‘Have a care, my sons!’ cried the Naik, whose clear voice was heard far above the din. ‘Raise the palankeen on your shoulders. Gently! first you in front—now those behind! Shabash! now let every man look to his footing, and Jey Kalee!’
They advanced as they shouted the invocation; but careful as they were, who could see beneath those muddy waters? There was a stone—a large one—on which the leading bearer placed his foot. It was steady when he first tried it; but as he withdrew the other, it rolled over beneath his weight and what he bore: he tottered, stumbled, made a desperate effort to recover himself, but in vain: he fell headlong into the current.
The palankeen could not be supported, and but one wild piercing shriek was heard from the wife of the Khan as it plunged into the water.
‘Ya, Alla! Alla!’ cried the Khan in his agony—for he had seen all—‘she is lost to me for ever!’ And throwing himself from his horse, encumbered as he was, he would have been drowned, but for one of the bearers, who supported him to the brink, and, assisted by the rest who immediately recovered the palankeen, bore him rapidly to the village.
CHAPTER II.
The confusion which ensued is indescribable. The few persons on the bank of the river rushed hither and thither without any definite object; and screams from some women, who had followed the men from the village out of curiosity, rent the air, and added to the wildness of the scene.
On a sudden an exclamation broke from a youth who stood not far off; and before they could turn to see what had occasioned it, he had darted from the spot, and precipitated himself into the waters.
Cries of ‘He will be lost! he will be lost!’ flew from mouth to mouth; and a dozen turbans were unwound and thrown to him from the brink, as he still struggled with the current, supporting the slight and inanimate form of her who was supposed to have been swept down the stream at first.
Without waiting for a moment to answer the numberless queries which were showered upon him by the spectators, or to ascertain whether the senseless form he bore had life in it or not, he hastily covered the features from view; and, declining the assistance of some old crones who thronged around him, he pressed through them and hurried with the utmost rapidity to his home.