“Talk on, sahib, but listen! Your men intend to jump ashore and leave you. They have been bitten by the wolf. Don’t try to stop them. Name of Allah, let them go!”
Frank’s heart throbbed under this dramatic development. He had no reason to doubt his servant’s statement. The faithful fellow had nursed him through a fever with the devotion of a brother, and Malcolm had reciprocated this fidelity by refusing to part with him when he, in turn, was stricken down by smallpox. In fact, Frank was the only European in Meerut who would employ the man, whose extraordinary appearance went against him. Cross-eyed, wide-mouthed, and broken-nosed, with a straggling black beard that ill concealed the tokens on his face of the dread disease from which he had suffered, Chumru looked a cut-throat of the worst type, “a hungry, lean-fac’d villain, a mere anatomy.” Aware of his own ill repute, he made the most of it. He tied his turban with an aggressive twist, and was wont to scowl so vindictively at the mess khamsamah that his master, quite unconsciously, always secured the wing of a chicken or the best cut of the joint.
Yet this gnome-like creature was true to his salt at a time when he must have felt that his sahib, together with every other sahib in India, was doomed; his eyes now shot fiery, if oblique, shafts of indignation as he muttered his thrilling news.
Malcolm did not attempt to question him. He glanced at the sowars, and saw that their carbines were slung across their shoulders. Chumru interpreted the look correctly.
“Akhab Khan prevented those Shia dogs from shooting you and Mayne-sahib,” went on the low murmur. “They said, huzoor, that the Nana wanted the miss-sahib, and that they were fools to help you in taking her away, but Akhab Khan swore he would fight on your honor’s side if they unslung their guns. They do not know I heard them as I was sitting behind the mast, and I took care to creep off when their heads were turned toward the shore.”
“Here we are,” cried Mayne, who little guessed what Chumru’s mumbling portended. “There is the ghât.[9] If it were not for the mist we could see the Magazine just below, on the left.”
Assuredly, Frank Malcolm’s human clay was being tested in the furnace that night. He had to decide instantly what line to follow. In a minute or less the boat would bump against the lowermost steps, and, if Akhab Khan and his companions were, indeed, traitors, the others on board were completely at their mercy. Mayne was unarmed, Chumru’s fighting equipment lay wholly in his aspect, while Malcolm’s revolvers were in the holsters, and his sword was tied to Nejdi’s saddle, its scabbard and belt having been thrown aside while Abdul Huq was robbing him.
The broad-beamed budgerow presented a strangely accurate microcosm of India at that moment. The English people on her deck were numerically inferior to the natives, and deprived by accident of the arms that might have equalized matters. Their little army was breathing mutiny, but was itself divided, if Chumru were not mistaken, seeing that all were for revolt, but one held out that the Feringhis’ lives should be spared. And, even there, the cruel dilemma that offered itself to the ruler of every European community in the country was not to be avoided, for, if Malcolm tried to obtain his weapons his action might be the signal for a murderous attack, while, if he made no move, he left it entirely at the troopers’ discretion whether or not he and Mayne should be shot down without the power to strike a blow in self-defense.
Luckily he had the gift of prompt decision that is nine tenths of generalship. Saying not a word to alarm Mayne, who was still weak from the wound received an hour earlier, he crossed the deck, halting on the way to rub Nejdi’s black muzzle.
The sowars were watching him. With steady thrust of the port sweep they were heading the budgerow toward the ghât.