At the Point of the Bayonet Part 12

"I thank you much, sir; and if I stay at Bombay, and obtain the permission of the Council to correspond with you, I will readily undertake the part. They can have little objection to the arrangement, as doubtless you have agents in Bombay, already."

"Certainly I have, but these are natives, and necessarily can only send me the rumours current in the bazaars, or known generally to the public; and their news is, for the most part, worthless."

"I have another favour to request," Harry said; "namely, that you will give leave of absence to Sufder, in order that he may accompany me to Bombay. He and my old nurse could, alone, substantiate my birth and ident.i.ty; and it would be necessary for them to give their evidence before some legal authority."

"That I will readily do. Sufder is honest and faithful, and I can rely upon him, absolutely, for anything in his sphere of duty; and have, only today, appointed him to the command of two hundred men; but although he has a hand ready to strike, he has no brain capable of planning. Had it not been so, I should before this have raised him to a higher position. When he returns from Bombay, I will grant him the revenues of a village, of which he shall be the patal [a mayor]; so that, in his old age, he will be able to live in comfort."

On leaving the minister, Harry went to Sufder's camp.

"'So you are back again, Puntojee?"

"Yes, and have brought Soyera down with me."

"I have great news to tell you," the soldier went on.

"It will not be news to me, Sufder. I know that your command has been doubled, and that you will now be the captain of two hundred men; but I can tell you much more than that. You are to accompany me down to Bombay, the day after tomorrow, so as to give evidence about my birth; and furthermore, Nana will, on your return, bestow upon you the jagheer [revenue] of a village district; so that, as he says, when you grow too old for service, you will be able to live comfortably."

"That is good news indeed--better even than that I am to have the command of two hundred men, for in truth I am beginning to be weary of service. I am now nearly fifty, and I feel myself growing stiff. Nothing would please me more than to be the patal of a village community, of which I hold the jagheer. However, so long as Nana lives and retains power I shall remain a soldier; but at his death I shall serve no other master, and shall take to country life again.

"Does Nana know that you are English?"

"Yes, I have told him my story. I was obliged to give my reasons for resigning and, as Nana has the support of the Government of Bombay, there was no risk in my doing so.

"How long will it be before I get quite rid of this colour, Sufder?"

"That I cannot say. I should think that in a fortnight the greater part of it will have faded out, but maybe Soyera knows of something that will remove it more rapidly."

Soyera, when asked, said that she knew of nothing that would remove the dye at once; but that if he washed his hands and face, two or three times a day, with a strong lye made from the ashes of a plant that grows everywhere on the plain, it would help to get rid of it.

"I will go out, tomorrow morning, and fetch some in."

When she had made the lye, and mixed it with oil, it made a very strong soap.

"How do you mean to dress, to go down, Harry?"

"I have no choice; but even if I had, I should ride out of here in my best court suit, and change it for English clothes when we got down the Ghauts. I may have to come up here again, for aught I know; and it is better, therefore, that no one should know that I am English."

Mr. Malet, however, solved the difficulty; for when, in the evening, Harry went to enquire about the time that they would start, he said:

"I had been thinking of offering you a suit to ride down in but, unfortunately, my clothes would be a great deal too small for you. However, I think that, after all, it is best you should go down as you are. In the first place, you would not show to advantage in English clothes, in which you would feel tight and uncomfortable, at first; and in the second place, I think that it is perhaps as well that the Council should see you as you are, then they would the better understand how you have been able to pa.s.s as a Mahratta, all these years.

"I will introduce you, now, to Colonel Palmer. It is important that he should know you, for possibly you may be sent up here on some mission or other--for which, having the favour of Nana, you would be specially fitted."

Accordingly, the next morning they started early. Soyera had prepared the liquid soap, but as it was decided that he should go in native dress, Harry thought it as well not to use it, especially as the dye was gradually wearing off. The party consisted of Mr. Malet, Sufder, and Harry; with an escort of ten cavalrymen, belonging to one of the native regiments. The mission clerk had been transferred to Colonel Palmer, as his knowledge of affairs would be useful to the newcomer. Soyera was carried in a dhoolie, and followed close behind the troopers.

That evening they descended the Ghauts into the Concan and encamped there and, on the following day, rode into Bombay; where Mr. Malet took them to an hotel, princ.i.p.ally used by natives of rank visiting Bombay.

"You had best stay here, till I send for you," he said, to Harry. "I shall see some of the Council tonight. No doubt there will be a formal meeting, tomorrow, to ask my opinion about the probability of the present state of things continuing at Poona. I shall, of course, tell them your story; and they will likely request you to go, at once, to see them; therefore, do not leave the hotel until you hear from me."

Sufder had not previously visited Bombay, and the next morning early he went out, with Soyera as his guide, to inspect the European part of the town. He was much struck with the appearance of neatness and order in the fort, and the solidity of the buildings.

"It is a strong place, a.s.suredly," he said to Harry, on his return. "In the first place, it would be necessary for a force attacking it to cross over the narrow isthmus, and causeway, uniting the island with the land; and that would be impossible, in face of a force provided with artillery guarding it. Then, if they succeeded in winning that, they would have to make their way through the native town to get on to the maidan; and this would be defended by the guns from all the batteries and, in addition to the artillery on land, it might be swept by guns on board s.h.i.+p. Truly, those who talked about driving the English into the sea cannot have known anything of the strength of the position.

