THE SOVEREIGNTY OF AIR

After Lesley had gone home to dinner, and Jack Raymond--in quaint contrast--was off to make certain that a rising in the city was expected before long, the station settled down once more into the silence and slackness of between-train time on a Sunday evening. The listless passengers to be, it is true, still sat in groups on the steps outside, and every now and again some one--who ought to have been on duty and was not--gave a look in, and went off again. Once, indeed, an assistant station-master called at the telegraph-office perfunctorily; but the baboo had by that time recovered from his paralysis of terror, and begun to see his own advantage clearly. True, he had so far been in with the conspirators, as to have promised his collaboration, should the authorities be enough on the alert to use the telegraph to Fareedabad; but in doing so he had thought himself safe from detection. He had not been so; but now he had once more a hope of safety that wild horses would not have dragged him to lessen. Therefore the assistant station-master went, as he had come, in ignorance of anything unusual.

Up on the turret of the bastion too, which abutted on to the river only a few yards from the first bridge-pier, and which therefore gave full on the station, the kite-flyers went on with their match undisturbed. JehÂn was there and Burkut Ali, together with most of the Royal Family; the former jubilant because his kite was one of those still defying the falling dew. And Lateefa was there also, his pile of vanquished kites growing steadily. He sat on the ground beside it, his slender hands crossed over his knees, his thin, acute face upturned. It had an odd amusement on it, and every time he rose to pull in a fresh victim, his high trilling voice quavered of 'oughts' and 'naughts.'

And on the bathing-steps, also, down on the other side of the terraced track which ran between them and the turret, there was peace. They were, in fact, emptier than usual at that hour; for the 'Circling of the Sacred Lights' must be nigh at hand, since the priests were already coming for the office; among them, Viseshwar NÂth----

The baboo saw him, and salaamed at the unusual sight, when--with his whole-hearted betrayal of everything likely to be a personal disadvantage--he walked out beyond the station to satisfy himself that the signalman obeyed his instructions. For realising--as he sat on his stool, still trembling with fear lest by any mischance the soldiers should not come in time and he be blamed for it--that it was necessary to have 'line clear' for the unexpected train, he had sought out the right man, and told him that a special from the north had just been wired to pass through Nushapore in half an hour on its way south. So he stood watching, waiting to see the red light change to green on the tower-pier, and catch the first echo of that change in the far distance at the other end of the bridge. And as he stood, he beguiled his fat body and mind from a faint remorse, by telling himself that, under the circumstances, he was doing the wisest thing for his own party also--that party of progress which had seized on the ignorant alarm of the herd as a fitting time in which to record their own protest against illegal tyranny. Since, if their plans had been blown upon, they were better postponed.

He heaved a sigh of relief, therefore, when the signal 'Line clear, go ahead' showed close at hand and far off. But at the same moment he heard a step behind him, and turned hastily to see Chris Davenant. Chris, still in his frock-coat and with a flower in his buttonhole; with his wife's diploma of membership in the 'Guild for Encouraging Intercourse between the Rulers and the Ruled,' also, in his pocket. For he had not been home since he left the 'memorable occasion'; neither to the home in Shark Lane, nor the home in the city, nor that betwixt-and-between home in the garden of plantains. In a way they all claimed him, and yet they were all alike insufferable, impossible to the man himself. Looking round his world, there was but one thing which brought no sense of revolt with it; and that was his work. He felt that if he could leave, not one thing, but all things behind him save this, life might still be endurable.

And so, when the foundations of flowers (freshened for the time into a promise of stability by the romance of moonlight) were deserted alike by the Rulers and the Ruled, he had, almost mechanically, wandered off to the scene of that work, and had ever since been strolling up and down among the general litter and order of his new goods station. It soothed him. The sight of the piles of brick that would fall into line after his plan, the whole paraphernalia brought together to give form to his idea--an idea which would take shape bit by bit according to his will as surely as the sun would rise--comforted him. And yet it brought no strength for the moment that was coming, as surely.

Half-past eight! And at nine the Circling would begin. Half an hour left--for it would not take him a minute to reach the temples--they were close enough----

Close! God in heaven! they were too close! Was it possible to escape from them? was there foothold for an honest man between them and the Palace of Lies in which he had lived so long?

