The Flag of the Adventurer

CHAPTER I. MAJOR AND MRS AMBROSE.“At last!” murmured Eveleen Ambrose with heartfelt relief, gaining the unsteady deck by dint of a frantic clutch at her husband’s arm, and cannoning helplessly against an unfortunate man who happened to be standing near the head of the ladder. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” as he staggered wildly and recovered himself, with a look of mortal offence on his face; “I am so sorry—I——” “Steady!” said her husband sharply, retrieving her from an unintentional rush across the deck, and setting her up in a corner. “What’s the matter with you—eh?” “The matter?” Eveleen’s Irish mind was so unhappily constituted that it saw humour where none was visible to others. She began to laugh weakly. “The matter? Oh, nothing at all, of course!” “Hysterics now, I suppose.” Richard Ambrose’s voice was rough. “I am never hysterical!” indignantly. “But after four days and nights of being tossed about like a cork in that cabin down there, till I know the feel of every inch of the floor and ceiling of it—and hard enough they are, I can tell you!—mayn’t I have your gracious leave to be just a little weeshy bit shaky?” “Exaggeration is not wit,” he growled. “You have my free leave to feel as you like, provided it don’t make you go about knocking people down.” Tears—never very far from laughter in Irish eyes—rose rebelliously, and Eveleen turned quickly to gaze at the shore whose first appearance she had hailed with so much joy. There was nothing particularly attractive about the long line of mud-coloured coast backed by low mud-coloured hills, beyond a wide—still horribly wide—waste of tumbling waters; but it was land, blessed solid land! The man against whom she had cannoned spoke suddenly—she had the instant idea that he had been trying to make up his mind whether the circumstances warranted his addressing her without an introduction. “The fact is, ma’am, ladies have no business in these steamboats. The cabin may have seemed uncommon incommodious to you, but in order that you and your companions might enjoy it, four of the gentlemen on board had no cabin at all.” “Oh!” in dismay. “But ’twas not for you to tell me that!” she flashed out at him. “I had a reason, ma’am—to convince you that you should not be here.” “And pray, sir, what other way would we poor females get to Khemistan?” “My point precisely, ma’am.” He spoke under difficulties, swaying to and fro and holding fast to the rail. “Khemistan is no place for European females—nor will be for years to come. But when charming ladies take it into their pretty heads to go there, what is poor Hubby to do? ‘My dear, believe me, I can’t take you with me.’ ‘Oh, but you will, won’t you?’ ‘Quite impossible, my dear.’ ‘Ah, but you can do it if you like, I know. And you must.’ And he does—naturally.” Richard Ambrose chuckled disagreeably, and the colour rose in his wife’s cheeks. “It’s a bachelor y’are, sir, by your own confession,” she said sweetly to the stranger. “No married man would dare to draw such a picture. The best I can wish you is that you may find how true it is!” She meant to end with a little contemptuous curtsey, but the moment she loosed her hold of the shawl over her head, the wind caught it and hurled it full in the stranger’s face. This time he did lose his footing, and went slipping and sliding across the deck till he was brought up by the bulwarks. “One for you, Crosse!” cried Richard Ambrose loudly, and holding his wife with one hand, secured the loose end of shawl and tucked it in with the other. “Can’t you look after your own fallals?” he demanded. “It ain’t enough to make out that you wanted to come and I couldn’t do without you—eh?” “I did want to come,” persisted Eveleen stoutly. “And pray would you have me tell people y’are bringing me here for a punishment because you can’t find a keeper in Bombay to look after me?” “Pray remember you are not a child,” he said—so coldly that she grew red again, and moved as far from him as the necessity of submitting to his protecting arm would allow. But it was difficult to maintain an attitude of dignified displeasure in the circumstances. “Why, we are anchoring already!” she cried in dismay a moment later. Her husband smiled superior. “Precisely, my dear. Now you will have an opportunity of experiencing the full pleasure of landing at Bab-us-Sahel. It might be worse, however, for the tide is fairly high.” Privately Eveleen wondered how low water could possibly make the landing worse, when the passengers and their luggage had been transferred from the rolling steamer to an equally unsteady tug, and thence into large open boats, in which the water seemed terribly near—and actually was, as she discovered on finding the wet mounting higher and higher up her skirts. They were to land at a pier, she knew, which was comforting, but alas! there was another transhipment before reaching it, this time into light canoes, since the boats drew too much water to enter the creek in which it stood. Dazed, shaken, and sea-sick, Eveleen had no pride left. With closed eyes, she leaned her swimming head against her husband’s shoulder as they came into smoother water, and told herself that this misery had lasted so long she would not be surprised if the tide had gone out. What would they do then? she speculated in a detached kind of way—change into some other kind of craft, or paddle up and down and dodge the rollers until the flow? “There’s Bayard waiting to meet us!” said her husband sharply. She opened one eye weakly, and discerned figures on the pier. “‘The celebrated Colonel Bayard!’” she quoted in a dreamy whisper, and shut it again. “But not Mrs Bayard!” Richard was evidently injured. “Perhaps—the sight of—this sea—makes her—ill. I would not—wonder,” murmured Eveleen. “Nonsense, my dear! Considering my friendship with Bayard, and the kindness she professed towards you when she heard——” “Her husband maybe teased her—to come—so she wouldn’t,” and even in her misery Eveleen