Gil the Gunner - George Manville Fenn (people reading books .TXT) 📗

Private Smith did not die, but he had a month in hospital for his punishment, while mine was confined to a severe reprimand.

I was not happy at Rambagh, for though the other officers were pleasant enough with me, Barton always seemed to be sneering at my efforts, and was ready to utter some disparaging remark. There was one consolation, however: the others did not seem to like him, so that it did not look as if it were all my fault. I noticed one thing, though, and it was this: Barton was always ready to say disparaging things about Brace; but the latter never retaliated, and always refrained from mentioning, save in the most general way, his brother-officer’s name.

I was getting on fast, I suppose, for I felt less nervous and more at home with the troop. The various words of command had ceased to be a puzzle, and when I had orders to give, I was beginning to be able to use my voice in a penetrating, decisive way, and did not feel ashamed of it when I heard my words ring out clearly, and not as if they were jerked or bumped out by the motion of my horse.

Then, too, I had got on so far that I did not mind standing close to the brass field-pieces when they were fired, and the discharge had ceased to make my ears ring for hours after, and feel deaf. At the first shots I heard, I could not help wondering whether the piece I stood by would burst, and kill or wound us with a jagged fragment of brass. While now the dashing gallop, with the guns leaping and bounding over the plain, and the men on the limbers holding on with both hands to keep from being jerked off, had grown exhilarating and full of excitement. There was always the feeling that one must have a bad fall, and sometimes a horse would go down, and a man be hurt more or less seriously; but somehow I always escaped. And one morning I went back to breakfast after a heavy gallop, tired, but prouder than I had ever before felt in my life, for I had heard one of the men whisper to another as we drew up into line after a fierce gallop—

“How the young beggar can ride!”

And, to make matters better, Brace came alongside of me, and uttered the one word, “Capital,” as he passed.

I felt the colour come into my cheeks, and a sense of delight such as I had not experienced for months; and then I gave my horse’s sides a nip with my knees, which made it start, for I caught sight of Barton smiling superciliously, and supplying the drop of bitterness which kept me from growing conceited.

I must hurry through these early days, a full account of which would sound dull and uninteresting, but during which I had grown to be quite at home on the Sheik, and on another horse which Brace purchased for me, and which, from his speed, I called Hurricane. For though I found that I belonged to the fastest and best-trained troop of horse artillery in the service, from being so light a weight, I had to keep a pretty tight rein on my new horse, so as to hold him in his place.

Barton laughed at it, and called it a wretched screw; but I did not mind, for I found out before I had been attached to the corps long that everything in which Brace had a hand was wrong, and that he bore anything but a friendly feeling toward me, dubbing me Brace’s Jackal, though all the time I felt that I was no nearer being friends than on the day I joined.

I had learned from Barton why Brace had been over to England. It was to take his young wife, to whom he had only been married a year, in the hope of saving her life; and if I had felt any repugnance to the lieutenant before, it was redoubled now by the cynically brutal way in which he spoke.

“She died, of course,” he said. “We all knew she would—a poor, feeble kind of creature—and a good job for him. A soldier don’t want an invalid wife.”

These words explained a good deal about Brace that I had not grasped before, and as I thought of his quiet, subdued ways, and the serious aspect of his face, I could not help feeling how fond he must have been of the companion he had lost, and how it had influenced his life.

At the end of a year, we received the route, and were off, to march by easy stages, to Rajgunge, where we were to be stationed, and a glorious change it seemed to me, for I was as weary of the ugly town, with its dirty river and crowded bazaars, as I was of our hot, low barracks and the dusty plain which formed our training-ground. Rajgunge, Brace told me, was quite a small place, in a beautifully wooded, mountainous country, where there was jungle and cane-brake, with plenty of sport for those who cared for it, the rajah being ready enough to get up shooting-parties and find elephants and beaters for a grand tiger battue from time to time.