Was there? Only half an hour left for decision, and he had not argued out the matter with himself at all. He had only felt.

He must think; and that seemed impossible out here with the moonlight showing each rib of the skeleton roof, each tier of bricks waiting for the next.

And above those black girders--so strong, so tense--were the faint stars. And among them--what?--kites!

He gave a bitter laugh, and told himself that he must get away from fancies into facts. He would go into the little galvanised iron shed, dignified by the name of the office, and there, with pen and paper before him, think the matter out solidly. Yes! with pen and paper. He had always been at his best with them, and the memory of many an examination was with him, idly, as he walked across the line to the station on the other side of it, to borrow a light. But the only ones--in the telegraph and the assistant station-master's offices--were behind closed doors; and so, seeing a figure at the end of the platform, outlined against the distant dimness of bridge and river, he went on towards it.

'I want a lamp, baboo; bring one over to my office, I have to look up some figures,' he said curtly; for the excuse had brought back the memory of something else that he had promised to see to in the works, and JÂn-Ali-shÂn's advice having come back also, made him speak more after the manner of the master than usual.

That--and the frock-coat possibly--produced an instant and almost servile obedience on the part of the baboo, whose mind was still in that state of dissolution which crystallises round the least thread of authority.

So, the lamp being brought, Chris sat down and tried to figure out facts.

Taking it from the point of abstract Right and Wrong, to begin with----

He leant his head on his hand and thought; but five minutes after had to pull himself up from a vague regret that already he had failed--he had held back information--though he had promised Mr. Raymond, who had always been so kind----

What a fool he was! What had these personal details to do with it?

He bent himself to his task again. Right and Wrong! Higher and Lower! Yet when, by chance, he looked at the paper before him on which he had been idly jotting down the heading of his subject, it was not 'Right or Wrong,' 'Higher or Lower,' that he saw. It was 'Naraini'!

He stood up then and faced himself; and her! He could marry her--Viva would not mind--she could not help it, anyhow, she had taken the risk! What if he did? And then--then went back on the priests!--then chose----

For a moment he stood tempted, as he had never been tempted in his life before.

And then the door burst open, and the baboo, stuttering, blubbering in his haste, almost fell at his feet.

'Oh, sir, come! You are nearest in authority. Come and issue order sharp. You are master, sir! Stop them, or this poor devil of baboo is lost. Issue order, sir, and stop them from the bridge!'

'The bridge!' echoed Chris, completely at fault, 'what bridge?'

'Drawbridge, sir,' almost shrieked the baboo, 'and express train coming instanter. Oh! what can do? Oh! this poor devil, this poor innocent devil!'

He was grovelling now, and Chris bade him stand up and speak Urdu, almost as Jack Raymond had bidden Govind. But as he listened to the baboo's words, each one, each phrase did not translate itself into a definite aspect of the one central fact that had to be reckoned with; and so, when the tale ended in fresh blubbers, he was not ready to act--he had to think! The very keenness of his intellectual apprehension--claimed clear perception of all points, and he hesitated as he recapitulated them.

Trouble expected in the city--ah! about the amulets, no doubt--why had he not spoken? Troops sent for to Fareedabad, and coming sooner than the authorities expected. How could that be? Coming in a few moments, and the fact of their having been sent for leaking out through the second telegram, the Commissioner's telegram! Why had there been two telegrams?

'Ob, Lord God!' moaned the baboo, reverting to English at this question, 'because this poor devil of a baboo one fool! Yet doing duty, sir--getting line clear, go ahead, all serene till Kuzai fellows come bribing signalman for midnight train, so discovering special, beat this poor body to bruises--Oh, sir! issue orders! issue orders!'

Chris, in a whirl, stood aghast. Issue orders? What orders?

'Yes, sir! Ah! come and see, sir, and issue orders!' moaned the baboo again.

Come and see? Well! he could at least do that! He dashed out at the door, and, followed breathlessly by the baboo, cut across the line. As he did so a figure, crouching by the telegraph-office, ran towards the bridge end of the station. In the moonlight he saw the man's face, and recognised him as one of his butcher's gang.

