“Ah-h-h!  So that was the way you took us into confidence?  Always secrets behind secrets, Kagig!  That is our complaint!”

“Listen, ye who would rather suspect than give credit!” He used one word in the Armenian.  “It was my plan—­my new plan, that seeing the Turks insist on giving us a governor, and are able to overwhelm us if we refuse, then I would be that governor!”

“Ah-h-h!  What did we say!  Unable to be king, you will be governor!”

“I talked that over with my new friend, and he did not agree with me, but I prevailed.  Now hear my last word on this matter:  I will not be governor of Zeitoon!  I will lead against this army that is coming.  If you men prevent me, or disobey me, or speak against me, I will hang you—­every one!  I will accept no reward, no office, no emolument, no title—­nothing!  Either I die here, fighting for Zeitoon, or I leave Zeitoon when the fighting is over, and leave it as I came to it—­penniless!  I give now all that I have to give.  I burn my bridges!  I take inviolable oath that I will not profit!  And by the God who fed me in the wilderness, I name my price for that and take my payment in advance!  I will be obeyed!  Out with you!  Get out of here before I slay you all!  Go and tell Zeitoon who is master here until the fight is lost or won!”

He seized a great firebrand and charged at them, beating right and left, and they backed away in front of him, protesting from under forearms raised to protect their faces.  He refused to hear a word from them, and drove, them back against the door.

Strange to say, it was Rustum Khan who gave up all further pretense at sleeping and ran round to fling the door open—­Rustum Khan who took part with Kagig, and helped drive them out into the dark, and Rustum Khan who stood astraddle in the doorway, growling after them in Persian—­the only language he knew thoroughly that they likely understood: 

“Bismillah!  Ye have heard a man talk!  Now show yourselves men, and obey him, or by the beard of God’s prophet there shall be war within Zeitoon fiercer than that without!  Take counsel of your women-folk!  Ye—­” (he used no drawing-room word to intimate their sex)—­“are too full of thoughts to think!”

Then he turned on Kagig, and held out a lean brown hand.  Kagig clasped it, and they met each other’s eyes a moment.

“Am I sportman?” Kagig asked ingenuously.

“Brother,” said Rustum Khan, “next after my colonel sahib I accept thee as a man fit to fight beside!”

We were all standing.  A free-for-all fight had seemed too likely, and we had not known whether there were others outside waiting to reinforce the delegation.  Rustum Khan sought Monty’s eyes.

“You have the news, sahib?”

Kagig laughed sharply, and dismissed the past hour from his mind with a short sweep of the hand.

“No.  Tell me,” said Monty.