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

I was very young; I had been badly wounded, and was just recovering and beginning to feel how beautiful, in spite of all my sufferings, life was, so I remained silent.

“You refuse, then?” he cried fiercely.

I was still silent, and he turned from me in a rage, making a fierce motion for me to descend from the elephant, which I obeyed, while Ny Deen gave a short, sharp order in an angry tone, whose result was that one of his men seized me on either side, and I was more a prisoner than ever, with six men in front and six behind, fresh summoned from the guard-house, to march me away.

It was to my death, so it seemed in those terrible moments; while I had but to raise my voice and give my promise to the rajah, to be at once his honoured and trusted friend, commissioned with great power.

But I could not say the necessary words, any more than I could speak a minute before, and in the silence of despair I walked as firmly as I could in the direction taken by the men, feeling giddy with excitement, and as if all this were not real, but part of some terrible trouble befallen another.

I did not see what was about to happen, and was so wrapped up in my position, that I did not hear the huge elephant from which I had just descended shuffling after me, till the rajah’s voice called to my guard to halt. Then, leaning down from the howdah, he said to me—

“This is blind obstinacy. Come, say you will be my friend, and help me now that I want your services.”

“I cannot,” I said huskily.

Ny Deen uttered a fierce command to the mahout, the elephant swung round, and I set my teeth hard to keep from shouting to him to stop and take me with him. But I mastered my cowardly feeling, and marched on to what I felt was my execution, giving Ny Deen the credit of treating me as a soldier, though all the while it was in a curious, half-stupefied way, as if the shock had terrorised me, though after the first sensation of horror, I do not recall feeling any great amount of dread.

It was then with something approaching wonder that I saw the leading men of the guard wheel to the left through the entrance, and up the broad staircase, and along the passages, at the end of which were my rooms.

Here they drew back for me to enter, and the door was closed, the rattle of the men’s muskets announcing that they remained on guard.

I felt so faint on being left alone that I was glad to fly to the great cool vessel of water always standing in one of the rooms, after which I sank down on one of the piles of cushions, and wiped the cold perspiration from my forehead.

I was still half-stunned, and wondering whether this was only a respite; but Hope soon began to be busy, and I felt that, after all, the being led off to instant death was the work of my own imagination, and that Ny Deen had probably never even had such a thought beyond holding it up as a threat.

As I recovered myself, I rose and walked to the farther door, where, there could be no doubt, the twelve men were stationed, and from thence I hurried to one of the open windows, and looked out to see that there was a guard still at the gateway, and beyond it I could hear a dull, hoarse murmur, and the heavy tramp, tramp of marching men, which was followed by the rush of a body of horse going by at a gallop.

This last revived me more than the water, for it sent a thrill through me, suggesting as it did preparations to meet our forces, which must be pretty close at hand, but whether in sufficient strength to attack this great town I would have given anything to know.

The beating of the horses’ hoofs passed away, but the steady tramp of infantry went on for some time before it had died out, and the dull, distant roar as of many people in a crowd, did not cease. I fancied that it was on the increase, while below me in the court, the fountain played and sparkled in the sunshine, the great goldfish sailed about in the tank, and the green leaves trembled and glistened in the bright light. For whatever might be going on in the town, here everything was perfectly peaceful and still.

I was just wishing that I could have been at liberty to mount a horse, and, only as a spectator, go about the town and see what arrangements were being made for its defence, wondering whether it was strongly walled, my recollections on the night of our entry only extending to the great gate through which we had passed, and thinking that if the force advancing were only small, Ny Deen might decide to go out and attack it, when I saw a couple of dark figures in the gateway, which were not those of the guard, and directly after, bending low beneath the weight of their loads, my old friends, the two bheesties, walked slowly across to the other side of the court, where they separated as before, one going round by the far side of the tank, the other coming in my direction.

“It cannot be a very serious alarm,” I thought, “or matters would not be going on so calmly here.”

Then I stopped short to watch the actions of the nearest man, wondering whether my ideas were right, or it was only fancy.

“It can’t be Dost,” I said to myself, as the man diligently directed the thin tube of leather formed by the leg of the animal from which it had been stripped, sending the water round and round to form chains of circles on the marble paving.

