Golden Stories - Various 7 стр.

"Iswar Chandraby Jove," muttered the Judge.

The last time they had met was in a London drawing-room. Iswar Chandra, the brilliant young barrister-at-law had discoursed to a philanthropic peeress upon the social future of his native land, whilst an admiring circle of auditors hung upon his words. The fate of India's women, he had said, lay at the feet of such fair and noble ladies as her Grace. The Judge remembered that people were saying that evening of Iswar Chandra that he was a fascinating and earnest man, and that he would be the pioneer of great things in the country of his birth.

The eyes of the half-naked savage challenged the Judge over the sea of moving heads, and drove away the supercilious smile from his lips.

"Brother, we claim you! You are of our blood, and we need such as you to lead us. The Feringhi have sharpened a sword to cut us down, but it shall turn to destroy them. Brother, we suffer the torments of hellwill you deliver us? Brother, we starvewill you give us food? Will you deal out to us life or death, you whose fathers were as our fathers? Choose now between great honor and the infamy that dies not! You are the paid creature of the British Raj, or you are a leader of free men. Brother, speak!"

As in a dream the Judge approached the waiting crowd. His mouth was parched, his heart beat fitfully. He wanted that piercing voice to wake the echoes again, to take up the story of the old blood-feud, to goad him into doing that which he had not the courage to do. Vanished was his pride of intellect, and of fine achievement. He was a native, and he tugged and crawled at the stretch of the British chain.

"The Feringhi are few, and we are many. Shall the few rule the many? Shall we be servants and poor while yet in the arms of our own golden mother? In their own country do the Feringhi not say that the word of the majority shall be law? So be it! We accept their word. The majority shall rule! O brother, skilled in the Feringhi craft, high-placed to administer justice to all who are brought before thee, do I not speak the truth?"

The Judge threw away the dead end of his cigar, and shouldered his way into the inmost circle.

"Peace, thou," he said, thickly; "this is folly. Ye must wait awhile for vengeance."

Chandra threw up his arms, writhing in a very ecstasy of fury.

"We have waitedhave we not waited?beside our open graves. Death to the Feringhi! Let them no longer desecrate our land. Let us forget that they ever were. They be few, and we be many. Brothers! To-night, to-night!"

The Judge was tearing off his clothes, he was trampling them beneath his feet, he was crying out in a strange, raucous voice; and all the swaying crowds were taking up his words, maddening themselves and their fellows with the intoxicating sounds.

"Death to the Feringhi! To-night, to-night! Our land for ourselves!"

All but a few torches were extinguished. Secret places were torn up, and out came old guns, old swords sharpened to razor-like edges, great pistols, clubs, skinning-knives, daggers. Then, up and up through the dark jungle they thronged, hordes of them in the grip of a red and silent frenzy. Chandra was in the forefront, but the leader was his Honor the District Judge, a glassy-eyed, tight-lipped Mussulman in a loincloth and a greasy turban.

The lights of the Collector's bungalow came in view, and the leader thought of young Capper, and rushed on, frothing like a madman, waving his sword above his head. Then he paused, and ran back to meet the laggards of a yard or two.

"Only the men!" he shouted.

Chandra mocked at him as the press bore him onward again, with scarcely an instant's halt.

"Only the men, my brother!" he echoed.

A few of the native police stood guard at the Collector's gates, but they turned and fled before the overwhelming numbers of the attacking force. Up the long drive the dark wave poured, and into the wide, bright rooms. The bungalow was deserted. Some fleet-footed servant had brought warning in time, and the British were well out of the town by the other road, with young Capper and a score of his men guarding their rear.

The mob howled with disappointment. The next instant it was screaming with triumph as it settled down to sack and burn and destroy.

The Judge went into the dining-room, and looked at the long table still decked with silver, and glass, and flowers. He looked at the chair on which he had sat, with Joan Malcolm at his side, and he picked it up and dashed it with all his might into a great ivory-framed mirror, and laughed aloud at the crash, and the ruin, and the rain of jagged splinters.

"India must pass into the hands of the Indians!"

"Oh! you think soyou think soyou think so...."

He overthrew a couple of standard lamps, and watched the liquid fire run and eat up their silken shades, and run again and leap upon the snowy curtains, and so, like lightning, spring to the ceiling, and lick the dry rafters with a thousand darting tongues. Then, he was out in the night again, the night of his life, the wonderful night that was calling for blood, and would not be denied.

