in order to set
a good example, allowed himself to be led over by the shepherd with his
eyes carefully bandaged lest he should get giddy in the middle by
looking down. As a matter of fact, this only made Head-nurse more
frightened, for, of course, the bridge swung and swayed with the weight
of the men on it. She would sooner, she declared, try to climb Heaven on
a rainbow! That was at least steady. Roy tried to hearten her up by
walking over himself with open eyes, though he felt frightfully dizzy
and had to fling himself flat on the grass to recover when he did get
over. Then Meroo, blubbering loudly that he was going to his death for
his young master, climbed up on the shepherd's back and allowed himself
to be carried over just to show how easy it was.

It was all in vain! Head-nurse was firm. They must bring the tents to
the Heir-to-Empire; the Heir-to-Empire should not go across a tight rope
to the tents. And there she would have remained had not a great, tall
burly woman with a fat baby on her hip come out of one of the tents, and
grasping the position, stalked over the bridge without even touching the
hand rail, caught Baby Akbar from Foster-mother, who was too taken aback
to resist, set him on her other hip and calmly stalked back again,
leaving the two women too surprised and horrified even to scream.

But when they saw the Heir-to-Empire safe on the other side, they
consented to be carried across pick-a-back.

So there they were before long eating goats' milk cheese fried like a
beefsteak and drinking long draughts of a sort of sour milk.

One of the shepherds could speak a little Persian, and from him
Foster-father, to his great relief, learned that Prince Askurry's camp
was only a mile or two down the valley, so, feeling certain of being
able to reach it before sundown, he called a halt, and they all lay down
to rest in one of the tents, Baby Akbar between his two nurses for
safety sake. For one could never tell, Head-nurse remarked, what might
happen amongst people who spoke the language of ghosts in the desert,
and kept such strange animals. A great golliwog of a black dog who sat
on one side of the tent like an image, watching them as if he meant to
eat them, and a great fluff of a white cat sitting on the other with her
eyes shut as if she did not want to watch them.

No! Indeed it was impossible to tell what might not happen!

And that is exactly how it turned out. What _really_ did happen no one
k