The Adventures of Kathlyn | Page 8

know Mr. Bruce?"
"Very well," said the German. "Didn't he tell you who he is? No? Ach!
Why, Mr. Bruce is a great hunter. He has shot everything, written
books, climbed the Himalayas. Only last year he brought me the sack
of a musk deer, and that is the most dangerous of all sports. He collects
animals."

Then Kathlyn knew. The name had been vaguely familiar, but the
young man's reticence had given her no opportunity to dig into her
recollection. Bruce! How many times her father had spoken of him!
What a fool she had been! Bruce knew the country she was going to,
perhaps as well as her father; and he could have simplified her journey
to the last word. Well, what was done could not be recalled and done
over.
"My father is a great hunter, too," she said simply, eying wistfully the
road taken by Bruce into town.
"What? Herr Gott! Are you Colonel Hare's daughter?" exclaimed the
captain.
"Yes."
He seized her by the shoulders. "Why did you not tell me? Why,
Colonel Hare and I have smoked many a Burma cheroot together on
these waters. Herr Gott! And you never said anything! What a woman
for a man to marry!" he laughed. "You have sat at my table for five
days, and only now I find that you are Hare's daughter! And you have a
sister. Ach, yes! He was always taking out some photographs in the
smoke-room and showing them to us old chaps."
Tears filled Kathlyn's eyes. In an Indian prison, out of the jurisdiction
of the British Raj, and with her two small hands and woman's mind she
must free him! Always the mysterious packet lay close to her heart,
never for a moment was it beyond the reach of her hand. Her father's
freedom!
The rusty metal sides of the ship scraped against the pier and the
gangplank was lowered; and presently the tourists flocked down with
variant emotions, to be besieged by fruit sellers, water carriers, cabmen,
blind beggars, and maimed, naked little children with curious, insolent
black eyes, women with infants straddling their hips, stolid Chinamen;
a riot of color and a bewildering babel of tongues.
Kathlyn found a presentable carriage, and with her luggage pressing

about her feet directed the driver to the Great Eastern Hotel.
Her white sola-topee (sun helmet) had scarcely disappeared in the
crowd when the Hindu of the freight caboose emerged from the
steerage, no longer in bedraggled linen trousers and ragged turban, but
dressed like a native fop. He was in no hurry. Leisurely he followed
Kathlyn to the hotel, then proceeded to the railway station. He had need
no longer to watch and worry. There was nothing left now but to greet
her upon her arrival, this golden houri from the verses of Sa'adi. The
two weeks of durance vile among the low castes in the steerage should
be amply repaid. In six days he would be beyond the hand of the
meddling British Raj, in his own country. Sport! What was more
beautiful to watch than cat play? He was the cat, the tiger cat. And what
would the Colonel Sahib say when he felt the claws? Beautiful,
beautiful, like a pattern woven in an Agra rug.
Kathlyn began her journey at once. Now that she was on land, moving
toward her father, all her vigor returned. She felt strangely alive,
exhilarated. She knew that she was not going to be afraid of anything
hereafter. To enter the strange country without having her purpose
known would be the main difficulty. Where was Ahmed all this time?
Doubtless in a cell like his master.
Three days later she stood at the frontier, and her servant set about
arguing and bargaining with the mahouts to engage elephants for the
three days' march through jungles and mountainous divides to the
capital. Three elephants were necessary. There were two howdah
elephants and one pack elephant, who was always lagging behind.
Through long aisles of magnificent trees they passed, across hot
blistering deserts, dotted here and there by shrubs and stunted trees, in
and out of gloomy defiles of flinty rock, over sluggish and swiftly
flowing streams. The days were hot, but the nights were bitter cold.
Sometimes a blue miasmic haze settled down, and the dry raspy hides
of the elephants grew damp and they fretted at their chains.
Rao, the khidmutgar Kathlyn had hired in Calcutta, proved invaluable.
Without him she would never have succeeded in entering the strange
country; for these wild-eyed Mohammedan mahouts (and it is pertinent

to note that only Mohammedans are ever made mahouts, it being
against the tenets of Hinduism to kill or ride anything that kills)
scowled at her evilly. They would have made way with her for an
anna-piece.