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Updated: May 29, 2025
A head and shoulders dropped out of sight here and there; but the hillsmen were not counting their losses that day, and when Pango Dooni at last came near to Boonda Broke the men he had lost seemed found again, for it was like water to the thirsty the sight of this man. But suddenly there was a rush from the Residency Square, and thirty men, under the command of Cumner, rode in with sabres drawn.
At a word his chestnut mare got away with telling stride in pursuit of the unknown rider, passing up the Gap of Mandakan like a ghost. Cumner's Son had a start by about half a mile, but Tang-a-Dahit rode a mare that had once belonged to Pango Dooni, and Pango Dooni had got her from Colonel Cumner the night he escaped from Mandakan.
"No debt is paid till I see the face of my son," answered Cumner anxiously. Pango Dooni pointed with his sword. "In the Palace yard," said he. "In the Palace yard, alive?" asked Cumner. Pango Dooni smiled. "Let us go and see." Cumner wiped the sweat and dust and blood from his face, and turned to McDermot. "Was I right when I sent the lad?" said he proudly. "The women and children are safe."
"Captain, captain," said he, "the Red Plague is on the city!" McDermot staggered back in consternation. "No, no," cried he, "it is not so, sir!" "The man, the first, lies at the entrance of the Path by the Bazaar. No one will pass near him, and all the city goes mad with fear. What's to be done? What's to be done? Is there no help for it?" the lad cried in despair. "I'm going to Pango Dooni.
Behind the gun-carriage, which bore the body, walked the nephew of the great Dakoon, then came a clear space, and then Pango Dooni, and Cumner, and behind these twenty men of the artillery, at whose head rode McDermot and Cumner's Son. As they passed the Path by the Bazaar every eye among the hillsmen and among the handful of British was alert.
He looked sharply at the three men who sat with him. "That clinches it," said he. "One of those fellows was Pango Dooni's nephew, another was his wife's brother. It's the only thing to do some one must go to Pango Dooni, tell him the truth, ask him to come down and save the place, and sit up there in the Dakoon's place. He'll stand by us, and by England." No one answered at first.
If he speak for the hillsmen and say that all shall be well with thee, and thy city be restored when Pango Dooni sits in the Palace of the Dakoon, then shalt thou join with them, that there may be peace in the land, for Pango Dooni and the son of Pango Dooni be brave strong men.
The danger is a matter of hours. A hundred men, and a score of niggers what would that be against thirty thousand natives?" "Pango Dooni is as likely to butcher us as the Dakoon," said McDermot, the captain of artillery.
Cumner and Pango Dooni had placed him at this point for no other reason than to give him his chance for a blow, if he dared to strike it, at the most advantageous place in the city. The furtive hangers-on, cut-throats, mendicants, followers of Boonda Broke, and haters of the English, lurked in the Bazaars, and Gis-yo-Bahim should be tempted for the first and the last time.
Their path lay towards it, for Pango Dooni hid in the hills, where the sun hung a roof of gold above his stronghold. "Forty to one!" said Tang-a-Dahit suddenly. "Now indeed we ride for our lives!" Looking down the track of the hillsman's glance Cumner's Son saw a bunch of horsemen galloping up the slope. Boonda Broke's men!
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