“He ain’t worse than y’have allowed my sister believe, General?” with sudden anxiety.
“No, but it’ll be a long business, I fear. To ride at all was bad enough, but to accept that chase across country after Keeling was pure madness. Had I had the slightest notion——! But there you are. I came across two of the Queen’s —th as I left the battlefield—one crouched almost double by the roadside, his comrade trying to cheer him on to reach the hospital tents. I bade my orderly give the sick soldier a lift, and learned from t’other that his friend ought to have reported sick this morning, but refused on account of the approaching battle, and so marched and fought all day before yielding to nature’s imperious weakness. Others I hear of who received wounds in the attack on Rickmer’s baggage, and concealed ’em, lest they should be forbid to fight to-day. Could any enemy in the world defeat such men as these?”
“Did poor Ambrose get the message to Keeling, General?” asked Brian, as Sir Harry wolfed down bread and meat and drank coffee in a way that said much for his digestion, if little for his palate.
“No. Rickmer called off the pursuit when Keeling swears another half-hour would have seen Kamal-ud-din a prisoner in his hands. Never a word of this to Ambrose or your sister, remember. It was the poor fellow’s excess of zeal led him to over-estimate his powers.”
“Then he fell from his horse at the moment you said you feared Kamal-ud-din must have left sharpshooters in ambush to delay the pursuit, sir? when he failed to cross the space of empty ground you were watching with your telescope?”
“That was the place. The patrol I sent out found him lying unconscious, his horse feeding beside him. And you came straight here, as I bid you?”
“As straight as a swimming head would permit, General! Of course I was beset for news as I passed through the camp, but I told all I could to the first officer I met, and stationed a sentry to keep the curious from approaching this house, according to your orders, so everything has been quite quiet.”
“‘Quite quite!’” Sir Harry mimicked Brian’s pronunciation. “Good, I am glad to leave you here to be a support to your sister—possibly also a consolation to poor Ambrose. You and he must keep up one another’s spirits.”
“But sure you’ll let me rejoin you, sir? This scratch—not a cat’s scratch, I’ll allow, but equally not a tiger’s; will we say it’s a tiger-kitten’s?—can’t keep me laid up more than a day or two. One day, I’d say if I was asked, but I know what these medicos are when once they get their hands on you.”
“We march again to-morrow, as soon as the doolies that have brought the wounded hither rejoin. Why, my good fellow, are you blind not to see that all hangs on our catching Kamal-ud-din ek dum? With him in my hands, the last shot is fired, as I believe. But should he escape and raise another army, with the hot weather and the inundations coming on, he may bother us for another year. So hie after him! Let us hope the gentleman will have the politeness to wait for us at Khanpur, and not lead us away into the desert on an unmannerly wild-goose hunt for Umarganj.”