Somehow they must have poled the thing off, for when I had recovered my breath and pulled myself up to the low gunwale, we were about twenty yards from the go-down, and drifting away from the pier as the eddy from the river mouth, I suppose, caught the lighter and tugged it out to sea. I had only a momentary sight of the interior of the go-down, looking for all the world like a mine-shaft, with the figures of miners hewing away in it, and then I saw a brilliant light suddenly glowing on its floor, growing in intensity, and then the rush-rush-rush sound of the Congreves as the flames from the burning wall reached them, and I just had sense enough to duck my head below the gunwale before the whole place dissolved in a blinding light—but strangely enough, without any great roar of explosion, just the rushing noise of a huge whirlwind. There were screams and oaths from the lighter all around me, but when I raised my head there was just one huge flame where the go-down had been, and the pier beside it was burning at its landward end, and the glare was so fierce that beyond there was nothing to be seen.
I just lay, with my cheek on the thwart, wondering if the eddy would carry us out of range before they started shooting at us, and thinking how calm and pleasant it was to be drifting along here, after all the hellish work in the go-down. I still wasn't feeling any sense of urgency, or anything beyond a detached, dreamy interest, and I can't say even now whether we were fired on or not, for I suddenly became aware that Ko Dali's daughter was crouched down beside me at the gunwale, staring back, and people were pressed close about us, and I thought, this is a splendid opportunity to squeeze that lovely little rump of hers. There it was, just nicely curved within a foot of me, so I took a handful and kneaded away contentedly, and she never even noticed—or if she did, she didn't mind. But I think she was too preoccupied with the inferno we had left behind us; so were the others, craning and muttering as we drifted over the dark water. It's queer, but in my memory that drifting and bum-fondling seems to have gone on for the deuce of a long time—I suppose I was immensely preoccupied with it, and a capital thing, too. But some other things I remember: the flames of the go-down and pier seen at a distance, and a wounded man groaning near me in the press of bodies; Ko Dali's daughter speaking to Yakub Beg, and Kutebar saying something which involved an oath to do with a camel; and a water-skin being pressed against my lips, and the warm, brackish water making me choke and cough. And Yakub Beg saying that the Mikhail was burning to a wreck, but the Obrucheff had got away, so our work was only half-done, but better half-done than not done at all, and Kutebar growling that, by God, it was all very well for those who had been loafing about on the beach, building sand-castles, to talk, but if Yakub and his saunterers had been in the go-down, where the real business was …
And pat on his words the sun was suddenly in the sky—or so it seemed, for the whole place, the lighter, the sea around, and sky itself, were suddenly as bright as day, and it seemed to me that the lighter was no longer drifting, but racing over the water, and then came the most tremendous thundering crash of sound I've ever heard, reverberating over the sea, making the head sing and shudder with the deafening boom of it, and as I tried to put up my hands to my ears to shut out the pain, I heard Kutebar's frantic yelclass="underline"
"The Obrucheff. She has gone—gone to the pit of damnation! Now whose work is half-done? By God!—it is done, it is done, it is done! A thousand times done! Ya, Yakub—is it not done? Now the praise to Him and to the foreign professors!"
More than two thousand Khokandians were killed in the battle of Fort Raim, which shows you what a clever lad Buzurg Khan was to keep out of it. The rest escaped, some by cutting their way eastward off the beach, some by swimming the Syr Daria mouth, and a favoured few travelling in style, by boat and lighter. How many Russians died, no one knows, but Yakub Beg later estimated about three thousand. So it was a good deal bigger than many battles that are household words, but it happened a long way away, and the Russians doubtless tried to forget it, so I suppose only the Khokandians remember it now.
It achieved their purpose, anyhow, for it destroyed the Russian munition ships, and prevented the army marching that year. Which saved British India for as long as I've lived—and preserved Khokand's freedom for a few years more, before the Tsar's soldiers came and stamped it flat in the 'sixties. I imagine the Khokandians thought the respite was worth while, and the two thousand lives well lost—what the two thousand would say, of course, is another matter, but since they went to fight of their own free will (so far as any soldier ever does) I suppose they would support the majority.
Myself, I haven't changed my opinion since I came back to my senses two days afterwards, back in the valley in Kizil Kum. I remember nothing of our lighter being hauled from the water by Katti Torah's rescue party, or of the journey back through the desert, for by that time I was in the finest hallucinatory delirium since the first Reform Bill, and I came out of it gradually and painfully. The terrible thing was that I remembered the battle very clearly, and my own incredible behaviour—I knew I'd gone bawling about like a Viking in drink, seeking sorrow and raving heroically in murderous rage, but I couldn't for the life of me understand why. It had been utterly against nature, instinct and judgement—and I knew it hadn't been booze, because , I hadn't had any, and anyway the liquor hasn't been distilled that can make me oblivious of self-preservation. It appalled me, for what security does a right-thinking coward have, if he loses his sense of panic?
At first I thought my memory of that night's work must be playing me false, but the admiring congratulations I got from Yakub Beg and Kutebar (who called me "Ghazi", of all things) soon put paid to that notion. So I must have been temporarily deranged—but why? The obvious explanation, for some reason, never occurred to me—and yet I knew Ko Dali's daughter was at the bottom of it somehow, so I sought her out first thing when I had emerged weak and shaky from my brief convalescence. I was too upset to beat about the bush, and although she played the cool arch tart at first, and pretended not to understand what I was talking about, I went at it so hard that at last she told me—not to put my mind at rest, you may be sure, but probably because she knew that the only fun to be had from a secret lies in betraying it, especially if it makes someone wriggle.
"You remember I spoke to you about the Old Man of the Mountains, of whom you had never heard?"
"What's he got to do with me rushing about like a lunatic?"
"He lived many years ago, in Persia, beyond the Two Seas and the Salt Desert. He was the master of the mad fighting-men the hasheesheen—who nerved themselves to murder and die by drinking the hasheesh drug—what the Indians call bhang. It is prepared in many ways, for many purposes—it can be so concocted that it will drive a man to any lengths of hatred and courage—and other passions."
And she said it as calm as a virgin discussing flower arrangement, sitting there gravely cross-legged on a charpai*(*Bed platform.) in a corner of her garden, with her vile kitten gorging itself on a saucer of milk beside her. I stared at her astounded.