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Duncan McClean, looking ill and weak and helpless, crowded his daughter to the wall, standing between her and the Prince; but Jaimihr aimed a swinging sabre at him, and the missionary fell. His daughter stooped to bend over him, and Jaimihr seized her below the arms. A second later he had hoisted her to his saddle-bow and was spurring hell-bent-for-leather for the open country.
"What do you propose to do about it?" inquired Byng. "It's out of our province. A copy of this letter has been sent to the proper quarter, and no doubt the story will be investigated. There have been all kinds of stories about suttee being practised in Howrah, and it very likely won't be difficult to find a plausible excuse for deposing the Maharajah and putting Jaimihr in his place.
"I obey him! I go with him!" growled Mahommed Gunga. "Sahib, I would like time to think this over." "How much time? I thought you quick-witted when you made Jaimihr prisoner. Has that small success undermined your power of decision? I know my mind. Mahommed Gunga knows his, Alwa-sahib." "I ask an hour. There are many points I must consider. There is the prisoner for one thing."
Somebody's word has got to break, and you may take it from me that it will be the word of the weakest man! I think that that man is Jaimihr, but I can't be sure in advance, and we've got to accept his promise to begin with. Go to him, Miss McClean, and make a very careful bargain with him along the line I mapped out for you. Alwa-sahib, I want witnesses, or rather overhearers.
He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and the thought seemed tantalizing. "It is not to be done," said Jaimihr, speaking in a dialect peculiar to Howrah.
"How is that for a start, sahib?" demanded Mahommed Gunga exultantly, as two men deposited the dishevelled Jaimihr on his feet, and the Prince glared around him like a man awaking from a dream. "How is that for a beginning?" "As bad as could be!" answered Cunningham. "It was well executed bold clever anything you like, Mahommed Gunga, but if I'd been asked I'd have sooner made the devil prisoner!
"Do you understand, Alwa-sahib, that if Jaimihr keeps his promise to her, she must keep hers to him? Do you realize that?" "Allah! Listen to him! Yes, sahib. Truly, bahadur, I appreciate! I also know that I have given certain promises which I, too, must fulfil! She is not the only bargainer!
This is my affair my private quarrel with Jaimihr!" Mahommed Gunga turned to Ali Partab, who had been a shadow to him ever since he came. "Turn out my five, and bring my charger!" he commanded. "No, I say!" Alwa had his hand already on his sabre hilt. "There is room for eight and no more. Four following four abreast, and one ahead to lead them. I and my men know how to do this.
"If Alwa and Mahommed Gunga are in league with my brother," muttered Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, "then the sooner the British quarrel with both of them the better. Howrah alone I can dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts for the British to spike the guns of the other two. By the time that is done, I will be Maharajah!"
"I will give thee the missionaries, against thy word to support me on this throne." "Against whom?" "Against all comers." "If I refuse, what then?" "Jaimihr who by this time must surely be thy very warmest friend! shall attack thee unmolested. Pledge thy word take thy missionary people and Jaimihr must oppose thee and me combined." "Should Jaimihr ride after me, what then?"
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