The immediate response to her signal was a startling one. She had barely time to recharge the pistol, working clumsily in the dark, before there was a hasty movement of men aft—whether the boatmen or the swimmers she could not tell, nor was she much concerned to know. At the moment she was more conscious of Abdul Qaiyam’s heavy breathing close beside her as he asked in a bewildered voice whether the Beebee had shot anybody than of her possible assailants. Hurriedly she thrust the ammunition pouch at him.
“Load when I pass y’a pistol!” she said sharply, and then called out in her imperfect Persian to the men in front that if any one came nearer she would shoot him. One man sprang forward, and she fired at him point-blank. The blind shot in the dark must have taken effect, for the man cried out and fell forward. Confused cries of rage and protest came from the rest, and Eveleen held her hand. For the moment she had thought of discharging all the three shots she had left into the group, in the hope of driving them overboard at once, but the imprudence of leaving herself defenceless, even for a moment, was reinforced by mystification. The whole thing was like a bad dream—the shapes in the water, the moving crowd dark against the dark sky, the eager talking in an unknown tongue. If it was Persian, her knowledge of the language was quite inadequate to cope with it. She stooped a moment towards Abdul Qaiyam as he handed her the recharged pistol.
“Speak to them!” she said imperiously. “Ask them who they are—what they want. Tell them we are well armed, and can see them though they can’t see us.”
The old man was too much terrified to obey immediately, and she thrust at him impatiently with her foot. Then his quavering voice made itself heard—“Brothers!” and the men in front appeared to listen. One of them stepped forward a little.
“Stand back, or I fire!” said Eveleen quickly, and the bearer repeated the words in Persian. As he spoke, she remembered suddenly that she must be visible to any one able to see through the cabin from end to end, and she sank on her knees, resting the barrel of the heavy pistol on the back of a camp-chair which she pulled noiselessly towards her. Crouching thus, she was invisible to those in front, and a barrier—if a frail one—between Richard and the enemy. But were they enemies, or was there some absurd mistake? She could not decide, but she felt fairly certain that what they had been speaking was not Persian, though the spokesman—who had withdrawn a pace or two hastily before her threat—was using that language with Abdul Qaiyam.
“These are very bad people,” the old man murmured to her at last, and she listened without turning her head. “Kajia tribe—they come to steal the boat—everything.”
“Nonsense! they’ll not do anything of the sort. Where will the Parsee be, now? letting this kind of thing happen instead of coming to help us.”
To her amazement the meek voice of Mr Firozji answered her—apparently from somewhere close at hand. In her bewilderment she suffered her gaze to stray for a moment, and discerned dimly that he was just outside the boat, but seemingly not in the water. At least, his voice was on a level with the gunwale, though there was no grating sound to show that another boat was rasping alongside. The mad incomprehensibility of the situation was more incomprehensible than ever.
“The Beebee beholds in me a son of misfortune,” he said pathetically. “The Kajias have deceived me. They have stolen the boat, so as to carry away the Sahib, the Beebee, myself, the servant people—all.”
“And what may those guards of yours be about, to let them do it? Call them, can’t you? Shout!”