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Updated: June 8, 2025
He did not mention the father; he was a mere side issue it was Alwa who asked after him. "A tick on the belly of an ox rides with the ox," said Ali Partab. "Lead on, then, to the mission house," commanded Alwa, and the ten-man troop proceeded to obey. They had reached the main street again, and were wheeling into it, when Joanna sprang from gutter darkness and intercepted them.
"Bismillah! Am I servant here or master?" wondered Alwa, loud enough for all his men to hear. Then he thought better of his dignity. "Sahib," he insisted, "I will not talk here before my men. We will have another conference." "I concede you ten minutes," said Cunningham, preparing to follow him, and followed in turn by Mohammed Gunga.
He waited until the yellow dawn broke up the first dim streaks of violet before he realized that Alwa had given him the slip; and he cursed even the high priest of Siva when that worthy accosted him and asked what tidings. "Another trick!" swore Jaimihr. "So, thou and thy temple rats saw fit to send me packing for the night! What devils' tricks have been hatched out in my absence?"
Rosemary stole off to argue with her father and her conscience, but Alwa went to his troopers' quarters and told off ten good men for the task of manning the fortress in his absence. They were ten unwilling men; it needed all his gruff authority, and now and then a threat, to make them stay behind. "I must leave ten men behind," he insisted. "It takes four men, even at a pinch, to lift the gate.
A blood-red cloud! Alwa is neither scare-monger nor robber; when he sends out armed men to inspect strangers on the sky-line, there is war! Sahib, I grow young again! Had people listened to me had they called me anything but fool when I warned them thou and I would have been cooped up now in Agra, or in Delhi, or Lucknow, or Peshawur!
He dropped bleeding in the dust at the second that Alwa and Mahommed Gunga each saw an opportunity and rushed in, to rein back face to face, grinning in each other's faces, their horses' breasts pressed tight against the charger that Jaimihr rode. The horse screamed as the shock crushed the wind out of him. "You robbed me of my man, sahib, by about a sabre's breadth!" laughed Alwa.
"If Alwa and Mahommed Gunga are in league with my brother," muttered Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, "then the sooner the British quarrel with both of them the better. Howrah alone I can dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts for the British to spike the guns of the other two. By the time that is done, I will be Maharajah!"
"Will you be kind enough to feed him, Alwa-sahib?" Alwa resented the imputation against his hospitality instantly. "Nay, I was waiting for his money in advance!" he laughed. "Food waits, thou. Thou art a Sikh thou eatest meat meat, then, is ready." The Sikh, or at least the true Sikh, is not hampered by a list of caste restrictions.
"A horseman from the West!" he announced, breaking in on Alwa's privacy without ceremony. "One?" "One only." "For us or them?" "I know not, sahib." Alwa glad enough of the relief from puzzling his brain ran to the rampart and looked long at the moving dot that was coming noisily toward his fastness but that gave no sign of its identity or purpose. "Whoever he is can see them," he vowed.
He had some trouble in persuading the outposts who he really was, and there was an argument that could be quite distinctly heard from the summit of the rock, and made Alwa roar with laughter before, finally, the whole contingent formed and wheeled and moved away, ambling toward Howrah City at a pace that betokened no unwillingness.
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