“But if not,” cried Brian quickly, “she must have been washed overboard before the boat came ashore—and that I won’t believe. No; they have carried her off into the hills, and Heaven only knows what has happened the poor Major. Sick and helpless—I fear the unfortunate fellow must have been drowned, and she would be left without a defender. Good heavens!”
“Let not the presence grieve so sadly. If he will, let him put this humble one ashore a day’s journey up the river, and he will make his way in disguise into the hills, to the dwellings of the Kajias, and sojourn among them until he has made certain either that the Beebee is there or that she has never been there. Then he will bring word to the presence.”
“And what will I be doing all that time?” cried Brian. “And what will be happening her if she has been carried some other way? No, we’ll make all speed back to Qadirabad, and I’ll get the General to give me a column strong enough to overawe the Kajias and force the truth out of ’em. Then we’ll know what we’re doing.”
“As the presence pleases,” said Puggy politely, but offering no opinion as to the wisdom of Brian’s plan. While they were talking the boatmen had been poling their vessel out into the stream again, and now Brian called for the headman, and promised lavish rewards for every hour gained on the time usually taken up-stream. The men did their best, but the current was strong and the wind generally in the wrong direction, and Brian chafed grievously at the slow progress made. But at last the round tower of Qadirabad came in sight again, and to his great joy he learned from the first officer he met that the General had returned from Khanpur and taken up his quarters in the Fort, Lord Maryport having now definitely appointed him Governor of Khemistan. But the General, when Brian presented himself, was worried, even testy.
“You should have let Puggy do as he proposed,” he said sharply. “Send a column to stir up that wasps’ nest in the hills? Not a bit of it! No man esteems and admires your sister more than I do, but I can’t sacrifice the army to her. Here is Kamal-ud-din playing about in every direction, just beyond my reach. Now he has started a brother—only just out of the nursery, they say,—and the two young rascals are kicking up a fine dust between them. All the bad elements in the country are rallying to ’em, of course—whether they have submitted to us or not. The thing is beginning to spread to this side of the river, too—there’s a very pretty plot brewing in Qadirabad itself. I have my spies, happily, and can stamp it out when I want to, so as long as we are on the watch, the disaffected may as well be plotting as anything else—keep ’em out of mischief. But I give you the credit of being able to see for yourself that this ain’t a time for detaching columns on private adventures.”
“If you could extend my leave, sir—let me go with Puggy and do what I could, I mean?”
“And be recognised in no time, and give me another set of murderers to hunt up and hang? No, my good fellow; when you joined the army it was to serve her Majesty—not to go off on wild-goose chases after your own female relatives,—and while I am above ground you’ll do it. It may not be long. Over and over again of late I have thought I was on the march. I can walk again now—but still groggy on my pins, as you see. Incessant labour in this heat is killing to sixty and over, and no doubt Welborne will give you all the leave you want.”
He turned abruptly to his papers again in a spasm of self-pity, and Brian could not but capitulate unconditionally. “Don’t, General—don’t, for Heaven’s sake, be talking like that! What in the world would we all do without you? Sure Khemistan would be lost, and the army with it.”
“It’s that already, according to the Bombay papers,” gruffly. “Now that Bayard’s experienced wisdom is withdrawn, the army is as good as sacrificed to the incapable old ruffian at its head. Believe me if you can, Delany, those fellows are making pets of the Khans—calling ’em ‘fallen Princes’ and setting ’em up as saints—and blackguarding me and my glorious soldiers high and low. Bayard is in it, of course—not behind it, for he’s a decent chap, though weak, weak as water—but when the journalistic gentlemen get round him and play upon his vanity he’ll say anything, and end by believing it himself. The fellows are positively gloating over Kamal-ud-din and his proceedings, I tell you. They butter him up as a heaven-taught commander, adored by his people, the inspirer of a sacred war to expel the invaders, who have the misfortune to be led by a disreputable old lunatic who threw away his last chance of success when jealousy induced him to rid himself of his good genius, Colonel Bayard! They recount my dispositions and suggest how he ought to meet ’em, and all their articles are translated and sent up here for the edification of Kamal-ud-din and his fellow-plotters. But I’ll knock the chap out yet, no matter who his treacherous backers may be, if only this old carcase of mine will hold out for one more month!”
“Of course it will, General, and for many years to come! You have shown me where my duty lies—though it breaks my heart to leave my sister to all the trouble she may be in. I cannot forget”—half apologetically—“what she’d be to me as a little child. No mother could have been more tender—and she only a bit of a girl herself.”