CHAPTER XIII

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*TO GAYA!*

Tristram led Arabella out of her stable and spoke gently to her. He showed no sign of haste or trouble. He did not believe Barclay. He was convinced that there was no intention to allow him to leave Heerut living. Even Barclay could not betray his followers so openly. Yet he had no right to refuse the chance, and in the end it could make but little difference.

He mounted and walked Arabella down the centre of the flooded street. Across the western exit of the village, where the land lay highest, the two thousand had herded together like a pack of hunted wolves awaiting the signal from their leader. Ayeshi sat his horse a little in advance, with Barclay and the shadowy mendicant to his right. Tristram rode towards them unmoved. He held himself with his usual casual ease, a little loosely, with one fist stemmed against his thigh. There was no conscious bravado in the attitude. An instinct inherited from generations of men who had confronted the same enemy at the same odds taught him an unchallenging serenity. As he drew nearer, he looked full into Ayeshi's face and read in the sombre eyes the confirmation of his death. He might have spoken, made some appeal to the old memories that bound them, but something--perhaps the consciousness that for that moment he represented more than himself--held him sternly silent. Barclay smiled, but his eyes too, were overshadowed with a knowledge in which there was neither happiness nor triumph. Thus the three men met in a last encounter. For an instant they seemed to be alone--to be standing on a lofty plateau above the watching crowd, confronting each other with a tragic perception of something common to them all, and of a destroying, merciless destiny.

Then Vahana laughed, shrilly, exultantly, and it was over.

Tristram rode past Ayeshi. He reached the border of the crowd. Arabella hesitated and he touched her gently with his heels. She understood, and, understanding, became insolently irresistible. The first man whom she nosed aside hesitated, his hand on his knife. Tristram did not look at him. His eyes passed carelessly over the sea of upturned faces. He did not draw himself up. So he might have ridden among them on a feast day, or as they returned from their work on the plain. His expression was neither defiant, nor contemptuous. To the last even as he awaited death at their hands, he remained one of them, not judge or master or victim, but man among men. One step more. The sea closed in behind him. Would it come now? He knew that it would be in his back. Sooner or later the hypnotic spell which his presence threw over them would snap. Some hand, bolder, more resolved than the rest, would lift itself, and then the waves would close over him for ever. Yet as he rode on, winning each step, the tension of waiting relaxed. He forgot himself. Something rose up to him in that heated, foetid atmosphere of a passion-ridden humanity. It enveloped him with a deeper knowledge of their dim strivings, of their dimmer hopes, and great fears. He saw in their revolt only a thwarted desire, a piteous clinging to the only faith they knew, in their hating cruelty only the curse under which all men, struggling blindly towards their vision of the future, flood their path with the blood of their brothers.

He did not pity them. The burden of their life was his. He forgot himself as the individual. He was part of the universe, part of all life. The instinct in him was to hold, out his hands to them in recognition--in acceptance of their common destiny.

He did not know that his face had changed as he rode slowly forward, nor that the faith which burnt up in him shone in his eyes. He only knew that suddenly it was over. The last wondering, questioning face flashed past him. He was out in the open--free.

Arabella broke into a canter. He pulled her back to a walk. The time had not yet come. They would recover now. Some of them had rifles. They would use them. There must be no sign of flight, of fear.

Ten yards--twenty--fifty--still nothing. Another pace or two, and he stood on a hillock, his body, as he knew, sharply outlined against the light. He drew in deliberately. Still nothing. He went on. He was hidden now. He called to Arabella, and then they were galloping towards Gaya.

Three hours and fifteen miles of bad road--perhaps partly flooded. So far there was only mud, into which Arabella sank up to the fetlocks, but down on the plain itself there would be morass--in places water. His mind foresaw each mile, each obstacle. If it could be done, Arabella would do it. No thoroughbred had her pluck and stamina. But it would be a close finish. Night was coming on. It would be dark within an hour. He would have to rely on his instinct to guide him. The lights of Gaya would not carry half a mile through the rain which fell in a finely woven curtain from the loaded sky.

He had ceased to question Barclay's action or Ayeshi's curious acquiescence. Possibly they had not meant him to escape--possibly they had relied on his coming too late or on the futility of his warning. It was useless to speculate. He could only act--do the best he could.

He breasted the last hillock which separated him from the plain. The roar of the river sounded ominous even then--like the roll of continuous, unmodulated thunder. Then on her own initiative, Arabella slithered to a standstill, her ears pricked, her lean body quivering with apprehension. Tristram brushed the rain from his eyes. For an instant he was only incredulous--distrustful of his own senses. Twenty-four hours ago--a wide flat stretch of saturated fertile soil--the bold, sweeping line of the Ganges--and now this--this level, rising, onward-flowing surface, broken near the centre by a broad ribbon of sinister, rippling movement--no landmark left, no grass, no trace of land--one stupendous, terrible monotony of water.

Then he knew what Barclay had known. The floods had come. The catastrophe of which old villagers had spoken with bated breath had broken over them. He could hear the water lapping against the base of the rising ground. With every minute it grew louder, nearer. In a few hours it might well be that the whole plain might be covered--Heerut--the temple itself.

He spoke to Arabella. He felt that figuratively she shrugged her shoulders. They had done many mad things together in their day, and this was the maddest and the last; but, if he wished it, she had no objection. She went slithering and stumbling down into the water. It rose to her knees, to his feet and there for the time stopped. They waded steadily towards the bridge-head. If it grew no deeper than this the passage might still be possible. He leant forward eagerly in the saddle, waiting for his goal to outline itself against the eternal greyness. There was no sound but the sish of the water as it broke from Arabella's shoulders and her own heavy breathing. He had ceased to hear the boom which had first warned him. He was in the midst of it and it became a kind of silence. It was a part of his consciousness--it had been there always.

