“It really is more like smoke than cloud,” said Lady Haigh, looking up at the lowering sky, “and whenever there is the least breeze one almost seems to smell smoke. I wish it wasn’t coming from the direction of the camp. It’s horrid to leave the clear sky behind, and ride straight into twilight. I wonder how far Dugald has got—whether he will be out of the storm. He is sure to have fever if he gets wet. I think I will send one of the servants after him with fresh clothes. They would keep dry if I packed them in a tin box——”
“What can that boy be saying?” interrupted Penelope, pointing across the swamp to the belt of forest on the opposite side. A native boy, unkempt and lightly clad, had appeared from among the trees, and paused in apparent astonishment on catching sight of the two ladies sitting in the shade, and the horses feeding quietly close at hand under the charge of their grooms. Now he was shouting and gesticulating wildly, and Murtiza Khan had hurried to the brink of the reed-beds to hear what he was saying.
“He must be warning us that the storm is coming on,” said Lady Haigh, as the boy pointed first at the darkening sky, and then back in the direction of the camp. “Pen! I am sure I smelt smoke at that moment. Did you notice it?”
Murtiza Khan turned his head for a second and shouted a sharp order to the grooms, which made them bestir themselves to get the horses ready, then asked some other question of the boy, who answered with more frenzied gesticulations than ever. When the trooper seemed to persist, he ran to a convenient tree and climbed up it like a monkey, and from a lofty branch shouted and pointed wildly, then slid down, and abandoning any further attempt at conversation, took to his heels and ran at his utmost speed along the edge of the swamp towards the east, where the sky was still clear.
“What is it, Murtiza Khan?” asked Lady Haigh breathlessly, as the trooper hurried up the bank towards her.
“Highness, the forest is on fire. Will the Presences be graciously pleased to mount at once? We must ride eastwards.”
“But the camp? the servants? We must warn them!” cried Lady Haigh.
“They will have seen the fire coming, Highness, for they are nearer it than we. They will stand in the lake, and let the flames sweep over them, and so save themselves. But we cannot go back, for we should meet the fire before we reached the lake.”
“But the Sahib!” cried Lady Haigh frantically. “He will be cut off. I will not go on and leave him. We must go back.”
“Highness, the Sahib is wise, and has with him the shikari Baha-ud-Din, who knows the forest well. He will protect himself, but the care of the Presences falls to me.”