good way in warm climate, good way in India; here, in this dam cold place, who can tell? I tell you pretty good hurry: you help, you light a fire, help rub.""What is the creature talking of?" cried Sir William. "My head goes round.""I tell you I bury him alive," said Secundra. "I teach him swallow his tongue. Now dig him up pretty good hurry, and he not much worse. You light a fire."Sir William turned to the nearest of his men. "Light a fire," said he. "My lot seems to be cast with the insane.""You good man," returned Secundra. "Now I go dig the sahib up."He returned as he spoke to the grave, and resumed his former toil.
My lord stood rooted, and I at my lord's side, fearing I knew not what.
The frost was not yet very deep, and presently the Indian threw aside his tool, and began to scoop the dirt by handfuls. Then he disengaged a corner of a buffalo robe; and then I saw hair catch among his fingers: yet, a moment more, and the moon shone on something white. Awhile Secundra crouched upon his knees, scraping with delicate fingers, breathing with puffed lips; and when he moved aside, I beheld the face of the Master wholly disengaged. It was deadly white, the eyes closed, the ears and nostrils plugged, the cheeks fallen, the nose sharp as if in death; but for all he had lain so many days under the sod, corruption had not approached him, and (what strangely affected all of us) his lips and chin were mantled with a swarthy beard.
"My God!" cried Mountain, "he was as smooth as a baby when we laid him there!""They say hair grows upon the dead," observed Sir William; but his voice was thick and weak.
Secundra paid no heed to our remarks, digging swift as a terrier in the loose earth. Every moment the form of the Master, swathed in his buffalo robe, grew more distinct in the bottom of that shallow trough; the moon shining strong, and the shadows of the standers-by, as they drew forward and back, falling and flitting over his emergent countenance. The sight held us with a horror not before experienced. I dared not look my lord in the face; but for as long as it lasted, I never observed him to draw breath; and a little in the background one of the men (I know not whom) burst into a kind of sobbing.
"Now," said Secundra, "you help me lift him out."Of the flight of time, I have no idea; it may have been three hours, and it may have been five, that the Indian laboured to reanimate his master's body. One thing only I know, that it was still night, and the moon was not yet set, although it had sunk low, and now barred the plateau with long shadows, when Secundra uttered a small cry of satisfaction; and, leaning swiftly forth, Ithought I could myself perceive a change upon that icy countenance of the unburied. The next moment I beheld his eyelids flutter; the next they rose entirely, and the week-old corpse looked me for a moment in the face.
So much display of life I can myself swear to. I have heard from others that he visibly strove to speak, that his teeth showed in his beard, and that his brow was contorted as with an agony of pain and effort. And this may have been; I know not, I was otherwise engaged. For at that first disclosure of the dead man's eyes, my Lord Durrisdeer fell to the ground, and when I raised him up, he was a corpse.
Day came, and still Secundra could not be persuaded to desist from his unavailing efforts. Sir William, leaving a small party under my command, proceeded on his embassy with the first light; and still the Indian rubbed the limbs and breathed in the mouth of the dead body. You would think such labours might have vitalised a stone; but, except for that one moment (which was my lord's death), the black spirit of the Master held aloof from its discarded clay;and by about the hour of noon, even the faithful servant was at length convinced. He took it with unshaken quietude.
"Too cold," said he, "good way in India, no good here." And, asking for some food, which he ravenously devoured as soon as it was set before him, he drew near to the fire and took his place at my elbow. In the same spot, as soon as he had eaten, he stretched himself out, and fell into a childlike slumber, from which I must arouse him, some hours afterwards, to take his part as one of the mourners at the double funeral. It was the same throughout; he seemed to have outlived at once and with the same effort, his grief for his master and his terror of myself and Mountain.
One of the men left with me was skilled in stone-cutting; and before Sir William returned to pick us up, I had chiselled on a boulder this inscription, with a copy of which I may fitly bring my narrative to a close:
J. D., HEIR TO A SCOTTISH TITLE, A MASTER OF THE ARTS AND GRACES, ADMIRED IN EUROPE, ASIA, AMERICA, IN WAR AND PEACE, IN THE TENTS OF SAVAGE HUNTERS AND THECITADELS OF KINGS, AFTER SO MUCH ACQUIRED, ACCOMPLISHED, AND
ENDURED, LIES HERE FORGOTTEN.
H. D., HIS BROTHER, AFTER A LIFE OF UNMERITED DISTRESS, BRAVELY SUPPORTED, DIED ALMOST IN THE SAME HOUR, AND SLEEPS IN THE SAME GRAVEWITH HIS FRATERNAL ENEMY.
THE PIETY OF HIS WIFE AND ONE OLD SERVANT RAISED THIS STONE
TO BOTH.
Footnotes:
(1) A kind of firework made with damp powder.
(2) "NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. Should not this be Alan BRECK Stewart, afterwards notorious as the Appin murderer? The Chevalier is sometimes very weak on names.
(3) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. This Teach of the SARAH must not be confused with the celebrated Blackbeard. The dates and facts by no means tally. It is possible the second Teach may have at once borrowed the name and imitated the more excessive part of his manners from the first. Even the Master of Ballantrae could make admirers.
(4) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. And is not this the whole explanation?
since this Dutton, exactly like the officers, enjoyed the stimulus of some responsibility.
(5) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR: A complete blunder: there was at this date no word of the marriage: see above in my own narration.
(6) Note by Mr. Mackellar. - Plainly Secundra Dass. - E. McK.
(7) Ordered.
(8) Land steward.
(9) Fooling.
(10) Tear-marked.
(11) Unwilling.
(12) Ring.
