"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