From first to last, that match against time with death was like one of those wild and feverish dreams, in which you are for ever rushing at full speed over a boundless waste, without advancing a single foot nearer to the goal. On, on, mile after mile--passing with bewildering suddenness from darkness to moonlight, and from moonlight into darkness again--now splashing through a swollen stream, now plunging down into a gloomy hollow, now bursting with a crash through a mass of tangled creepers, now checking their horses, barely in time, on the brink of a yawning chasm.
Once, the lights waved by the Hindus made a kind of broken rainbow on the scaly bulk of a monstrous snake, which, coiled round a tree above them, thrust out its huge flat head with an angry hiss, only to draw it back in affright at the sudden glare. Farther on, two flaming eyes broke the gloom for an instant, and then a long, gaunt, striped body vanished ghost-like into the surrounding blackness, with a snarl of mingled terror and rage; and, a few minutes later, a pack of prowling jackals, scared by the hoof-tramp and the lights, flitted spectrally away into the thickets, whimpering like frightened children.
But all this passed unheeded by Colonel Hardman. In place of the moonlit forest and the threatening monsters, _his_ eyes saw only a sick-room that lay already miles behind him, where a tiny golden head was tossing in weary pain upon its restless pillow; and he clenched his teeth in desperation at the thought that the aid which he was perilling his life to bring might come too late after all.
But now they were more than half-way to Kalipur--and now but a quarter of the distance was left--and now, as they drew nearer and nearer to the goal, the father's heavy heart began to wax lighter with an ever-growing hope.
Ha! what was that red fire-glow that broke suddenly upon them from an open space just ahead? and what were these wild forms that sprang up around it, like spectres starting from their graves?
"Sahib," said Lal Singh as coolly as ever, "there are robbers in our path."
So tremendous was the suppressed emotion that quivered through those half-whispered words, so ghastly this sudden revelation of that inward torment which could hail as a positive relief the prospect of blood and wounds, and death itself, that even the iron-nerved Hindu felt awed. But there was no time to think of it. Fixing themselves firmly in their saddles, the three men rushed upon the nineteen as tigers spring upon a herd of deer.[4]