The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier. Mitford Bertram

renewed efforts to reach him—and the vocabulary of this young person earned the delighted appreciation of even the toughest of her audience. Then a diversion occurred.

      “Myke wy? Oo are you tellin’ of to myke wy?” rose a voice, in angry and jeering expostulation, followed immediately by the sound of a scuffle. The attention of the crowd was diverted to this new quarter, which circumstance enabled the luckless Oriental to gain his feet, and he stood staggering, glaring about him in a frenzy of wrath and bewilderment. Then he was knocked flat again, this time by the pressure of those around.

      What followed was worth seeing. Straight through the mass of roughs came upwards of a dozen and a half of another species, in strong and compact order, hitting out on either side of them, scrupulously observing the Donnybrook principle, “When you see a head hit it”—only in the present instance it was a face. Most of these were members of an athletic club, who had been dining generously and had caught the prevailing excitement. They had seen the predicament of the Oriental from afar, and promptly recognised that to effect his rescue would furnish them with just the fun and fight for which they were spoiling.

      “Make way, you blackguards. Call yourselves Englishmen, all packing on to one man? What? You won’t? That’ll settle you.”

      “That” being a “knock-out” neatly delivered, the recipient, he who had begun the assault. Still crowned with his female companion’s headgear the abominable rough sank to the ground, permanently disabled.

      “Here—you, sir—get up. Hope you’re not much the worse,” cried the foremost, dragging the stranger to his feet.

      “I thank you, gentlemen,” said the latter, in excellent English. “No, not much, I think.”

      “That’s right,” cried the foremost of his rescuers, admiring his pluck. For undoubtedly the stranger was considerably the worse for what he had gone through. His cheek bones were swollen, and one eye was bunged up, and his now tattered beard was matted with blood flowing from a cut on the lip; and as he stood, with somewhat unsteady gait, the forced smile wherewith he had greeted his deliverers changed to a hideous snarl of hate, as his glance wandered to the repulsive and threatening countenances of his late assailants. Here, obviously, was no shrinking, effeminate representative of the East, rather a scion of one of its fine and warrior races, for there was a mingled look of wistfulness and aroused savagery in his eyes as instinctively he clenched and unclenched his defenceless fingers as though they ought to be grasping a weapon.

      But the moral effect of the first decisive rush having worn off, the rough element of the crowd, roughest of all just here, began to rally. After all, though they had science, the number of these new arrivals constituted a mere mouthful, so puny was it. Yells, and hoots, and catcalls arose as the surging rabble pressed upon the gallant few, now standing literally at bay. Those in the forefront were pushed forward by the weight of numbers behind, and the pressure was so great that there was hardly room to make free play with those fine, swinging out-from-the-shoulder hits—yet they managed partially to clear a way—and for a few moments, fists, feet, sticks, everything, Teere going in the liveliest sort of free fight imaginable. The while, over the remainder of the packed space, shrill cheers and patriotic songs, and the firing off of squibs and crackers were bearing their own part in making night hideous, independently of the savage rout, here at the top of King William Street.

      “Kroojer! Kroojer! ’Ere’s Kroojer!” yelled the mob, and, attracted by its vociferations, others turned their attention that way. And while his deliverers had their hands very full indeed, a villainous-looking rough reached forward and swung up what looked like a slender, harmless roll of brown paper above the Oriental’s head. Well was it for the latter that this move was seen by one man, and that just in time to interpose a thick malacca cane between his skull and the descending gas pipe filled with lead, which staff, travelling down to the wrist of him who wielded the deadly weapon, caused the murderous cad to drop the same, with a howl, and weird language.

      “A good ‘Penang lawyer’ is tough enough for most things,” muttered the dealer of this deft stroke. “Here, brother, take this,” he went on, in an Eastern tongue, thrusting the stick into the stranger’s hand.

      The effect was wondrous. The consciousness of grasping even this much of a weapon seemed to transform the Oriental completely. His tall form seemed to tower, his frame to dilate, as, whirling the tough stick aloft, he shrilled forth a wild, fierce Mohammedan war-cry, bounding, leaping, in a very demoniacal possession, charging those nearest to him as though the stick were a long-bladed, keen-edged tulwar. Whirling it in the air he brought it down with incredible swiftness, striking here and there on head and face, while looking around for more to smite. And then the rabble of assailants began to give way, or try to. “Cops” was the cry that now went up, and immediately thereupon a strong posse of the splendid men of the City Police had forced their way to the scene of disturbance—or very nearly.

      Crushed, borne along by the swaying crowd, the man who had so effectually aided the distressed Oriental had become separated from his friends. For his foes he cared nothing, and, indeed, these had all they could think of to effect their own retreat, the motive being not so much fear of immediate consequences as the consciousness with many of them that they were desperately wanted by the police in connection with other matters, which would infallibly assert their claims once identity was established. At last, to his relief, he found himself in a side street and outside the crowd.

      “You’re better ’ere, sir,” said a gruff voice, whose owner was contemplating him curiously.

      “Yes, rather. I’ve been in a bit of a breeze yonder.”

      “So I should say, sir,” answered the policeman, significantly. “Thank’ee, sir. Much obliged.”

      “They were mobbing a stranger, and I and some others went to help him.”

      “Was it a Hindian gent, sir, with a high black sort of ’at? I seen him go by here not long since.”

      “Yes. That was the man. Well, I suppose he’s all right by now. Good-night, policeman.”

      “Good-night, sir, and thank’ee, sir.”

      An hour and a half later one corner of the supper-room in the Peculiar Club was in a state of unwonted liveliness, even for that by no means dull institution, where upwards of a dozen more or less damaged members were consuming devilled bones and champagne.

      Damaged, in that bunged up eyes and swelled noses—and here and there a cut lip—were in evidence; but all were in the last stage of cheerfulness.

      “Why isn’t Raynier here, I wonder?” was asked.

      “He? Oh, I expect he went on taking care of that Indian Johnny. He likes those chaps, you know, has to do with them out there. He’ll turn up all right—never fear.”

      “Don’t know. Don’t like losing sight of him,” said another.

      “Oh, he’ll turn up all right. He knows jolly well how to take care of himself.”

      But as the night became morning, and the frantic howling of patriotism gone mad rent the otherwise still hours, Raynier did not turn up. Then the revellers and quondam combatants became uneasy—such of them, that is, as were still capable of reflection in any form.

Chapter Two.

       Table of Contents

      The Day After.

      Raynier awoke in his club chambers the next morning, feeling, as he put it to himself, exceedingly cheap.

      When we say awoke, rather are we expressing a recurring process which had continued throughout the few remaining night hours since, by force of circumstances and the swaying of the crowd, he had become separated from his companions, and had wisely found his way straight to bed instead of to the Peculiar Club. On this at any rate he congratulated