It was quite a new experience to me, all the preparations for the evacuation of the barracks, and I stared with astonishment at the size of the baggage-train, with the following of servants, grooms, tentmen, elephants, and camels, deemed necessary to accompany our marches. It was like the exodus of some warlike tribe; but, as Brace told me, it was quite the regular thing.

“You see, everything is done to spare our men labour. Their profession is to fight, and as long as they do that well, John Company is willing that they should have plenty of assistance to clean their horses, guns, and accoutrements.”

Our marches were always made in the very early morning, many of our starts being soon after midnight, and a curious scene it was in the moonlight, as the long train, with its elephants laden with tents, and camels moaning and grumbling at the weight of the necessaries they were doomed to carry, the light flashing from the guns or the accoutrements of the mounted men, and all on and on, over the sandy dust, till I grew drowsy, and nodded over my horse’s neck, rousing myself from time to time with a start to ask whether it was not all some dream.

Just as the sun was getting unpleasantly hot, and the horses caked with sweat and dust, a halt would be called in some shady tope, where the tents rose as if by magic, fires were rapidly lighted by the attendants, and, amidst quite a babel of tongues, breakfast was prepared, while parroquets of a vivid green shrieked at us from the trees, squirrels leaped and ran, and twice over we arrived at a grove to find it tenanted by a troop of chattering monkeys, which mouthed and scolded at us till our men drove them far into the depths of the jungle with stones.

Here, with our tents set up in the shade of the trees, we passed the hot days, with the sun pouring down with such violence that I have often thought it might be possible for a loaded gun to get heated enough to ignite the powder. There would be plenty of sleeping, of course, with the sentries looking longingly on, and wishing it was their turn; and then, soon after midnight, the column would be en route again, to continue its march till seven, eight, or nine o’clock, according to the distance of the camping-place, the same spots being used by the different regiments year after year.

There was very little variety, save that we had more or less dust, according to the character of the road material over which we travelled; and I heard the news, after many days, that the next would be the last, as eagerly as I had of the one which had been nominated for our start.

It was a brilliant morning when we came in sight of a sparkling river, beyond which were the white walls and gilded minarets of Rajgunge, with squat temples and ghauts down at the riverside, and everywhere dotted about tall waving palms, groves of trees, and again, beyond these, the rich green of cultivated lands, rising up to mountains blue in the distance, where the wild jungle filled up the valleys and gorges which seamed their sides.

“Lovely!” I ejaculated, as I feasted my eyes on the glorious scene.

“Eh? What?” said Barton, who heard me. “Bah! what a gushing girl you are, Gil Vincent! Does look, though, as if we might get a bit of shooting.”

He rode on, and I hung back till Brace came abreast of me, and looked at me inquiringly.

“Well, Vincent,” he said, “you wanted some beautiful country to look at. I have not exaggerated, have I?”

“No; it is glorious!” I cried.

“Yes; beautiful indeed, and the more lovely to us who have been so long in the plains.”

We rode on in silence for a time till we neared the head of the bridge of boats we had to cross—a structure which looked too frail to bear our guns and the ponderous elephants in our baggage-train; but the leading men advanced; the first gun was drawn over by its six horses, and the rest followed, while, as I passed over with the Sheik snorting and looking rather wild-eyed at the rushing water, I was only conscious of an elastic motion of the plank roadway, as a hollow sound came up at the trampling of the horses’ feet, and before long we were winding through that densely-populated city, and then right through to our quarters, high up on a slope, where the wind came down fresh and sweet from the hills.

“How long shall we stay here?” I asked Brace, that evening, after mess, as we stood at the edge of our parade-ground, looking down at the city with the level rays of the setting sun lighting up the gilded minarets, and glorifying the palm-trees that spread their great feathery leaves against the amber sky.

“How long shall we stay here?” said Brace, sadly, as he repeated my question. “Who can tell? Perhaps for a year—perhaps for a month. Till we are wanted to crush out some mad attempt on the part of a chief to assert his independence, or to put down a quarrel between a couple of rajahs hungry for each other’s lands.”