Kitabı oku: «The Three Sapphires», sayfa 7
Chapter X
There was a scowl on his face as Lord Victor, looking so pink and white after his bath, sat down to breakfast, growling: "There's a bally London fog of that attar fume in my room; somebody's been pawing my letter case, kit bag – everything. It isn't my bearer, for he smells chiefly of dried fish and opium."
"The attar would suggest a woman – a jealous woman looking for love letters; but you haven't been here long enough, Gilfain," the captain remarked.
A servant entered with a broiled fish, and Swinton switched Lord Victor to a trivial discussion of food. When the servant reappeared later with curry, the captain said: "Leave it on the table, Abdul, and sit without." Then, rising, he added: "I'll be back in a minute.
"My stuff has been censored, too," he said, on his return.
"What's the devilish idea – loot?"
"No; nothing missing."
"Who's doing it – servants?"
"This is India, youth; here we don't bother chasing 'who;' we lock up everything, or destroy it."
"I'm going to dash the bearer with an exam," Lord Victor said decidedly.
"You'd get nothing but lies; you'd draw blank."
The captain lapsed into a moody silence, completing a diagnosis of this disturbing matter mentally. The attar suggested that somebody on intimate terms with Prince Ananda had investigated. Doctor Boelke would do it; he could read papers written in English and assimilate their contents. If Swinton were under suspicion, Prince Ananda would look for proofs as to whether he was a secret-service man or just the companion of Lord Victor.
Later, when, with Finnerty, they arrived at the hunt-ground, the Banjara, who was waiting, said: "My brothers have taken the buffalo to the west of the big growth of tall grass wherein is the slayer of my cow, because from that side blows the wind and it will carry the scent of the buffalo, and the tiger will move forward, not catching in his nostrils word of the guns which the sahib knows well how to place. When the sahib is ready, I will give the call of a buffalo, and my brothers will make the drive. Where will be the place of the young sahib, that I may remain near in the way of advice lest he shoot one of my people, or even a buffalo?"
"Where will the tiger break to, Lumbani?" Finnerty asked.
The Banjara stretched his long arm toward the north. "At that side of the cane fields lies a nala that carries a path up into the sal forest, and the tiger knows it well. If he is not annoyed with hurry, he will come that way out of the cane; and if the young sahib's elephant is stationed in the nala, the tiger will come so close that even he can make the kill."
"That's the idea," Finnerty declared. "Swinton, you and Lord Victor take your elephant to the nala – the Banjara will show you the very spot to stand; I'll post the prince on our left when he arrives; I'll keep the centre, and if the tiger is coming my way I can turn him off with old Moti – I'll shoo him over to you. Here comes the prince now. Heavens, you'd think he was going to a marriage procession! Look at the gorgeous howdah! And he has got old Boelke and the girl, too."
The howdah was a regal affair, such as native princes affect on state occasions. The girl was almost hidden by the gilded sides of its canopied top; indeed, her features were completely masked by a veil draped from the rim of her helmet. The heavy figure of Doctor Boelke bulged from the front of the howdah.
"Where are we stationed, major?" Ananda called, the mahout checking their elephant some distance away.
"To the left, beyond the pipal tree."
Swinton chuckled, observing Gilfain stretching his long neck as the prince's elephant plodded on; evidently there was to be no introduction.
"We'd better get placed at once," Finnerty declared; "the buffalo may get out of hand – anything may happen. The elephants that will act as stops are already in place on the two sides; I sent them on ahead. The natives on their backs will keep tapping on gongs to prevent the tiger from breaking through the sides; if he does break through, they'll blow shrill blasts on their conch shells. Away you go, Swinton!"
And at an order from the mahout, their elephant trudged over to the point of honour, accompanied by the Banjara. In a few minutes his voice rose in the plaintive squeak of a buffalo, and in answer down the wind that rustled the feathered tops of the cane came a mild clamour of buffaloes, being driven, and men's voices crying:
"Dut, dut! Gar! Aoi-aoi!"
The buffalo were in a huge fan, advancing in a crescent troupe slowly, so that the tiger, not suddenly overrun, would keep slipping along in front.
Finnerty sat with his .450 Express across his knee, his eyes fixed on Gilfain, whose head he could just see above the bank of the nala, which was shallow where it struck the plain.
The turmoil of buffalo noises and their drivers' cries, drawing near, had increased in the cane. To the left, on one of the stop elephants, a native beat vigorously on his brass gong, followed by voices crying from a stop elephant: "The tiger passes!" Then a conch shell sent out its warning screech.
