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"What is it, Bhallu Khan?" said Upward, as the voice and the light of the lantern revealed the chief forest guard.
Now Bhallu Khan was inclined to be long-winded in his statements. It was raining smartly, and Upward grew impatient.
"Eh! another shot!" cried Upward, now thoroughly startled. "Why, what the devil is the meaning of it?" This last escaped him in English--and it brought the whole party around him, now all ears, regardless of the rain. Only Nesta was out of it--not understanding Hindustani.
"Yes, let's go!"--cut in Lily. "Hurrah! here's a new excitement!"
"Let's go!" echoed her father sharply. "To bed, you mean. So off you go there, both of you. Come--clear in--quick! Likely one wants a lot of children fooling about in the dark on a night like this."
Heedless of their grumbling protest, Upward dived into his tent, and, quickly arming himself with his magazine rifle and revolver, he came forth. Bhallu Khan he instructed to bring another of the forest guard to accompany them while a third was left to look after the camp.
In the darkness and rain they took their way along the bank of the flood--Upward hardly knowing what he was expecting to find. The country was wild, and its inhabitants wilder still. Quite recently there had been an upheaval of lawlessness among a section of the powerful and restless Marri tribe. What if some bloody deed of vendetta, or tribal feud, had been worked out here, almost at his very door? He stumbled along through the wet, coarse tussocks, peering here and there as the forest guard held the lantern before him--his rifle ready. He hardly expected to find anything living, but there was a weird creepiness about this nocturnal quest after something sinister and mysterious that moved him by sheer instinct to defensive preparation. Twice he started, as the dark form of a half-stranded tree trunk with its twisted limbs suggested the find of some human body--ghastly with wounds--distorted with an agonising death. Suddenly Bhallu Khan stopped short, and with a hurried and whispered exclamation held up the lantern, while pointing to something in front.
Something which lay half in, half out of the water. Something which all felt rather than saw had had life, even if life were no longer in it. No tree trunk this time, but a human body. Dead or alive, however, they were only just in time, for even as they looked the swirl of an eddy threw a volume of water from the middle of the trunk right over the neck--so quickly had the flood risen.
"Here--give me the lantern--And you two pull him out, sharp," said Upward.
This, to the two stalwart hillmen, was but the work of a moment. Then an exclamation escaped Bhallu Khan.
"It is a sahib!" he cried.
Upward bent over the prostrate form, holding the light to the face. Then it became his turn to start in amazement.
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