Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
If he had known that Boonda Broke had cultivated his friendship for months, to worm out of him all the secrets of the Residency, there might have been a violent and immediate conclusion to the incident, for the lad was fiery, and he had no fear in his heart; he was combative, high-tempered, and daring.
But consider the nest of murderers that'll be let loose here when the Dakoon dies. Better a strong robber with a strong robber's honour to perch there in the Palace, than Boonda Broke and his cut-throats " "Honour honour? Pango Dooni!" broke out McDermot the gunner scornfully.
Crushed now, he could never rise again. Pango Dooni had carefully picked the hillsmen whom he had sent to the Bazaar, and their captain was the most fearless and the wariest fighter from the Neck of Baroob, save Pango Dooni himself. Boonda Broke was abroad still. He had escaped from the slaughter before the Residency and was hidden somewhere in the city.
"March!" said the lad; and even as ten men of the artillery rode through the crowd to rescue their Colonel's son, he marched the murderer on. But a sudden frenzy possessed Boonda Broke. He turned like lightning on the lad, and raised his kris to throw; but a bullet was quicker, and he leaped into the air and fell dead without a cry, the kris dropping from his hand.
It was not from a bittern it was a human voice, of whose tribe he knew not Pango Dooni's, Boonda Broke's, the Dakoon's, or the segments of peoples belonging to none of these highway robbers, cattle-stealers, or the men of the jungle, those creatures as wild and secret as the beasts of the bush and more cruel and more furtive.
Boonda Broke had learned no secrets of him, had been met by an unconscious but steady resistance, and at length his patience had given way in spite of himself. He had white blood in his veins fighting Irish blood which sometimes overcame his smooth, Oriental secretiveness and cautious duplicity; and this was one of those occasions.
On this hot, long, silent ride he looked back carefully, but he could not see where he had been to blame; and, if he were, he hoped to strike a balance with his own conscience for having been friendly to Boonda Broke, and to justify himself in his father's eyes.
There was a sudden swaying movement of the shrieking mass between Boonda Broke and Pango Dooni, and in the confusion and displacement Boonda Broke had disappeared. Panic and flight came after, and the hillsmen and the little garrison were masters of the field. "I have paid the debt of the mare," said Pango Dooni, laughing.
With one accord they rose in their places and swore over bread and a drop of blood of their chief that they would not sheathe their swords again till a thousand of Boonda Broke's and the Dakoon's men lay where their own kinsmen had fallen. If it chanced that Tang-a-Dahit was dead, then they would never rest until Boonda Broke and all his clan were blotted out.
They could hear one gun firing intermittently, and the roars of Boonda Broke's men. They did not call or cry till within a few hundred yards of the Residency Square. Then their battle-call broke forth, and Boonda Broke turned to see seven hundred bearing down on his ten thousand, the black flag with the yellow sunburst over them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking