“Of course; why would there be?” asked Brian dreamily. “No doubt the old sinner is sailing happily down the river, congratulating himself on the money he’s saved. But all the same,” inconsequently, “I’m certain something has happened. I have a feeling——”
“So have all of us when we are anxious, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred it all ends in smoke, and we are precious proud afterwards to think we never had a second’s doubt all along. But tell you what. You take one of the General’s spies with you—to look out for things generally and cross-question anybody you may meet. If old Puggy ain’t out on duty, he’s the man you want. A bullet chipped a bit off his heel at Mahighar—he was not on the field in the way of business, but just looking on at the show—and he’s been laid up since. But I know he is out again, and he’s an uncommonly downy old bird. I’ll hunt him up while you get your traps together.”
The search was successful, and when Brian and his bearer arrived at the boat the doctor was there in triumph with an undersized elderly native of indeterminate features and an expression of guileless simplicity. It was almost impossible to believe that this was one of the General’s famous secret agents, of whom he boasted that several were in each camp of his enemies, and not a few in their very households, but there was his name to prove it. He possessed a complicated and sonorous name of his own, but Sir Harry had a short way with such luxuries. He dubbed the man Puggy [Pagi, tracker] as his tracker par excellence, and from such august lips the undignified appellation was accepted as an honour and flaunted with pride. Colonel Welborne, whose permission had to be obtained for him to accompany Brian, was interested in the young man’s journey, and came down to see them off.
“Hope you’ll find everything all right,” he said, “but in case of accidents I have given you a sergeant’s guard of sepoys in Hindustani dress, [mufti] so that you won’t attract undue attention. If the Codgers take you by surprise, they may come in useful. But look you here: no fighting—unless you have to extricate yourself from an ambuscade, that is. If you find your sister is in the hands of the Codgers—even if she is in the camp which you are outside of, don’t try to rescue her on your own account. You can’t do it, and it will only lead to her being killed or carried off into the hills. And if you get yourself killed, how are we ever to know what has happened to her? Just let Puggy do the talking and manage things his own way. If she is in the camp he will find out without their knowing it, and he’ll bring you off peacefully to go back and rescue her another day. D’ye understand me?”
“I do,” said Brian reluctantly; “and I’m greatly obliged to you for sparing him, sir. But listen, now: if I find her marooned on an island, it’s myself will take the business in hand, and Puggy may go hang!”
No degree of anxiety could depress Brian’s tongue, though his heart might be heavy, and the little group of friends on the landing-stage—at the very foot of the cliff now—praised his cheerfulness to one another as they sped him on his way with good wishes. After all, nothing untoward might have happened; he would catch up his sister and go down with her to Bab-us-Sahel, then return by land with his guard—since by that time the river was fairly certain to be impossible for small boats.
The first day and a half of the voyage was unimportant, as was only natural, since whatever had happened must presumably have happened lower down. After that, when they had arrived at the stretch of river which the boats might be supposed to have reached on the night of the storm, a close watch was kept on the right-hand bank—the scene of the activities of the Kajias. Boats going down the river would be inclined to keep more or less to this side, and there was no apparent reason for crossing to the other, though it also must be searched in the course of the return voyage if no traces had been found earlier. A forlorn cluster of shrubs and low trees, rising again out of the water which had almost submerged them, could tell no tale, for the floods had washed away all signs of the boatmen’s evening meal on the island in the shelter of which the boats had been moored. A day after it had been passed, when Brian was beginning to fear that the whole flotilla had been swamped without leaving a trace, a trace appeared at last, though not a cheering one. On a sandy beach, below the flood-mark, half in and half out of the water, lay a battered boat, its mast and its cabin gone. Brian saw it first, and his inarticulate shout summoned the tracker and the soldiers to his side. It seemed to him ages before his boatmen, poling carefully, brought their craft as near as it was safe to go, and he could let himself overboard and swim to the derelict. He did not notice that Puggy lingered to say something to the havildar in charge of the sepoys before joining him. There was nothing to show whether the boat was that they sought, save that it had evidently been fitted up for European use; but though supports and hooks remained, all the fittings were gone. It might be that the water had swept it nearly bare, or it might have been systematically gutted—there was nothing to show which, save a large dark stain on the deck. Brian bent down to look at this, touched it, and turned mutely to the tracker for his opinion. As he lifted his head a slight movement among the bushes fringing the beach attracted his attention, and he realised that he and his companion were the target for a dozen or more matchlocks with fierce faces behind them. He was thunder-struck, but Puggy smiled triumphantly, and Brian saw why. The seeming peaceful passengers in their own boat had suddenly produced muskets, and were lining the gunwale in warlike guise. It struck Brian that if shooting began, they two were infallibly doomed, but the tracker was so proud of his precaution that he had not the heart to spoil his pleasure. The moral effect was certainly all that could be desired, for a wild-looking elderly man, with a red-dyed beard, stood up in the bushes, and demanded with righteous indignation—
“Why does the Sahib seek to steal what Allah and the river have given us?”
“Suffer me to answer, Sahib,” said the tracker hurriedly; then to the chief, “The Sahib seeks news of his sister, who embarked with her husband before the storm in such a boat as this. Is there word of her?”
“Nay,” was the reply. “The boat drifted ashore as ye see it—broken and empty. Of any Sahib or Beebee we know nothing.”