One of them, standing a little back from the other, was Diggle; the other, a tall, powerful figure in raiment as gaudy as the painted peacocks around him, his fingers covered with rings, a diamond blazing in his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais.  Behind him, against the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes, and blazing with jewels.  At one side was his hookah, at the other a two-edged sword and an unsheathed dagger.  Below the dais on either hand two fierce-visaged Marathas stood, their heads and shoulders covered with a helmet, their bodies cased in a quilted vest, each holding a straight two-edged sword.  Between Angria and the idol two fan bearers lightly swept the air above their lord’s head with broad fans of palm leaves.

Desmond walked towards the dais, feeling woefully out of place amid the brilliant costumes of Angria’s court.  Scarcely two of the Marathas were dressed alike; some were in white, some in lilac, others in purple, but each with ornaments after his own taste.  Desmond had not had time before leaving the Good Intent to smarten himself up, and he stood there a tall, thin, sunburnt youth in dirty, tattered garments, doing his best to face the assembly with British courage.

At the foot of the dais he paused and held out the captain’s note.  Diggle took it in silence, his face wearing the smile that Desmond knew so well and now so fully distrusted.  Without reading it, he tore it in fragments and threw them upon the floor, at the same time saying a few words to the resplendent figure at his side.

Tulaji Angria was dark, inclined to be fat, and not unpleasant in feature.  But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle.  Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling, scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt his knees tremble under him.  What was the Pirate saying?  That he was the subject of their conversation was plain from the glances thrown at him; that he was at a crisis in his fate he knew by instinct; but, ignorant of the tongue they spoke, he could but wait in fearful anxiety and mistrust.

He learned afterwards the purport of the talk.

“That is your man?” said Angria.  ’You have deceived me.  I looked for a man of large stature and robust make, like the Englishmen I already have.  What good will this slim, starved stripling be in my barge?”

“You must not be impatient, huzur {lord},” replied Diggle.  “He is a stripling, it is true; slim, certainly; starved—­well, the work on board ship does not tend to fatten a man.  But give him time; he is but sixteen or seventeen years old, young in my country.  In a year or two, under your regimen, he will develop; he comes of a hardy stock, and already he can make himself useful.  He was one of the quickest and handiest on board our ship, though this was his first voyage.”