"Hah!" he ejaculated, speaking for the first time, and in excellent
English. "You are getting well fast now. You are weak, but you will
live and soon be well. I thought once you would die. You know me?" he
added, with a smile.

I spoke now for the first time, and my voice sounded feeble, I felt,
compared to his.

"Yes, I know you again, Ny Deen."

His eyes flashed, and his face lit up strangely as he exclaimed--

"Yes; Ny Deen, the syce, beaten, kicked, trampled upon; Ny Deen, the
dog--the--"

He paused for a moment or two, and then with an emphasis that would have
made the term of reproach sound absurd, but for the fierce revengeful
look in his countenance, he added--

"Nigger!"

There was an intensity of scorn in his utterance of the word that was
tragic; and as I lay back there on my cushion I read in it the fierce
turning at last of the trampled worm--the worm as represented by the
venomous serpent of the conquered land, and I knew from my own
experience what endless cases there were of patient, humbled, and
crushed-down men, no higher in position than slaves, ill-used, and
treated with contempt by my insolent, overbearing countrymen of that
self-assertive class who cannot hold power without turning it to abuse.

The silence in the tent as my captor knelt by me was intense, and I
could hear his hard breathing, and see how he was striving to master the
fierce emotion in his breast. His eyes were mostly fixed on me with a
savage scowl, and for a moment or so I fancied that he must have saved
my life so as to take it himself in some way which would add torture and
throw dismay amongst the English ranks.

But I was ready to smile at my own vanity as I thought to myself of what
a little consequence the life of a young artillery subaltern would be in
the great revolt now in progress.

Then I felt a strong desire to speak, to make some great utterance such
as would impress him and raise me in his estimation sufficiently to make
him treat me with the respect due to an English officer; but no such
utterance would come. I felt that I was only a poor, weak, wounded lad,
lying there at the mercy of this fierce rajah, and when at last my lips
parted, as if forced to say something in answer to his searching gaze, I
writhed within myself and felt ashamed of the contemptible words. For
his utterance of that term of contumely so liberally used toward one of
a race of people who had been for countless generation