Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/42

692 to the burning-ghat half conscious and all but paralyzed with drugs"

"Ah, yes, one comprehends completely," broke in Jules de Grandin. "But your uncle, what of him? What did he then do?"

"You can't use cavalry in wooded terrain, and the forest came down thick each side the road. Besides, my uncle had but two men with him, and to attempt a sortie would have meant sure death. Accordingly he waited till the procession filed past, then hurried back to his command and led them toward the burning-ghat. This lay in a depression by the river bank, so that the partly burned corpses could be conveniently thrown into the stream when cremation rites were finished. The Hindoos had a quarter-hour start, but that was just as well, as they took more time than that to make their preparations. The funeral pyre had been erected, and over it they poured a quantity of sandal-oil and melted butter. Paraffin was not so common in the Orient those days.

"When all had been prepared they took the dead man's costly garments off and stripped the widow of her jewels and gorgeous sari, wrapping each of them in plain white cotton cloth like winding-sheets and pouring rancid butter over them. They laid the corpse upon the pyre and marched the widow seven times around it with a lighted torch held in her hand. Then they lifted her up to the pyre, for the poor kid still was only semi-conscious, made her squat cross-legged, and laid the dead man's head upon her knees. A Brahmin gave the signal and the dead man's eldest son ran forward with a torch to set the oil-soaked wood afire, when my uncle rode out from the woods and ordered them to halt. He spoke Hindustani fluently, and there was no mistaking what he said when he told them that the Raj had banned suttee and commanded them to take the widow down.

"The thing the blighters didn't know was that nineteen Afghan cavalrymen were waiting in the underbrush, praying as hard as pious men could pray that the Hindoos would refuse to heed my uncle's orders.

"Allah heard their prayers, for the only answer that the Brahmins gave was a chorus of shrill curses and a barrage of stones and cow-dung. The dead man's son ran forward to complete the rite, but before he could apply the torch my uncle drew his pistol and shot him very neatly through the head.

"Then all hell broke loose. The guard of honor brought their muskets into play and fired a volley, wounding several of the crowd and cutting branches from the trees behind my uncle. But when they drew their swords and rushed at him it was no laughing-matter, for there must have been two hundred of them, and those fellows are mean hands with the bare steel.

Troop advance! Draw sabers! Trot, gallop, charge!' When the natives heard my uncle's order they halted momentarily, and it would have been a lot more healthy if they'd turned and run, for before they could say 'knife' the Afghans were among 'em, and the fat was in the fire.

Yah Allah, Allah—Allah!" [sic] cried the subadar, and his men gave tongue to the pack-cry that men of the North Country have used when hunting lowland Hindoos since the days when Moslem missionaries first converted Afghanistan.

"There were only nineteen of them, and my uncle, while the Hindoos must have totaled half a thousand, but"—the pride an honest man takes in his trade shone in his eyes as Pemberton grinned at us—"you don't need more than twenty professional soldiers to scatter a mob of