The Chief halted and swept an arm in an encompassing embrace of the tent-studded plain.

“We are not a nation to muster an army because now the cannon that belch forth a shower of death mow horsemen down like ripened grain.  It was the dead Chief’s ambition, but it is wrong.”

Barlow was struck with the wise logic of this tall wide-browed warrior, it was wrong.  Massed together Pindaris and Bundoolas assailed by the trained hordes of Mahrattas, with their French and Portuguese gunners and officers, would be slaughtered like sheep.  And against the war-trained Line Regiments of the British foot soldiers they would meet the same fate.  “You are right, Chief Kassim,” Barlow declared; “even if you cut in with the winning side, especially Sindhia, he would turn on you and devour you and your people.”

“Yes, Sahib.  The trade of a Pindari, if I may call it so, has been that of loot in this land that has always been a land of strife for possession.  I rode with Chitu as a jamadar when we swept through the Nizam’s territory and put cities under a tribute of many lakhs, but that was a force of five thousand only, and we swooped through the land like a great flock of hawks.  But even at that Chitu, a wonderful chief, was killed by wild animals in the jungle when he was fleeing from disaster, almost alone.”

They were now close to the palace, and as they entered, just within the great hall Kassim said:  “There will be nothing to say on thy part, Captain Sahib; the officers will come even now to the audience and it is all agreed upon.  Thou wilt be given an assurance to take back to the British, for by chance the others have great confidence in me, even more in a matter of diplomacy than they had in the dead leader, may Allah rest his soul!”

And to the audience chamber—­where had sat oft two long rows of minor chiefs, at their head on a raised dais the Rajput Raja, a Seesodia, one of the “Children of the Sun,” as the flaming yellow gypsum sun above the dais attested—­now came in twos and threes the wild-eyed whiskered riders of the desert.  They were lean, raw-boned, steel-muscled, tall, solemn-faced men, their eyes set deep in skin wrinkled from the scorch of sun on the white sands of the desert.  And their eyes beneath the black brows were like falcon’s, predatory like those of birds of prey.  And the air of freedom, of self-reliance, of independence was in every look, in the firm swinging stride, and erect set of the shoulders.  They were men to swear by or to fear; verily men.  And somehow one sharp look of appraisement, and one and all would have sworn by Allah that the Sahib in the garb of an Afghan was a man.

As each one entered he strode to the centre of the room, drew himself erect facing the heavy curtain beyond which lay the dead Chief, and raising a hand to brow, said in a deep voice:  “Salaam, Amir Khan, and may the Peace of Allah be upon thy spirit.”