The American did not let himself think further. He fell into his old queer absorption; the reporter of his makeup taking him over. He shut out Amritsar from mind; the Native Idea, the English Idea, and his own that hovered between. He was just a stranger in a half-closed carriage looking out from under a bandaged brow. He heard the flies in the air. He did not seem to have any mental guard to shut out that distracting buzz—flies winging across the vapors of filth. They came to a narrow lane, a kucha, the driver called it. The armored cars ahead were having difficulty in this constricted place. Finally they halted and Dicky heard a British soldier on the nearest turret call out that the cars could proceed no further.
His own carriage was of course blocked. The kucha appeared less than eight feet wide. He was still lame, and had not intended to do much walking about in the furious heat, but beyond the armored cars he had glimpsed the Gurkhas filing forward and the officers stepping out of their machines. He let himself to the ground, ordered the driver to wait, and followed the soldiers through the wet trampled lane.
A minute later he was in the broken ranks of the Gurkhas—little muttering men with big sprawly hands holding fast to their rifles, fingers running loosely over breech and stock and barrel. The halt had come because there was a sudden rise to the ground—a mound of earth closing the lane, and running at angles to each side. The soldiers were ordered up and deployed along the mound; equally divided to the right and left.
Now Richard Cobden, in the midst of the officers and civilians who had occupied the two motor cars, also gained the eminence with some pains; and at this point he saw the man he had started out to find that afternoon—General Fyatt, a significant picture, indeed, here in Amritsar, who had been but a small obscure exhibit in the broad gallery of France.
Fyatt didn’t see him, and the American looked over the vast assembly of natives in the burning light. On a raised frame toward the center, a Sikh speaker stood. Dicky could hear his words, but did not understand. He saw, however, that the coming of the soldiers had interrupted the tenor of the speech and that many of the people were frightened and drawing away. An English officer beside him, after listening a moment, spoke with an ironical laugh:
“We have nothing to fear. Sarkar is our father and our mother. Government would not injure its children——”
Dicky realized that the young officer had quoted a translation of words the Sikh speaker had just spoken to the people—from twelve to fifteen thousand in the maidan, he reckoned. All faces were now turned to the soldiers—waves of faces. It was as if the color of a tree had changed by a steady pressure of wind that showed the under side of all the leaves. A nervous laugh from the young Englishman who had interpreted; then from General Fyatt, the low single sentence:
“You may give the order.”
“Fire!” the young officer called to his Gurkhas.
To Richard Cobden it was quite incredible, but another officer on the far side of the lane repeated the command, and the line of leveled rifles spurted on either side. Dicky winced at the crashes. He had been in the firing pits many times, but one can never remember how these concussions close by hurt one’s head and spine.... Of course, they were firing blanks. This was Martial Law. The people had been ordered not to assemble and they had disobeyed—twelve thousand of them, or more. General Fyatt had undertaken to impress upon them that his word was Law, Martial Law. Of course, this was also the English answer to April 10th, at the Hallgate Bridge. A bit uncouth to stampede a big crowd like this.