“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!  Jaimihr is no use at all to us in here.  Outside, he’d be veritable godsend!”

CHAPTER XXVI

    There is war to the North should I risk and ride forth,
    And a fight to the South, too, I’m thinking;
    There is war in the East, and one battle at least
    In the West between eating and drinking. 
    I’m allowed to rejoice in an excellent choice
    Of plans for a soldier of mettle,
    For all of them mean bloody war and rapine. 
    So—­on which should a gentleman settle?

With his muscles strained and twisted (for his Rangar capturers had dragged him none too gently) and with his jewelled pugree all awry, Jaimihr did not lack dignity.  He held his chin high, although he gazed at the bubbling spring thirstily; and, thirsty though he must have been, he asked no favors.

One of Alwa’s men brought him a brass dipper full of water, after washing it out first thoroughly and ostentatiously.  But Jaimihr smiled.  His caste forbade.  He waved away the offering much as Caesar may have waved aside a crown, with an air of condescending mightiness too proud to know contempt.

“Go, help thyself!” growled Alwa; and Jaimihr walked to the spring without haste, knelt down, and dipped up water with his hand.

“Now to a cell with him!” commanded Alwa, before the Prince had time to slake a more than ordinary thirst.  Jaimihr stood upright as four men closed in on him, and looked straight in the eyes of every one in turn.  Rosemary McClean stepped back, to hide herself behind Cunningham’s broad shoulders, but Jaimihr saw her and his proud smile broadened to a laugh of sheer amusement.  He let his captors wait for him while he stared straight at her, sparing her no fragment of embarrassment.

“I slew a man once to save thee, sahiba!” he mocked.  “Why slink away?  Have I ever been thy enemy?”

Then he folded his arms and walked off between his guards, without even an acknowledgment of Alwa’s or any other man’s existence on the earth.

Alwa spat as he wiped blood from his long sabre.  He imagined he was doing the necessary dirty work out of Miss McClean’s sight; but, except hospital nurses, there are few women who can see dry blood removed from steel without a qualm; she had looked at Alwa to escape Jaimihr’s gaze; now she looked at Jaimihr’s back to avoid the sight of what Alwa was seeing fit to do.  And with all the woman in her she pitied the prisoner, who had said no less than truth when he claimed to have killed a man for her.