I felt a dull crushing sensation. My nerves collapsed; my senses left me. Speech, sight, hearing, all failed me in an instant; a strange darkness came over me, and then I was conscious of nothing.
When my senses slowly and wearily recovered I was still lying in my master"s pocket in the place where he had fallen at the storming of the breach. Firing was still going on all around, but the shouts of our men rose now from inside the fort instead of outside. And what shouting it was! The enemy"s guns ceased as if by magic, and the distant sounds of firing showed plainly enough that the main body, now that we had silenced the fort, was resuming its march on Lucknow.
All this flashed through me as my senses gradually returned, and before even I had time to contemplate my own condition. What a wreck I was! A helpless cripple past all healing, of no use to any one, and utterly incapable of resuming the ordinary duties of life. But almost before I could realise this, another care flashed through my mind and drove out every other.
My master! What of him? There he lay, motionless and pale, with his blue eyes closed, and a little stream of blood trickling down his chest.
Could he be dead?
Anxiously I listened if his heart still beat. At first all seemed silent as death. Then there seemed a slight quiver, and as I listened still, a faint throb. He lived still! How I longed for help to come!
And before long it came. Two soldiers of Charlie"s regiment came out of the fort and walked straight towards us.
"It was close to the breach he dropped," said one.
"Come on, then," said the other, "and we may be in time."
They were not long in finding the object of their search, and leant eagerly over him.
"He"s dead, poor fellow!" said the first; "shot right through the heart!"
"So he is," said the other. "It must have--wait a bit!" cried he, in sudden excitement. "Feel here, Tom, quick! he"s alive yet! Oh, if we could only get hold of a doctor!"
"Is there one about at all?"
"Not that I know of, unless the Major knows what to do."
Just then there came up a gaunt man, in an undress uniform, who, seeing that they knelt over a wounded man, said,--
"Is he alive?"
"It"s all he is, sir," replied one of the men; "and we"re wondering how to get a doctor to him."
"Let me see," said the stranger, approaching the body.
He knelt beside it and gently removed the coat from the wound.
"It looks as if he must be shot through the heart. Stay a bit, though, here"s a watch!" and he pulled me softly out of the pocket. As he did so I looked up at him. Surely I knew his face! Surely somewhere I had seen that troubled frightened face before! Then I remembered Seatown Gaol! Could this be Tom Drift here in India, and kneeling beside his old schoolfellow"s body?
It was indeed Tom Drift! But he neither recognised me nor the wounded man before him; indeed he was too busy examining the latter"s wound to look very closely at his face. As he removed the waistcoat he uttered an exclamation of astonishment.
"A most wonderful thing," he said; "the bullet, which must have been a spent one, has struck his watch and turned aside. A most wonderful escape!"
And then he produced a box of instruments, with one of which he probed the wound, and after some trouble extracted the bullet. Then, bandaging up the place, he said,--
"He may do now, but he has lost a lot of blood. Let him lie here a bit, and presently, if he seems better, move him into the fort. I will see him again this evening."
And so saying, he pa.s.sed on to the next prostrate figure.
Towards evening the two men tenderly lifted their officer in their arms and carried him inside the fort, where a rude hospital had been fitted up. Here Charlie, who, after the extraction of the bullet and staunching of blood, had shown symptoms of recovery, opened his eyes, and found himself able to say a few words to those round him. And when they told him how I had probably saved his life his face lit up with a most triumphant smile, and he asked that I might be put into his hand.
As he lay there, scarcely strong enough to speak, and fondling me in his fingers, the doctor entered the hospital.
He came straight to Charlie"s bed. My master"s eyes were closed when Tom first reached his side; and I could see by the face of the latter that he was still as far from recognising his old schoolfellow as ever.
But directly Tom softly lifted the clothes in order to examine his wound, the patient woke and opened his eyes. They rested for a moment on the doctor"s face, and then, with a sudden flush and start, he half raised himself in his bed, and exclaimed,--
"Tom Drift, is it you?"
The doctor thus unexpectedly hearing his own name p.r.o.nounced, turned pale, and started back as if he had been shot. The scared, terrified look returned to his face, and for an instant he seemed as if he would rush from the place. But only for an instant.
As he looked again on the face of his patient a strange expression came over his own. Wonder, doubt, joy, succeeded each other in rapid succession, and then all of a sudden it flashed upon him who this was.
"Charlie!" he exclaimed, trembling with astonishment; and next moment the poor prodigal was on his knees beside his friend"s bed, sobbing, with his head buried in his hands.
Don"t laugh at him, reader, for thus forgetting himself. Tom Drift had been through many trials you know nothing about, and out of those trials he had come broken in spirit and as humble as a child. _You_ might have had more regard for appearances, perhaps, and controlled your emotion genteelly; but, as I have said before, Tom Drift was not anything like so strong-minded as you. So he knelt there and sobbed; and Charlie, as he lay, took his hand into his own, and held it.
Presently he said, softly, "Tom!"
Tom looked up and rose to his feet.
"What, old fellow?"
"Look here, Tom!" said Charlie, showing me.
At the sight of me, bruised and battered as I was, Tom"s feelings overcame him again. He seized me eagerly, and looked long and tenderly into my face; then his tears came again, and once more he sunk on his knees at Charlie"s side and buried his face in his hands.
The place was getting dark. The noise of voices outside and the distant roar of guns slowly died away; the guards for the night were called out, and one by one soldier and invalid fell asleep after their hard day"s toil. But Tom Drift never moved from Charlie"s bedside, nor did Charlie, by word or movement, disturb him. In the silence of that night I seemed to be back in the past--when, years ago, I first knew these two. The dreary hospital changed, in my imagination, into the old Randlebury dormitory.
These beds all round were occupied not by wounded soldiers, but by soundly-sleeping boys, worn out with sports or study. And the two between whom I lay were no longer suffering men, but the light-hearted lads of long ago. I could almost fancy myself ticking through the silent watches; and when now and then the fingers that held me closed over me, or fondled me tenderly, I could almost have believed I heard the low sweet whistling of an innocent boy as he furtively turned in his waking moments to his father"s precious gift.
It all seemed so strangely natural that as I woke from my dream it required an effort to remember where I really was. All was silent around me. I peered first at my master, then at Tom Drift; they were both asleep--sleeping, perhaps, as simply as ever they did in those bygone days--Tom kneeling still by the bedside with his head upon his arms, and Charlie turned towards him with one hand upon his friend"s, and I--I lay between them.
Thus the sultry Indian night pa.s.sed, and then at the little window opposite there came a faint gleam of light.
Charlie woke first, and, laying his hand gently on Tom"s arm, said, "Tom Drift, old fellow!"
With a start and a bound Tom was awake and on his feet, staring in a bewildered way round him.
At last his eyes fell on Charlie, and he remembered where he was. "I was asleep and dreaming," he said.
"So was I," said Charlie--and _I_ could almost guess what their dreams had been.
"Now, Tom," said Charlie, "you must look to my wound."
"My poor boy!" exclaimed Tom; "to think I have forgotten it all this time!"
"It"s not worth bothering about, after all," said my master, "But see, Tom, the day is breaking."