by Talbot Mundy
“But how did you escape?” he demanded, and Prothero grew unintelligible again.
“Did you fight your way out?”
That was the kind of question Prothero was delighted to answer. To tell a lie truthfully tickled his sense of humor and complied with all his tenets. He nodded. He had fought his way out, hadn’t he? He certainly wasn’t going to admit that Ommony had kicked him out! He framed the words with cracked and purple lips, and made a gesture by way of illustration. Obviously, as a modest man, he could not boast of his own resourceful bravery, but the suggestion was in the air, nevertheless, that V.C.’s are mostly a question of available witnesses.
All of which naturally added to Tregurtha’s growing conviction that the outlaws were an insignificant number, who should be handled with speed and resolution. Were there not Prothero’s previous reports, to the general effect that not a rebel was left at large “with guts enough to grin with”?
Personal ambition did not influence Tregurtha, and he was man enough not to be governed by desire to score off Macaulay. But to his view the situation called for immediate action, and that was nearly, but not quite, all about it.
“Didn’t they take you to Peria Vur?” he demanded. “Isn’t there an ancient temple where they’re camped? Elephants? An enormous rock that junglis call the Rump?”
Prothero’s eyes were much too swollen and discolored to betray the thought behind them as it began to dawn how perfectly he could mislead the other man without incriminating himself. He permitted the impression to escape that he was gradually recalling impressions and incidents, which had been for a while obliterated by his experiences in the jungle. There was such a temple. They were camped there. He remembered.
“You came on foot from there to here? How far away is it then? Must be fairly close. You arrived here about eight in the morning. In your condition you can’t have been marching many hours. Is it three-four-five miles?”
Prothero nodded at the word five. Fifteen was nearer the mark, and he knew it, but the truth might make Tregurtha over-cautious. Tregurtha remembered that Ommony’s map, which he had in his pocket, gave the distance as fifteen or sixteen miles; but, as Macaulay had insisted, the map was not necessarily accurate. Prothero, who had come recently on foot, should know best.
“All right,” he said suddenly, “I’ll have this car cut off and send you along. Please tell Macaulay that my patrols will probably be in touch with the outlaws by the time you get there. He may expect to hear from me soon after. This should be a quick business, so I’ll keep all of this train except your car, and use it for a base of operations. Hang it, man! I do believe you’re smiling! Well, well, that’s splendid! Feeling better already, eh?”
CHAPTER 9. “I will do anything you ask of me, Bahadur.”
The showdown came at dawn. They do. If the history of crises could be written it would be set down that the turning-point in the career of nations as well as individuals occurs with almost mathematical exactitude between darkness and the rising of the sun.
Mahommed Babar came before the false dawn and awoke Ommony, who was sleeping fitfully on a heap of blankets in the lap of a stone Buddha. Together they mounted the Rump by a winding flight of steps cut the width of a human foot into the granite, and sat facing the direction where the sun would presently appear. There was an enormous lingam there, which Mahommed Babar used as a stool, sitting in the European way with legs thrust forward and his old-fashioned saber laid across his knees. Ommony sat on an altar to some obscure Hindu god that, like the lingam, had displaced, or, at any rate, had followed after the purer worship of the Buddha.
They were aware that they formed an almost perfect contrast — conscious of the fact that they were men of opposite color, differing creed, rival culture, seeking for a common denominator, as it were, through which they might attain to understanding. So they were silent all the while the false dawn flickered in the sky. For just as the really hungry hound pursues and does not give tongue, men who genuinely seek knowledge make no noise about it.
“How is it, my friend Ommony?” Mahommed Babar said at last. “We are men, we two. The world as we know it would be safer in our hands than in those of the men who do rule it. We have the merit of being honest. Why are we not successful?”
“Perhaps because we are fools,” suggested Ommony.
“Nay, I think not. If a man is a fool who puts conviction to the test, then I have no use for the universe or all its laws!”
“Perhaps the universe with all its laws has a use for you,” Ommony answered dryly.
“We mean the same thing, sahib, only we phrase it differently. But I would like to know what it all amounts to. My heart burns with rebellion. Who put it there? I see, I know, I admire such men as you; and I rebel against the culture that you worship! I defy your masters! I cannot rebel against what represses me unless I injure you; and if I ceased to rebel I would cease thereby to be a man, and be not worth your respect. What is the meaning of it all?”
“When I have looked I have nearly always found a middle way,” said Ommony.
“A middle way? Hah! That is the obsession of the English. Compromise is its other name. I hate it! The middle way between light and darkness is gloom; between enmity and friendship is treachery; between rebellion and servitude is hypocrisy! I despise all three. Nevertheless, I am gloomy and a traitor and a hypocrite!”
“I shouldn’t have supposed you were the last two,” Ommony answered, biding his time like a fisherman.
“It is being a traitor and a hypocrite that makes me gloomy,” Mahommed Babar answered. “I must betray the Moplahs, who stood with me until the end, or else my Northern friends, or you — or even possibly all three!”
