Chapter XIV

Explosions are among the few things--or the many things, whichever way you like to look at it!--that science can not undertake to harness or account for. When a gun blows up, or a powder-magazine, the shock kills whom it kills, as when a shell bursts in a dense-packed firing-line. You can not kill any man before his time comes, even if a thousand tons of solid masonry combine with you to whelm him, and go hurtling through the air with him to absolutely obvious destruction.

The fakir's time had come, and the prisoners' time had come. But Sergeant William Brown's had not.

They found him, blackened by powder, and with every stitch of clothing blown from him, clinging to a bunch of lotus-stems in a temple-pond. There was a piece of fakir in the water with him, and about a ton of broken granary, besides the remnants of a rifle and other proof that he had come belched out of a holocaust. The men who came on him had given their officer the slip, and were bent on a private looting-expedition of their own. But by the time that they had dragged him from the water, and he had looted them of wherewithal to clothe himself, their thoughts of plunder had departed from them. Brown had a way of quite monopolizing people's thoughts!

There were twenty of them, and he led them all that night, and all through the morning and the afternoon that followed. He held them together and worked them and wheeled them and coached and cheered and compelled them through the hell-tumult of the ghastliest thing there is beneath the dome of heaven--house-to-house fighting in an Eastern city. And at the end of it, when the bugles blew at last “Cease fire,” and many of the men were marched away by companies to put out the conflagrations that were blazing here and there, he led them outside the city-wall, stood them at ease in their own line and saluted their commanding-officer.

“Twenty men of yours, sir. Present and correct.”

“Which twenty?”

“Of Mr. Blair's half-company.”

“Where's Mr. Blair?”

“Dunno, sir!”

“Since when have you had charge of them?”

“Since they broke into the city yesterday, sir.”

“And you haven't lost a man?”

“Had lots of luck, sir!”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”

“Of the Rifles?”

“Of the Rifles, sir.”

“Were you the man who signaled to us from the magazine and blew it up and made the breach in the wall for us to enter by?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you alive, or dead? Man or ghost?”

“I'm pretty much alive, sir, thank you!”

“D'you realize that you made the taking of Jailpore possible? That but for you we'd have been trying still to storm the walls without artillery?”

“I had the chance, sir, and I only did what any other man would ha' done under like circumstances.”

“Go and tell that to the Horse Marines--or, rather, tell it to Colonel Kendrick! Go and report to him at once. Possibly he'll see it through your eyes!”

So Brown marched off to report himself, and he found Colonel Kendrick nursing a badly wounded arm before a torn and mud-stained tent.

“Who are you?” said the colonel, as Brown saluted him.

“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”

“Not Bill Brown of the Rifles?”

“Yes, sir!”

“You lie! He was blown up on the roof of the powder-magazine! I suppose every man who's gone mad from the heat will be saying that he's Brown!”

“I'm Brown, sir! I had written orders from General Baines to enter Jailpore and rescue three women and a child.”

“Where are your orders?”

“Lost 'em, sir, in the explosion.”

“For a madman, you're a circumstantial liar! What happened to the women?”

The colonel sat back, and smothered an exclamation of agony as the nerves in his injured arm tortured him afresh. He had asked a question which should settle once and for all this man's pretentions, and he waited for the answer with an air of certainty. It was on his lips to call the guard to take the lunatic away.

“Juggut Khan, the Rajput, took them, with nine of my men, and brought them in to your camp last night, sir. I naturally haven't seen them since.”

“Will the women know you?”

“One of them will, sir.”

“Which one?”

“Jane Emmett, sir.”

“Well, we'll see!”

The colonel called an orderly, and sent the orderly running for Jane Emmett. A minute later two strong arms were thrown round Bill Brown from behind, and he was all but carried off his feet.

“Oh, Bill--Bill--Bill! I knew you'd be all right! Turn round, Bill! Look at me!”

She was clinging to him in such a manner that he could not turn, but he managed to pry her hands loose, and to draw her round in front of him.

