In truth, there is no sorer trial of nerve on the face of the earth than to know, and never for a moment forget that you know, that the meek little water-carrier who fills your bath is probably in a plot to take your life—that the cook who dresses your dinner so well may have sprinkled poison on it—that the smart groom who obeys so promptly and intelligently your orders about your favourite horse, is calculating all the while how much he can get for it after he has cut your throat—and that the humble peasants who crouch in the dust at your feet, hailing you as "protector of the poor," and whiningly calling you "their father and their mother," are just preparing to fire your house over your head, and burn or murder all within. Let any man be compelled to live for a time in a spot where the whole air is heavy with yellow fever or cholera, and where, whenever two men meet, each looks nervously in the other's face for the first signs of the fell destroyer—and he will know how it feels to be quartered in the midst of a disaffected Eastern population.
Not a word said Colonel Hardman when this attack, and the juggler's identity with the bandit chief who had led it, were reported to him. But the best of his native scouts, a jungle veteran, who had slain as many tigers as he had seen birthdays, knew enough of his master's ways to remark shrewdly to his comrades that evening—
"Brothers, there is evil in store for these Dacoits (robbers), whoever they be. When the Colonel Sahib looks fierce, and speaks angry words, it is as a strong wind that sweeps by and is gone; but when he says nothing, it is the hush before the thunderstorm."
In fact, the colonel (who, like Lord Goring, "always kept his temper when he was really angry"), had fully made up his mind that the "rabble of black thieves" who had dared to molest Englishmen should pay dearly for their insolence; and the means were ready to his hand, for the garrison had just been strongly reinforced, it being of the last importance, in the disturbed state of the whole country, to secure so important a post as Huttee-Ghur, which, so long as the English held it, would be an effectual curb on the surrounding population.
The old soldier's eye sparkled with stern approval as he saw filing into the fort three or four squadrons of Rajput horse (than whom there were no better riders or harder fighters in all India), and several companies of Rohilla foot—men whom their greatest leader had rightly declared to be "the best of all Sepoys at the cold steel."
With such men at his back, the colonel would have faced a whole native army; and he lost no time in scouring the jungle in quest of his skulking foes.
His style of campaigning would have sorely displeased those learned gentlemen who, sitting at home in England over their books and diagrams, lay down the law about "throwing out flankers," and performing this or that manœuvre amid thickets as dense as themselves, through which you may struggle for hours without sight or sound of an enemy, while passing again and again so close to the hidden foe whom you are hunting, that he could touch you with his spear if he chose. (A fact.) But, unscientific as it might be, the colonel's mode of fighting was eminently successful, as the jackals and vultures of the jungle could have told for many a day.
The savage chief himself, indeed, managed to escape; but he was almost the only survivor of his band, and there was no more trouble with the Dacoits that season.
But hardly was the work done when a wild legend began to creep abroad, that the three slain British soldiers, Bob Burton, Sam Black, and Tom Tuffen had come to life again, and had been seen fighting in the ranks of the brigands! Several of Colonel Hardman's native followers had recognised them, and all told the same story.
But when the English Grenadiers heard the tale, they laughed it to scorn.