"As to carrying it by a.s.sault, it could not be done; nor could the garrison be starved out, since they could always obtain supplies of all sorts by sea. And yet, except at the causeway, the place has no natural strength. The Mahrattas acted unwisely, indeed, when they allowed the English to settle here."

"They could not foresee the future, Sufder. Now, doubtless, they are sorry; but if in the future the British become masters of India, the Mahrattas will have no reason to regret having given them a foothold. Wherever their powers extend, the natives are far better off than they were under the rule of their own princes. Were the British masters, there would be no more wars, no more jealousies, and no more intrigues; the peasants would till their fields in peace, and the men who now take to soldiering would find more peaceful modes of earning a living."

"But you do not think, surely, Harry,"--for after leaving Poona, he had been told to call him so--"that the English can ever become masters of India? They conquered the Carnatic, but even there they were not safe from the forays of Hyder Ali. Mysore bars their way farther north. Then there is the Nizam to be dealt with, and then Berar and the Mahrattas; then comes Rajputana, and beyond are the Sikhs, and the fierce chiefs of Scinde. It is true that the English have beaten the peoples of lower Bengal, but these have always been looked down upon, and despised as cowardly and effeminate, by the fighting men of all India.

"Besides, how few are the white soldiers! They say, too, that the French have promised Tippoo to send a big army, to help to drive the English into the sea."

"The French have quite work enough, at home," Harry said. "It is true that they have got into Egypt, but they are shut up there by our fleets. Moreover, even were they to cross over into Arabia, how could they march across a dry and almost waterless country, for a thousand or two of miles? When they arrived in Scinde they would find all the fighting men of the province, and the Sikhs, opposed to them; and they would never be able to fight their way down to Mysore. The thing is absurd."

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger, from the Government House, with a request that Mr. Lindsay should at once attend there. Harry's horse, which had been saddled in readiness, was brought round; for it would have seemed strange for a Mahratta, whose dress showed that he held a good position, to go on foot. Sufder rode by his side, Soyera following on foot.

Dismounting at the Government House, he threw the reins to one of the lads, who were waiting in readiness to hold the horses of officers coming to see the Governor. On Harry mentioning his name, the native doorkeeper said:

"I have orders for you to be taken, at once, to the Council chamber, sahib, on your arrival here."

The Governor, with four members of the Council and Mr. Malet, were seated at a long table. Mr. Malet rose and said:

"This is Mr. Lindsay, gentlemen."

"Truly, sir, it would be difficult to recognize you as a fellow countryman, in that garb," the Governor said; "though your colour is somewhat less dark than that of a Mahratta."

"Since I left Poona I have ceased to dye, sir; as to my dress, this will be the last time I shall wear it, unless I should be called upon to go to Poona again."

"Your story is a most singular one," the Governor said, "but Mr. Malet a.s.sures us that you are the son of Major Lindsay, and has been telling us how you escaped the ma.s.sacre at the camp, and how your ayah has brought you up."

"She has come down with me, sir. I thought that her testimony would be necessary; and I have also brought down her cousin, who was present at the foray in which my father and mother were killed. My account will be confirmed by their statements."

"You do credit to Mahratta food and training, Mr. Lindsay; but Mr. Malet has mentioned to me that, at one time, you were employed as a s.h.i.+karee, to keep down the tigers which were doing havoc among the villagers near the top of the Ghauts. He has also informed us of the very valuable service you rendered, by informing him of Nana Furnuwees' measures for regaining power, and replacing Bajee Rao on the musnud--intelligence which saved us a great expenditure of money in preparing to support him; with the certainty that, by doing so, we might excite the enmity of Scindia. He tells us, also, why you continued so long in the Deccan, instead of coming down here; and I think you acted very wisely.

"We have mentioned your services, in that matter, in our reports to the Board of Directors; and have said that, partly as a recognition of this, and partly because you are the son of an English officer, who was killed in their service, we should at once give you an appointment, subject to their approval.

"Now, sir, which would you prefer, the civil or military branch?"

"I should much prefer the military," Harry answered, without hesitation; "unless indeed, sir, you think my services would be more useful in the civil."

"If we were at Calcutta or Madras, there would be more scope for you in the civil service; but as we hold, at present, little territory beyond this island, there are therefore but few appointments affording an opportunity for the display of the intelligence which you certainly possess; but, should circ.u.mstances alter, you might, owing to your knowledge of the country and its language, be told off for civil work, in which the emoluments are very much higher than in the military branch of the service.

"You will at once be gazetted to the 3rd Native Cavalry, and do duty with the regiment, until your services are required elsewhere. Fresh disturbances may break out at Poona and, in that case, you might be attached as a.s.sistant to Colonel Palmer.

"Do you think you would be known again?"

"I think it would be very unlikely, sir. When my skin has recovered its proper colour, and I am dressed in uniform, I feel sure no one would recognize me as having been an officer in the Peishwa's court."

"Very well, sir. Then you will see your name in the gazette, tomorrow. You will, within a day or so, report yourself to the officer commanding the regiment.