King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of AdventureMundy, Talbot
History
King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure
Mundy, Talbot
British -- India -- Fiction; Historical fiction; India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction; Love stories; War stories
It was thirty minutes after the last of the mullahs men had vanished
through the gate, and his own men in dozens and twenties were scattered
along the cliff-top arguing against delay with growing rancor, when
a lone horseman galloped out of Khinjan Gate and started across the
valley. He rode recklessly. He was either panic-stricken or else bolder
than the devil.
In a minute King had recognized the mare, and so had the eyes of fifty
men around him. No man with half an eye for a horse could have failed
to recognize that black mare, having ever seen her once. She came like
a goat among the rocks, just as she had once dived into darkness in the
Khyber with King following. In another two minutes King had recognized
the Rangar's silken turban. And now there was no need to restrain the
men; they all stood and watched, to know what new turn affairs were
taking.
Most of them were staring downward at the Rangar's head as he urged the
mare up the cliff path, when the explanation of Yasmini's message came.
It was only King, urged by some intuition, who had his eyes fixed on
Khinjan.
There came a shock that actually swayed the hill they stood on. The mare
on the path below missed her footing and fell a dozen feet, only to
get up again and scramble as if a thousand devils were behind her, the
Rangar riding her grimly, like a jockey in a race. Three more shocks
followed. A great slice of Khinjan suddenly caved in with a roar, and
smoke and dust burst upward through the tumbling crust.
There was a pause after that, as if the waiting elements were gathering
strength. For ten minutes they watched and scarcely breathed. Rewa Gunga
gained the summit and, dismounting, stood by King with the reins over
his arm. The mare was too blown to do anything but stand and tremble.
And King was too enthralled to do anything but stare.
“That is what a woman can do for a man!” said Rewa Gunga grimly. “She
set a fuse and exploded all the dynamite. There were tons of it! The
galleries must have fallen in, one on the other! A thousand men digging
for a thousand years could never get into Khinjan now, and the only way
out is down Earth's Drink! She bade me come and bid you good-by, sahib.
I would have stayed in there, but she commanded me. She said, 'Tell King
sahib my love was true. Tell him I give him India and all Asia that were
at my mercy!'”
While the Rangar spoke there came three more earth tremors in swift
succession, and a thunder out of Khinjan as if the very “Hills” were
coming to an end. The mare grew frantic and the Rangar summoned six men
to hold her.
Suddenly, right over the top of Khinjan's upper rim, where only the
eagles ever perched, there burst a column of water, immeasurable, huge,
that for a moment blotted out the sun. It rose sheer upward, curved on
itself, and fell in a million-ton deluge on to Khinjan and into Khinjan
valley, hissing and roaring and thundering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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