• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2978 0

he loved her more than life and because she was so much a part of him that without her life would have no meaning – he could have shot her without a tremor, and never felt that her blood was upon his head; but to put a bullet through Shushila's head was a very different matter, because pity, however strong, did not provide the terrible incentive that love had done. And then, too, his own life would not be involved. The next bullet would not be for himself, and that alone would make him feel like a murderer – or at best, an executioner, which was absurd when he knew that Juli would have faced the flames with far less terror and endured the pain with more fortitude than poor Shu-shu would ever do, and yet he had resolved to save her from that agony… and was now sickened by the thought of doing the same for Shu-shu.

Sarji broke in on the confusion of his thoughts by remarking in a matter-of-fact voice that the range would be greater from up here than it had been from the edge of the terrace below, and that as Ash would be aiming downwards, and from at least twelve to fifteen feet higher, it was not going to be easy. He might have been discussing a difficult shot from a machan on one of their hunting trips in the Gir Forest, and strangely enough it seemed to take some of the horror out of this supremely horrible situation. For he was talking sense.

If the thing must be done, it must be done well; and at the last possible moment, so that it might be thought that Shushila, having taken her place on the pyre, had fainted. To bungle it would be a disaster, not only for Shushila, but for them all; because though there was every chance that the crack of a single shot would be lost in the noise of the crowd, a second or third could not fail to attract attention, or to pin-point the spot from where it had been fired.

‘Do you think you can do it?’ asked Sarji, coming to stand beside him.

‘I must. I can't afford not to. Have you a knife?’

‘You mean for the chik. No, but I can cut you a gap in it with this thing –’ Sarji set to work with the short spear that all members of the Rana's body-gguard carried, and sliced a small oblong out of the split cane. ‘There. That should serve. I do not think the cane would deflect a shot, but it might; and there is no need to take chances.’

He watched Ash take out the service revolver and sight along the barrel, and said in an undertone: ‘It is all of forty paces. I have never handled one of those things. Will it reach as far?’

‘Yes. But I don't know how accurately. It was never intended for such distances, and I -’ He swung round abruptly: ‘It's no good, Sarji. I daren't risk it from here. I shall have to get closer. Listen, if I go down there again, will you and the others – Yes, that's it. Why didn't we think of it before? We will all leave now, at once, and when we reach the terrace you three can go on ahead with the Rani-Sahiba, and I will get back to my place near the parapet and -’

Sarji cut brusquely across the sentence: ‘You could not get there. The crowds are too thick. It was all I could do to get to you before; and even wearing this livery they would never make room for you now. Besides, it is too late. Listen – they come.’

The conches sounded again. But now the mournful and discordant bray was deafeningly loud, while the roar that followed it came from the crowd lining the last short stretch of pathway that lay within the grove itself. In another minute or so the funeral cortège would be here, and there was no longer time to make for the terrace and try to force a way to the front of the close-packed and half-hysterical multitude that thronged it. It was too late for that.

The crowds on the ground below were swaying backwards and forwards as a flood-tide surges between the supports of a pier, pushing, jostling, craning to see over the heads of those in front, or striving to dodge the indiscriminate blows of men who laid about them with lathis in order to keep a way clear for the slow-moving procession. And now the advance guard were emerging from the tree shadows into the golden