“He is better than the best!”
“We will make a man of this one!”
“Did you mark how he handed me his purse to defray expenses?” asked a black-bearded soldier of the five.
“He is a man who knows by instinct!” said Mahommed Gunga. “See to it that thy accounting is correct, and overpay no man!”
Deep-throated as a bull, erect as a lance, and pleased as a little child, Mahommed Gunga came to him alone that evening to talk, and to hear him talk, and to tell him of the plans that had been made.
“Thy father gave me this,” he told him, producing a gold watch and chain of the hundred-guinea kind that nowadays are only found among the heirlooms. Young Cunningham looked at it, and recognized the heavy old-gold case that he had been allowed to “blow open” when a little boy. On the outside, deep-chiseled in the gold, was his father's crest, and on the inside a portrait of his mother.
“Thy father died in these two arms, bahadur! Thy father said: 'Look after him, Mahommed Gunga, when the time is ripe for him to be a soldier.' And I said: 'Ha, huzoor!' So! Then here is India!”
He waved one hand grandiloquently, as though he were presenting the throne of India to his protegé!
“Here, sahib, is a servant—blood of my own blood.”
He clapped his hands, and a man who looked like the big, black-ended spirit of Aladdin's lamp stood silent, instant, in the doorway.