He pulled up short, the consciousness that this was something in which he could be no mere onlooker, but one in which his part must be played as that man's superior officer, coming to him. And as he paused, looking down the narrowing ribbon of steel, he gave a quick gasp of comprehension. All lay silent, peaceful, but against the dark shadow of the pier-tower a darker shadow was rising, and below it that narrowing ribbon of steel ended sharp, square, as if cut off with a knife.

The drawbridge was being raised!

Yet above it the green light of safety, the signal 'Line clear, go ahead' shone bright, and was echoed from the faint moonshine and the deepening dark over the river.

And troops, in a special train, were almost due. At the very moment, indeed, a sudden ringing of an electric bell from the telegraph-office could be heard distinctly in the silence. The sound seemed to finish the baboo; he squatted down on the rails, murmuring, 'Oh, flag-station now! Oh, coming instanter! Oh, please, master, issue orders!'

No! not orders; something beyond orders surely! Who was it--was it he himself in a different life?--who had been through this before, with some one who had said, 'But we don't let 'em. No, sir! Two men, if they was men, 'ud keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time.'

But he was only one, for that thing at his feet was not a man! The old north-country contempt for the down-country swept through Chris as fiercely as contempt for the east sometimes sweeps through the west; as, no doubt, it sweeps through the east for the west!

'How many were there?' he asked swiftly. 'Of the gang, I mean.'

'Too many,' moaned the baboo; 'oh, sir, too many for one poor man. Therefore vis et armis forced into telling truth on compulsion because, they knowing already of train and troops, little knowledge became dangerous thing causing grievous hurt.'

'How many?' reiterated Chris fiercely; 'don't "men in buckram"!' He could not help the quotation, even then.

Five or six! And the man who had run forward was one, left as a scout, of course. And that must be another in the shadow of the city wall, close to the gap. Say three or four, then, on the bridge-pier; and behind him? He turned citywards, then realised that if--if the pier was to be held as a Christian country, it would not matter how many men were on this side of the drawbridge, provided those three or four on the pier could be reckoned with.

If! The next moment, still uncertain what he should do to gain his object, yet intellectually certain of that, he had run along the platform, swung himself over the low parapet of the retaining-wall, and dropped on to the bathing-steps, the top of which was here not six feet below the level of the line. And below him again the temple of Mai KÂli rose out of the levels of the river; rose from the sunken ridge of rock, on which, farther out in the deeper stream, the drawbridge tower was built; the ridge along which he must pass, since he was no swimmer, if he was to gain that iron ladder.

There were lights in the temple; twinkling lights. In his headlong rush downwards he could see the many-armed, blood-red idol between the figures of those circling round it with the sacred lamps. And that compelling clang of the temple bell was in his ears. Yet he did not pause. He was on the threshold, when it was barred by Viseshwar NÂth.

'Not yet, Krishn! Not yet! The penance first, the vow first!'

'It is not that,' gasped Chris, forgetful of the possibility, nay, the probability, that what to him was dire misfortune might be to this man a very different thing. 'It is treachery, murder! a train is due; they have raised the drawbridge. Look! and let me pass.'

The drawbridge! Half a dozen worshippers grouped about the plinth heard the words and looked bridgewards; so did the SwÂmi, and seized his advantage.

'Take thy shoes from off thy feet, Krishn Davenund,' he called in a louder voice, 'and vow the vow first!'

The circling priests within paused at the sound, and crowded to the temple door; the scattered worshippers, curious at the strange sight, closed in round the figure in the frock-coat, the figure in the saffron-shirt.

Yet there was something stranger to come. For from within, pushed to the front at a sign from the SwÂmi, came two more figures: a widow, her face hidden in her white shroud, a slender slip of a girl with hers hidden in her bridal scarlet.

Chris fell back from the sight with a cry.

'Choose quick, Krishn!'

Choose! How could he choose, when behind those shrinking figures which meant so much to him, he could see that which, in a way, meant more. For, hidden in the arched shadows of the temple, wafted to him in the perfume of incense and fading flowers--yes! symbolised even in the red-armed idol--was the great Mystery of Right and Wrong, Higher and Lower, which had haunted him all his life. It was years since he had stood so close to these eastern expressions of a world-wide thought, and the old awe came back to him at the sight.

