further.”
Tenderly he lifted his wife to a place where sand offered a softer couch than the rocks on which she lay.
“I must bring the infant,” he muttered aloud. “The touch of its hands will revive her. Then I shall kill poor Deri (the cow), and we can feast on her in the hope that some may pass this way. Walk, with three to carry, we cannot.”
This was indeed the counsel of desperation. The cow, living, provided their sole link with the outer world. Dead, she maintained them a little while. Soon the scanty meat she would yield would become uneatable and they were lost beyond saving. Nevertheless, once the resolve was taken a load was lifted from the man’s breast. Bidding the elder boy hold Deri’s halter, he strode back towards the infant with eager haste.
As he drew near he thought he saw something black and glistening amidst the soiled linen which enwrapped the little one. After another stride he stood still. A fresh tribulation awaited him. Many times girdling the child’s limbs and body was a hideous snake, a monster whose powerful coils could break the tiny bones as if they were straws.
The flat and ugly head was raised to look at him. The beady black eyes seemed to emit sparks of venemous fire, and the forked tongue was darting in and out of the fanged mouth as though the reptile was anticipating the feast in store.
Mirza Ali Beg was no coward, but this new frenzy almost overcame him. There was a chance, a slight one, that the serpent had not yet crushed the life out of its prey. Using words which were no prayer, the father uplifted the tough staff which he still carried. He rushed forward. The snake elevated its head to take stock of this unexpected enemy, but the stick dealt it a furious blow on the tail.
Instantly uncoiling itself, either to fight or escape, as seemed most expedient, it received another blow which hurled it, with dislocated vertebræ, far into the dust.
The man, with a great cry of joy, saw that the child was stretching her limbs, now that the tight clutch of its terrible assailant was withdrawn. He caught her up into his arms and, weak as he was, ran back to his wife.
“Here is one who will restore the blood to thy cheeks, Mihr-ul-nisa,” he cried. And truly the mother stirred again with the first satisfied chuckle of the infant as it sought her breast.
The husband, heedless what befell for the hour, obtained from the cow such slight store of milk as she possessed. He gave some to the two boys, the greater portion to the baby, and was refuting his wife’s remonstrance that he had taken none himself as he pressed the remainder on her, when the noise of a commotion at a distance caused them to look in wonderment along the road they had recently traversed in such sorrow.
There, gathered around some object, were a number of men, some mounted on Arab horses or riding camels, others on foot; behind this nearer group they could distinguish a long kafila of loaded beasts with armed attendants.
“God be praised!” cried Mihr-ul-nisa, “we are saved!”
This was the caravan of a rich merchant, faring from Persia or Bokhara to the court of the Great Mogul. The undulating plain, no less than their own anguish of mind, had prevented the Persian and his wife from noting the glittering spear points of the warrior merchant’s retainers as they rode forward in the morning sun. Surely such a host would spare a little food and water for the starving family, and forage for Deri, the cow!
“But what are they looking at?” cried the woman, of whom hope had made a fresh being.
“They have found the snake.”
“What snake?”
“It is matterless. As I returned for the child, when you fell in a swoon, I met a snake and killed it.”
A startled look came into her eyes.
“Khodah hai!”1 she murmured; “it would have attacked my baby!”
Two men, mounted on Turkoman horses, were now spurring towards them. Mirza Ali Beg advanced a few paces to meet them.
One, an elderly man of grave appearance and richly attired, reined in his horse at a little distance and cried to his companion: —
“By the tomb of Mahomet, Sher Khan, ’tis he of my dream!”
The other, a handsome and soldierly youth, came nearer and questioned Ali Beg, mostly concerning the disabled and dying snake, found and beaten into pulp by the foremost men of the caravan.
The Mirza told his tale with dignified eloquence; he ended with a pathetic request for help for his exhausted wife and family.
This was forthcoming quickly, and, while he himself was refreshed with good milk, and dates, and cakes of pounded wheat, Malik Masúd, the elder of the two horsemen and leader of the train, told how he dreamt the previous night that during a wayside halt under a big tree he was attacked by a poisonous snake, which was vanquishing him until a stranger came to his aid.
The snake lying in the path of the kafila was the exact counterpart of that seen in his disturbing vision, but his amazement was complete when he recognized in Ali Beg the stranger who had saved him.
So, in due course, Mihr-ul-nisa, with her baby girl, was mounted on a camel, and her husband and two sons on another, and Deri, the cow, before joining the train, was regaled with a copious draught of water and an ample measure of grain.
Thus it came to pass that Mirza Ali Beg and his family were convoyed through Kandahár and Kábul in comfort and safety. They rode through the gaunt jaws of the Khaibar Pass, and emerged, after many days, into the great plain of the Punjáb, verdant with an abundant though deferred harvest.
And no one imagined, least of all the baby girl herself, that the infant crowing happily in the arms of Mihr-ul-nisa was destined to become a beautiful, gracious and world-renowned princess, whose name and love-story should endure through many a century.
In that same month of July, 1588, on the nineteenth day of the month, to be exact, the blazoned sails of the Spanish Armada were sighted off the Lizard. Sixty-five great war galleons, eight fleet galleasses, fifty-six armed merchantmen and twenty pinnaces swept along the Channel in gallant show. Spread out in a gigantic crescent, the Spanish ships were likened by anxious watchers to a great bird of prey with outstretched wings. But Lord Howard of Effingham led out of Plymouth a band of adventurers who had hunted that bird many a time. Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and the rest – they feared no Spaniard who sailed the seas.
Their little vessels, well handled, could sail two miles to the Spaniards’ one, and fire twice as many shots gun for gun. “One by one,” said they, “we plucked the Don’s feathers.” Ship after ship was sunk, captured, or driven on shore. A whole week the cannon roared from Plymouth Sound to Calais, and there the last great fight took place in which the Duke of Medina Sidonia yielded himself to agonized foreboding, and Drake rightly believed that the Spanish grandee “would ere long wish himself at St. Mary Port among his orange trees.”
During one of the many fierce duels between the ponderous galleons and the hawk-like British ships, the Resolution, hastily manned at Deal by volunteers who rode from London, hung on to and finally captured the San José.
It was no easy victory, for the Spaniards could acquit themselves as men when seamanship and gunnery gave place to swords and pikes. Three times did the assailants swarm up the lofty poop of the San José before they made good their footing.
At last, the Spaniards gave way before the ardent onslaught
“There is indeed a God!”
