Rujub, the Juggler, G. A. Henty [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

He had heard women scream. Mrs. Hunter and her daughter were the only other women in the boat. Isobel would not have screamed had those muskets been pointed at her, nor did he think the others would have done so. They screamed when they saw the natives about to murder those who were with them. The three women were sitting together, and if one had fallen by the grape shot all would probably have been killed. He felt confident, therefore, that she had escaped; he believed he would have known it had she been killed.

“If I can be influenced by this juggler, surely I should have felt it had Isobel died,” he argued, and was satisfied that she was still alive.

What, however, more than anything else gave him hope was the picture on the smoke. “Everything else has come true,” he said to himself; “why should not that? Wilson spoke of the Doctor as dead. I will not believe it; for if he is dead, the picture is false. Why should that thing of all others have been shown to me unless it had been true? What seemed impossible to me—that I should be fighting like a brave man—has been verified. Why should not this? I should have laughed at such superstition six months ago; now I cling to it as my one ground for hope. Well, I will wait if I have to stay here until tomorrow night.”

Noiselessly he moved about in the little wood, going to the edge and looking out, pacing to and fro with quick steps, his face set in a frown, occasionally muttering to himself. He was in a fever of impatience. He longed to be doing something, even if that something led to his detention and death. He said to himself that he should not care so that Isobel Hannay did but know that he had died in trying to rescue her.

The sun rose, and he saw the peasants in the fields, and caught the note of a bugle sounding from the lines at Cawnpore. At last—it had seemed to him an age, but the sun had been up only an hour—he saw a figure coming along the river bank. As it approached he told himself that it was the juggler; if so, he had laid aside the garments in which he last saw him, and was now attired as when they first met. When he saw him turn off from the river bank and advance straight towards the wood, he had no doubt that it was the man he expected.

“Thanks be to the holy ones that you have escaped, sahib,” Rujub said, as soon as he came within speaking distance of Bathurst. “I was in an agony last night. I was with you in thought, and saw the boats approaching the ambuscade. I saw you leap over and swim to shore. I saw you fall, and I cried out. For a moment I thought you were killed. Then I saw you go on and fall again, and saw your friends carry you in. I watched you recover and come on here, and then I willed it that you should wait here till I came for you. I have brought you a disguise, for I did not know that you had one with you. But, first of all, sit down and let me dress your wound afresh. I have brought all that is necessary for it.”

“You are a true fried, Rujub. I relied upon you for aid; do you know why I waited here instead of going down with the others?”

“I know, sahib. I can tell your thoughts as easily when you are away from me as I can when we are together.”

“Can you do this with all people?”

“No, my lord; to be able to read another's thoughts it is necessary there should be a mystic relation established between them. As I walked beside your horse when you carried my daughter before you after saving her life, I felt that this relation had commenced, and that henceforward our fates were connected. It was necessary that you should have confidence in me, and it was for that reason that I showed you some of the feats that we rarely exhibit, and proved to you that I possessed powers with which you were unacquainted. But in thought reading my daughter has greater powers than I have, and it was she who last night followed you on your journey, sitting with her hand in mine, so that my mind followed hers.”

“Do you know all that happened last night, Rujub?” Bathurst said, summoning up courage to ask the question that had been on his lips from the first.

“I only know, my lord, that the party was destroyed, save three white women, who were brought in just as the sun rose this morning. One was the lady behind whose chair you stood the night I performed at Deennugghur, the lady about whom you are thinking. I do not know the other two; one was getting on in life, the other was a young one.”

The relief was so great that Bathurst turned away, unable for a while to continue the conversation. When he resumed the talk, he asked, “Did you see them yourself, Rujub?”

“I saw them, sahib; they were brought in on a gun carriage.”

“How did they look, Rujub?”

“The old one looked calm and sad. She did not seem to hear the shouts of the budmashes as they passed along. She held the young one close to her. That one seemed worn out with grief and terror. Your memsahib sat upright; she was very pale and changed from the time I saw her that evening, but she held her head high, and looked almost scornfully at the men who shook their fists and cried at her.”

“And they put them with the other women that they have taken prisoners?”

Rujub hesitated.

“They have put the other two there, sahib, but her they took to Bithoor.”

Bathurst started, and an exclamation of horror and rage burst from him.

“To the Rajah's!” he exclaimed. “To that scoundrel! Come, let us go. Why are we staying here?”

“We can do nothing for the moment. Before I started I sent off my daughter to Bithoor; she knows many there, and will find out what is being done and bring us word, for I dare not show myself there. The Rajah is furious with me because I did not support the Sepoys, and suffered conditions to be made with your people, but now that all has turned out as he wished, I will in a short time present myself before him again, but for the moment it was better that my daughter should go, as I had to come to you. But first you had better put on the disguise I have brought you. You are too big and strong to pass without notice in that peasant's dress. The one I have brought you is such as is worn by the rough people; the budmashes of Cawnpore. I can procure others afterwards when we see what had best be done. It will be easy enough to enter Bithoor, for all is confusion there, and men come and go as they choose, but it will be well nigh impossible for you to penetrate where the memsahib will be placed. Even for me, known as I am to all the Rajah's officers, it would be impossible to do so; it is my daughter in whom we shall have to trust.”

Bathurst rapidly put on the clothes that Rujub had brought with him, and