Told in the East

XIV.

Explosions are among the few things—or the many things, whichever way you like to look at it!—that science can not undertake to harness or account for. When a gun blows up, or a powder-magazine, the shock kills whom it kills, as when a shell bursts in a dense-packed firing-line. You can not kill any man before his time comes, even if a thousand tons of solid masonry combine with you to whelm him, and go hurtling through the air with him to absolutely obvious destruction.

The fakir's time had come, and the prisoners' time had come. But Sergeant William Brown's had not.

They found him, blackened by powder, and with every stitch of clothing blown from him, clinging to a bunch of lotus-stems in a temple-pond. There was a piece of fakir in the water with him, and about a ton of broken granary, besides the remnants of a rifle and other proof that he had come belched out of a holocaust. The men who came on him had given their officer the slip, and were bent on a private looting-expedition of their own. But by the time that they had dragged him from the water, and he had looted them of wherewithal to clothe himself, their thoughts of plunder had departed from them. Brown had a way of quite monopolizing people's thoughts!

There were twenty of them, and he led them all that night, and all through the morning and the afternoon that followed. He held them together and worked them and wheeled them and coached and cheered and compelled them through the hell-tumult of the ghastliest thing there is beneath the dome of heaven—house-to-house fighting in an Eastern city. And at the end of it, when the bugles blew at last “Cease fire,” and many of the men were marched away by companies to put out the conflagrations that were blazing here and there, he led them outside the city-wall, stood them at ease in their own line and saluted their commanding-officer.

“Twenty men of yours, sir. Present and correct.”

“Which twenty?”

“Of Mr. Blair's half-company.”

“Where's Mr. Blair?”

“Dunno, sir!”

“Since when have you had charge of them?”

“Since they broke into the city yesterday, sir.”

“And you haven't lost a man?”

“Had lots of luck, sir!”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”

“Of the Rifles?”

“Of the Rifles, sir.”

“Were you the man who signaled to us from the magazine and blew it up and made the breach in the wall for us to enter by?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you alive, or dead? Man or ghost?”

“I'm pretty much alive, sir, thank you!”

“D'you realize that you made the taking of Jailpore possible? That but for you we'd have been trying still to storm the walls without artillery?”

“I had the chance, sir, and I only did what any other man would ha' done under like circumstances.”

“Go and tell that to the Horse Marines—or, rather, tell it to Colonel Kendrick! Go and report to him at once. Possibly he'll see it through your eyes!”

So Brown marched off to report himself, and he found Colonel Kendrick nursing a badly wounded arm before a torn and mud-stained tent.

“Who are you?” said the colonel, as Brown saluted him.

“I'm Sergeant Brown, sir.”

“Not Bill Brown of the Rifles?”

“Yes, sir!”

“You lie! He was blown up on the roof of the powder-magazine! I suppose every man who's gone mad from the heat will be saying that he's Brown!”

“I'm Brown, sir! I had written orders from General Baines to enter Jailpore and rescue three women and a child.”

“Where are your orders?”

“Lost 'em, sir, in the explosion.”

“For a madman, you're a circumstantial liar! What happened to the women?”

The colonel sat back, and smothered an exclamation of agony as the nerves in his injured arm tortured him afresh. He had asked a question which should settle once and for all this man's pretentions, and he waited for the answer with an air of certainty. It was on his lips to call the guard to take the lunatic away.

“Juggut Khan, the Rajput, took them, with nine of my men, and brought them in to your camp last night, sir. I naturally haven't seen them since.”

“Will the women know you?”

“One of them will, sir.”

“Which one?”

“Jane Emmett, sir.”

“Well, we'll see!”

The colonel called an orderly, and sent the orderly running for Jane Emmett. A minute later two strong arms were thrown round Bill Brown from behind, and he was all but carried off his feet.

“Oh, Bill—Bill—Bill! I knew you'd be all right! Turn round, Bill! Look at me!”

She was clinging to him in such a manner that he could not turn, but he managed to pry her hands loose, and to draw her round in front of him.

“I knew, Bill! I felt sure you'd come! And I recognized your voice the minute that the trapdoor opened and I heard it! I did, Bill! I knew you in a minute! I didn't worry then! I knew you wouldn't come and talk to me as long as there was any duty to be done. I just waited! They said you were killed in the explosion, but I knew you weren't! I knew it! I did! I knew it!”

“Face me, please!” said Colonel Kendrick. “Now, Jane Emmett, is that man Sergeant William Brown, of the Rifles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is he the man who entered Jailpore with nine men and a Rajput, and came to your assistance?”

“Yes, sir! He's the same man who spoke in the powder-magazine;”

“Do you confirm that?” he asked Brown.

“Under favor, sir, my men must be somewhere, if they're not all killed. They'll recognize me. And there's the other lot I led all last night and all today. They'll tell you where they found me!”

“Never mind! I've decided I believe you! D'you realize that you're something of a marvel?”

“No, sir—except that I've had marvelous luck!”

“Well, I shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in despatches. It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen! There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what you dared in the first place. But, more than that, there are even fewer men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else's care while they blew up a powder-magazine with themselves on top of it, in order to make a breach for the army to come in by! My right hand's out of action unfortunately—you'll have to shake my left!”

The colonel rose, held his uninjured hand out and Brown shook it, since he was ordered to.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to have shaken hands with you, Sergeant Brown!” said Colonel Kendrick.

“Thank you, sir!” said Brown, taking one step back, and then saluting. “May I join my regiment, sir?”

He joined his regiment, when he had helped to sort out the bleeding remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was once more mentioned in despatches.

When the Mutiny was over, and the country had settled down again to peace and reincarnation of a nation had begun, Brown found himself hoisted to a civil appointment that was greater and more highly paid than anything his modest soul had ever dreamed of.

He never understood the reason for it, although he did his fighting-best consistently to fill the job; and he never understood why Queen Victoria should have taken the trouble to write a letter to him in which she thanked him personally, nor why they should have singled out for praise and special notice a fellow who had merely done his duty.

Perhaps that was the reason why he was such a conspicuous success in civil life. They still talk of how Bill Brown, with Jane his wife and Juggut Khan the Rajput to advise him, was Resident Political Adviser to a Maharajah, and of how the Maharajah loathed him, and looked sidewise at him—but obeyed. That, though, is not a war-story. It is a story of the saving of a war, and shall go on record, some day, beneath a title of its own.