Gil the Gunner - George Manville Fenn (people reading books .TXT) 📗
- Author: George Manville Fenn
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Book online «Gil the Gunner - George Manville Fenn (people reading books .TXT) 📗». Author George Manville Fenn
“And yet how can I shake hands with you, rajah?” I said sadly; “we are enemies.”
His eyes flashed with pride as I called him rajah, and he retained my hand firmly.
“Enemies?” he said. “Yes, in the field, when face to face; but you are wounded, and there is a truce between you and me. We can be friends, and eat salt together. You are my guest, my honoured guest. This tent is yours; the servants are yours; order them, and they will obey you. As soon as you are well enough, there is a palanquin waiting with willing men to bear you. When you are better still, there is your elephant and a horse.”
“My horse, my Arab?” I cried. “Is he safe?”
He smiled.
“Yes, quite safe, with two syces to care for him; the horse of their rajah’s friend. What can I get you? Ask for anything. I am very rich, and it shall be yours.”
“You can only give me one thing,” I cried. “No; two things.”
“The first, then?” he said, smiling.
“News of my troop, of Captain Brace, and our men; of the officers of the foot regiment. Tell me,” I cried excitedly, “how did the fight end?”
“How could it end?” he replied, with a smile full of pride. “What could that poor handful of men do against my thousands?”
“Defeated?” I cried excitedly.
“Yes; they were defeated; they fled.”
My countenance fell, and there must have been a look of despair in my eyes, which he read, for he said more quietly—
“Captain Brace is a brave man, and he did everything he could; but he had to flee—and you were left in my hands a prisoner,” he added, with a smile.
“He had to flee,” I said to myself; and that means that he had escaped uninjured from a desperate encounter. There was something consoling in that; and I wanted to ask a score of questions about Haynes and the infantry officers, but I could not. For one thing, I felt that it would be like writing a long account of a list of disasters; for another, I was not sure that I could trust an enemy’s account of the engagement. So I remained silent, and the rajah asked me a few questions about my symptoms, and whether there was anything he could get for me.
I shook my head, for, though gratified by the warm liking and esteem he had displayed, my spirits had sunk very low indeed, and I wanted to be alone to think.
Seeing that I was weak and troubled, the rajah soon after rose, and moved to the doorway of the tent, where he summoned one of the attendants, and uttered a few words, the result being that a few minutes after the tall, grave, eastern physician appeared at the doorway, and salaamed in the most lowly way before his prince.
“Go to him,” said the rajah in their own tongue, and the doctor came across to me and began examining my injuries, while the rajah stood looking on, watching everything attentively.
I could not help noticing how nervous and troubled the doctor seemed, performing his task with trembling hands, as if in great awe of the chief his master. He ended by rising and salaaming again.
“Well?” said the rajah quickly; and I knew enough Hindustani now to be able to snatch at the meaning of their words. “You must make him well quickly.”
“I will try, your highness.”
“No, sir; you will do,” said the rajah, sternly.
“He must be made strong and well soon. I want him; he is my friend.”
He turned from the doctor, who took this as his dismissal, and bowed and left the tent, while the rajah seated himself on the carpet by his sword, and stayed there in one position as if deep in thought, making probably more plans.
I lay watching him wonderingly, asking myself whether he had ever grasped the fact of how much I had had to do with the recovery of the guns, and if he did not, what would be his feelings toward one who had utterly baulked him, and robbed him of the prize he went through so much to win.
I certainly did not feel disposed to enlighten him, but by watching his troubled face, and thinking of how valuable, if he had succeeded in well training his men, a troop of horse artillery would be, and how different our position would have been during that encounter if he had had half a dozen six-pounders well-served.
“But he has no guns,” I ended by saying to myself; “and we—I mean our people—have, and I cannot believe in our—I mean their—being swept away, so long as they hold such a supremacy as the guns afford to them.”
I was stopped short by the rajah re-buckling his sword-belt, and a minute later he was bending over me.
“Make haste,” he said in Hindustani. “I shall not be at peace till you are well once more.”
He pressed my hand warmly, and bade me order anything I wished, for I was in my own tent, and then, after smiling at me, and telling me to grow strong, he strode to the purdah, drew it aside, turned to look back, and then the curtain fell between us, and I was alone once more.
I lay listening to the stamping and plunging of horses, and in imagination could picture the whole scene with the restless, excitable animals, shrinking from being backed, and pretending to bite, but calming down the moment they felt a strong hand at the bit.