"Gad! He's broken through!" Finnerty growled.
Prince Ananda, thinking the tiger was escaping, had the elephant driven forward to give Boelke a shot at the fleeing beast; but just as they reached the grass there was a coughing roar, a flashing turmoil of brown and gold in the sun, and the elephant, terrified by the ferocious onslaught, whirled just as Boelke's rifle barked. Straight back for the fringe of trees where Finnerty waited the elephant raced, the tiger clinging to his rump and striving to reach the howdah.
Burra Moti knew the elephant was running away, and, at a command, shuffled forward with the intent of peeling the tiger from his perch with her trunk. But the fleeing animal, taking Moti for a new enemy, swerved to the right under the pipal, a long arm of which swept away the howdah, leaving Herr Boelke sprawled on the limb like a huge gorilla and yelling: "Ach, Gott! Hel-lp!"
The tiger was carried away in the wreck, and now, thirty feet away, was crouched, his tail lashing from side to side.
The girl had struggled to her feet and stood dazed, clinging to the wrecked howdah. The tiger was in a nasty mood; he would charge the first move the girl made, Finnerty knew, and nothing but a miracle shot through the heart or brain could stop him in time to save her. Ordering the mahout to pick the girl up, he dropped to the ground. Holding his gun from the hip, both barrels cocked, he slipped past the girl to stand between her and the snarling brute, saying: "Keep cool! Keep your face to the tiger and step back; the elephant will pick you up."
His blue, fearless, Irish eye lay along the gun barrels, looking into the yellow eyes of the tiger as he spoke to the girl. Well he knew how straight his shot must be, or that flat, sloping forehead, with its thick plate of bone, would glance the bullet like armour plate.
A little cry of pain, the thud of a falling body, told him that the girl had gone down at the first step. For a fraction of a second his eye had wavered from the gun-sight, and the tiger, with a hoarse growl, rose in his catapult charge. Both barrels of Finnerty's rifle blazed as he was swept backward by a push from Moti's trunk, and the tiger landed upon two gleaming ivory swords that, with a twist of the mighty head, threw him twenty feet into the scrub.
With a roar of disgruntled anger he bounded away toward cover in the cane, pursued by Gilfain, whose mahout had driven the elephant across at the sound of the tiger's charge.
Finnerty, telling the mahout to make Moti kneel, turned to the girl, who sat with a hand clasping an ankle, her face white with pain; and as he lifted her like a child, like a child she whispered with breaking passion: "You, you! God – why should it be you again?"
Then Finnerty commanded the mahout to retrieve Herr Boelke from his perch, pick up the prince, who had scuttled off some distance when he fell, and take them home.
When the prince had been lifted to the howdah on a curl of Moti's trunk, he waved his hand to the major, calling: "Devilish plucky, old chap; thanks for the elephant."
The elephant bearing Lord Victor and the captain returned, and the major tossed up a gold cigarette case he had found beside the broken howdah, saying: "You can give that to Prince Ananda; fancy he dropped it."
It looked familiar to Lord Victor. "Yes," he said, "I'm sure it's his. I know I've seen it at Oxford."
Plodding homeward in the solemn dejection of an unsuccessful hunt, even the ears of their elephant flapping disconsolately like sails of a windless boat, Finnerty suggested: "If you chaps would like it, we can swing around to your bungalow across the plain."
"Topping!" Lord Victor cried. "I'm so despondent I want a peg."
At the bungalow Finnerty alighted for a whisky and soda; and Gilfain, after reading a note his servant had handed him, advised:
"The prince wants me at the palace for dinner, and a confab over old Oxford days; the note came after we had gone to the hunt. Devilish fuzzy order, I call it – what! I can't leave you to dine alone, old boy."
"The captain can come with me – the very thing!" Major Finnerty declared eagerly.
The arrangement suited Swinton perfectly; it would give him an unplanned chance to talk with the major. And Gilfain would, of course, have to honour the prince's invitation.
It was a somewhat tame dinner for two; though Ananda plied his lordship with wine of an alluring vintage, for he had a "hare to catch," as the native proverb has it. He was most anxious to discover as much as possible about Captain Swinton's mission. By a curious chance he had learned who Lord Victor's companion was – that he was Captain Herbert, a secret-service man.
