The Moonstone | Page 2

of the deities were broken in pieces; and the Moonstone was
seized by an officer of rank in the army of Aurungzebe.
Powerless to recover their lost treasure by open force, the three
guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations
succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege
perished miserably; the Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it)
from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all
chances and changes, the successors of the three guardian priests kept
their watch, waiting the day when the will of Vishnu the Preserver
should restore to them their sacred gem. Time rolled on from the first to
the last years of the eighteenth Christian century. The Diamond fell into
the possession of Tippoo, Sultan of Seringapatam, who caused it to be
placed as an ornament in the handle of a dagger, and who commanded
it to be kept among the choicest treasures of his armoury. Even then--in
the palace of the Sultan himself--the three guardian priests still kept
their watch in secret. There were three officers of Tippoo's household,
strangers to the rest, who had won their master's confidence by
conforming, or appearing to conform, to the Mussulman faith; and to
those three men report pointed as the three priests in disguise.

III
So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of the Moonstone. It
made no serious impression on any of us except my cousin--whose love
of the marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the
assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with
others, for treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle
followed; and Herncastle's unlucky temper got the better of him. He

declared, in his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his
finger, if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by
a roar of laughter, and there, as we all thought that night, the thing
ended.
Let me now take you on to the day of the assault. My cousin and I were
separated at the outset. I never saw him when we forded the river; when
we planted the English flag in the first breach; when we crossed the
ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the town. It
was only at dusk, when the place was ours, and after General Baird
himself had found the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the slain,
that Herncastle and I met.
We were each attached to a party sent out by the general's orders to
prevent the plunder and confusion which followed our conquest. The
camp-followers committed deplorable excesses; and, worse still, the
soldiers found their way, by a guarded door, into the treasury of the
Palace, and loaded themselves with gold and jewels. It was in the court
outside the treasury that my cousin and I met, to enforce the laws of
discipline on our own soldiers. Herncastle's fiery temper had been, as I
could plainly see, exasperated to a kind of frenzy by the terrible
slaughter through which we had passed. He was very unfit, in my
opinion, to perform the duty that had been entrusted to him.
There was riot and confusion enough in the treasury, but no violence
that I saw. The men (if I may use such an expression) disgraced
themselves good-humouredly. All sorts of rough jests and catchwords
were bandied about among them; and the story of the Diamond turned
up again unexpectedly, in the form of a mischievous joke. "Who's got
the Moonstone?" was the rallying cry which perpetually caused the
plundering, as soon as it was stopped in one place, to break out in
another. While I was still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a
frightful yelling on the other side of the courtyard, and at once ran
towards the cries, in dread of finding some new outbreak of the pillage
in that direction.
I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians (by their dress,
as I guessed, officers of the palace) lying across the entrance, dead.

A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an
armoury. A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a
man whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I
came in, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a
dagger dripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in
the end of the dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on
me, like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to
the dagger in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his native language--"The
Moonstone