was conscious of triumph. It was something to have reduced Richard to speechless indignation, were it but for a moment. “Halloo, Ambrose! Glad to see you, my dear fellow!” The words sounded startlingly near, and looking up quickly, she saw a small stoutish dark-moustached officer hanging perilously on what looked like a ladder just above them. As the canoe rocked this way and that with the motion of the waves, he seemed to be performing the wildest acrobatic feats, as though it were the pier and not the boat that rose and fell. She closed her eyes again hopelessly. “Your poor wife overcome by all this landing business? I don’t wonder. Lift her up, man. Now, ma’am, give me your hand, and we’ll have you on firm ground in no time.” The deep commanding voice mastered even her helpless lassitude, and she looked up into the kindest eyes she had ever seen. Her hand was seized in a strong clasp, and somehow—between Richard and Colonel Bayard—she was hoisted up the ladder before she had time to notice with horror how very rickety it was. “‘Firm ground!’” she said reproachfully when she reached the top, for the pier seemed to be swaying every way at once, and between its sun-warped timbers the water was disconcertingly visible. “In a moment, in a moment!” said Colonel Bayard soothingly, as though speaking to a child. “I brought my wife’s palanquin for you, but I had not realised how bad the landing would be. Would you prefer to wait here while I have it fetched?” “Indeed I would not—not here!” said Eveleen with a shudder, and supported by the two men, she stumbled uncertainly along the pier. “I trust Mrs Bayard ain’t ill?” said Richard. “You could answer that better than I, my good fellow, for you must have passed her on your way up from Bombay. I had to send her down by the next steamer after you had started. So end my hopes of making a home up here. Heigh-ho!” He gave a great sigh, and Eveleen looked up at him sympathetically. Not noticing that they had come to the end of the pier, she stumbled wildly in the loose sand, and fell. The Resident had her up again in a moment. “My dear lady, forgive me!” he cried, in deep contrition. “I fear Khemistan is giving you a sorry welcome.” “Ah, but think how I’ll be adoring the place when I fall on my knees at the first sight of it!” she said, laughing feebly, while her husband—in awful silence—did his best to brush the wet sand from her gown. “That’s the spirit!” said Colonel Bayard approvingly. “Mrs Ambrose is cut out for the frontier, Richard. Now, ma’am!” He was handing her into the waiting palki, while she looked longingly at the ponies waiting for the two men. If only there were one for her! But Colonel Bayard would probably be scandalised, and Richard certainly would, if she proposed to ride through the town on a man’s saddle, with a stirrup thrown over to serve as pommel. “The many times I’ve done it at home!” she lamented to herself. “And sure this place might be in Ireland, only that it’s brown instead of green.” But she settled herself meekly on the cushions, and closed her eyes, that the swaying of the palki might not recall too vividly the motion of the steamer. She was not losing much, she told herself, for the inhabitants of Bab-us-Sahel appeared to live either in mud-heaps or within high mud walls, both windowless, and there was not a tree to be seen. She must have gone to sleep before very long, for she woke with a start when the reed blind was drawn aside, and Colonel Bayard’s face appeared in the doorway—a sepoy guard standing to attention behind him. “Welcome to Government House, Mrs Ambrose! Let me say as the Spaniards do, ‘This house is yours, ma’am.’ Turn it upside down if you like, and do me the favour of chivying the servants as much as you please. My wife always declares I spoil ’em when she ain’t with me.” “Ah, but tell me now—will you let me ride your horses?” demanded Eveleen, pausing as he helped her out. The mud-built town was below them now, for they were at the top of a long slope. An immensely wide road with ostentatiously white houses on either side, so rigidly spaced that they looked like tents in a camp, led down to a muddy swamp, and by a causeway across it to the mud-heap which was Bab-us-Sahel. Some attempt had been made by most of the householders to enclose their domains with a hedge, but the only available plant seemed to be a weak and straggly kind of cactus, which left more gaps than it filled. Government House was mud-built and white-washed like the rest, long and narrow and surrounded by verandahs, and boasted an imposing flagstaff in front, together with a circular enclosure, intended as a flower-bed, in which grew a few debilitated shrubs. Glaring sunshine and shadeless sand were the salient features of the scene from which Eveleen withdrew her eyes as she looked up at her host. “With all my heart, if I had any,” he responded genially. “But I’ll confess I am a precious lazy fellow when there’s no hunting in question. Bring me khubber of a tiger, and I’ll ride all day and all night to get at him, but here——! My dear ma’am, this respectable elderly gentleman”—he indicated the pony from which he had just dismounted—“represents my whole stable, and you can see by his figure that he don’t get much to do.” “And such a galloping country!” Deep commiseration was in Eveleen’s tone as she looked down the other side of the rise to the bare rolling sandy plain. “I’ll have to wait till my own horses are landed, then, before challenging you to a race.” “Mrs Ambrose is going to wake us all up, I see, Richard!” Colonel Bayard beamed as he handed her into the house. He had to perfection the gift of doing little things greatly, and Queen Victoria herself could not have been ushered in with more empressement. “Now if anything is not as you like it, ma’am, command me and all I have, I beg of you. You won’t feel bound to show yourself at table if you ain’t equal to it? Ambrose and I will devour our grub in solitude, like a pair of uncivilised bachelors again.”