But Lord Victor was automatically unresponsive to the several subtle leads of his host for the simple reason that he didn't even know that Captain Swinton was in reality Captain Herbert; and as to the mission – any mission – why, it was to shoot game, to keep out of England for a season. Prince Ananda was puzzled. Either Lord Victor was cleverer than he had been at Oxford, or he knew absolutely nothing. Indeed, the subject of Captain Swinton bored Gilfain; he saw enough of his companion in the day. He was wishing Ananda would say something about the mysterious lady.
It was when the cigarettes were brought that he remembered the gold case. Drawing it from his pocket, he said: "Oh, devilish stupid! I forgot – brought your cigarette case."
But Ananda disclaimed the ownership. "That's not mine," he said.
"Rather! Finnerty picked it up at the broken howdah. It's the same one you had at Oxford, I think; I remember seeing it, anyway."
Prince Ananda took the gold case and examined it thoughtfully; then said: "By Jove! I didn't know I'd lost it; thought it was in my shooting togs. Thanks, old chap."
Of course, as it had been found at the howdah, it must belong to the girl – the Herr Boelke smoked cheroots – though the prince did not remember having seen it with her. But he said nothing as to its true ownership as he slipped it into his pocket.
Lord Victor, somewhat puzzled by Ananda's denial of ownership and then the admittance of it, concluded that the prince was still upset by the cropper he had come off the elephant.
But all down the hill, on his return, this curious incident kept recurring to him. He wasn't a man to follow problems to a conclusion, however, and it simply hung in his mind as a fogging event. Just as he was falling asleep, wondering why the captain had not returned, it suddenly dawned upon him with awakening force that perhaps the gold case belonged to the girl. Of course it did, he decided. The prince had treated the case as a stranger; his face had shown that he did not recognise it. And yet Gilfain had seen it in England, as he thought, in the prince's possession. He fell asleep, unequal to the task of wallowing through such a morass of mystery.
Chapter XI
After Finnerty and Swinton left Gilfain in the evening, the major said: "If you don't mind, we'll stick to this elephant and ride on to the keddah, where I'll take the bell off Moti; I won't take a chance of having the sapphire stolen by leaving it there all night. I am worrying now over letting Prince Ananda have Moti – I forgot all about the stone, really."
"Worked beautifully to-day, didn't it?" Swinton commented.
"Yes. I fancy it saved the girl's life, at least; for if I'd not had Moti I'd have lost out on the mix-up with Stripes. I'll get a metal clapper to-morrow, but I doubt its answering; it will clang, and the sapphire has a clinking note like ice in a glass. And, while an elephant hasn't very good eyesight, he's got an abnormally acute sense of hearing. Moti would twig the slightest variation in the tone of that bell that she's probably worn for a hundred years or more – maybe a thousand, for all I know. There's a belief among the natives that a large elephant has been wandering around northern India for a thousand years; it is called the 'Khaki Hethi' – brown elephant."
Swinton looked curiously at the major. "Do you believe that?"
"Each year in this wonderland I believe more; that is, I accept more without looking for proofs. It is the easiest way. Yes," he added, in a reflective way, "I'll have trouble with Moti, I'm afraid; elephants are the most suspicious creatures on earth, and she is particularly distrustful."
"Don't bother about the sapphire," Swinton objected.
"Oh, yes, I will. I've got to take off the bell, anyway, to find some substitute. If I don't, somebody'll poison Moti if they can't get the sapphire any other way."
At the keddah the two dismounted and walked over to where Moti was under her tamarind tree. Swinton became aware of the extraordinary affection the big creature had for Finnerty. She fondled his cheek with the fingers of her trunk, and put it over his shoulder, giving utterance to little guttural chuckles of satisfaction, as though she were saying: "We fooled the tiger, didn't we?"
Finnerty called to a native to bring him some ghie cakes – little white cookies of rice flour and honey that had been cooked in boiling ghie, butter made from buffalo's milk – and when they were brought he gave the delighted elephant one. She smacked her lips and winked at Finnerty – at least to Swinton her actions were thus.
In obedience to the mahout she knelt down; but as Finnerty unlaced the leather band that held the bell she cocked her ears apprehensively and waved her big head back and forth in nervous rhythm. Patting her forehead, Finnerty gave Moti the bell, and she clanged it in expostulation. Then he took it away, giving her a ghie cake. Several times he repeated this, retaining the bell longer each time, and always talking to her in his soft, rich voice.
Finally, telling the mahout to call him if Moti gave trouble, he said: "We can walk to the bungalow from here; it isn't far, captain."
