The Adventures of Kathlyn

With a diplomacy which would have graced a better man Umballa directed

the troopers to escort Kathlyn to her chamber in the zenana. He had in

mind seven days. Many things could be accomplished in that space of

time.

"For the present," he said, smiling at Kathlyn, "the God of your

fathers has proven strongest. But to-morrow! . . . Ah, to-morrow!

There will be seven days. Think, then, deeply and wisely. Your

khidmutgar Rao is a prisoner. It will be weeks ere your presence is

known here. You are helpless as a bird in the net. Struggle if you

will; you will only bruise your wings. The British Raj? The British

Raj does not want a great border war, and I can bring down ten thousand

wild hillmen outlaws between whom and the British Raj there is a blood

feud; ten thousand from a land where there is never peace, only truce.

In seven days. Salaam, heaven born!"

She returned his ironical gaze calmly over the shoulder of a trooper.

"Wait," she said. "I wish you to understand the enormity of your

crime."

"Crime?" with elevated eyebrows.

"Yes. You have abducted me."

"No. You came of your own free will."

"The white men of my race will not pause to argue over any such

subtlety. Marry you? I do not like your color."

A dull red settled under Umballa's skin.

"I merely wish to warn you," she went on, "that my blood will be upon

your head. And woe to you if it is. There are white men who will not

await the coming of the British Raj."

"Ah, yes; some brave hardy American; Bruce Sahib, for instance. Alas,

he is in the Straits Settlements! Seven days."

"I am not afraid to die."

"But there are many kinds of death," and with this sinister reflection

he stepped aside.

The multitude, seeing Kathlyn coming down from the dais, still

surrounded by her cordon of troopers, began reluctantly to disperse.

"Bread and the circus!"--the mobs will cry it down the ages; they will

always pause to witness bloodshed, from a safe distance, you may be

sure. There was a deal of rioting in the bazaars that night, and many

a measure of bhang and toddy kept the fires burning. Oriental politics

is like the winds of the equinox: it blows from all directions.

The natives were taxed upon every conceivable subject, not dissimilar

to the old days in Urdu, where a man paid so much for the privilege of

squeezing the man under him. Mutiny was afoot, rebellion, but it had

not yet found a head. The natives wanted a change, something to gossip

about during the hot lazy afternoons, over their hookas and coffee. To

them reform meant change only, not the alleviation of some of their

heavy burdens. The talk of freeing slaves was but talk; slaves were

lucrative investments; a man would be a fool to free them. An old man,

with a skin white like this new queen's and hair like spun wool,

dressed in a long black cloak and a broad brimmed hat, had started the

agitation of liberating the slaves. More than that, he carried no idol

of his God, never bathed in the ghats, or took flowers to the temples,

and seemed always silently communing with the simple iron cross

suspended from his neck. But he had died during the last visitation of

the plague.