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Very earnestly all the party hoped that when the dread moment came it might come when they were all together, so that they might share the same fate, whatever it might be. The young officers' buggies now stood all day in Major Warrener's compound, with the patient syces squatting near, or talking with the servants, while the major's horses stood ready saddled in the stables.
Despite the lateness of the hour it was tenanted by several wideawake syces, dancing attendance upon a pair of blooded stallions of the stud royal, who, saddled, bridled and hooded, pawed and champed impatiently in the centre of the yard, making it echo with the ringing of iron on stone and the jingling of their silver curb-chains.
The boat seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous, that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us.
The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a word or two of farewell that even now I cannot write down.
Ordered to carry revolvers, they stuffed them unloaded into side-pockets, or left them in the hands of syces to bear behind them. Proof positive of their total failure to realize the danger that threatened from amidst the frowning, grey-cragged mountains was the fact that their womenkind were allowed to remain at the station, and even rode and drove forth unattended on the rocky, mountain roads.
So we turned back, picked up the men with the waterbuck, and plodded on down the little stream, or, rather, on the red-hot dry valley bottom outside the stream's course, to where the syces were waiting with our horses. We mounted with great thankfulness. It was now eleven o'clock, and we considered our day as finished.
Then the princess told their story and how her husband had gambled away his half of the kingdom. The Raja ordered any one with such a history to come forward, as his wife was in the palace; but the prince did not reveal himself. Then the princess said "Let all the syces cook rice and bring me a bit of each man's cooking to taste."
The syces looked at him, saying nothing, and he straightened himself against the wall of the hillside, also in silence. It was too early for conversation. Thus did all the others. When the last portmanteau had been deposited, a khaki-coloured heap on the shed floor rose up as a broad-shouldered Punjabi driver, and walked round the luggage, looking at it.
She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods, their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for contemptuous Bazaar gossip.
Not a Malay or a Kling has raised himself either as a merchant or in any other capacity to wealth or distinction in the colony. The Klings make splendid boatmen, they drive gharries, run as syces, lend small sums of money at usurious interest, sell fruit, keep small shops, carry "chit books," and make themselves as generally useful as their mediocre abilities allow.
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