“No. It can’t be Dost,” I thought, with the feeling of sadness of one who was suffering terribly from his solitary position. “It was all imagination.”

But then I felt that it could not have been imagination about the message, for there were the forces approaching. Still, that heavy-looking man’s sole aim in life seemed to be to make the rings of water on the pavement perfectly exact, and I was wondering at myself for being so ready to jump at conclusions as I watched him come slowly nearer and nearer, his back bent, his head and neck forward, and his shadow cast by the sun on the white pavement—exactly that of a laden camel.

On he came, nearer and nearer, but so well-drilled in his work that he seemed to see nothing but the pavement, which glistened in the bright sunshine, as he spread the water in ring after ring, splashing his brown feet and legs at every turn.

At last he was right beneath me without there appearing to be the most remote possibility of his being Dost; and in spite of the cleverness of his disguise as the fakir, I gave up my idea, when a voice in a whisper said—

“Be of good cheer, master; there is help coming.”

“Dost!” I ejaculated aloud, and as the man started violently, I stepped back from the window, feeling sure that my voice would bring some one into the room.

I was quite right, for I had hardly left the window when the curtain was drawn aside, and Salaman entered.

“Yes. Quick; bring me something to eat.”

He salaamed, and passed behind the curtain, while I followed, and saw him draw aside the purdah at the next doorway, the momentary glimpse I had showing me a group of armed men on guard, so that, if I had any doubts before, there was room for none now.

I went back and glanced through the window again, just in time to see the two bheesties join again, and slowly march out with their empty skins to fetch more water.

I was in the act of turning away wondering whether by any possibility Dost would be able to make his way to me when it was dark, and with my heart beating fast, hoping that he would have designed some way of escape, when my heart gave another bound, and I ran to the window to thrust out my head and listen, for unmistakably, although at some distance off, came the quick dull thud of a cannon.

“Hah!” I ejaculated, as I saw in my imagination the men serving the guns, and in my own mind making certain that it was one of Brace’s six-pounders.

“How glorious!” I cried; “one of the pieces he carried off turned upon him now.”

“My lord is glad there is fighting?” said a voice behind me; and I saw that Salaman had come quickly up behind, and he now pointed to where the meal I had asked for had been placed upon the matting.

I frowned, but made no answer, as I walked to the spot where the repast was spread, and I had hardly seated myself, with the two attendants who had brought in the food standing before me, when I heard another report, and then, slowly and steadily the whole of the guns were brought into action, keeping up a regular steady fire, one which told me that an advance was being made by infantry, which the firing was to cover.

I began to eat, trying to be perfectly calm, but at the first mouthful I broke down. It was impossible, and, jumping, up I went and sat down by the window, to listen to the firing, and try to picture to myself what was going on.

It was weary work. All imagination, and I knew it; but still I could not keep from picturing the scene, especially when the firing suddenly ceased. My cheeks grew flushed then, and I seemed to hear the order, see the men trot up with the limbers, the gunners hook on the trail of the gun-carriage, and then spring to their seats on horse or limber, and go off at a gallop.

“No,” I muttered, “come on at a gallop,” to take up a fresh position.

I could have sworn that the next minute I should hear them open again, and I seemed to see the swift horses going along at full speed to come to a sudden halt, the men spring down, unhook, and bring the guns into action again. But that minute passed, then another, and another—long, weary minutes—till quite ten must have gone by before I heard the familiar dull report again, and now, to my misery, I acknowledged to myself that it must be from fully a mile further away.

Four guns were fired, or two twice over, I could not, of course, tell which. Then the firing ceased, and a dull feeling of misery came over me, for it meant retiring. They must be driven back by the superior force of the rajah’s army.

I turned away from the window with a feeling of depression that was terrible, and, try how I would, to keep from thinking, I kept on seeing the fierce-looking lancers of Ny Deen making furious charges at perhaps a mere skeleton of a regiment of foot, which grew gradually less and less, till the men scattered, and were ridden down.

Oh how vivid that all seemed, till I saw that which was real, and not imaginary. Salaman and the two attendants patiently watching me, as I began once more to walk up and down.