Choose! How could he choose between old and new--even between Viva and Naraini; were they not the same? were they not both----

'Now then, guv'nor! wot 'ave you lost this time?' came a cheerful voice, and with it the sound of shod feet running down the steps. 'You jes' put a name to wot you want done, an' I'm blamed if the best A1 copper-bottomed as ever was 'all-marked----'

JÂn-Ali-shÂn paused, for Chris, with another cry--a cry that had a ring of appeal in it like a lost child's--had caught at the newcomer's hand desperately, while he pointed with his other to the gap.

'The bridge!' he cried in frantic haste. 'Look! the gang, the Kuzais have got at it; there is a train signalled; a train----'

He was going on, but that was enough for JÂn-Ali-shÂn. More than enough! He had wrenched his hand away, turned to look for some weapon, and found one. Found it in the soda-water bottle closely netted round with twine, prolonged into a cord handle, which pilgrims carry so often, and which hung on the wrist of one close by him.

The next instant it was whirling--a veritable death-dealer--round his head, as he dashed forward among the little knot of people outside the temple, and the whole strength of his splendid voice rose echoing over the steps in a triumphant chant--

'I was not born as thousands are.'

There was a free path so far--

'Where God was never known.'

He paused here in the narrow entry to say, 'Stand back, my darlin's, we ain't got no quarrel with you'; and then, facing the priests inside, to call back--

'Now for it, sir!--use your fists on the Ram-rammers if they tries to stop yer!'

'And taught to pray a useless prayer.'

The words were broken a bit by blows, an oath or two, yells and desperate scuffling, until--breathless but continuous--the chant rose again among the shadows and the incense--

'To blocks of wood and stone!'

Here JÂn-Ali-shÂn, clear of all his adversaries save the SwÂmi, who stood with upraised hands barring the way before the image of Mai KÂli, pushed the former aside and aimed a passing swing at the latter.

The crash of a fall mingled with his gay 'Yoicks forre'd! gone away! gone away!' and the next moment, closely followed by Chris, he was through the temple and waistdeep in the water beyond.

'Mum's the word now, sir!' he whispered, when--after having given Chris a heft up to the lowermost rung of the iron ladder, which hung on the pier--he swung himself up by sheer strength, and then paused for breath. 'How many on them are there, I wonder?'

'Not more than four or five,' whispered Chris, as he climbed. The man behind him made no answer, but Chris could hear him mutter the old complaint--'It don't give a fellow a chanst--it don't, really.'

So, stealthily, they were on the bridge in the rear of the tower.

'Like a thief in the night, sir,' whispered JÂn-Ali-shÂn approvingly. 'Of that day an' hour, as it say in 'Oly Writ--that's the ticket. An' you lay a holt on somethin' 'andy, sir; even a broken brick's better nor trustin' to Providence--there's a biggish bit on the track, sir. An'--an' don't waste time killin'; it's the bridge we want, not the butchers. Now for it!'

Were there four or five of them, or fifty, in the almost pitch darkness of the little inner room? Chris never knew. It was a confused struggle, short, sharp, silent; till, suddenly, John Ellison's voice called--

'That'll do, sir! I've bagged three on 'em, and can't find no more. Now to business!'

He was out as he spoke in the dim light to lay his ear to the rails. And as he listened, he smiled to see a couple of figures scudding for bare life along the single rails as only coolies can do, in hope of shelter from the coming train in the safety, half-way across the bridge.

''Ave to be nippy, my sons,' he remarked affably as he rose, more leisurely, and, from habit, dusted the knees of his trousers as he turned to look stationwards.

But what he saw there made him stop the dusting and swear under his breath.

A little crowd had gathered on the farther side of the gap; a hostile crowd armed with sticks and stones. And with more!

For a bullet whizzed past between him and Chris, who had followed him out, and the sharp report of a rifle roused the echoes of the city wall; and roused, also, a sudden sense of strain, of anxiety, in thousands within the wall; thousands till then ignorant that disturbance was in the air, or at least that it could come so soon!

Even on the turret, amid the schemers and plotters ready--perhaps inevitably--to fall in with any quarrel, this was so; for something else had been in the air, absorbing the attention. Some of those there had remarked, it is true, on the raising of the drawbridge, but others had been ready to tell of the day, not long ago, when it had been so raised and lowered many times without cause, and without result.

