The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

  *XIV.*

  It was one thing to help fight the scourge with Mackenzie in themilitary hospital, crude as it was, where things were carried on with acertain nicety and regard to military discipline that was stronger thaneven the demoralizing dread of the hour; but it was another matter tofight it, and crush it, and stamp it out, alone, in the midst of half ahundred panic stricken natives, who knew neither military discipline norpaid proper attention to the precautionary measures of the disease.

  Trevelyan had never possessed the quality of conciliation; it had beeneither one side of the line or the other. He had always reduced thingsto their smallest denomination at once, with no intermediate measures.And the quality became now a practical and living thing, as he forcedthe natives to bow before him in obedience, and brought order out ofchaos.

  It was not altogether the exact application of the military organizationlearned at Woolwich, or the inspiration of the rally he had dreamed of,that would fire his men, he told himself grimly, as he worked amongthese people, but it answered for it, and it brought them intosubjection to his will.

  He held them in control, as the pilot holds in control the ship hesteers, guiding it through the madness of the gale, and they neverdreamed of mutiny, because they feared him more than they feared thecholera.

  And by and by when they saw that he held the scourge in check, his handupon its throat, they fell down before him in all the pitifulness ofignorance and superstition, as before a being mightier than they hadever conceived of, worshiping him. But they were at his feet always.

  Mackenzie, shrewd and silent-tongued, took in the situation at a glance,when he rode over for an afternoon, a fortnight later, to see howTrevelyan was getting on.

  "He’s the biggest man I ever knew," he said to himself as he followedthe orderly who was leading him to Trevelyan.

  He found Trevelyan stooping over the small rigid figure of a nativebaby, his hand still resting on the tiny wrist where the pulse had juststopped its slow beating.

  Mackenzie came in and stood on the other side of the child, andTrevelyan raised his head. He showed no surprise at Mackenzie beingthere. In his face was all the unutterableness of the horror; in hisvoice was all the passionate protest, all the crushing dread, all thegrief, that he had never shown before.

  "_It—is—awful!_"

  Mackenzie nodded.

  "Yes," he said.