J. M. Barrie - "THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON"

C.J. Dennis - "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke"

John Muir - "The Yosemite"

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - "The House of Life"

Soldiers Three

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three




On returning to Lalun's door I stumbled over a man at the threshold.
He was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a
goose. It was Wali Dad, Agnostic and Unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless,
and frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding
from the vehemence with which he had smitten himself. A broken
torch-handle lay by his side, and his quivering lips murmured, '_Ya
Hasan! Ya Hussain!_' as I stooped over him. I pushed him a few steps
up the staircase, threw a pebble at Lalun's City window and hurried
home.

Most of the streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes
before the dawn whistled down them. In the centre of the Square of the
Mosque a man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in
by gun-butt or bamboo-stave.

'It is expedient that one man should die for the people,' said Petitt
grimly, raising the shapeless head. 'These brutes were beginning to
show their teeth too much.'

And from afar we could hear the soldiers singing 'Two Lovely Black
Eyes,' as they drove the remnant of the rioters within doors.


Of course you can guess what happened? I was not so clever. When the
news went abroad that Khem Singh had escaped from the Fort, I did not,
since I was then living this story, not writing it, connect myself,
or Lalun, or the fat gentleman with the gold _pince-nez_, with his
disappearance. Nor did it strike me that Wali Dad was the man who
should have convoyed him across the City, or that Lalun's arms round
my neck were put there to hide the money that Nasiban gave to Khem
Singh, and that Lalun had used me and my white face as even a better
safeguard than Wali Dad who proved himself so untrustworthy. All that
I knew at the time was that, when Fort Amara was taken up with the
riots, Khem Singh profited by the confusion to get away, and that his
two Sikh guards also escaped.

But later on I received full enlightenment; and so did Khem Singh. He
fled to those who knew him in the old days, but many of them were dead
and more were changed, and all knew something of the Wrath of the
Government. He went to the young men, but the glamour of his name had
passed away, and they were entering native regiments of Government
offices, and Khem Singh could give them neither pension, decorations,
nor influence--nothing but a glorious death with their backs to the
mouth of a gun. He wrote letters and made promises, and the letters
fell into bad hands, and a wholly insignificant subordinate officer
of Police tracked them down and gained promotion thereby. Moreover,
Khem Singh was old, and anise-seed brandy was scarce, and he had left
his silver cooking-pots in Fort Amara with his nice warm bedding, and
the gentleman with the gold _pince-nez_ was told by those who had
employed him that Khem Singh as a popular leader was not worth the
money paid.

'Great is the mercy of these fools of English!' said Khem Singh when
the situation was put before him. 'I will go back to Fort Amara of my
own free will and gain honour. Give me good clothes to return in.'

So, at his own time, Khem Singh knocked at the wicket-gate of the Fort
and walked to the Captain and the Subaltern, who were nearly gray-headed
on account of correspondence that daily arrived from Simla marked
'Private.'

'I have come back, Captain Sahib,' said Khem Singh.

'Put no more guards over me. It is no good out yonder.'

A week later I saw him for the first time to my knowledge, and he made
as though there were an understanding between us.

'It was well done, Sahib,' said he, 'and greatly I admired your
astuteness in thus boldly facing the troops when I, whom they would
have doubtless torn to pieces, was with you. Now there is a man in
Fort Ooltagarh whom a bold man could with ease help to escape. This
is the position of the Fort as I draw it on the sand--'

But I was thinking how I had become Lalun's Vizier after all.

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