



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Draw Swords! by George Manville Fenn.

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DRAW SWORDS! BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.



CHAPTER ONE.

A FEATHER IN HIS CAP.

"Oh, I say, what a jolly shame!"

"Get out; it's all gammon.  Likely."

"I believe it's true.  Dick Darrell's a regular pet of Sir George
Hemsworth."

"Yes; the old story--kissing goes by favour."

"I shall cut the service.  It's rank favouritism."

"I shall write home and tell my father to get the thing shown up in the
House of Commons."

"Why, he's only been out here a year."

Richard Darrell, a well-grown boy of seventeen, pretty well tanned by
the sun of India, stood flashed with annoyance, looking sharply from one
speaker to another as he stood in the broad veranda of the officers'
quarters in the Roumwallah Cantonments in the northern portion of the
Bengal Presidency, the headquarters of the artillery belonging to the
Honourable the East India Company, commonly personified as "John Company
of Leadenhall Street."  It was over sixty years ago, in the days when,
after a careful training at the Company's college near Croydon, young
men, or, to be more correct, boys who had made their marks, received
their commission, and were sent out to join the batteries of artillery,
by whose means more than anything else the Company had by slow degrees
conquered and held the greater part of the vast country now fully added
to the empire and ruled over by the Queen.

It was a common affair then for a lad who had been a schoolboy of
sixteen, going on with his studies one day, to find himself the next, as
it were, a commissioned officer, ready to start for the East, to take
his position in a regiment and lead stalwart men, either in the
artillery or one of the native regiments; though, of course, a great
deal of the college training had been of a military stamp.

This was Richard Darrell's position one fine autumn morning a year
previous to the opening of this narrative.  He had bidden farewell to
father, mother, and Old England, promised to do his duty like a man, and
sailed for Calcutta, joined his battery, served steadily in it for a
year, and now stood in his quiet artillery undress uniform in that
veranda, looking like a strange dog being bayed at by an angry pack.

The pack consisted of young officers of his own age and under.  There
was not a bit of whisker to be seen; and as to moustache, not a lad
could show half as much as Dick, while his wouldn't have made a
respectable eyebrow for a little girl of four.

Dick was flushed with pleasurable excitement, doubly flushed with anger;
but he kept his temper down, and let his companions bully and hector and
fume till they were tired.

Then he gave an important-looking blue letter he held a bit of a wave,
and said, "It's no use to be jealous."

"Pooh!  Who's jealous--and of you?" said the smallest boy present, one
who had very high heels to his boots.  "That's too good."

"For, as to being a favourite with the general, he has never taken the
slightest notice of me since I joined."

"There, that'll do," said one of the party; "a man can't help feeling
disappointment.  Every one is sure to feel so except the one who gets
the stroke of luck.  I say, `Hurrah for Dick Darrell!'"

The others joined in congratulations now.

"I say, old chap, though," said one, "what a swell you'll be!"

"Yes; won't he?  We shall run against him capering about on his spirited
Arab, while we poor fellows are trudging along in the hot sand behind
the heavy guns."

"Don't cut us, Dick, old chap," said another.

"He won't; he's not that sort," cried yet another.  "I say, we must give
him a good send-off."

"When are you going?"

"The despatch says as soon as possible."

"But what troop are you to join?"

"The Sixth."

"The Sixth!  I know; at Vallumbagh.  Why, that's the crack battery,
where the fellows polish the guns and never go any slower than a racing
gallop.  I say, you are in luck.  Well, I am glad!"

The next minute every one present was ready to declare the same thing,
and for the rest of that day the young officer to whom the good stroke
of fortune had come hardly knew whether he stood upon his head or heels.

The next morning he was summoned to the general's quarters, the quiet,
grave-looking officer telling him that, as an encouragement for his
steady application to master his profession, he had been selected to
fill a vacancy; that the general hoped his progress in the horse brigade
would be as marked as it had been hitherto; and advising him to see at
once about his fresh uniform and