“Do as you promised!” It was Colonel Eyre’s deep voice that uttered the words, and we all glanced round at the speaker. He had remained silent 319 during the badinage occasioned by Everton’s determination, sitting with his tumbler of Scotch whiskey-and-water in front of him, puffing away silently at the short brier-root, whose bowl scarcely cleared the sweep of his heavy, grizzled mustache. He was holding the pipe in his hand now, sitting erect and speaking with unmistakable earnestness of manner. “Do as you promised, and don’t be too sure it’s all nonsense, either. I have known cases in which men have lived to be very thankful that they yielded to a presentiment.”
“But this was a dream, colonel,” broke in the irrepressible Jones.
“Dream be it, then! Stay at home, Everton. As you say, it’s not much to miss a day’s shooting. And if you neglect this warning the chances are you may never live to regret it.” The speaker took a sip from the tumbler in front of him, replaced his pipe between his lips, and leaned back as if the subject were at an end.
But the colonel, an Indian officer of many years’ service, was popularly supposed to have led a life of adventure, and to have figured in more than one story whose exciting incidents could well bear repetition. As a rule, he was a taciturn man, and it was by no means easy to “set him talking,” as the story goes. The present seemed an opportunity too good to be lost, and several voices demanded the experience by whose authority he had spoken so decidedly.
“Well, yes,” said Colonel Eyre slowly, “I have seen a presentiment very remarkably fulfilled. I am not much of a hand at yarning, but, if you wish, I have no objection to give you a leaf out of my own book, if it’s only that you may leave my friend Tom here in peace to follow his own course, without badgering him about it. Yes, I mean you, Mr. Jones,” he went on, impaling that helpless youngster with a glance that sent him nervously to the spirit case, while the rest of us settled ourselves 320 comfortably to listen, and Sir Alan, with a “Fire ahead, colonel,” drew his chair forward into a better position.
“It was a good while after the breaking of the monsoon in ’68,” began the colonel, slowly; “the weather was cool and pleasant enough, so that, on the face of it, it seemed no great hardship when I was ordered to take a detachment down to Sumbalpar. I was stationed at Raipur at the time, in the Orissa district, and word came of some trouble with the Zemindars above Sumbalpar. The only thing that seemed inconvenient was the suddenness of the order. It was just ‘Fall in and march out’ without delay of an hour. I was a young married man in those days, pretty much in the position of my friend Tom Everton, with a wife of two years and a bit of a baby a few months old. It wasn’t pleasant to leave them behind me in a place like Raipur, and, of course, it was out of the question to start them at an hour’s notice. I spoke to my bearer, Josein, one of the best native servants I ever saw, and directed him to make arrangements for an early march on the following morning. He was to see my family driven quietly over to Sumbalpar in the tonga. They were to travel by easy stages under the charge of a careful bilewallah. If there are any ‘griffs’ in this company, I may explain for their benefit that a tonga is a kind of bullock wagon, and a bilewallah is the driver of the same. Well, I had just time for a few words of comfort and farewell—Tom will appreciate all that—before I rode out of Raipur at the head of my column. We camped that night in the jungle, after a march of about twenty miles, and it was under canvas that I was visited with the dream or presentiment, or whatever you choose to call it, that gives such point as it may possess to this old-time yarn of mine.”
The colonel paused to refill his glass, but every one’s interest was now awakened, and no one broke the momentary silence that ensued.
“It was pretty late before I fell asleep,” resumed Colonel Eyre, setting down his tumbler, “and it was still dark when I awoke, or seemed to awake, with my wife’s voice ringing in my ears—a shriek of agony that made me start up from my pillow and listen breathlessly. There was a lantern burning in my tent—I had left it so when I lay down—and by the glimmer of light I saw a large, dark mass spread itself between me and the canvas roof and gradually settle down on my head. I did not know what it was—it was vague and formless in outline—but I had a consciousness that it was something of a dangerous nature—something that threatened my life—and I struggled to throw myself to one side or the other. In vain. I could not move hand or foot. I lay as if chained to the bed, and still the dark mass descended, shutting out light and air and seeming to suffocate me.”