folk say; is't true?" asked Gu-gu. It was a point in the oft-told tale which was still discussed by Eshwara gossips.
"That is other folks' news, not mine," replied Akbar, discreetly. "May be, may be not. The Huzoors, anyhow, sent the Nawab to die in Calcutta on a pinson[2] for it; but they have ever an excuse to take land! Pidar Narâyan had a hard fight to keep Bun-avatâr-sahib's grants--the Nawab was ever generous to his favourites, look you--for Anâri Begum's baby; ay! though he showed a writing of marriage, and had made the infant Christian after their habit. Still he got them, land and palace and all. So I stayed on serving my master's child, and when she died, her child, the Miss-baba, even to the haggling for fish. Lo! slave! it grows late. Give it to me and have done with it--Thou wilt not. Oh! for the devil that was in her grandmother Anâr to be in this Miss-baba, and for her to come to Bun-avatâr-sahib's rights as Wazeer--then would there be loppings and--"
"Or if Roshan Khân should come to his," sneered Gu-gu. "The canal sahib's ayah was telling me thou didst prostrate thyself in the dust as if he were indeed Nawab! Have a care! eunuch-jee, the police are agog nowadays to find disloyalty even in newspapers."
"May her gossiping tongue be slit!" stuttered the old retainer. "Can a body not do obeisance to his masters? For look you, Roshan is true grand-nephew to the Nawab through his grandmother, Walidâd's wife--ay! and for that matter, cousin to the Miss, through Anâri Begum, Walidâd's sister! I did but welcome him; I did but my duty--I did but show my manners--I did but what we have done from generation to generation." He moved away muttering, full of virtuous resentment that a suspicion of anything save sheer servility should have been imputed to him. After a lifetime of trucklings and bootblackings, to be credited with higher motives was too bad. To prove his innocence he would that very evening, he told himself, seek out Roshan, not at the Fort,--that might be misunderstood,--but at his grandmother's. His grandmother, who, though she had been upstart Walidâd's wife, was still the late Nawab's half-sister! His sister!! What could be nearer than that!!!
And he would prostrate himself again, and assure the family of his services. That was his birthright.
Meanwhile Gu-gu looked after him, and laughed. He was a clever fellow, was Gu-gu, and in a previous generation of scholars had been pet pupil in a little school started by another Miss from another Missen. He had got pennies for attending it, which had come in useful before he was big enough to face the river.
But now he was the best man on either the Hara or the Hari, save one. And he?
Gu-gu's beady black eyes, watching the curve of the current mechanically, gave a sudden flash. He was on his feet in a second. There was something dipping, diving, sidling, drifting, out yonder which might be secured for his wigwam before anyone else saw it! But as, silently, like a seal's, his black head came up from his first forge under water which was to give him a fair start from the shore without even a splash to attract notice, another black head showed to the right of him, a yard or two behind.
But it was his head! Am-ma's head! Am-ma, the frog-like, Am-ma, whose wide hands and feet looked as if webbed in the water. Am-ma, the only man who could touch him. He set his teeth, gave up silence, and surged ahead with an overhand stroke, his hand seeming to clutch and hold the water. It was a faster stroke than Am-ma's; for a time the swifter. Then with a backward glance he drew a quick breath, knowing it would be a race indeed, for the black head had gone, and only a faint wale on the smooth water told where his rival, avoiding the slight resistance of the air, swam like a fish. Dangerous tactics for most men, ending often in a sudden collapse, bleedings from nose and ears, or, at least, time lost in coming to the surface. But Am-ma was not as other men. Half-witted, except in river lore, uncouth, misshapen, he was practically amphibious.
Gu-gu ground his teeth impotently as the faint wale crept up and up. The man must have air in his stomach like a fish! Ah! if the river had been in flood, if this had been a race with air bladders, indeed,--one black head of inflated skin under each arm, and your own in the middle--the issue would have been certain; for no one, in the whole tribe, knew the backward rip of a knife from below which would leave a rival helpless, lopsided, bound to seek safety on shore, so well as Gu-gu! But it was not flood time, so he must risk all. Like a porpoise at play the curve of his dark back disappeared, and now there were two wales upon the water side by side.
And ahead, sidling, dipping, diving to the current was a deodar log with the broad arrow of government on it, now visible, now out of sight.
It was a question of steering; steering without eyes, steering by instinct, steering by sheer experience of logs and their ways, of the meeting currents of the two rivers and their ways.
And over against them, to the right across the broad lagoon, were low brick buildings, and a horde of fifteen hundred ruffians with fascines and earth-baskets finishing a dam that was to alter the currents, and protect the canal! They looked like swarming ants in the sunshine.
The wales were neck and neck now, side by side, straight as a die on the log. Then suddenly, the right-hand one swerved outward. Only a yard or two; a yard or two nearer to the ants in the sunshine.
A second after the log swerved also--swerved to the right. The next, two black heads rose silently; but one of them was two yards to the left of that dancing, dipping prize!
Gu-gu, breathless as he was, gave an inarticulate cry of rage, and shook his fist at the swarming ants. Already their work was altering the currents he had known for so long. That it was possible to allow for this, as Am-ma had done, did not comfort him. He swam back sulkily, his wrath increased by the knowledge one glance had given him, that the log on which his rival was paddling to shore triumphantly bore its broad arrow so lightly, and so near its end, that a little dexterous manipulation would have left the runaway unmarked, and so given its captor the right, not merely of ransom, but of sale!
Truly, it was an ill world for the poor!
But Lance Carlyon laughed, as he lounged over his early tea and watched the river through his field-glass, in a balcony of the fort, dressed in a gorgeous ring-streaked sleeping suit which he could only wear when on outpost duty, as the regiment had tabooed it. In truth it made him not unlike Tom Sawyer's "Royal Nonsuch."
"The little 'un's got it! I say! Dering, I believe I shall like Eshwara. It's--it's--new--don't you know." His eyes rested, as he spoke, on the low, bastioned building, all hemmed in by temple spires, at the very point of the city's triangle, which Erda Shepherd had told him was the mission house. Truly, he thought, she was in the thick of it!
"New!" echoed Vincent Dering captiously, "I should have called it old. I thought that sort of thing had died with the pagoda tree."
"What sort of thing?"
Vincent nodded towards the palace with an odd, cynical laugh. "That; it's ghostly. Doesn't belong to the nineteenth century!"
Lance turned curiously. "I said that to--to Pidar Narâyan--I can't call him anything else, somehow--when he was showing me over yesterday. And--you know that inscrutable smile of his--he just pointed up to the telegraph wires--they go right across the garden you know--and said, 'There is half the news of half the world over our heads, anyhow.' It knocked me over, I tell you, to think of it; and by Jove! Dering, next week when the Lord-sahib comes--"
Vincent Dering laughed boisterously. "There'll be the millennium, of course. Come along, Lance! It's time we were off to prepare his way. Dashwood wants it done A1. They are going to lay on electric light, and all that. By the way, Mrs. Smith told me to tell you she expected you to breakfast."
Ten minutes afterwards they were riding over the boat bridge to superintend the