There was no lack of light now to make clear the path to vengeance. The Collector's bungalow roared red to the very heavens, and flames shot up in a dozen different parts of the town. The bazaar was looted, and English-made goods were piled upon bonfires in the street. A greater mob than had entered the town poured out of it, swift on the road to Chinsurah where thousands of their brothers lay, lacking only courage and leaders.

At the midway turn of the road where the giant trees rear themselves at the side of the well, came a sudden check, and the mob fell back upon itself, and grew dead silent. Those in the rear could only wait and guess what had happened. The forefront saw that the road was barred. The moon had risen, and well out in the white light, was Capper Sahib. Some of his men were behind him. There were soldiers there, too, how many could not be seen, for they were grouped in the velvety black shadows which the trees flung across the road. There might have been only fiftyor five hundred.

Young Capper came forward with his hands in his pockets, and stared at them. They saw that he was not afraid. He spoke to them in Maharattee, bluntly and earnestly, so that some of them wavered, and looked back. He said they were fools, led by a few rotten schemers who had only personal gain in view.

"Take good advice," he said, "go to your homes while ye may. Ignorant, and greatly daring that ye are, the bandar-log, or such thievish scum among ye, drive ye with idle words and chatterings even to the brink of death. So far have ye come, but no farther"

The Judge had snatched a villager's gun, and fired. Capper Sahib fell, unspoken words upon his lips. His fair head draggled in the dust, and a red stain showed suddenly upon the white linen over his breast.

A triumphant roar swept the mob from end to end. British rifles cracked out the answer, and the bullets went home surely, into the rioting mass. Amid shrill screams of pain and fury the leaders rallied their men, and charged forward. A second volley stopped them, before young Capper's prostrate body could be reached. Few had joined the attack, but now they were fewer, and neither of the leaders stood among them.

That was the end. Bearing their dead and wounded, the rebels returned, wailing as they went. Before daylight the townsmen were in their houses, and the villagers had passed through the jungle, and regained their homes. Arms were concealed with all haste. The dead were buried, the wounded, for the most part, were hidden. Prisoners had been taken, but only an inconsiderable number. Before daylight also, the headman of the village, and a native surgeon came stealthily from the Judge's bungalow, and went their ways. They had their order, and they went to spread it abroad. The order wasSilence! The headman had bowed himself to the earth when it was given, for he understood all that it meant. Prisoners would be brought before a brother, not only to-day, but to-morrow, and for many morrows. So much had the night given them.

At noon His Honor came stiffly into the court-room, leaning upon the arm of his native servant. The Collector, who was awaiting him there, feared that he had been injured by the rioters on the previous night; but he was quickly reassured. The Judge, it seemed, had sprained his knee shortly after leaving the Malcolm's hospitable roof. It was nothing. A mere trifle, though indisputably painful.

The Collector seated himself near the bench, and talked in a low voice. The ladies were all safe. No Europeans had been killed, and few injured. Capper had been shot by some cowardly dog while parleying with the rioters, but there were good hopes of him.

The Judge was most truly concerned to hear of the calamity which had befallen Mr. Capperimmensely thankful to know that things were no worse with him.

His Honor had heard little or nothing of what had happened during the riot, being laid by the leg, as it were, in his own room.

The first batch of prisoners was brought in. At first the Judge did not look at them. Afterward his eyes sought their gaze, and held it, and they knew him for their brother. They heard his soft voice speaking of them compassionately, as wayward children whom mercy would win over, though harshness might confirm them in their foolish resistance to authority. The Collector seemed to protest, but with gentle courtesy his objections were put aside. He leaned back in his chair, flushed and angry, as one after another, the sullen-looking rebels were fined, and having paid what was demanded, were set at liberty.

When the Judge looked up again, a single prisoner stood before him, a wounded, hawk-faced native, whose eyes blazed hate and contempt. The Collector drew his chair closer to the bench, and began to speak in gruff undertones.

"A ring-leader. Man of some education, I understandqualified as a barrister, and has taken to journalism. Must make an example of himeh?"

The Judge, straining in agony of mind and body, was aware of sudden relief from the pain of his wound. The bandage had slipped, and blood was cooling the torturing fire. A deathly faintness was upon him, and through it he spoke distinctlyagain of mercy.

"They were all blind. The leaders were blind. The blind leading the blind. Blindblind"

The Collector sprang up with a startled exclamation. A thin stream of blood trickled from behind His Honor's desk, and went a twisting way down to the well of the court. He caught the Judge in his arms as he fell forward, and lowered him gently to the ground. Then it was seen that the unconscious man's clothes were saturated with blood.

