I should
be willing. Heaven knows, to die, and yet as each 5th of October comes
round, I am prostrated with fear because I do not know what strange and
terrible experience may be in store for me.
"Forty years have passed since I slew Ghoolab Shah, and forty times I
have gone through all the horrors of death, without attaining the
blessed peace which lies beyond.
"I have no means of knowing in what shape my fate will come upon me.
I have immured myself in this lonely country, and surrounded myself with
barriers, because in my weaker moments my instincts urge me to take some
steps for self-protection, but I know well in my heart how futile it all
is. They must come quickly now, for I grow old, and Nature will
forestall them unless they make haste.
"I take credit to myself that I have kept my hands off the prussic-acid
or opium bottle. It has always been in my power to checkmate my occult
persecutors in that way, but I have ever held that a man in this world
cannot desert his post until he has been relieved in due course by the
authorities. I have had no scruples, however, about exposing myself to
danger, and, during the Sikh and Sepoy wars, I did all that a man could
do to court Death. He passed me by, however, and picked out many a
young fellow to whom life was only opening and who had everything to
live for, while I survived to win crosses and honours which had lost all
relish for me.
"Well, well, these things cannot depend upon chance, and there is no
doubt some deep reason for it all.
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