“I knew, Bill! I felt sure you'd come! And I recognized your voice the minute that the trapdoor opened and I heard it! I did, Bill! I knew you in a minute! I didn't worry then! I knew you wouldn't come and talk to me as long as there was any duty to be done. I just waited! They said you were killed in the explosion, but I knew you weren't! I knew it! I did! I knew it!”

“Face me, please!” said Colonel Kendrick. “Now, Jane Emmett, is that man Sergeant William Brown, of the Rifles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is he the man who entered Jailpore with nine men and a Rajput, and came to your assistance?”

“Yes, sir! He's the same man who spoke in the powder-magazine;”

“Do you confirm that?” he asked Brown.

“Under favor, sir, my men must be somewhere, if they're not all killed. They'll recognize me. And there's the other lot I led all last night and all today. They'll tell you where they found me!”

“Never mind! I've decided I believe you! D'you realize that you're something of a marvel?”

“No, sir--except that I've had marvelous luck!”

“Well, I shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in despatches. It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen! There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what you dared in the first place. But, more than that, there are even fewer men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else's care while they blew up a powder-magazine with themselves on top of it, in order to make a breach for the army to come in by! My right hand's out of action unfortunately--you'll have to shake my left!”

The colonel rose, held his uninjured hand out and Brown shook it, since he was ordered to.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to have shaken hands with you, Sergeant Brown!” said Colonel Kendrick.

“Thank you, sir!” said Brown, taking one step back, and then saluting. “May I join my regiment, sir?”

He joined his regiment, when he had helped to sort out the bleeding remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was once more mentioned in despatches.

When the Mutiny was over, and the country had settled down again to peace and reincarnation of a nation had begun, Brown found himself hoisted to a civil appointment that was greater and more highly paid than anything his modest soul had ever dreamed of.

He never understood the reason for it, although he did his fighting-best consistently to fill the job; and he never understood why Queen Victoria should have taken the trouble to write a letter to him in which she thanked him personally, nor why they should have singled out for praise and special notice a fellow who had merely done his duty.

Perhaps that was the reason why he was such a conspicuous success in civil life. They still talk of how Bill Brown, with Jane his wife and Juggut Khan the Rajput to advise him, was Resident Political Adviser to a Maharajah, and of how the Maharajah loathed him, and looked sidewise at him--but obeyed. That, though, is not a war-story. It is a story of the saving of a war, and shall go on record, some day, beneath a title of its own.

FOR THE SALT HE HAD EATEN

Prologue

To the northward of Hanadra, blue in the sweltering heat-haze, lay Siroeh, walled in with sun-baked mud and listless. Through a wooden gate at one end of the village filed a string of women with their water-pots. Oxen, tethered underneath the thatched eaves or by the thirsty-looking trees, lay chewing the cud, almost too lazy to flick the flies away. Even the village goats seemed overcome with lassitude. Here and there a pariah dog sneaked in and out among the shadows or lay and licked his sores beside an offal-heap; but there seemed to be no energy in anything. The bone-dry, hot-weather wind had shriveled up verdure and ambition together.

But in the mud-walled cottages, where men were wont to doze through the long, hot days, there were murmurings and restless movement. Men lay on thong-strung beds, and talked instead of dreaming, and the women listened and said nothing--which is the reverse of custom. Hanadra was what it always had been, thatched, sun-baked lassitude; but underneath the thatch there thrummed a beehive atmosphere of tension.

In the center of the village, where the one main road that led from the main gate came to an abrupt end at a low mud wall, stood a house that was larger than the others and somewhat more neatly kept; there had been an effort made at sweeping the enclosure that surrounded it on all four sides, and there was even whitewash, peeling off in places but still comparatively white, smeared on the sun-cracked walls.

Here, besides murmurings and movement, there was evidence of real activity. Tethered against the wall on one side of the house stood a row of horses, saddled and bridled and bearing evidence of having traveled through the heat; through the open doorway the sunshine glinted on a sword-hilt and amid the sound of many voices rang the jingling of a spur as some one sat cornerwise on a wooden table and struck his toe restlessly against the leg.

