One with the crowd, he felt its galvanic jerk of ugliness pass through himself. The murmur of protest that now arose from the open mouths was like something from himself—as if his mouth, too, were open with sound. A bearded native in soiled white garments turned suddenly and pressed him back. This man had felt a stone under his bare foot and he was making room to reach down to pick it up. Dicky saw his fingers stretch toward the muck. He understood. Here was one of the primal impulses of the human body in a stress of fear and hate. Far ahead, the English officers roared commands for the natives to go back. The voices of native leaders standing with the English, also implored the people to disperse. But the people had their faryad. They wanted talk. Also there were dead and wounded on the earth before the eyes of the front ranks. Another volley sounded.

Instead of being driven back by the second pelting of shots, the native crowd crushed its way across the bridge. In the opening on the other side, it halted, now in the Civil Lines, no longer jammed by the narrow rails of the bridge. The throng had not yet become insensate; no individual had seized the office of leadership. This was the instant of all to Dicky Cobden, the turning point. The native gathering might still have been reasoned with, as it stood leaderless, looking upon its own dead; but instead of reason, came the third volley from the soldiers and police, the prod of the ankus that turned the elephant musth.

The shuddering of revolt that the people felt passed through Richard Cobden as well—whipped up in his own breast. Then he was carried forward with the mob. Nothing gentle or yielding about the bodies now, a rough, bruising, muscular mass pushed from behind by incredible power.

Dicky glanced about to look for Lala Relu Ram, and that instant was whacked to the ground, a slug from the pistol of one of the troopers, gouging his left shoulder. He arose to one knee, still turned back, a laugh on his lips, looking for the student.

And now a most extraordinary shock was meted out to the son of the trowel makers. A running native with gray, patchy face, completely carried away by mob impulse, halted, stood above the kneeling white man, struck him in the face with both hands, emptying his mouth at the same time. Some of the natives immediately behind, without questioning but that Dicky was one of the English, now tramped over his body as they ran. Though fallen, he still preserved a final waver of consciousness—face down, head covered in his arms. Finally he was caught by the arm and jerked to the side.

It was Lala Relu Ram who had pulled him out of the crowd and looked down into a face covered with blood and mud, and a welt or two. The only white about that face now was the lips which smiled and repeated a word which the Hindu student had never heard in all his linguistic studies of the East and West.

XLIII
HATHIS LAMENTS

DICKY really came to back in an apothecary shop on the way to the Golden Temple, where Lala Relu Ram had carried him. The filth of that face that had opened upon him as he looked up from his knee—a shudder about that, something he would never be able to tell. It had been uglier to take than the blows. As moments dragged on, he fell to wishing Nagar would come. A curious wonder played incessantly in his mind about the twisted ascetic under the mango trees in Cawnpore, but where was the wall? The crystal gazer had repeated that the thing which was to befall would be within a wall.

“... The bullet didn’t think enough of you to stay, Mr. Cobden,” the young English surgeon said after examination. “It merely bit out a chunk of muscle and went its way. Since there is no cavity for it to drain into, it means nothing but a stitch or two, and a clean bandage. But you’ve been considerably mashed about the face. There’s going to be a strain on your drainage system for a few days to carry off dead tissue.”

He was taken to his room at the Inn, much bandaged, and Lala Relu Ram sat by his bedside, his face often turned to the open window that looked out over the street.