Then came an order, followed by the jingling of weapons and the snorting of the horses and their heavy trampling upon the soft earth, the sound gradually growing fainter, till it was like a distant murmur, one which had the effect of sending me, tired as I was, off into a heavy sleep.
It was night when I awoke, refreshed and ready to ask myself whether it was a dream, one of the many vivid sleep scenes which I had conjured up since I had been there, wounded and a prisoner.
But I knew directly that it was no dream, and I began thinking of how sadly some of the natives must have been treated for the simple civilities which I had bestowed upon Ny Deen to be appreciated as they were.
From that I began thinking of Brace and Haynes, about the colonel of the foot regiment, and of Ny Deen’s words that they were beaten and had fled.
“I don’t believe it,” I said, half aloud. There may have been thousands against our hundreds; but our fellows would not study that. It would only make them fight the more fiercely. I suppose that was his idea of it; but I felt sure that it would not be Brace’s, or that of his brother in arms. I thought then of our tremendous charge with the guns, and I could not keep from smiling.
“That does not seem to be the work of a man who wants to retreat,” I said to myself. “If Brace has retired, it is only to act like a wave of the sea, so that he can come back with greater force, and sweep everything before him.”
Yes; I was sure of that, as I lay there gazing at the lamp, whose soft light seemed to look dreamy and pleasant. I was in better spirits, and the old depression and feeling of misery had gone.
Then I began to plan what I should do as I grew stronger. I would make use of the palanquin and the elephant’s howdah; but at the first opportunity I decided that I would escape. I did not want to be ungrateful to Ny Deen, and it was very pleasant to feel that he liked me; but I must get back to my own people, I felt, and he would know that it was quite reasonable.
A faint rustling sound drew my attention just then, somewhere near the head of my bed; but it ceased directly, and I attributed it to the servants.
To prove this, I made up my mind to clap my hands, but at the first movement such a keen pain shot through my shoulder that I contented myself by calling, “Who waits?”
There was a quick rustling sound at once, and the purdah was drawn aside by a shadowy figure, and held while three men in white entered with trays so quickly and silently that I felt as if I were going through some scene from the “Arabian Nights,” when the four men came up to my couch, and the chief attendant pointed out places on the carpet for the various things to be placed, and then signed to the men to go, which they did without word or look.
“I suppose I shall not be allowed to eat and drink what I like,” I thought, and I laughed to myself, for it was such a good sign even to think about food at all. Directly after I found I was right, for my attendant poured me out something warm which smelt savoury, and as he raised me carefully and propped me up with cushions, I smiled again, for I felt as if I were a baby about to be fed.
My amusement was quite justified, for I was as weak as an infant, and was glad to let the calm, silent man supply my wants, holding me so that I could drink what tasted like a strong preparation of chicken; after which he gave me a very delicious and sweet preparation which I recognised as cocoanut cream. Lastly, he gave me some curious-looking bonbons, helping me to lie back first, so that I need not grow weary while I partook of the preparations, which were nice, but possessed a peculiar aromatic taste, which was new to me.
I had eaten three of these, and then half uneasily told myself that, without doubt, the doctor ordered these preparations because they contained the medicines he wished me to take.
I think so now; for in a short time a pleasant drowsiness stole over me, and I fell asleep to awake with a start, as it seemed to me; but it must have been only a slight one, for I could not have moved more than my eyes, which were at once directed to the lamp on its stand, some ten or a dozen feet from me, and I wondered why my breath came so short, and grasped at once the fact that I had a heavy weight upon my chest.
It appeared simple enough. I had hardly taken anything of late, and my meal on the previous night had been fairly liberal. Consequently, being a sick or delicate man, I was suffering from the consequences—that of a heavy weight at my chest.
I lay thinking that I had not taken much, and that it was very hard that I should suffer so much inconvenience for so trivial a meal, when the weight on my chest moved, and I felt something cool touch my neck.
I was still not clearly awake, and I did not feel any very great surprise at this; for during what must have been my delirium, I had in imagination had stranger adventures than this, and consequently I lay perfectly still, waiting for the sensation to pass off before closing my eyes and enjoying another pleasant, restful, strength-giving sleep.
I had just arrived at this pitch of reasoning, and I was considering how long it would be before the sensation passed away, when, as I stared with half-closed eyes at the lamp, I fancied that I saw something gleam only a short distance before me; and this exciting my curiosity, I looked again, felt startled, my heart began to beat painfully, and a cold chill ran through me, as I realised the horrible fact that, consequent upon my bed being made up on the ground, instead of upon the native bedstead known as a charpoy, a serpent had crept in beneath the side of the tent—the rustle I had heard—and, attracted by the
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