzoor,” he cried suddenly. “They have made signs to the Fattehpore ghât. Two boats are following us.”
And then Malcolm found that the real danger came from the opposite shore. It was a case of falling on Scylla when trying to avoid Charybdis. He learnt afterwards that the rebels had organized a code of signals from bank to bank, owing to the number of the craft with Europeans on board that sought safety in flight down the river. That some device must have drawn pursuit from the right bank was obvious. A couple of roomy budgerows with sails set were racing after him, and the long sweeps on board each boat were being propelled by willing arms.
It must be confessed that a feeling of bitter resentment against this last stroke of ill-luck rose in Malcolm’s breast for an instant. He conquered it. He recalled Lawrence’s bold advice, “Never Surrender,” and that inspiriting memory brought strength.
At that point the Ganges was about a mile and a quarter in width. The budgerow was some six hundred yards distant from the left bank. Three miles ahead the river curved to the left round a steep promontory. The farther shore was marsh-land, so it might be assumed that a hidden barrier of rock flung off the deep current there, while the one chance of escape that presented itself was to steer for that very spot and effect a landing before the enemy could head off the budgerow and force it under the fire of the horsemen. The Fattehpore boats were a mile in the rear, but that advantage would be greatly lessened if Malcolm crossed the stream, and perhaps altogether effaced by the powerful sweeps at their command.
However, to cross was the only way, and the only way is ever the best way. Having once made up his mind Frank coolly reviewed the situation. Food was the first essential. The boat itself, having been used for carrying hay, contained sufficient sweepings to feed the horses, and he set the ryot to work on gathering the odds and ends of forage. A brief search brought to light a quantity of ghee, boiled rice and dried peas. He divided the store into five portions, and set a good example to the others by compelling himself to eat his share of the cooked food at once, while the peas went into his pockets to be crushed or chewed at leisure.
Chumru kept the budgerow steadily on her course, and ere many minutes elapsed it was plain to be seen that the rebels were alive to the tactics of their quarry. Fresh gangs manned the sweeps and the riders on the eastern bank eased their pace to a walk. The space between pursuers and pursued began to decrease. At the outset Frank thought that this was the natural outcome of his plan, and gave no heed to it beyond the ever-growing anxiety of the time problem. But at the end of the first mile he was seriously concerned at finding that the mutineers were gaining on him in an incomprehensible manner. The boat was then seemingly in mid-stream, while the enemy kept close to the shore, and they were certainly traveling half as fast again, a difference in speed that the use of the oars hardly accounted for.