After dinner, as they sat on the verandah, Finnerty's bearer appeared, and, prefaced by a prayerful salaam, said: "Huzoor, my mother is sick, and your slave asks that he may stay with her to-night. The sahib's bed is all prepared, and in the morning I will bring the tea and toast."
"All right," the major said laconically; and as the bearer went on his mission of mercy he added: "Glad he's gone. I've a queer feeling of distrust of that chap, though he's a good boy. He never took his eye off that bell till it was locked up in my box. The mahout told me at the keddah that Rajah Ananda was particularly pleased with Moti; had a look at the bell and petted her when they got to the palace." Finnerty laughed, but Swinton cursed softly.
"That means," he said, "that we've got to look out."
"Yes; can't use the sapphire on Moti again."
Finnerty rose, stretched his bulk, travelled to both ends of the verandah, and looked about.
Swinton was struck by the extraordinary quiet of the big man's movements. He walked on the balls of his feet – the athlete's tread – with the graceful strength of a tiger. Coming back, he turned with catlike quickness and slipped into the bungalow, returning presently, drawing his chair close to Swinton as he sat down.
"You remember my tussle with the Punjabi wrestler?"
Swinton laughed. "Rather!"
"It wasn't a Punjabi – a European."
The captain gasped his astonishment.
"One of Boelke's imported Huns." Finnerty gave a dry chuckle. "Ananda isn't the only man that can get information. I knew there was a Prussian wrestler here, and that he was keeping fit for a bout with somebody; I had a suspicion that somebody was myself. You see" – and the major crossed his long legs – "in spite of all our talk about moral force in governing, physical superiority is what always appeals to the governed – Ananda knows that deuced well. Now, hereabouts I have quite an influence over the natives, because, while I give them a little more than justice in any dispute, I can put their best man on his back."
"And Ananda, not being able to have you removed, wanted to shatter your prestige?"
"He thought that if I were humiliated in being beaten by a supposed native I'd ask to be transferred."
"Then it was all a plot, the other bout furnishing Boelke a chance to taunt you?"
"Yes, and clever. That final scene in the 'love song' doesn't belong there at all – I mean where the lover is resuscitated to challenge the gods to combat; that emanated in Ananda's brain; and when I saw the second wrestler come out painted black to represent Bhairava, I was convinced there was deviltry afloat and that it was the Hun."
Swinton laughed. "He got a surprise, major, though he was a dirty fighter. I saw the toe hold, but didn't see what happened to him."
"I gave him a paralysing something I had learned from a Jap in Calcutta. If you stand up, I'll show you."
Finnerty clutched the captain's hip, and, with the tip of a finger, gave a quick pressure on a nerve in the "crest of the ilium" bone. The effect was extraordinary; a dulling numbness shot with galvanic force to the base of Swinton's skull – needles penetrated his stomach.
"Marvellous!" the captain gasped, as he almost collapsed back into his chair.
The major smiled. "That was a new one on my Hun friend, for I cracked him there with the knuckles – almost brought the bone away."
"How many Huns has Boelke got?" Swinton asked.
"I don't know – three or four, and they're all service men; one can tell the walk of a Prussian, soldier or officer. Nominally, they are archæological men. Our paternal government actually supplied the prince with Doctor Boelke, for he was in government service in Madras Presidency, exploring old ruins."
"The prince is subtle."
"He is. All this temple row is his. This Dharama who wants to put the brass Buddha in is really a half-caste – a tool of the prince's. Ananda's plan is so full of mystery, neither I nor any one else can get head or tail of it. He doesn't appear in these rows, therefore the Buddhists think he is not a bigoted Hindu. So do the Mussulmans; and no doubt he will tell these two sects that I, as the British raj representative, fought against them. I think he's trying to get these two fighting peoples, the Mussulmans and the Nepalese, with him against the British if he comes out as a liberator. He's planning a propaganda so big that these three sects will bury their differences under a leader who does not stand for Brahmanism alone. I believe he's almost insane on this idea that he can unite the natives, Mussulmans, Hindus, and Buddhists, against the British raj. He bids for the Mussulman support by removing himself from that nest of Brahmanism, the maharajah's palace in the old fort, and secretly letting it be understood the Brahman's sway, with their tithe of a sixth of Darpore revenue, will cease when he sits on the guddi. There is an Asoka pillar in the Place of Roses that doesn't belong there; he stole it from a temple, I fancy. On its polished sides is a line of weathering showing that it was buried deeper than it is now for centuries. He put it there to show the Buddhists that his palace is in a sacred place – the true spot where Buddha received knowledge. He knows that his own people will stick to his rule – they can't do anything else – and he hopes to win the Buddhists by a crazy pose that he is the new Buddha – a war Buddha, ordained to the task of giving them liberty."
