d up by the orderly, whose pipe was in barracks,
and must lie there untouched until evening at least; for he had stood at
this door since seven that morning, waiting orders; and he knew by the
look on Colonel Cumner's face that he might be there till to-morrow.

But the ordinary spectator could not have noticed any difference in the
general look of things. All was quiet, too, in the big native city. At
the doorways the worker in brass and silver hammered away at his metal,
a sleepy, musical assonance. The naked seller of sweetmeats went by
calling his wares in a gentle, unassertive voice; in dark doorways
worn-eyed women and men gossiped in voices scarce above a whisper; and
brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep
on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was
selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few
scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards
Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went by,
oblivious of all things.

Yet, too, the keen observer could have seen gathered into shaded corners
here and there, a few sombre, low-voiced men talking covertly to each
other. They were not the ordinary gossipers; in the faces of some were
the marks of furtive design, of sinister suggestion. But it was all so
deadly still.

The gayest, cheeriest person in Mandakan was Colonel Cumner's son. Down
at the opal beach, under a palm-tree, he sat, telling stories of his
pranks at college to Boonda Broke, the half-breed son of a former Dakoon
who had ruled the State of Mandakan when first the English came. The
saddest person in Mandakan was the present Dakoon, in his palace by the
Fountain of the Sweet Waters, which was guarded by four sacred warriors
in stone and four brown men armed with the naked kris.

The Dakoon was dying, though not a score of people in the city knew it.
He had drunk of the Fountain of Sweet Waters, also of the well that is
by Bakbar; he had eaten of the sweetmeat called the Flower of Bambaba,
his chosen priests had prayed, and his favourite wife had lain all day
and all night at the door of his room, pouring out her soul; but nothing
came of it.

And elsewhere Boonda Broke was showing Cumner's Son how to throw a kris
towards one object and make it hit another. He gave an illustration by
aiming at a palm-tree and sticking a passing dog behind the shoulder.
The dog belonged to Cumner's Son, and