The Advanced-Guard

by Sydney C. Grier

At last there were sounds outside, and the door creaked slowly open. A man’s head appeared, looking round in surprise and alarm for the prisoner. By a tremendous effort, Ferrers raised the weight as the gaoler advanced into the cell, and brought it down on his head. He fell with a crash, and an earthen vessel of water which he had been carrying was shivered on the floor. Ferrers had formed some vague plan of dressing himself in the gaoler’s clothes and taking possession of his keys, but this was now out of the question, for there was a sound of voices and a rush of steps towards his cell. He drew back into the shadow, intending to knock down the first man that entered as he had done the gaoler, but his temporary strength was gone. His arms refused to raise the weight more than an inch or two. With a cry of rage he dropped it, and charged furiously into the group of men who had been attracted by the noise, and were trying to screw up one another’s courage to enter the cell. One or two of them went down before his blows, others fled at the sight of the apparition, but there remained two who flung themselves upon Ferrers and grappled with him. Weakened by fasting and the blow he had received, he yet fought manfully, but they were slowly and surely forcing him back towards the cell, when one of them caught his foot in the chain. All three went down, Ferrers undermost, and once more he lost consciousness, the last thing he heard being a warning cry, “Do not kill him: it is his Highness’s order.”

When he awoke next he was again in his cell, but now his hands were also fettered, and he was chained to a ring in the wall. The death he desired had eluded him, and he was worse off than before. He was stiff and sore all over after his fight, and his head gave him excruciating pain. At his side were a cake of rough bread and a very moderate allowance of water, and he seized upon them greedily, then lapsed into semi-consciousness. For an unknown length of time after this he lived in a kind of delirium, in which past, present, and future were inextricably mingled in his mind, and his only clear feeling was a vehement hatred of any one who came near him. When his brain became less confused he gave himself up to imagining means of gratifying this hatred, walking ceaselessly backwards and forwards in the semicircle of two or three paces’ radius, which was all that his chains would allow. His new gaoler never ventured within his reach, and put his food where he could only touch it by dint of strenuous efforts, and the difficulty was to induce him to come closer. But the words he had heard recurred to Ferrers’ half-maddened brain, and when the gaoler entered the cell one day, expecting to find the prisoner walking about and muttering to himself as usual, he saw only a confused heap by the wall. He called, but received no answer, and in terror lest the Khan should have been baulked of his revenge by the death of his captive, ventured near enough to touch him. The moment he came within reach Ferrers sprang up with a howl like that of a wild beast, and, joining his two fettered hands, smote him on the head with all his strength. The man fell; but the authorities had learnt wisdom from the fate of his predecessor, and Ferrers’ triumph was shortlived. Several men rushed in from the passage, dragged out the gaoler, and, turning upon the prisoner, beat him so cruelly with whips of hide that he sank on the ground bleeding and exhausted. When they left him at last, it was with a promise that he should taste the bastinado on the morrow, and, unhappily for him, his mind was now sufficiently clear to understand all that this implied.

All day he lay more dead than alive, and when the door of his cell opened gently, hours before the usual time, he had not strength to look up, even when a light was flashed in his eyes. It was not until a leathern bottle was held to his lips, and a voice said, “Drink this, sahib,” that he awoke from his lethargy, to see a well-known face bending over him.

“What, is it you, Mirza?” he asked feebly.

“Hush, sahib; I am come to save you,” was the whispered answer. “Only do what I tell you, or both our lives will pay for it.”

Ferrers drank obediently, and as he drank his strength seemed to return. He sat passive while the Mirza unlocked the fetters from his ankles, and filed through the chain which fastened him to the wall, but the thought in his mind was that now he would run through the prison and kill any one he met. He felt strong enough to face an army. But the Mirza’s hand was on his arm as he sprang up.

“Nay, sahib, we must go quietly. Put on the turban and garments I have here, and hide your hands in the sleeves, for it would take too long to file the fetters from your wrists now. Then follow me without a word. You are my disciple, and under a vow of silence. If we meet any one, I will speak for both.”

The authoritative tone had its effect in calming Ferrers, and he obeyed, putting on the clothes as best he could with his trembling, fettered hands, assisted by the Mirza, and pulling the loose sleeves down to hide his wrists. Then the Mirza took up his lantern and beckoned him to follow, fastening the door of the cell noiselessly as soon as they were both outside. They passed along a corridor with cell-doors on either side, and then through a kind of guardroom, where several men were lounging, either asleep or only half-awake. These saluted the Mirza, and looked with something like curiosity at his disciple, making no objection to their passing. Then came a courtyard which was evidently that of the common prison, for from a high-walled building on one side came shouts and groans and cries and wild laughter, making night more hideous even than day, and the ground was strewn thickly with bones and all kinds of filth. The Mirza did not turn towards the gateway, but to a corner near it, where he opened a small door and secured it carefully again when Ferrers had passed through. Then he led the way up a flight of stone steps and through various passages, and finally brought his guest into a room fairly furnished and—joy of joys!—clean.

“This house is yours, sahib,” he said, turning to him. “There are slaves at your orders, a bath, food, clothes. I myself will dress your wounds, since there might be danger in calling in a physician from the town, but here for the present you are safe.”

Ferrers looked round him like one in a dream. The thing was absolutely incredible after the squalor and brutality, the ineffectual struggles, of the days and nights since he had been captured. “I—I don’t understand,” he said feebly. “I thought you and I had quarrelled.”