Instantly the court was cleared. A military surgeon cut away the blood-stained clothing from the Judge's thigh, and laid bare the clean wound made by a British bullet. A look passed between him and the Collector, but never a word. Syed Mehta's life had ebbed with his blood, and so he passed, unawakened, from swoon to death.

The English, as their way is, betrayed nothing. It was His Honor, the District Judge of Golampore, who had died, and they gave him burial the next day with due regard to the high position which he had held in the service of H.M. the King and Emperor.

IV

A FOG-HORN CONCLUSION

The Saucy Sally was a vessel of renown. No blustering liner, no fussy tug, no squattering steamer, she; but a bluff-bowed, smartly painted, trim-built sailing barge, plying chiefly from the lower reaches of the Thames to ports west of Dover. She had no equal of her class, at any point of sailing, and certainly her Master, Mr. Joseph Pigg, was not the man to let her fair fame suffer for want of seamanship.

"Cap'n Pigg," as he insisted upon being called, was a great, hairy-faced man, with brawny muscles and a blood-shot eye. And in these respects, his mate, Bob Topper, greatly favored himin fact, their physical resemblance was rather marked; but their tastes were in no way similar; 'the Cap'n' was fond of his glass, whilst the mate was a blue-ribbon man; Joseph Pigg couldn't bear music, in any form, whilst the total abstainer had a weakness for the flute and would not infrequently burst into song; the Skipper hated women, whereas the mate was, what he himself called "a bit of a gay Lathero." But notwithstanding these dissimilarities of tastes and disposition, they got along fairly well together, and both met on the common ground of getting as much work out of the two "hands" as was ordinarily possible. The Skipper didn't drink alcoholic liquors before the mate, and the mate returned the compliment by refraining from any musical outrage in the hearing of his superior officer.

One hot summer afternoon, when the Saucy Sally was taking in cargo and the Skipper was ashore, Mr. Topper, seated on the coamings of the hatchway, abandoned himself to the melancholy pleasures of Haydn's "Surprise," the tune being wrung out of a tarnished German-silver flute. "Kittiwake Jack," one of the crew, was seated as far as possible for'ard, vainly trying to absorb his tea and stop his ears, at one and the same time, whilst his fellow-sufferer, Bill Brown, having hastily dived below, lay in his bunk, striving to deaden the weird, wailing sounds that filled the ship. And just as Haydn's "Surprise" was half way through, for the seventh time, the Skipper walked on board.

The flutist stopped short, and stared up at him.

"Didn't expect you back so soon, Cap'n," he said in confused tones.

"No. What's that 'owlin' row you're making?"

"I dunno about no 'owlin' row, but"

"Well, I do. I s'pose, accordin' to you, I ain't got no musical h'ear," sneered Cap'n Pigg.

"Thisthis here tune"

"Yes. This disgustin' noisewhat is it?"

The mate looked sulky.

"This is Haydn's 'Surprise,'" he growled.

"So I should think. I dunno who the bloke was, but it must have given Haydn quite a turn! Don't let's 'ave no more of it."

"Well, I don't see as there's no 'arm in music. And I didn't loose it off when you was about. I know you don't like it, so I studied your pecooliarities. Fact is, I studies yer too much," and the mate looked mutinous.

Cap'n Pigg scowled.

"You shet yer 'ead," he grunted as he stamped off below. He went to a small cupboard in the corner of the cabin, and mixed himself a stiff "go" of gin and water, which he tossed off at one gulp, saying:

"Haydn's 'S'prise,' eh? Haydn's S'prise be ddished! 'E don't come no s'prises 'ere while I'm master of the Saucy Sally!"

After this slight breeze, things quickly settled down again on the old lines between master and mate, and the voyage to Chichester Harbor was entirely uneventful, the barge bringing up at a snug anchorage near Emsworth.

The next day Mr. Topper had undressed and gone overboard for a swim. After this, climbing up the bobstay, he regained the deck, and proceeded to dry his hairy frame on an ancient flannel shirt. In the midst of this occupation, temporarily forgetful of his superior officer's prejudices, he broke into song.

Thirty seconds after he had let go the first howl, the Skipper's head was thrust up the companion-way.

"Wodjer want to make all that row about? Anything disagreed with yer? If so, why don't yer take something for it?"

"It's a funny thing yer carn't let a man alone, when all 'e's a doin' is making a bit of 'armony on board," replied the mate, pausing in the act of drying his shock head.

"'Armony be ddriven overboard!" cried Mr. Pigg, wrathfully. "Now, look 'ere, Bob Topper, I ain't a onreasonable man in my likes and dislikes, but it ain't fair to sing at a feller creature with the voice nature fitted you out with! I never done you no 'arm."