"With German help?"
"Yes, if the rumours of war between Germany and Britain come true and all Europe flames into a blaze, you'll see Ananda strike."
"Gad! If we could only nip him – find him with the guns!"
"That's what he's afraid of; that's why he wants to get rid of me."
"I have a feeling that he wishes I had not come," Swinton said. "I fancy he suspects me. It's all mystery and suspicion. He'll hear about the Buddhists' veneration for Burra Moti and you'll have her stolen next."
"Not without the sapphire in the bell – I won't put it in again. And I warn you, captain, that you'll stand a good chance of getting a Thug's towel about your neck, for they'll know you have one of the sapphires."
"Yes; the servants have it on their tongues now – they've been spying on us, I know."
"That reminds me!" Finnerty rose, went to his room, opened his steel box, turned up the low-burning lamp, and unlaced the sapphire from the bell. Raising his head, he caught a glint of a shadowy something on the window; it was a shift of light, as though a face had been suddenly withdrawn.
"Damn it!" the major growled, locking the box.
"Either somebody is peering over my shoulder all the time or this mystery is getting on to my nerves."
He went along to the verandah, and, putting the sapphire into Swinton's palm, hiding its transference with his own hand, said: "Slip that quietly into your pocket, and when you get home hide it."
"I don't value it much," Swinton answered.
With an uncertain laugh, Finnerty declared: "I'd throw it in the sea. Like the baboo, I think it's an evil god. I mean, it will be if Ananda gets the three sapphires together; he'll play up their miracle power; they'll be worth fifty thousand sepoys to him."
They smoked in silence till Swinton broke it: "I found a little notebook the murderer of Perreira dropped that evidently belonged to a British officer, though leaves had been torn out here and there for the purpose of destroying his identity. The man himself didn't do this, for there were entries in a different hand at the pages these leaves had been torn from – sort of memos, bearing on the destroyed matter."
"If the identity were destroyed, captain, how do you know an officer owned it?"
"For one thing, he had used an army code, though changed so that I could only make out bits of it; and in two or three places the other has written the word 'captain.' One entry in code that I've partly worked out is significant: 'Darpore, March.' And that entry, I gather from other words surrounding it, was written in England. The second handwriting wasn't Perreira's; I have his on that envelope he addressed to me. The latter entries are in a woman's hand."
Strangely there was no comment from Finnerty. He had pulled the cheroot box toward him and was lighting a fresh smoke.
"What do you really know about the Boelke girl, major?" the captain asked pointedly, his blue-coloured wax disks of eyes fixed in their placid, opaque way on Finnerty, who, throwing away the match he had held interminably to his cheroot, turned to answer: "She popped into Darpore one day, and I don't think even Doctor Boelke, who is supposed to be her uncle, expected her. You know India, captain – nothing that pertains to the sahibs can be kept quiet – and I hadn't heard a word of her coming. Boelke gave out that she had been living in Calcutta while he was up here, but I don't believe that; I think she came straight from Europe. I probably would not have met the girl – Marie is her name – but for an accident. Up on an elephant path that leads to an elephant highway, a great, broad trail, we have elephant traps – pits ten feet deep, covered over with bamboos, leaves, and earth that completely hide their presence. One day I was riding along this trail, inspecting, when I heard, just beyond a sharp turn in the path, a devil of a row, and, driving my mount forward, was just in time to throw myself off, grab that grey stallion by the nostrils, and choke him to a standstill. He had put a hoof through a pit covering and gone to his knees, the sudden lurch throwing the girl over his head; and there she was, her foot caught in a stirrup, being dragged in a circle by the crazed beast, for she was gamely hanging onto the rein."
"She'd have been trampled to death only for you. And to-day you saved her life again."
The major gave a dry laugh. "I think she was in a temper over it, too."
"What's this station gossip about Ananda's intentions?"
"The girl doesn't seem like that; to me she's the greatest mystery in all this fogged thing. She speaks just like an English girl."
"Perhaps she's one of Ananda's London flames, and the relationship with Boelke is only claimed in a chaperoning sense. He couldn't marry her, having a princess now."