Striking diagonally across the plain, he left the black mass of the temple on his right. He could not feel any current, and yet he was aware that they were being drawn insidiously towards the centre. The knowledge did not trouble him. So long as he could keep Arabella's head up the river, he could afford to give ground. He did not contemplate the possibility of being sucked into the torrent itself. As yet Arabella's foothold was sure and her progress steady.

No suspicion of the truth had reached him.

But still he could not see the bridge. Once past the temple it was the first important landmark, and he began to wonder, in spite of Arabella's sturdy efforts, whether they were really moving forward. The horror of the passing time coiled itself round him, stifling him. He knew fear--already the drab daylight was failing rapidly. Yet there was no bridge.

He was drifting nearer to the river's banks. He could mark them definitely by the break in the placid surface--the sudden rush, the eddies and deep pits of the whirlpools. He could judge the pace of the torrent by the passing of odd, as yet unrecognizable fragments. They sped on their way, now disappearing for many minutes, now carried from side to side in cross currents, but always in headlong movement. Some of the fragments were like small islands--they stood upright out of the water like pillars of a ruined church, black and straight.

Still there was no bridge.

"Mother Ganges demands toll of those who curb her."

Suddenly he understood. He understood Barclay's smile and Ayeshi's acquiescence. He recognized those pillars. They were motionless. They held their place in the torrent like the defiant remnant of an annihilated army, like tragic monuments to man's futility.

The bridge had gone.

For a moment he drew Arabella to a standstill. He had lost all sense of anxiety, all thought of failure. Methodically but rapidly, he threw overboard every unnecessary weight: his water-logged riding boots, various small items in his pockets, a heavy belt with a metal clasp, his coat. With an effort he managed to cut the girths and finally to remove the saddle itself, flinging it to the rest. Then he turned Arabella's head towards the river.

They were moving quickly now--perilously quickly. In what seemed no more than a minute they had reached the limit. The water rose above his knees, he could feel it circling round him--a living monster, awaiting its moment. He bent forward and patted Arabella's neck and whispered to her, and kissed her warm sleekness. She whinnied challengingly, tossing her head. Then plunged.

The torrent passed over them. He went down under a crushing opaque mass of delirious water. It seemed many minutes--perhaps it was only a second or two--then they rose again. Arabella's head was turned downstream. She made no effort. She was panic-stricken--helpless. He called to her. He himself was stunned and could barely keep his seat. Invisible forces had hold of him, dragging at him. At last he had her head round, and she struck out with the energy of terror. They were moving now. He could judge their progress by the two pillars mere specks on the rushing greyness. A fierce exultation possessed him--the glory of struggle--they were moving. Arabella had found her stride. Though they drifted, too, they were not wholly at the mercy of the current. Foot by foot, they were winning their way across. It did not matter that they were being swept farther down the river. Once on dry land they could make up for lost time. Then Arabella would not fail.

But now he was afraid for her. He could feel in his own nerves and sinews the cost of her heroic effort--the rising agony of her exhaustion. He believed that already she was finished. He felt her go down under him. Then, in answer to a supreme demand of her spirit, she rose again--the blood streaming from her nostrils. He called to her, and she turned her head a little. He could see her eyes, their whites veined with red, and he remembered Wickie. It was the same look, the same unfaltering confidence, the same patient acceptance of suffering. For herself alone she would not have struggled farther; but for him, for his life she accepted the crushing, heart-breaking burden of living.

Strange things raced past them--fragments horrible in their significance--an unhinged door, a table, a wooden image swept from some village shrine, its battered face staring from out of the foaming water in grotesque serenity; dead things--the carcase of a bullock, a woman's rigid hand tossed up in horrible semblance of appeal, a baby's body; living things--the hideous snout of a mugger battling against the stream, its jaws snapping greedily at the passing provender, a cheetah, caught perhaps in the midst of some marauding expedition, which struggled to Tristram's side and kept close to him. He called to it and it turned its eyes to him in frantic supplication and terror. In that dread moment they were comrades, fighting shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy.

They reached midstream. In a minute they would be out of the worst--out of danger. He turned his head; he wanted to measure by the pillars how far they had still to go. He saw the end coming. It was grotesque--absurd--a native hovel that had been caught up bodily. It bore down upon him, staggering drunkenly on the full breast of the current. It seemed to blot out the sky--a monstrous, towering Juggernaut.

A figure clung to the thatched roof. It was gesticulating wildly--in fear or warning, he could not tell. But there was no escape. The rocking structure was travelling with the speed of an express,--Arabella had almost ceased to move. Tristram slipped quietly from her back, only holding to her bridle, and she rose buoyantly. In that final moment, a deep-rooted instinct in him had prevailed. She was to have her chance. He struck out--turning his head for a last time towards the onrushing catastrophe. It was not more than twenty yards away. He could see the man's dark face--staring down into the water--aghast, silly-looking. His grotesque vessel seemed suddenly to stop, to draw back, quivering like a frightened, death-stricken animal--then plunged headlong--flashed like a pebble over the edge of a precipice.

Tristram closed his eyes. He tasted death. He knew the horror of suffocation--the pitiless night which swirled over him, choking him, stupefying him.

Twenty yards lower down the hut reappeared. Its roof was battered in. The clinging, piteous figure had vanished.

Tristram twisted Arabella's bridle about his arm. It was his last deliberate act. He was dimly conscious of movement, of being sucked against warm, heaving flanks, of a hand that closed down blackly on his will to live. He knew that he was letting go his hold--he was beaten. He felt himself go down--then one last thrill of consciousness. His feet jarred against something--he was being dragged--dragged over a soft spongy substance.

He tried to right himself--but instead stumbled--pitched headlong into oblivion.

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