The Winds of the World, Talbot Mundy [rom com books to read .txt] 📗

The German followed suit. Then Ranjoor Singh took most of his wet clothes off and spread them upon the bales to dry. The German imitated that too.

"Go to sleep if you care to," said the German. "I shall stand watch," he added, with a dry laugh.

But if a Sikh soldier can not manage without sleep, there is nobody on earth who can. Ranjoor Singh sat back against a bale, and the watch resolved itself into a contest of endurance, with the end by no means in sight.

"How long should it take that man to reach her?" asked the German.

"Who knows?" the Sikh answered.

"Perhaps three hours, perhaps a week! She is never still, and there are those five regiments to hold in readiness."

"She is a wonderful woman," said the German.

Ranjoor Singh grunted.

"How is it that she has known of this place all this time, and yet has never tried to meddle with us?"

"I, too, am anxious to know that!" said Ranjoor Singh.

"You are surly, my friend! You do not like this pistol? You take it as an insult? Is that it?"

"I am thinking of those regiments, and of these grenades, and of what I mean to do," said Ranjoor Singh.

"Let us talk it over."

"No."

"Please your self!"

They sat facing each other for hour after dreary hour, leaning back against bales and thinking each his own thoughts. After about four hours of it, it occurred to the German to dismantle the wireless detonator.

"We should have been blown up if the police had grown inquisitive," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, returning to his seat.

After that they sat still for four hours more, and then put their clothes on, not that they were dry yet, but the German had grown tired of comparing Ranjoor Singh's better physique with his own. He put his clothes on to hide inferiority, and Ranjoor Singh followed suit for the sake of manners.

"What rank do you hold in your army at home?" asked Ranjoor Singh, after an almost endless interval.

"If I told you that, my friend, you would be surprised."

"I think not," said Ranjoor Singh. "I think you are an officer who was dismissed from the service."

"What makes you think so?"

"I am sure of it!"

"What makes you sure?"

"You are too well educated for a noncommissioned officer. If you had not been dismissed from the service you would be on the fighting strength, or else in the reserve and ready for the front in Europe. And what army keeps spies of your type on its strength? Am I right?"

But then came Yasmini, carrying her food-basket as the rest had done. She knocked at the outer trap-door, and the German ran to peep through a hidden window at her. Then he went up a partly ruined stair and looked all around the clearing through gaps in the debris overhead that had been glazed for protection's sake. Then he admitted her.

She ran in past him, ran past him again when he opened the second door, and laughed at Ranjoor Singh. She seemed jubilant and very little interested in the bombs that the German was at pains to explain to her. She had to tell of five regiments on the way.

"The first will be here in two or three hours" she asserted; "your men,
Ranjoor Singh—your Jat Sikhs that are ever first to mutiny!"

She squealed delight as the Sikh's face flushed at the insult.

"What is the cocked pistol for?" she asked the German.

He told her, but she did not seem frightened in the least. She began to sing, and her voice echoed strangely through the vault until she herself seemed to grow hypnotized by it, and she began to sway, pushing her basket away from her behind a bale near where the German sat.

"I will dance for you!" she said suddenly.

She arose and produced a little wind instrument from among her clothing—a little bell-mouthed wooden thing, with a voice like Scots bagpipes.

"Out of the way, Ranjoor Singh!" she ordered. "Sit yonder. I will dance between you, so that the German sahib may watch both of us at once!"

So Ranjoor Singh went back twenty feet away, wondering at her mood and wondering even more what trick she meant to play. He had reached the conclusion, very reluctantly, that presently the German would fire that pistol of his and end the careers of all three of them; so he was thinking of the squadron on its way to France. In a way he was sorry for Yasmini; but it was the squadron and Colonel Kirby that drew his heart-strings.

Swaying to and fro, from the waist upward, Yasmini began to play her little instrument. The echoing vault became a solid sea of throbbing noise, and as she played she increased her speed of movement, until the German sat and gaped. He had seen her dance on many more than one occasion. So had Ranjoor Singh. Never had either of them, or any living man, seen Yasmini dance as she did that night.

She was a storm. Her instrument was but an added touch of artistry to heighten the suggestion. Prom a slow, rhythmic swing she went by gusts and fits and starts to the wildest, utterly abandoned fury of a hurricane, sweeping a wide circle with her gauzy dress; and at the height of each elemental climax, in mid-whirl of some new amazing figure, she would set her instrument to screaming, until the German shouted "Bravo!" and Ranjoor Singh nodded grave approval.

"Kreuz blitzen!" swore the German suddenly, leaping to his feet and staggering.

And Yasmini pounced on him. Ranjoor Singh could not see what had happened, but he sprang to his feet and ran toward them. But before he could reach them Yasmini had snatched the German's pistol and tossed it to him, standing back from the writhing German, panting, with blazing eyes, and looking too lovely to be human. She did not speak. She looked.

And Ranjoor Singh looked too. Under the writhing German, and back again over him, there crawled a six-foot hooded cobra, seeming to caress the carcass of his prey.

