In the Crawling Lane and elsewhere were erected tikitis for flogging. These were triangles of wood, upon which the hands could be suspended and tied. A general order was issued for all the native population of Amritsar, a city of one hundred and sixty thousand, to salam to English in the streets. Those who did not salam were arrested, often flogged. Many of the people were so terrified, that they dared not sit down anywhere outside of their own houses, lest one of the English appear suddenly and not find them standing and in position to salam.
During the late days of April, Richard Cobden did not see Nagar, though occasional brief messages reached him from his friend through the students. One of these was a suggestion, which Dicky followed, to send off whatever mail he had ready, in care of one of the young men who was leaving for Pondicherry, French India. Finally there was the episode of the tennis court, in the Civil Lines. Dicky drew up to the crowd.
A set of doubles or singles was not in progress. This was a game of triangle—a tikiti in the center of the court; a naked native strung up and being whipped. Dicky had seen about enough of this, and was ready to turn back, when something of the carriage of the native’s head arrested his eye, and started a peculiar sinking in his heart.
The bare back was toward him, but the face turned sidewise revealed the profile of Nagar. His hands were strapped high toward the top of the great frame formed in the shape of the letter A. Nagar had been stripped to the loincloth, his head bare, his white robes and turban cloth flung upon the turf. The stripes were being put on by one of the native police. The whip was a rigid canelike affair, but longer than a walking-stick. A detachment of native soldiers was drawn up on one side, police on the other. Two young officers of the military, one of whom Dicky knew, were in charge of the affair.
Dicky had halted, hand to mouth. Each stroke blinded his eyes; his body became, for an instant after it, like a house in flames with every curtain tightly drawn. Then he would see the sunlight before the next stroke, and the naked man with bleeding back. He had direct need to turn his back upon this thing—the old nausea. It never occurred to him that this was his own great test, greater than Nagar’s, for such tests of the human heart do not come announced; but out of all past experience, one thing stood in the midst of a rocking universe—that if he did anything in this red blindness, he would do worse than nothing.
He walked away, his elbows jerking up as another stroke fell. The thing that saved him was already accomplished. The turning of his back was all that was required, apparently, since in this instant he got a life and death grip on the word Messenger. Was he Nagar’s friend or India’s messenger?
Then he knew just one furious smearing doubt. What of human loyalty—to stand by and allow this thing to go on? He was answered in his mind from Nagar’s own words, “Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is of the Soul.” Action of a foreigner in behalf of a native would only intensify the English fears and the native’s plight. To rush in was John Higgins’ code. Evidently there was another.
He walked around to meet Nagar face to face. Ten feet away, he stood until Nagar’s eyes came up to his. Had Nagar’s hand been free to lift and command Silence, his lips free to speak, the word could not have been more fiercely impressed. Indeed, the word Silence seemed to have been shot into the American’s consciousness.
A blow fell. Nagar’s eyes closed; his lips stretched out as if struck by an invisible hand. Then under the trailing eyelids, Dicky saw a look of inexpressible gratitude and relief—the barest beginning of a smile. Nagar had found him fit to trust. It was another moment of real life, that moment of the look, another instant of essential recognition.