XVII
Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we;
I was the Lord of the Inca Race, and she was the Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the reinless meteors glow,
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.
Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above--
Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove;
Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.
She with the star I had marked for my own--I with my set desire--
Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights, 'wildered by worlds afire--
Met in a war 'twixt love and hate where the reinless meteors glow,
Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago.
—The Sack of the Gods.
In summer the nights of the desert are hotter than the days, for when the sun goes down, earth, masonry, and marble give forth their stored heat, and the low clouds, promising rain and never bringing it, allow nothing to escape.
Tarvin was lying at rest in the verandah of the rest-house, smoking a cheroot and wondering how far he had bettered the case of the Maharaj Kunwar by appealing to the Maharajah. His reflections were not disturbed; the last of the commercial travellers had gone back to Calcutta and Bombay, grumbling up to the final moment of their stay, and the rest-house was all his own. Surveying his kingdom, he meditated, between the puffs of his cheroot, on the desperate and apparently hopeless condition of things. They had got to the precise point where he liked them. When a situation looked as this one did, only Nicholas Tarvin could put it through and come out on top. Kate was obdurate; the Naulahka was damnably coy; the Maharajah was ready to turn him out of the State. Sitabhai had heard him denounce her. His life was likely to come to a sudden and mysterious end, without so much as the satisfaction of knowing that Heckler and the boys would avenge him; and if it went on, it looked as though it would have to go on without Kate, and without the gift of new life to Topaz--in other words, without being worth the trouble of living.
The moonlight, shining on the city beyond the sands, threw fantastic shadows on temple spires and the watch-towers along the walls. A dog in search of food snuffed dolefully about Tarvin's chair, and withdrew to howl at him at a distance. It was a singularly melancholy howl. Tarvin smoked till the moon went down in the thick darkness of an Indian night. She had scarcely set when he was aware of something blacker than the night between him and the horizon.
'Is it you, Tarvin Sahib?' the voice inquired in broken English.
Tarvin sprang to his feet before replying. He was beginning to be a little suspicious of fresh apparitions. His hand went to his hip pocket. Any horror, he argued, might jump out at him from the darkness in a country managed on the plan of a Kiralfy trick spectacle.
'Nay; do not be afraid,' said the voice. 'It is I--Juggut Singh.'
Tarvin pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. 'The State is full of Singhs,' he said. 'Which?'
'I, Juggut Singh, of the household of the Maharajah.'
'H'm. Does the King want to see me?'
The figure advanced a pace nearer.
'No, Sahib; the Queen.'
'Which?' repeated Tarvin.
The figure was in the verandah at his side, almost whispering in his ear. 'There is only one who would dare to leave the palace. It is the Gipsy.'
Tarvin snapped his fingers blissfully and soundlessly in the dark, and made a little click of triumph with his tongue. 'Pleasant calling hours the lady keeps,' he said.
'This is no place for speaking, Sahib. I was to say, "Come, unless you are afraid of the dark."'
'Oh, were you? Well, now, look here, Juggut; let's talk this thing out. I'd like to see your friend Sitabhai. Where are you keeping her? Where do you want me to go?'
'I was to say, "Come with me." Are you afraid?' The man spoke this time at his own prompting.
'Oh, I'm afraid fast enough,' said Tarvin, blowing a cloud of smoke from him. 'It isn't that.'
'There are horses--very swift horses. It is the Queen's order. Come with me.'
Tarvin smoked on, unhurrying; and when he finally picked himself out of the chair it was muscle by muscle. He drew his revolver from his pocket, turned the chambers slowly one after another to the vague light, under Juggut Singh's watchful eye, and returned it to his pocket again, giving his companion a wink as he did so.
'Well, come on, Juggut,' he said, and they passed behind the rest-house to a spot where two horses, their heads enveloped in cloaks to prevent them from neighing, were waiting at their pickets. The man mounted one, and Tarvin took the other silently, satisfying himself before getting into the saddle that the girths were not loose this time. They left the city road at a walking pace by a cart-track leading to the hills.
'Now,' said Juggut Singh, after they had gone a quarter of a mile in this fashion, and were alone under the stars, 'we can ride.'
He bowed forward, struck his stirrups home, and began lashing his animal furiously. Nothing short of the fear of death would have made the pampered eunuch of the palace ride at this pace.
Tarvin watched him roll in the saddle, chuckled a little, and followed.
'You wouldn't make much of a cow-puncher, Juggut, would you?'
'Ride!' gasped Juggut Singh. 'For the cleft between the two hills--ride!'
The dry sand flew behind their horses' hoofs, and the hot winds whistled about their ears as they headed up the easy slope toward the hills, three miles from the palace. In the old days, before the introduction of telegraphs, the opium speculators of the desert were wont to telegraph the rise and fall in the price of the drug from little beacon-towers on the hills. It was toward one of these disused stations that Juggut Singh was straining. The horses fell into a walk as the slope grew steeper, and the outline of the squat-domed tower began to show clear against the sky. A few moments later Tarvin heard the hoofs of their horses ring on solid marble, and saw that he was riding near the edge of a great reservoir, full of water to the lip.
Eastward, a few twinkling lights in the open plain showed the position of Rhatore, and took him back to the night when he had said good-bye to Topaz from the rear platform of a Pullman. Night-fowl called to one another from the weeds at the far end of the tank, and a great fish leaped at the reflection of a star.
'The watch-tower is at the further end of the am,' said Juggut Singh, 'The Gipsy is there.'
'Will they never have done with that name?' uttered an incomparably sweet voice out of the darkness. 'It is well that I am of a gentle temper, or the fish would know more of thee, Juggut Singh.'
Tarvin checked his horse with a jerk, for almost under his bridle stood a figure enveloped from head to foot in a mist of pale yellow gauze. It had started up from behind the red tomb of a once famous Rajput cavalier who was supposed by the country-side to gallop nightly round the dam he had built. This was one of the reasons why the Dungar Talao was not visited after nightfall.
'Come down, Tarvin Sahib,' said the voice mockingly in English. 'I, at least, am not a grey ape. Juggut Singh, go wait with the horses below the watchtower.'
'Yes, Juggut; and don't go to sleep,' enjoined Tarvin--'we might want you.' He alighted, and stood before the veiled form of Sitabhai.
'Shekand,' she said, after a little