The city itself was by this time like a hive of bees about to swarm,
which is disturbed by a finger-touch. People hurried hither and thither
causelessly; excited, anxious, yet harmless; for those who had meant to
give the cue for action hung back at the sight of the soldiers. Yet
many of these would-be mischief-makers had not quite given up hope, and
their unwillingness to do so, strangely enough, was in inverse ratio to
their hope of achieving any good by raising a riot. For, while every
minute that passed showed the more reasonable, the more interested,
that wisdom lay in postponement, those who had very little stake or
thought in the matter beyond a general desire to kick over the traces,
grew more and more desperate as the opportunity for this seemed to be
slipping from them. Govind the editor was one of these, and,
gravitating naturally to his like, found himself after a time in one of
the bands of discontents who were ready for any trivial mischief that
might come handy. But as yet, even these had no objective.
And so, after all, Jack Raymond had time for a late dinner. And he ate
a good one too, in ignorance--like every one else except a few of the
would-be train-wreckers who discreetly held their tongues--of the real
history of the drawbridge. For the steam fog had effectually hidden all
the heroism of that struggle for it. Had hidden all things save the
voices in the fog; save that almost incredible chanting of a sailor's
chorus heard by the engine-driver, those few words, 'Keep your head,
sir, and take a holt of me,' half-heard by some of the officers.
And Sir George Arbuthnot, too, ate his dinner at the club. He did not
make so good a one, however; and when he had finished it, hurriedly, he
paused beside the table where Jack Raymond was finishing his,
leisurely, to say with rather elaborate point, 'So you were right after
all, Mr. Raymond!--and--and I was wrong--should, I expect, have been
still more wrong, if Kenyon here had not insisted on telegraphing to
Fareedabad.' He looked as he spoke at the Commissioner, who had come in
for a mere bite and sup.
Jack Raymond rose, feeling that he liked the man better than he had
ever done before; feeling for the first time that he was glad he had
helped.
'I don't know, sir,' he said cheerfully, 'about the right and the
wrong. I happened to hear. But it was uncommonly lucky the troops
managed to nick the up-mail, or they might have been a bit late. It
must have been a near shave!'
'Very!' put in the Commissioner with a slightly puzzled frown. 'I don't
know exactly how the deuce they did it, but that's a detail for the
present. Now, sir, if you will write that note to relieve Lady
Arbuthnot's anxiety, we can start back to the hospital--though really
there is no necessity for it--the danger is over.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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