"He will be dead in five—ten minutes," said Yasmini, "and then I will catch my snake again! If you want to ask him questions you had better hurry!"

Then Ranjoor Singh recalled the offices that men had done for him when he was wounded. He asked the German if he might send messages, and to whom. But the dying man seemed to be speechless, and only writhed. It was nearly a minute before Ranjoor Singh divined his purpose, and pounced on the hand that lay underneath him. He wrenched away another pistol only just in time. The snake crawled away, and Yasmini coaxed it slowly back into its basket.

"Now," she said, "when he is dead we will drive back to Delhi and amuse ourselves! You shall run away to fight men you never quarreled with, and I will govern India! Is that not so?"

Ranjoor Singh did not answer her. He kept trying again and again to get some message from the German to send perhaps to a friend in Germany. But the man died speechless, and Ranjoor Singh could find no scrap of paper on him or no mark that would give any clue to his identity.

"Come!" said Yasmini. "Lock the door on him. We will tell the general sahib, and the general sahib will send some one to bury him. Come!"

"Not yet," said Ranjoor Singh. "Speak. When did you first know that these Germans had taken this vault to use?"

"More than two years ago," she boasted, "when the old priest, that was no priest at all, came to me to be doorkeeper."

"And when did you know that they were storing dynamite in here?"

"I did not know."

"Then, blankets?"

"Bah! Two years ago, when a Customs clerk with too much money began to make love to a maid of mine."

"Then why did you not warn the government at once, and so save all this trouble?"

"Buffalo! Much fun that would have been! Ranjoor Singh, thy Jat imagination does thee justice. Come, come and chase that regiment of thine, and spill those stupid brains in France! Lock the door and come away!"

  Brother, a favor I came to crave,
    Oh, more than brother, oh, more than friend!
  Spare me a half o' thy soldier grave,
    That I sleep with thee at the end!
  Spur to spur, and knee to knee,
    Brother, I'll ride to death with thee!

The crew of the Messageries Maritimes steamship Duc d'Orleans will tell of a tall Sikh officer, with many medals on his breast, who boarded their ship in Bombay with letters to the captain from a British officer of such high rank as to procure him instant accession to his request. Bound homeward from Singapore, the Duc d'Orleans had put into Bombay for coal, supplies and orders. She left with orders for Marseilles, and on board her there went this same Sikh officer, who, it seemed, had missed the transport on which his regiment had sailed.

He had with him a huge, ill-mannered charger, and one Sikh trooper by way of servant. The charger tried to eat all that came near him, including his horse-box, the ship's crew, and enough hay for at least two ordinary horses. But Ranjoor Singh, who said very little to anybody about anything, had a certain way with him, and men put up with the charger's delinquencies for its owner's sake.

When they reached the Red Sea, and the ship rolled less, Ranjoor Singh and his trooper went to most extraordinary lengths to keep the charger in condition. They took him out of his box and walked him around the decks for hours at a time, taking turns at it until officer, trooper and horse were tired out.

They did the same all down the Mediterranean. And when they landed at Marseilles the horse was fit, as he proved to his own brute satisfaction by trying to kick the life out of a gendarme on the quay.

Another letter from somebody very high, in authority to a French general officer in Marseilles procured the instant supply of a horse for the Sikh trooper and two passes on a northbound train. The evening of their landing saw them on their way to the front, Ranjoor Singh in a first-class compartment, and his man in the horse-box. Neither knew any French to speak of, but the French were very kind to these dark-skinned gentlemen who were in so much hurry to help them win the war.

It was dark—nearly pitch—dark at the journey's end. The moon shone now and then through banks of black clouds, and showed long lines of poplar trees. Beyond, in the distance, there was a zone in which great flashes leaped and died—great savage streaks of fire of many colors—and a thundering that did not cease at all.

Along the road that ran between the poplars two men sent their horses at a rousing clip, though not so fast as to tax them to the utmost. The man in front rode a brute that lacked little of seventeen hands and that fought for the bit as if he would like to eat the far horizon.

In the very, very dark zone, on the near side of where the splashes of red fire fell, jingling bits and a kick now and then proclaimed the presence of a regiment of cavalry. Nothing else betrayed them until one was near enough to see the whites of men's eyes in the dark, for they were native Indian cavalry, who know the last master-touches of the art of being still.

Between them and the very, very dark zone—which was what the Frenchmen call a forest, and some other nations call a stand of timber—a little group of officers sat talking in low tones, eight Englishmen and the others Sikhs.

"They say they're working round the edge—say they can't hold 'em. It looks very much as if we're going to get our chance to-night. When a red light flashes three times at this near corner of the woods, we're to ride into 'em in line—it'll mean that our chaps are falling back in a hurry, leaving lots of room between 'em and the wood for us to ride through. Better join your men, you fellows! Oh, lord! What wouldn't Ranjoor Singh have given to be here! What's that?"

There came a challenge from the rear. Two horsemen cantered up.

"Who are you?