In the next street there was supposed to be a riot. And the
shrill repeated whistle of the nearest policeman summoning help
confirmed the crowd in its belief, besides convincing it of new
atrocities as yet unguessed.
Only one man in the crowd had wit enough to carry the tale to
barracks where it might be expected to produce action. He was a
Bengali babu, bare of leg and fat of paunch, who had enough
imagination to conceive of a regiment in receipt of the news, and the
mental picture so appealed to him that he held his protruding stomach
in both hands while he ran down-street like a landslide, his mouth
agape and his eyes all but popping from his head.
He reached the barrack gate speechless and breathless, just as
Ranjoor Singh rode up on Bagh, mud-plastered after an afternoon's
work teaching scouts. He clung to the risaldar-major's stirrup, and
was dragged ten feet, slobbering and bubbling incoherencies, before
the savage charger could be reined in and made to stand.
"What is it, oh, _babuji?_" laughed Ranjoor Singh. "Are the
Moslems out after your temple gods?"
"Aha! Run! Gallop! Bring all the guns!" This in English, all of it.
"Blood in the gutter--blood like water--twentee policemen are already
dead, and your men have done it! Gallop quicklee. _Jaldee,
jaldee!_"
"Go and get twenty more policemen to wipe away the blood!" advised
Ranjoor Singh, sitting back in the saddle to get a better look at
him, and reining back the impatient Bagh.
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