ge, straining in agony of mind and body, was aware of sudden
relief from the pain of his wound. The bandage had slipped, and blood
was cooling the torturing fire. A deathly faintness was upon him, and
through it he spoke distinctly--again of mercy.
"They were all blind. The leaders were blind. The blind leading the
blind. Blind--blind----"
The Collector sprang up with a startled exclamation. A thin stream of
blood trickled from behind His Honor's desk, and went a twisting way
down to the well of the court. He caught the Judge in his arms as he
fell forward, and lowered him gently to the ground. Then it was seen
that the unconscious man's clothes were saturated with blood.
Instantly the court was cleared. A military surgeon cut away the
blood-stained clothing from the Judge's thigh, and laid bare the clean
wound made by a British bullet. A look passed between him and the
Collector, but never a word. Syed Mehta's life had ebbed with his blood,
and so he passed, unawakened, from swoon to death.
The English, as their way is, betrayed nothing. It was His Honor, the
District Judge of Golampore, who had died, and they gave him burial the
next day with due regard to the high position which he had held in the
service of H.M. the King and Emperor.
V
A FOG-HORN CONCLUSION
The Story of a Gramophone
By FOX RUSSELL
THE _Saucy Sally_ was a vessel of renown. No blustering liner, no fussy
tug, no squattering steamer, she; but a bluff-bowed, smartly painted,
trim-built sailing barge, plying chiefly from the lower reaches of the
Thames to ports west of Dover. She had no equal of her class, at any
point of sailing, and certainly her Master, Mr. Joseph Pigg, was not the
man to let her fair fame suffer for want of seamanship.
"Cap'n Pigg," as he insisted upon being called, was a great, hairy-faced
man, with brawny muscles and a blood-shot eye. And in these respects,
his mate, Bob Topper, greatly favored him--in fact, their physical
resemblance was rather marked; but their tastes were in no way similar;
'the Cap'n' was fond of his glass, whilst the mate was a blue-ribbon
man; Joseph Pigg couldn't bear music, in any form, whilst the total
abstainer had a weakness for the flute and would not infrequently burst
into song; the Skipper hated women, whereas the mate was, what he
himself called "a bit of a gay Lathero." But notwithstanding these
dissimilarities of tastes and disposition, they got along fairly well
toge
|