"Yes."
"And no one listened, I suppose?" said Shere Ali bitterly.
"Or listened too late," said Phillips. "Like Dewes, who only since he met you in Calcutta one day upon the racecourse, seems dimly to have understood the words the dead man spoke."
Shere Ali was silent. He stood looking at the grave and the obelisk with a gentler face than he had shown before.
"Why did he not wish it?" he asked at length.
"He said that it would mean unhappiness for you; that it might mean ruin for Chiltistan."
"Did he say that?" said Shere Ali slowly, and there was something of awe in his voice. Then he recovered himself and cried defiantly. "Yet in one point he was wrong. It will not mean ruin for Chiltistan."
So far he had spoken in English. Now he turned quickly towards his friends and spoke in his own tongue.
"It is time. We will go," and to Captain Phillips he said, "You shall ride back with me to Kohara. I will leave you at the doorway of the Residency." And these words, too, he spoke in his own tongue.
There rose a clamour among the seven who waited in the doorway, and loudest of all rose the voice of the mullah, protesting against Shere Ali's promise.