United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat's-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.

Sookdee stared in affrighted silence, and Hunsa's bellow of rage was stilled by Ajeet, who whirling upon him, the jade-handled knife in his grip, commanded: "Still your clamour! The Gulab has but seen the truth. I, also, know that, but a soldier may not speak as may one of his women-kind." There was a sudden hush. A tremor of apprehension had vibrated from Bagree to Bagree; the jamadars felt it.

"Get a cannon, dogs, against one man," and again, whirling the great jade-handled knife, long as a short sword, he rushed forward and the little mob gave ground before the irresistible claymore-whirl, the unbreakable Maltese cross described by the razor-edge and needle-point.