Told in the East. Talbot Mundy
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that flanked the road, and Brown spent the next few minutes in making the guard “port arms,” and carefully inspecting their weapons with the aid of a lantern. He had already inspected there once since supper, but he knew the effect that another inspection would be likely to produce. Nothing goes further toward making men careful and ready at the word than incessant and unexpected but quite quietly performed inspection of minutest details.
He produced the effect of setting the men on the qui vive without alarming them.
Suddenly, the farthest advanced sentry's challenge rang out.
“Frie-e-e-e-nd!” came the answer, in nasal, high-pitched wail, but the galloping continued.
“Halt, I tell you!” A breech-bolt clicked, and then another one. They were little sounds, but they were different, and the guard could hear them plainly. The galloping horse came on.
“Cra-a-a-a-ack!” went the sentry's rifle, and the flash of it spurted for an instant across the road, like a sheet of lightning. And, just as lightning might, it showed an instantaneous vision of a tired gray horse, foam-flecked and furiously ridden, pounding down the road head-on. The vision was blotted by the night again before any one could see who rode the horse, or what his weapons were—if any—or form a theory as to why he rode.
But the winging bullet did what the sentry's voice had failed to do. There came a clatter of spasmodic hoof-beats, an erratic shower of sparks, a curse in clean-lipped decent Urdu; a grunt, a struggle, more sparks again, and then a thud, followed by a devoutly worded prayer that Allah, the all-wise provider of just penalties, might blast the universe.
“Stop talkin'!” said the sentry, and a black-bearded Rajput rolled free, and looked up to find a bayonet-point within three inches of his eye.
“Poggul!” snarled the Mohammedan.
“Poggul's no password!” said the sentry. “Neither to my good-nature nor to nothing else. Put up your 'ands, and get on your feet, and march! Look alive, now! Call me a fool, would yer? Wait till the sergeant's through with yer, and see!”
The Rajput chose to consider a retort beneath his dignity. He rose, and took one quick look at the horse, which was still breathing.
“Your bayonet just there,” he said, “and press. So he will die quickly.”
The sentry placed his bayonet-point exactly where directed, and leaned his weight above it. The horse gave a little shudder, and lay still.
“Poggul!” said the Rajput once again. And this time the sentry looked and saw cold steel within three inches of his eye!
“Your rifle!” said the Rajput. “Hand it here!”
And, to save his eyesight, the sentry complied, while the Rajput's ivory-white teeth grinned at him pleasantly.
“Now, hands to your sides! Attention! March!” the Rajput ordered, and with his own bayonet at his back the sentry had to march, whether he wanted to or not, by the route that the other chose, toward the guardroom. The Rajput seemed to know by instinct where the second sentry stood although the man's shape was quite invisible against the night. He called out, “Friend!” again as he passed him, and the sentry hearing the first sentry's footsteps, imagined that the real situation was reversed.
So, out of a pall of blackness, to the accompanying sound of rifles being brought up to the shoulder, a British sentry—feeling and looking precisely like a fool—marched up to his own guardroom, with a man who should have been his prisoner in charge of him.
“Halt!” commanded Brown. “Who or what have you got there, Stanley?”
“Stanley is my prisoner at present!” said a voice that Brown vaguely recognized.
He stepped up closer, to make sure.
“What, you? Juggut Khan!”
“Aye, Brown sahib! Juggut Khan—with tidings, and a dead gray horse on which to bear them! If this fool could only use his bayonet as he can shoot, I think I would be dead too. His brains, though, are all behind his right eye. Tie him up, where no little child can come and make him prisoner!”
“Arrest that man!” commanded Brown, and two men detached themselves from the end of the guard, and stood him between them, behind the line.
“Here's his rifle!” smiled Juggut Khan, and Brown received it with an ill grace.
“How did you get past the other sentry?” he asked.
“Oh, easily! You English are only brave; you have no brains. Sometimes one part of the rule is broken, but the other never. You are not always brave!”
“I suppose you're angry because he killed your horse?”
“I am angry, Brown sahib, for greater happenings than that! The man conceivably was right, since I did not halt for him, and I suppose he had his orders. I am angry because the standard of rebellion is raised, and because of what it means to me!”
“Are you drunk, Juggut Khan?”
“Your honor is pleased to be humorous? No, I am not drunk. Nor have I eaten opium. I have eaten of the bread of bitterness this day, and drunk of the cup of gall. I have seen British officers—good, brave fools, some of whom I knew and loved—killed by the men they were supposed to lead. I have seen a barracks burning, and a city given over to be looted. I have seen white women—nay, sahib, steady!—I have seen them run before a howling mob, and I have seen certain of them shot by their own husbands!”
“Quietly!” ordered Brown. “Don't let the men hear!”
“One of them I slew myself, because her husband, who was wounded, sent me to her and bade me kill her. She died bravely. And certain others I have hidden where the mutineers are not likely to discover them at present. I ride now for succor—or, I rode, rather, until your expert marksman interfered with me! I now need another horse.”
“You mean that the native troops have mutinied?” “I mean rather more than that, sahib. Mohammedans and Hindus are as one, and the crowd is with them. This is probably the end of the powder-train, for, from what I heard shouted by the mutineers, almost the whole of India is in revolt already!”
“Why?”
“God knows, sahib! The reason given is that the cartridges supplied are greased with the blended fat of pigs and cows, thus defiling both Hindu and Mohammedan alike. But, if you ask me, the cause lies deeper. In the meantime, the rebels have looted Jailpore and burned their barracks, and within an hour or two they will start along this road for Bholat, which they have a mind to loot likewise. My advice to you is retire at once. Get me another horse from somewhere, that I may carry warning. Then follow me as fast as you and your men can move.”
“Bah!” said Brown. “They'll find General Baines to deal with them at Bholat.”
“Who knows yet how many in Bholat have not risen? Are you positive that the garrison there has not already been surrounded by rebels? I am not! I would not be at all surprised to learn that General Baines is so busy defending himself that he can not move in any direction. And—does your honor mean to hold this guardroom here against five thousand?”
“I mean to obey my orders!” answered Brown.
“And your orders are?”
“My orders!”
“Would they preclude the provision of another horse for me?”
“There's a village about a mile away, down over yonder, where I think you'll find a decent horse—along that road there.”
“And your honor's orders would possibly permit a certain payment for the horse?”
“Positively not!” said Brown.
“Then—'
“To seize a horse, for military use, under the spur of necessity,