Another string of women started for the water-hole, with their picturesque brass jars perched at varying angles on their heads; and as each one passed the doorway of this larger house she turned and scowled. A Rajput, lean and black-bearded and swaggering, came to the door and watched them, standing proudly with his arms folded across his breast. As the last woman showed her teeth at him, he laughed aloud.

“Nay!” said a voice inside. “Have done with that! Is noticing the Hindu women fit sport for a Rajput?”

The youngster turned and faced the old, black-bearded veteran who spoke.

“If I had my way,” he answered, “I would ride roughshod through this village, and fire the thatch. They fail to realize the honor that we pay them by a visit!”

“Aye, hothead! And burn thy brother's barn with what is in it! The Hindus here are many, and we are few, and there will be burnings and saberings a-plenty before a week is past, if I read the signs aright! Once before have I heard such murmurings. Once before I have seen chupatties sent from house to house at sunset--and that time blood ran red along the roadside for a month to follow! Keep thy sword sharp a while and wait the day!”

“But why,” growled another deep-throated Rajput voice, “does the Sirkar wait? Why not smite first and swiftly?”

Mahommed Khan moved restlessly and ran his fingers through his beard.

“I know not!” he answered. “In the days when I was Risaldar in the Rajput Horse, and Bellairs sahib was colonel, things were different! But we conquered, and after conquest came security. The English have grown overconfident; they think that Mussulman will always war with Hindu, the one betraying the other; they will not understand that this lies deeper than jealousy--they will not listen! Six months ago I rode to Jundhra and whispered to the general sahib what I thought; but he laughed back at me. He said 'Wolf! wolf!' to me and drew me inside his bungalow and bade me eat my fill.”

“Well--what matters it! This land has always been the playground of new conquerors!”

“There will be no new conquerors,” growled the old Risaldar, “so long as I and mine have swords to wield for the Raj!”

“But what have the English done for thee or us?”

“This, forgetful one! They have treated us with honor, as surely no other conquerors had done! At thy age, I too measured my happiness in cattle and coin and women, but then came Bellairs sahib, and raised the Rajput Horse, and I enlisted. What came of that was better than all the wealth of Ind!”

He spread his long legs like a pair of scissors and caught a child between them and lifted him.

“Thou ruffian, thou!” he chuckled. “See how he fights! A true Rajput! Nay, beat me not. Some day thou too shalt bear a sword for England, great-grandson mine. Ai-ee! But I grow old.”

“For England or the next one!”

“Nay! But for England!” said the Risaldar, setting the child down on his knee. “And thou too, hot-head. Before a week is past! Think you I called my sons and grandsons all together for the fun of it? Think you I rode here through the heat because I needed the exercise or to chatter like an ape or to stand in the doorway making faces at a Hindu woman or to watch thee do it? Here I am, and here I stay until yet more news comes!”

“Then are we to wait here? Are we to swelter in Siroeh, eating up our brother's hospitality, until thy messengers see fit to come and tell us that this scare of thine is past?”

“Nay!” said the Risaldar. “I said that I wait here! Return now to your own homes, each of you. But be in readiness. I am old, but I can ride still. I can round you up. Has any a better horse than mine? If he has, let him make exchange.”

“There will be horses for the looting if this revolt of thine breaks out!”

“True! There will be horses for the looting! Well, I wait here then and, when the trouble comes, I can count on thirteen of my blood to carry swords behind me?”

“Aye, when the trouble comes!”

There was a chorus of assent, and the Risaldar arose to let his sons and grandsons file past him. He, who had beggared himself to give each one of them a start in life, felt a little chagrined that they should now refuse to exchange horses with him; but his eye glistened none the less at the sight of their stalwart frames and at the thought of what a fighting unit he could bring to serve the Raj.

“All, then, for England!” he exclaimed.

“Nay, all for thee!” said his eldest-born. “We fight on whichever side thou sayest!”

“Disloyal one!” growled the Risaldar with a scowl. But he grinned into his beard.

“Well, to your homes, then--but be ready!”