So the attention of all had reverted to the two kites which now remained overhead among the faint stars. They were JehÂn's and--since little Sa'adut had resigned his claim--that of the next Heir to All Things or Nothingness; a coincidence which, by its hint of fatefulness, had kept interest keener than usual. Even Lateefa, beside his balloonlike bundle of the vanquished, was beginning to wonder if Aunt KhÔjee had been true prophet, and JehÂn's Creator meant to give him back his honour?

But at that rifle-shot, all else was forgotten and all crowded to the parapet.

'Back, sir! back!' shouted JÂn-Ali-shÂn, roused beyond silence, as he grasped a fresh danger; and the crowd, recognising the new turn of affairs, broke silence also in a deep-toned murmur, on which a shriller sound rose sharply--the distant whistle of an engine. And Chris, as he dashed back to shelter, felt a faint quiver in the linked ribbon of steel beneath his feet.

'She's on the bridge, sir!' said JÂn-Ali-shÂn--there was breathless hurry in his voice, but absolute certainty, as he felt hurriedly in his pocket for a match--'but we must wait a bit: if we looses off till the last minute, them Kusseyes'll swarm over. Oh! jes' wait till I gets a holt of them--sneakin' cold chisels won't be in this job!' He had the match lit, his watch out. ''Arf a minute gone, say, an' it takes a cool four minute on the bridge slowin' her off, an' she'--he laid his hand on the lever crank of the hydraulic lift--'kin do it in fifty seconds; two and a 'arf left, say, for it won't do to miss the train this journey--but you look 'ere, sir--you give the time-creep round to the back and keep your h'eye on the distance-signal-when she falls sing out, and I'll'--he clasped the crank tighter-'do Sandow! And,' he added to himself as Chris disappeared, 'you can talk your ikbally rot all you know, to-night, you can, you fools! for it won't come up to sample--no! it won't.'

Then, as if the reminiscence had brought another with it, he began softly on the song which he had sung that day on the bridge. The song of surplice-choir days. He had learned it with an organ accompaniment; and a sound was to be heard now, growing louder and louder, that like a deep organ note seemed to set the whole world a-quivering, even the very ground beneath his feet--a rumble and a roar, with a rhythmic pulse in it.

'They are trying to get a rope over,' shouted Chris. 'In two places--from the bastion as well.'

JÂn-Ali-shÂn's hand left the crank for a second. He was out at the door looking, not citywards, but bridgewards. And then he laughed, laughed in the very face of a monstrous form with red eyes and a flaming mane coming steadily at him.

'They'll 'ave to be nippier than they is general,' he called back, his hand once more waiting for its task, as he continued his song--

The dainty little runs, mellow, perfect, paused when the wire connecting the distance-signal with the station thrilled like a fiddle-string as the signal fell, and Chris Davenant's 'Now!' followed sharply, but they went on again in the darkness, backed by that growing rumble and roar.

'Is it working? I can't hear the water! My God! if it isn't--what is to be done?'

The brown hand that had found a place on the crank also trembled against the white one.

'Do? We done our best, sir; an' she's a lydy, so the odds is fair--

"aa--a--a--aa--a--
Trees whe--re you--sit, shall crowd into--o--a--shade.'"

Done our best! The words, blending with the tender triumph of those final bars, were in Chris Davenant's ears but a few seconds, yet they brought a strange dreamy content with them, till JÂn-Ali-shÂn, almost before the last note he had learned in his white-robed days ended, burst into a regular yell of relief, as the resistance on the crank lessened, ceased.

'She's down, or nigh it! Now for the fun, and the fightin', sir! Now to see them blamed Kusseyes!----'

Clear of the clamour of confined sound in the little room, his voice rose in a laugh, as, to gain a standpoint on the wider ledge beyond the archway, he dashed, followed by Chris, right in front of the thundering engine, which was already so close, that the glare of its red eyes shone full on their reckless figures, as the scream of the danger-whistle rang out shrill and sharp.

Not in warning to them only. Not even to the crowd in front; that had parted, as it were, mechanically, leaving the steel-edged ribbon of rail in its midst, clear to the station. It was for the long links of carriages behind, out of which heads were already craning to catch the first glimpse of the fun and the fighting to which they had been summoned so hastily.

For there was danger ahead to every one behind. The girders of the drawbridge were still slightly aslant; they had barely closed into the sockets, and beside these a group of half-naked figures were busy.

