But the antagonists still lingered in their dressing-rooms while their trainers put the final touch to their preparations.  And while the antagonists lingered, the two young men next to him began again to talk, and this time the words fell on Shere Ali’s ears.

“I think it ought to be stopped,” said one.  “It can’t be good for us.  Of course the fellow who runs the circus doesn’t care, although he is an Englishman, and although he must have understood what was being shouted.”

“He is out for money, of course,” replied the other.

“Yes.  But not half a mile away, just across the Maidan there, is Government House.  Surely it ought to be stopped.”

The speaker was evidently serious.  He spoke, indeed, with some heat.  Shere Ali wondered indifferently what it was that went on in the circus in the Maidan half a mile from the Government House.  Something which ought to be stopped, something which could not be “good for us.”  Shere Ali clenched his hands in a gust of passion.  How well he knew the phrase!  Good for us, good for the magic of British prestige!  How often he had used the words himself in the days when he had been fool enough to believe that he belonged to the white people.  He had used it in the company of just such youths as those who sat next to him now, and he writhed in his seat as he imagined how they must have laughed at him in their hearts.  What was it that was not “good for us” in the circus on the Maidan?

As he wondered there was a burst of applause, and on the opposite side of the ring the soldier, stripped to the waist, entered with his two assistants.  Shere Ali was sitting close to the lower corner of the ring on the right-hand side of the stage; the soldier took his seat in the upper corner on the other side.  He was a big, heavily-built man, but young, active, and upon his open face he had a look of confidence.  It seemed to Shere Ali that he had been trained to the very perfection of his strength, and when he moved the muscles upon his shoulders and back worked under his skin as though they lived.  Shouts greeted him, shouts in which his surname and his Christian name and his nicknames were mingled, and he smiled pleasantly back at his friends.  Shere Ali looked at him.  From his cheery, honest face to the firm set of his feet upon the floor, he was typical of his class and race.

“Oh, I hope he’ll be beaten!”

Shere Ali found himself repeating the words in a whisper.  The wish had suddenly sprung up within him, but it grew in intensity; it became a great longing.  He looked anxiously for the appearance of the Jew from Singapore.  He was glad that, knowing little of either man, he had laid his money against the soldier.

Meanwhile the two youths beside him resumed their talk, and Shere Ali learned what it was that was not “good for us”!