And now the maimed craft was carried along sluggishly, drifting back towards the center of the river, while the men in the other boats set up a fiendish yell of delight at the catastrophe that had overtaken the doomed Feringhis. Their skilled boatmen evidently knew of this reef. They stood away towards the shore, but the triumphant jeering that came from the crowded decks showed that they meant to pass their dismantled quarry and wait in safer waters until it lumbered down upon them.
Malcolm suddenly became aware of his wounded arm. With a curious fatalism he began to dissect his emotions. He arrived at the conclusion that the drop from the nervous tension of hope to the relaxation of sheer despair had dulled his brain and weakened his physical powers. This, then, was the end. There could be no doubt about it. He quieted the startled horses with a word or two and spoke to the girls again.
“You may as well come on deck now,” he said. “It is all up with us. If a friendly bullet puts us out of our misery, so much the better. Otherwise my advice to you both is to leap into the river rather than be recaptured.”
Grace was sobbing hysterically, but Harriet, clasping her fondly in her arms, looked up at him.
“No,” she said, “we must not do that. Our lives are not our own. The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Frank winced in his anguish. To a puissant man there is nothing so galling as helplessness; what a game of battledore and shuttlecock had been played with him and those bound up with his fortunes since the moulvie’s man-trap brought him headlong to the earth in the main street of Rai Bareilly!
“Huzoor!” yelled Chumru, excitedly. “Look! There below! A smoke ship! And see! Those sons of pigs are making for the bank!”
Malcolm could scarce believe his eyes when they rested on a small steamer with the British flag flying from the masthead, coming round the bend. Yet there could be no mistake about it. British officers in white uniforms were standing on her bridge, the muzzles of a couple of guns showed black and business-like over her bows, while her forward deck was packed with men in the uniform of the Madras Fusiliers. Her commander seemed to take in the exact position of affairs at a glance, and, indeed, the half-wrecked and almost empty boat in mid-stream, so eagerly followed by two thickly crowded craft now close hauled and putting forth desperate efforts to reach the bank, presented a riddle easy to read.
That twinge of pain quitted Frank’s arm as speedily as it had made its presence felt. He helped the girls to the raised deck, so that the people on the steamer could see them. It was not necessary. An officer waved a hand to them as the sturdy little vessel dashed past, raising a mighty spume of white froth with her paddles, and soon her guns were busy. There was no question of quarter. Captain Spurgin had been with Neill at Allahabad. He knew the story of Massacre Ghât, of Delhi, of Sitapore, Moradabad, Bareilly, and a score of other stations in Oudh and the Northwest. His gunners pelted the unwieldy budgerows with round shot until they began to sink. Then he used grape and rifle fire, until five minutes after the Warren Hastings came on the scene, there was nought left of the Fattehpore navy save some shattered wreckage and a few wretches who strove to swim amidst a hail of lead and in a river infested with crocodiles.
When the steamer dropped down stream and picked up the fugitives, Malcolm learnt that Spurgin was co-operating with Renaud. The one cleared the river, the other was hanging men on nearly every tree that lined the Grand Trunk Road. And Havelock, nobly aided by Neill, was moving heaven and earth to equip a strong force at Allahabad to avenge Cawnpore and raise the expected siege of Lucknow.