Curiously enough, though all three were dressed as Hindus, and were very nearly as dark in complexion, they all spoke in English.
"Plenty o' dead wood for a fire, anyhow," growled the first man; "but wot's the use? It's jist like our luck, ain't it, Tom, to have a good fire and nothin' to cook at it!"
"Well, it'll keep the tigers off, if it does nothin' else," said Tom Tuffen; "though, if they was to eat us, Bob," added he, with a meaning glance at his own lean hands, "they'd have pretty nigh as poor a supper as we're a-goin' to have ourselves."
"Why, there's some o' them chupatties (thin flour cakes) left yet, ain't there, Sam?" cried Bob Burton sharply.
"Two apiece, Bob—that's all!" replied Sam Black, producing the scanty provisions as he spoke, while his two comrades hastily scraped together and set on fire a heap of dead twigs and withered leaves, round which the wanderers stretched themselves in moody silence.
The meagre meal was eaten without a word; and, in truth, the three outcasts had but too good reason to be so silent and gloomy.
After the breaking up of the robber band which they had joined, they had taken service with one native prince after another, and had passed through all the vicissitudes of wild Eastern warfare. Now revelling in short-lived luxury—now fighting for their lives against terrible odds—now heading a mutiny for arrears of pay, and sacking the palace of their so-called master—one week filling their pockets with precious stones and gold mohurs (to be instantly flung away in the wildest freaks of excess), and then a week later, struggling half-starved through swamp and jungle, with a swarm of merciless foes in hot pursuit—they had compressed into those few months the perils and adventures of a whole lifetime.
And what had all this profited them? Nothing. All their rich gains, all their daring feats, had left them as poor, and destitute, and hopeless as before.
In fact, their future seemed even darker than their past; for no one knew better than they that the savage despot of Oude—for whose court they were now making, as a last resource—even should he admit them among his soldiers, might any day reward them for their services by torturing them to death, or flinging them to the crocodiles of the Goomtee.[5]
"I'll tell yer wot hurts me most," muttered Bob Burton at last, in the tone of a man thinking aloud, rather than actually addressing his comrades; "to think o' them pals of our'n in the old regiment fightin' like men agin them coffee-coloured' heathens, one agin a dozen—and lickin' 'em too, every time—and every one in the old country's a-praisin' them, and calling 'em 'eroes; and we—wot have we been doin' all the while? Why, thievin' and murderin' along with a lot o' sneakin' blackamoors!"