Out—out—past all the lights went the Northern Star straight into the silver white moon path stretching endlessly across the water.
Lemmy looked up at the winking stars and leaned comfortably back against the Cap’n’s arm.
“I’m safe now from the ’Dopters,” he whispered exultantly.
“We’ve given them the slip,” the Cap’n assured him. “They’ll never get you now.”
Dreamily, with his head upon the Cap’n’s shoulder, Lemmy happily fingered the ebony ring which had somehow “got majicked” into his pocket.
Prem Singh had company. When I went in the gathering dusk to feed the cow I noticed, instead of the usual solitary figure crouched above the little camp fire in the open, two lean forms silhouetted against the dancing flames, while a flow of guttural conversation that broke occasionally into seemingly excited treble argument mingled with the fragrant smoke from burning greasewood roots.
“He probably has a letter from India,” I told the Lady of the Castle, when I went back into the little stone house, “and has rung in a chap from the gang below to read it to him.”
“From his brother, probably,” said the Lady. “He’ll be all excited over it. You’ll have to do the milking.”
Her surmise as to the letter was correct, though I didn’t have to do the milking.
“Letter come China country! My brother!” Prem Singh announced exultantly, when he came for the milk pail. “Pretty good!” He ducked his head sideways in a delighted nod. “I go milk now.”
We had known of this brother ever since the Hindu had become our devoted and isolated adherent. He was Prem Singh’s family, the only relative he had in the world.
“My father, mammy, been die,” he had explained to me. “Both. My father, my mammy, two my sister, my little brother: all one time die. Too much sick. All my uncle, my auntie, everybody die. Too many people. Just me, my big brother, live. Thass all.” From which we gathered that a cholera epidemic had left the two boys orphans: Prem Singh, now our vassal, and Kala Singh, half a dozen years older, at present a British policeman at Shanghai.
It was a poor life, this brother’s, but highly treasured by the younger brother, who, curiously enough, proved to be the stable member of the family. Kala Singh had left a bad record behind him in India, including a year’s jail sentence for knifing a co-conspirator in a bank robbery.