It was the bearer, who, suddenly wakened by some noise, had in the dark groped for his lamp and found it missing.
"Heavens!" the Captain exclaimed. "Now the cook house will be empty—the servants will come!" He rubbed a hand perplexedly over his forehead. "Quick, Gulab, you must hide!"
He swung open a wooden door between his room and a bedroom next. Within he said: "There's a bed, and you must sleep here till daylight, then I will have the chowkidar take you to where you wish to go. You couldn't go in the dark anyway. Bar the door; you will be quite safe; don't be frightened." He touched her cheek with his fingers: "Salaam, little girl." Then, going out, he opened the door leading to the room of clamour, exclaiming angrily, "You fool, why do you scream in your dreams?"
"God be thanked! it is the Sahib." The bearer flopped to his knees and put his hands in abasement upon his master's feet.
Jungwa had rushed into the room, staff in hand, at the outcry. Now he stood glowering indignantly upon the grovelling bearer.
"It is the opium, Sahib," he declared; "this fool spends all his time in the bazaar smoking with people of ill repute. If the Presence will but admonish him with the whip our slumbers will not again be disturbed."
The bearer, running true to the tenets of native servants, put up the universal alibi—a flat denial.
"Sahib, you who are my father and my mother, be not angry, for I have not slept. I observed the Sahib pass, but as he spoke not, I thought he had matters of import upon his mind and wished not to be disturbed."
"A liar—by Mother Gunga!" The chowkidar prodded him in the ribs with the end of his staff, and turning in disgust, passed out.
"Come, you fool!" Barlow commanded, returning to his room, and, sitting down wearily upon the bed, held up a leg.