Over what? JÂn-Ali-shÂn guessed in a second that they were trying to prevent a further closing, they were trying to derail the train, and he was off like an arrow across the narrow bridge, hidden by the clouds of steam that rose in an instant from the curbed monster, as the brakes, the valves, were jammed home hard in the effort to stop it.

Chris could not understand the cry that came back through the steam--'Drop it, you devils! them's my cold chisels'; but, as ever, he followed on the other's heels, half-scalded, half-deafened; followed blindly until in the clearer air beyond--as yet!--that snorting, sliding, resistless fate behind him, he saw that the group about the sockets had scattered at the mere sight of that reckless onslaught.

All but one figure--the figure of the biggest bully of the butchers' gang, JÂn-Ali-shÂn's sworn foe--that, with a yell of absolute hate, had run out as recklessly to bar the way.

JÂn-Ali-shÂn gave a shout as he closed with it, for the man was a noted wrestler--'None o' yer buttin's an' booin's; fight seeda, or it ain't----'

There was no time for more words, since this was no place for a wrestling match--this narrow platform with the river below it, and scarcely room upon it for a man with steady nerves to stand slim and let a fierce shadow with a screaming voice pass in a roar and a rattle.

And such a fierce shadow half hidden in the steam fog was sliding on, battling against the curb, thundering, shaking the track with brakes down! So close! Dear God! so close!

Chris gave a desperate cry of fear and courage--but was beside those two.

And so was the red glare of the angry eyes seen through the steam clouds; so was the scream of the whistle heard above the roar and the rattle.

'Now then, sir, heave!

"Yo-ho--yo-ho, ho! yo-ho, ho!"'

The engine-driver, craning from his cab, heard so much beyond that fog of steam. The officers in the first carriage heard a brief--

'Keep your head, sir, and git a holt of me.'

Only those voices; no more. Then everything was lost in an awful grating sound--a sound of iron grinding iron to powder--a jerk, a wrench, a dislocation; a shock that shook the very air and made the very water in the river ebb and flow as the piers, the retaining-wall, quivered to their foundations.

But the next instant the rocking engine recovered its smooth slide, and the carriages were sliding after it over the girders it had jammed home--sliding on to the station, to safety, to the fun and the fighting!

And yet a yell of horror rose from the watching crowd. Not because the onward sliding which left the bridge free of steam clouds left it free also of all trace of those wrestling figures. That was only to be expected, since, if they had not fallen victims to the steam-devil, the water must have claimed them.

It was because the river was claiming something else, and the bastion, cracked so long, had yielded to its importunity at last--yielded perhaps to the shock, perhaps to that reckless rush of spectators to one side, perhaps to fate! And with a silence, awful in comparison with the clamour around it, it was sliding outwards, downwards. Sliding so slowly that it was well on its way ere an answering yell of terror rose from the figures upon it. Sliding so softly--brick holding fast to brick--that the final rending was almost unheard in the sound of hissing water closing in on water.

So, for an instant, nothing remained except two kites whirling distractedly at the swift downpull on their strings, until, giving up the battle, giving in to fate, they yielded the Sovereignty of Air and sank slowly into the river.

By this time, however, some of the claimants to that sovereignty had come to the surface again, shrieking for help, and reaching round for anything to support them.

Lateefa, luckily for him, found that bundle of the vanquished close to his hand, and managed with its help to get a grip upon a jag of wall. Luckily, for something had struck him on the back as he went down.

But there was no sign of JehÂn or Burkut Ali; no sign even of those other two whom the river had claimed.

And none came to seek for one; for none knew rightly what had happened or who the bridge-savers had been, save the bridge-wreckers, and they had fled. Most of the crowd, therefore, drifted back to the station or the city. The station that was full of the rattle of rifles being shouldered, of the tramp of feet falling into line.

'How on earth you got here so soon, I can't think,' said a police-officer who had ridden up in hot haste at the news of some disturbance on the bathing-steps. 'The up-mail? By Jove! what luck! It will settle the whole "biz," I expect.'

And in the city voices were saying much the same thing.

If the troops were there, ready for the first sign, what was the use of making it? Let the rabble rise if they chose. Let fools commit themselves. Wise men would wait a better opportunity.