“How does that make you a hypocrite?”
“I do the very thing I hate. I play off one alternative against the other. You think me a brave man — a bold man, Ommony?”
“I have considered you brave.”
“I am afraid!”
“I have often been afraid,” Ommony answered.
“I am a coward!”
Ommony chose a cigar from his case and stuck it in his teeth belligerently, up-tilted — lighted it with one hand, never taking his eyes off the other’s face — and slightly closed his left eye, as he always did when studying the jungle.
“Hah! You eye me as a man who judges wine, and you are a good judge. But, you see, it isn’t dawn yet, and who shall judge wine in a half-light?”
“Half-light! I think that’s it!” said Ommony, and the rissaldar nodded.
“Something is happening, sahib, but we know not what. We see a little, but not enough. You see that the sun is setting on the day of empires — on the earth hunger that has made one nation rule another. I see the sun rising on new realms. Yet neither you nor I see clearly. I am a rebel, because my heart burns. You are—”
“My business is the forest,” Ommony answered.
“I would praise Allah more profoundly if I might speak as you!” said the rissaldar. “You can devote yourself to the forest and injure none. Mine is rebellion, and it seems I must injure everyone! Yet, sahib, if the truth could be peeled, as it were, so that one might see it naked, it would be known that I would rather die than injure anyone except myself!”
Ommony nodded with understanding. To be born rebel, whose brave heart burns without envy, his own submission to authority always seems to be the greatest injury that he could do the world. The very strength of his compassion for the under dog strips him of patience. Pilate asked, “What is truth?” and washed his hands, committing murder to save himself trouble. The rebel sees untruth and strikes at it because he knows what truth is, yet not how to express it. He kills that other men may live — is willing to die that other men may live. The world has gone forward on the backs of rebels, continuing to treat them as vermin, yet making heroes of them after they are dead.”
“What puzzles me is why you don’t get out of here,” said Ommony at last.
“How can I, sahib?
When this Moplah rebellion began I lent my sword and became a leader. I sent letters to such cities as Peshawar. Men joined me from the North, and then I sent back to recruit others, appointing a rendezvous here, on this spot. Shall they come then and not find me here?”
“If the troops come and find you here—”
“There might be a fight!” Mahommed Babar answered. “That might possibly serve as an advertisement to keep my friends away! But I doubt it, and it might do the reverse. You remember that I suggested that you should mail my letters, and you refused? You were right to refuse. Besides, letters, are probably opened, so of late I have written none. My friends are in ignorance, and if I were to be taken without a fight they would never learn of it until they all came blundering into a trap. But if there were a fight, and I should defeat the British, news of that would travel on the wind. My friends might come hurrying all the faster — and to what? To a cause already lost — to sure defeat! So either way I am a traitor to my own! What shall I do, sahib?”
“That’s the end of every problem, ‘What are you going to do about it?’” answered Ommony. “Look. There’s the dawn at last.”
“Aye, but the dawn of what? Irresolution — irony — Nemesis — who knows? And how about you, my friend? You have kicked that hyena Prothero into the jungle. Your junglis will shepherd him. My scouts say that railway men are already working on the wrecked train, so he will find servants, if not friends. He will say what he likes about you! What if they kill me and you are taken?”
Ommony got to his feet and stretched himself, facing the rising sun.
“Lord knows!” he answered. “It’s your affair as long as I’m your prisoner.”
“And if I let you go?”
“It would then become my business.”
Mahommed Babar rose with his back to the sun and stood facing Ommony. He smiled, but he looked like the image of robbed hope, not disillusioned but defeated. The sun’s rays, edging him, only appeared to exaggerate his mental agony.
“It is a difficult thing,” he said, “to set a hundred nations free!” He did not exaggerate. India is at least a hundred nations. Ommony laughed, but without scorn.
“The funny part about that is that you have to free one man first,” he answered; and of the two, although he was prisoner and the other captor, he looked the less distressed in mind or body. Mahommed Babar was pale and drawn with anxiety. The sun, brazening as it rose, made of the surrounding tree-tops a shimmering sea of gold and silver, and of the rock they stood on an opal; but it made Mahommed Babar old and grim, although be was hardly as old as Ommony.
“I think that I will set you free,” he said slowly — then broke out suddenly in bitterness: “It seems to make no difference what I do! I came to help these people, not myself; and they surrendered and left myself to pay the price! I sent for my friends, and I am become a bait that lures them to their undoing! Yet I intended less to make use of them than to provide them with opportunity! I took you prisoner because I hoped to save you from the stigma of having befriended me. But I think I have only made your situation worse! Prothero is free, for you freed him; he will lie about you to save his own face. Lal Rai is loose—”
Ommony gasped as if someone had hit him.
“Lal Rai gone! That rascal is Prothero’s brains! I warned you—”
“I know you did, Bahadur. But he broke the iron with which we fastened him, slew two of my men in the night, and slipped away. None knew until early dawn. I sent men in pursuit, but—”
“Damn!” exclaimed Ommony.
