"Nay, both of you! Ye shall both beg!" said Yasmini, "or Ranjoor
Singh shall taste a hillman's mercy. He shall die so dishonored that
the regiment shall hang its head in shame."
"Impossible!" said Kirby. "His honor is as good as mine!'
"Then beg for his and thine--on your knees, Colonel sahib!"
Then it seemed to Colonel Kirby that the room began to swim, for
what with the heat and what with an unconquerable dread of snakes, he
was not in shape to play his will against this woman's.
"What if I kneel?" he asked.
"I will promise you Ranjoor Singh, alive and clean!"
"When?"
"In time!"
"In time for what?"
"Against the regiment's need!"
"No use. I want him at once!" said Colonel Kirby.
"Then go, sahib! Put out the fire with the sweat that streams from
thee! Nay, go, both of you--ye have my leave to go! And what is a
Sikh risaldar more or less? Nay, go, and let the Jat die!"
It is not to be written lightly that the British colonel of Outram's
Own and his adjutant both knelt to a native woman--if she is a native--in
a top back-room of a Delhi bazaar. But it has to be recorded that
for the sake of Ranjoor Singh they did.
They knelt and placed their foreheads where she bade them, against
the divan at her feet, and she poured enough musk in their hair, for
the love of mischief, to remind them of what they had done until in
the course of slowly moving nature the smell should die away.
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