sit publicly in the middle of the
grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to
each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in
a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the
heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing
in chokey and do _poojah_ to their photos. But the superior members did
no _poojah_ to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy
man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have assumed,
for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on
suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind
Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.

"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.

"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the
next Instrument?

"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.

"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless
Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be
unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit
for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went
away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he
could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a
mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.

"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British
Government does for you--educates you to be passed B.A. and educated
gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects
you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A.
work with hands like _maistri_?

"Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman
who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky
joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at
school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-class
superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory.

"His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they
did much--for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it.

"But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not
grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing
up of the _bhangi_ by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired
to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacre