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On the tin box near the head of the bed burned a candle in a mica lantern. By its dim light her face looked paler than ever, and deep black circles seemed to have defined themselves under her eyes. The Nubian and the white woman stared at each other for a moment. "It is done?" she asked finally, in a hoarse whisper. "It is done, memsahib," he replied calmly.
Morbid sort of fancy I call it; but I've got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men they were brothers died of cholera on the way to Hard-war, poor devils; and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Memsahib's 'rickshaw. 'Spoiled his luck. Queer notion, wasn't it?
He could turn back; he must turn back; and as a corollary the Leopard Woman must turn back with him! He remembered Cazi Moto squatting, undoubtedly horrified to the core. "Cazi Moto, are you there?" "Yes, bwana." "Where has the memsahib gone?" "Into her tent, bwana." "Listen well to me. She has destroyed the medicine. Now we must go back to where Bwana Marefu can come to fix my eyes.
"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler. "I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. There was a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open door. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long way below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea.
"You have heard the memsahib speak, you men of the memsahib's safari," remarked Kingozi; then: "You, Jack, whom I made chief of askaris, you speak." "What does the bwana say of this?" came Jack's deep voice after a moment. "You have heard." "What the bwana says is law." "Does any man of you think differently? Speak!" No voice answered. Kingozi turned to where, he knew, the Leopard Woman stood.
She walked alongside carrying the baby and its little bundle of clothes. There was nothing else to carry, and that was fortunate, for the cart in which the memsahib lay was too full of sick and wounded to hold anything more.
He must have made a good thing out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could get anywhere. When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it the "Temple of the Three Possessions"; but we old ones speak of it as the "Hundred Sorrows," all the same. The nephew does things very shabbily, and I think the Memsahib must help him.
Never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. He has to keep us three of course me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian. We're fixtures.
His face whitened as he looked at her. 'It's Tooni! he said, hoarsely. And then, in a changed voice, unconscious of the time and place, 'Tooni, what happened to the memsahib? he asked. The ayah burst into an incoherent torrent of words and tears. The memsahib was very, very ill, she said. There were not five breaths left in her body.
But Abdul, having heard no guns for nearly an hour and a half, was inclined to be very brave, and said that without doubt they should all get safely to Allahabad; and there, when the memsahib was better, they would find the captain-sahib again, and he would give them many rupees backsheesh for being faithful to her.
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