“So there are two dangerous men who will accuse you. No man, sahib, ever had a better friend than you have been to me, and no friend ever steered a course more carefully. I could answer truly that you never stepped beyond the letter of your authority, but who will believe me?”
Ommony did not answer. Something told him that the upshot of it all was ripe for announcement, and that Mahommed Babar was only coming at it in his own way.
“I can save you, sahib, I think, but first tell me this: Am I of use in the world? I am a defeated man, but might my sword perhaps yet serve these people?”
“That is Allah’s business,” answered Ommony, in his usual unbigoted way that makes so many Christian missionaries hate him.
“Is it your business to—”
“My business is the forest!” he interrupted, sure that he could never insist too strongly as to that.
“If I let you go, will you do me one favor, sahib?”
“Because you release me? No.”
“I do. You are no longer a prisoner. Will you do me a favor, sahib?”
“Ask. I’ll answer yes or no.”
“Lead British troops to this place! Let them take what they find, see what they see, draw their own conclusions — and do you say nothing!”
“No ambush?”
“None! I want you to promise me to keep hands off — to say nothing, know nothing, do nothing except see to it that news of my capture and death is made public. My friends must hear of it.”
It was Ommony’s turn to be irresolute. By the terms of the original permission given to him to remain at his forest post, when all other Europeans were hurriedly herded into Calicut because of the rebellion, he might regard himself as almost a neutral, in order that either side might have the ear of the other through him. In common with all neutrals, being human, he had not pleased both sides; although the Moplahs had never once doubted him and some of his own countrymen had understood.
He regarded it as none of his business to dictate to Mahommed Babar what he should or should not do. If the sirdar wanted to surrender that was his affair, between himself and his own conscience. What did occur to him and puzzle him was whether or not the Moplahs would understand, when they should learn eventually that he, Ommony, whom they had trusted, was the individual who guided troops to their ex-leader’s hiding-place and so brought about his capture, and in all likelihood his death.
“Understand me, sahib, please! No lawyers to be hired to try and turn death into life imprisonment! As a friend I am asking you to lead the troops to this place and to let what may happen to Mahommed Babar!”
Suddenly Ommony squared himself and turned his back on the sun in order to see better into the sirdar’s eyes.
“Your life is yours and you are master of it,” he said slowly. “If I go, it will be my duty to bring the troops here, provided I’m asked to. If you’re here when they come that’s your lookout. All right. Do me a favor in return.”
“Subject to the stipulations I have named, I will do anything you ask of me, Bahadur.”
“Good. You’ve a murdering, torturing devil in your party, who richly deserved hanging a year ago. See that he’s here, too, when the troops come. I refer to Ali Khan of Aira.”
To Ommony’s surprise the sirdar nodded, answering eye to eye unflinching.
“He shall be here. He is a rascal, but he has been brave, so let us pray they shoot him instead of hanging!”
CHAPTER 10. “I’m glad it’s you, Tregurtha!”
Most men run as true to type as animals. Tregurtha did. As a wolf or a bear or an elephant will react in a definite way to a given set of circumstances, Tregurtha, given opportunity, could be counted on for forced marches, swift decisions, and a trick of catapulting his whole command at a hole in the enemy’s line. He had won half a dozen distinctions that way, including the respectful title of “Sic ’em Tregurtha” from his men, and there was as much likelihood of changing him as of persuading the Sphinx to move along a bit.
Circumstances were decidedly in his favor. He no longer had any engine, so he couldn’t return to headquarters. Prothero was on the way to see Macaulay, who, without any doubt whatever, running also true to type, would take immediate steps to spoil the game for all concerned; that was another certainty. He had a map, a compass, and a hundred and eleven men, plus a more than usually guarded admission from Prothero that the enemy was within striking distance. Plenty for “Sic ’em” to base a de
cision on.
So Prothero had hardly been gone twenty minutes when Tregurtha’s dispositions were all made, down to the final selection of the dissatisfied eleven whose duty would be to stay and guard the train. The delighted hundred were drawn up awaiting the order to march, and Tregurtha was giving his final instructions to subordinates, when, however, according to Tregurtha’s memoranda, twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds after the departure of Prothero’s engine and one car, a one-eyed specimen of humanity emerged from the forest and descended on the railway line by the ancient and honorable means of sitting and so sliding. As he had no pants he wore out nothing.
He resembled one of those unfortunates released from the Bastille, in the beginning of the Terror. He was about as full of human charity. His one eye glared. From his wrists, by bent but unbreakable rings, hung the broken bar with which they had fettered him and with which, when he had smashed it, he had brained his guards. Furthermore, there was other than human blood on those pieces of iron. He had had no escort of junglis, and they who believe they are lords of the jungle had challenged his right of way. He could have chanted a one-night Odyssey had poetry been in him. However, he was a wholly prosy individual, laconic, and obsessed by one idea, outlined, defined, and expressed by the first word that escaped him after one of the eleven had pounced on him and led him to Tregurtha. “Perr-r-other-r-roh!”