CHAPTER XXI

Howrah City bows the knee
(More or less) to masters three,
King, and Prince, and Siva. 
Howrah City comes and goes—­
Buys and sells—­and never knows
Which is friend, and which are foes—­

                King, or Prince, or Siva.

That that followed Alwa’s breakaway was all but the tensest hour in Howrah City’s history.  The inevitable—­the foiled rage of the priests and Jaimihr’s impudent insistence that the missionaries should be handed over to him—­the Maharajah’s answer—­all combined to set the murmurings afoot.  Men said that the threatened rebellion against the rule of Britain had broken loose at last, and a dozen other quite as false and equally probable things.

Jaimihr, finding that his palace was intact, and that only the prisoner and three horses from his stable were missing, placed the whole guard under arrest—­stormed futilely, while his hurrying swarm flocked to him through the dinning streets—­and then, mad-angry and made reckless by his rage, rode with a hundred at his back to Howrah’s palace, scattering the bee-swarm of inquisitive but so far peaceful citizens right and left.

With little ceremony, he sent in word to Howrah that he wanted Alwa and the missionaries; he stated that his private honor was at stake, and that he would stop at nothing to wreak vengeance.  He wanted the man who had dared invade his palace—­the man whom he had released—­and the two who were the prime cause of the outrage.  And with just as little ceremony word came out that the Maharajah would please himself as to what he did with prisoners.

That message was followed almost instantly by the high priest of Siva in person, angry as a turkey-gobbler and blasphemously vindictive.  He it was who told Jaimihr of the unexpected departure through the palace-grounds.

“Ride, Jaimihr-sahib!  Ride!” he advised him.

“How many have you?  A hundred?  Plenty!  Ride and cut him off!  There is but one road to Alwa’s place; he must pass by the northern ford through Howrah River.  Ride and cut him off!”

So, loose-reined, foam-flecked, breathing vengeance, Jaimihr and his hundred thundered through the dark hot night, making a bee-line for the point where Alwa’s band must pass in order to take the shortest route to safety.

It was his word to the Jew that saved Alwa’s neck.  He and his men were riding borrowed horses, and he had promised to return them and reclaim his own.  They had moved at a walk through winding, dark palace-alleys, led by a palace attendant, and debouched through a narrow door that gave barely horse-room into the road where Jaimihr had once killed a Maharati trader who molested Rosemary McClean.  The missionary and his daughter were mounted on the horses seized in Jaimihr’s stable; Joanna, moaning about “three gold mohurs, sahib—­three, where are they?” was up behind Ali Partab, tossed like a pea on a drum-skin by the lunging movements of the wonder of a horse.