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It was at this very point that the danger lay, for the nephew of the Dakoon, Gis-yo-Bahim, was a weak but treacherous man, ill-fitted to rule; a coward, yet ambitious; distrusted by the people, yet the heir to the throne.
A hillsman bound up the wound, and he rode on to the Tomb. The Dakoon was placed in his gorgeous house of death, and every man cried: "Sleep, lord of the earth!" Then Cumner stood up in his saddle, and cried aloud: "To-morrow, when the sun stands over the gold dome of the Palace, ye shall come to hear your Dakoon speak in the hall of the Heavenly Hours."
He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no information of any use to the foes of the Dakoon or the haters of the English.
A crocodile slipped off a log into the water he knew that sound; a rank odour came from the river bank he knew the smell of the hippopotamus. These very things gave him new courage. Since he came from Eton to Mandakan he had hunted often and well, and once he had helped to quarry the Little Men of the Jungle when they carried off the wife and daughter of a soldier of the Dakoon.
A look of satisfaction came into Pango Dooni's face. "Speak with the man alone," said he, and he drew back. Cumner's Son drew a little to one side with the man, who spoke quickly and low in English. "I have spoken the truth," said he. "I am Cushnan Di" he drew himself up "and once I had a city of my own and five thousand men, but a plague and then a war came, and the Dakoon entered upon my city.
For long they rode silently, and in that time Cumner's Son found new thoughts; and these thoughts made him love the brown hillsman as he had never loved any save his own father. "When there is peace in Mandakan," said he at last, "when Boonda Broke is snapped in two like a pencil, when Pango Dooni sits as Dakoon in the Palace of Mandakan "
The saddest person in Mandakan was the present Dakoon, in his palace by the Fountain of the Sweet Waters, which was guarded by four sacred warriors in stone and four brown men armed with the naked kris. The Dakoon was dying, though not a score of people in the city knew it.
He had gone to the Palace that morning as Colonel Cumner had commanded, that he might receive the thanks of the Dakoon for the people of Mandakan; but he had tired of the great place, and had come back to play at chuck-farthing. Already he had won everything the other possessed, and was now playing for his dinner.
"Why do you ask this?" asked McDermot, nodding towards Cumner's Son. The beggar shrugged his shoulders. "That he may not do with me as did the Rajah of Nangoon." "He is not Dakoon," said McDermot. "Will the young man promise me?" "Promise what?" asked Cumner's Son. "A mat to pray on, a house, a servant, and a loaf of bread, a bowl of goat's milk, and a silver najil every day till I die."
Hovering near were gloomy, wistful crowds of people, who drew close to the mystery of the House of Death, as though the soul of a Dakoon were of more moment than those of the thousand men who had fallen that day.
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