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Updated: May 29, 2025
If ye choose Boonda Broke, then shall your city be levelled to the sea, and ye shall lose your name as a people. Choose!" One or two voices cried out; then from the people, and presently from the whole dark battalions, came the cry: "Long live Pango Dooni!" Pango Dooni rode down with Tang-a-Dahit and Cushnan Di. He bade all but five hundred mounted men to lay down their arms.
No man knew from Cumner's speech who was to be Dakoon, yet every man in Mandakan said in the quiet of his home that night: "To-morrow Pango Dooni will be Dakoon. We will be as the stubble of the field before him. But Pango Dooni is a strong man."
My father hath passed on this honour to me, but I yield it up to one who hath saved ye from a double death, even to the great Cumner's Son. He rode, as ye know, through peril to Pango Dooni, bearing the call for help, and he hath helped to save the whole land from the Red Plague. But for him Mandakan would be only a place of graves. Speak, children of heavenly Mandakan, whom will ye choose?"
No man knew from Cumner's speech who was to be Dakoon, yet every man in Mandakan said in the quiet of his home that night: "To-morrow Pango Dooni will be Dakoon. We will be as the stubble of the field before him. But Pango Dooni is a strong man."
And Pango Dooni sat on the ground near them and pondered, and no man broke his meditation. When the two hours were gone, they mounted again and rode on through the dark villages towards Mandakan. It was just at the close of the hour before dawn that the squad of troopers who rode a dozen rods before the columns, heard a cry from the dark ahead. "Halt-in the name of the Dakoon!"
In the homes of a few rich folk there was feasting also, for it mattered little to them whether Boonda Broke or Pango Dooni ruled in Mandakan, so that their wealth was left to them. But hundreds of tinkling little bells broke the stillness. These were carried by brown bare-footed boys, who ran lightly up and down the streets, calling softly: "Corn and tears and wine for the dead!"
By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni. "You travel near to Mandakan!" said the lad. "Do you ride with a thousand men?" "For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe," answered Tang-a-Dahit. "To thrust your head in the tiger's jaw," said Cumner's Son. "Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?"
When these heard Pango Dooni and the others in the Palace yard they were to ride straight for a gate which should be opened to them. There was delay in opening the stone door which led into the temple, but at last they forced their way. The place was empty, and they rode through the Palace yard, pouring out like a stream of spectral horsemen from the altar of the temple.
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.
Tower and minaret were like inverted cups of ruddy gold, and the streets all velvet dust, as Pango Dooni, guided by Cushnan Di, halted at the wood of wild peaches, and a great thicket near to the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, and looked out towards the Palace of the Dakoon.
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