"Rajahs arrange their domestic matters to suit themselves. Much can be done with a pinch of datura, or a little cobra venom collected in a piece of raw meat that has been put with a cobra in a pot that sits over a slow fire. But if Ananda tries that game – You saw his brother-in-law, Darna Singh?"
Swinton nodded. "A Rajput!"
"Yes. Well, Darna Singh would stick a knife in the prince, knowing that he would become regent till Ananda's little son came of age; that is, of course, after the maharajah had been settled, for in spite of all his magnificent appearance he's just a shell – the usual thing, brandy in champagne and all the rest of it."
The trembling whistle of a small owl coming from behind the bungalow caused Finnerty to turn his head and listen intently. He rose and slipped along the wall to the end rail, where he stood silently for two minutes. Then he dropped over the rail and came back to Swinton from the other end, having circled the bungalow.
"An owl, wasn't it?" the captain asked.
"No; it was the call of an owl badly done by a native. There's some game on."
As he ceased speaking, there came floating up the road from a mango thicket the dreary, monotonous "tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk!" of the little, green-coated coppersmith bird. It sounded as if some one tapped on a hollow pipe.
"What about that? Is that a bird?" Swinton whispered.
"A two-legged bird." They both laughed softly. "I mean a native. If it had been a coppersmith bird, he wouldn't have stopped at four notes; he'd have kept it up. That fellow is tapping off on a piece of metal an answer to the owl."
"Here comes my tom-tom," Swinton said, as a groom, leading a horse in the shafts of a dogcart, appeared, coming up the road. Rising, he touched Finnerty on the arm and went into the bungalow, where, taking the sapphire from his pocket, he said: "I wish you'd put this in your box for to-night; I've got a curious, flabby streak of depression – as if I'd lose the thing."
"Have a peg – there's the Scotch on the table – while I put it away," and the major darted into his room.
"That's not my horse; I've been driving a chestnut," Swinton exclaimed, when they stood beside a cow-hocked, hog-maned bay whose eyes showed an evil spread of white.
"Yes, sahib; other pony going lame," the groom explained.
"One of those devilish, fiddle-headed Cabul ponies – less brains than a coolie," Finnerty growled. "You'll have to watch him going downhill, or he'll put you over the kud; I never saw one yet that wouldn't shy at a shadow." He stood watching the scuttling first rush of the horse, the groom madly scrambling to the back seat, till they had vanished around a corner.
The watchman, having heard his master's guest depart, now came from the servants' quarters to place his charpoy beside the door for his nightly sleep. Throwing away his cheroot and taking a loaded malacca cane from a rack, Finnerty said: "Gutra, there are rogues about; sit you in my room while I make a search."
Reaching the mango thicket, he stood behind a tree from where his eye could command the moon-lighted compound that surrounded the bungalow. At that instant from down the road floated up the call of a voice; there was a crash, and the high-pitched scream of a horse in terror. Finnerty was off; rounding a turn, he came head on into a fleeing syce, who was knocked flat, to lie there, crying: "Oh, my lord, the sahib is eaten by a tiger!"
Finnerty grabbed the native and yanked him to his feet. "Stop the lies! Tell me what's happened! Where is the sahib?"
"Have mercy on me, a poor man, huzoor; the tiger sprang from the jungle and took the sahib in his mouth like a leg of a chicken and went back into the jungle. I tried to frighten the tiger away by beating him with my hands; then I am running to tell you, my lord."
But Finnerty was speeding on before the man had finished.
Where the road swept sharply around the edge of a cliff, Finnerty almost stepped on Swinton, lying quite still beside a white boulder on the road. With a groan, he knelt beside the captain, apprehension numbing his brain; but the latter's heart was beating with the even pulsation of a perfect motor. He tipped back an eyelid; the dull blue eyes were as if their owner slept. He ran his fingers along the scalp, and just behind an ear found a soft, puffy lump, but no blood.
"Good old chap! You've just got a concussion – that's all," welled in relief from the Irishman.
Some chafing of the hands, a little pumping of the lungs by lifting the torso gently up and down, and, with preliminary, spasmodic jerks, Swinton sat up, rubbed his eyes, looked at Finnerty, and asked: "What time is it? I – I've been asleep – " Then, memory coming faster than his hesitating words, he rose to his feet, saying: "The pony and cart went over the kud."
"That Cabuli donkey thought the boulder a crouching wolf and shied, eh? The syce said a tiger had eaten you."
