“Do anything you like, in reason, risaldar! Only keep the pup from cutting his eye-teeth on his seniors' convenience, that's all!”
Mahommed Gunga wasted no time after that on talking, nor did he wait to specify the nature of the latitude he would expect to be allowed him; he knew better. And he knew now that the one chance that he sought had been given him.
Like all observant natives, he was perfectly aware that the British weakness mostly lay in the age of the senior officers and the slowness of promotion. There were majors of over fifty years of age, and if a man were a general at seventy he was considered fortunate and young. The jealousy with which younger men were regarded would have been humorous had it not come already so near to plunging India into anarchy.
He did not even trouble to overlook the garrison. He took his leave, and rode away the long two-day ride to his own place, where a sadly attenuated rent-roll and a very sadly thinned-down company of servants waited his coming. There, through fourteen hurried, excited days, he made certain arrangements about the disposition of his affairs during an even longer absence; he made certain sales—pledged the rent of fifty acres for ten years, in return for an advance—and on the fifteenth day rode southward, at the head of a five-man escort that, for quality, was worthy of a prince.
A little less than three months later he arrived at Bombay, and by dint of much hard bargaining and economy fitted out himself and his escort, so that each man looked as though he were the owner of an escort of his own. Then, fretful at every added day that strained his fast-diminishing resources, he settled down to wait until the ship should come that brought young Cunningham.
CHAPTER V
Lies home beneath a sickly sun,
Where humbleness was taught me?
Or here, where spurs my father won
On bended knee are brought me?
HE landed, together with about a dozen other newly gazetted subalterns and civil officers, cramped, storm-tossed, snubbed, and then disgorged from a sailing-ship into a port that made no secret of its absolute contempt for new arrivals.
There were liners of a kind on the Red Sea route, and the only seniors who chose the long passage round the Cape were men returning after sick-leave—none too sweet-tempered individuals, and none too prone to give the young idea a good conceit of himself. He and the other youngsters landed with a crushed-in notion that India would treat them very cavalierly before she took them to herself. And all, save Cunningham, were right.