CHAPTER XVII—MRS. ULSWATER TAKES ACTION
SADLER came down late in the afternoon, and with him little Irish and King Ogel. If Mrs. Ulswater was expecting a contrite king, she was disappointed. He strutted across the deck in front of a bodyguard of three huge warriors, whose garb and outfit were more ferocious than ornamental, more ornamental than decorous, and more ornamental in intention than in result. He was unashamed. His misbehaviour had left no traces on his complacence. He was impertinently vain of that terrific bodyguard. I noticed Mrs. Ulswater's expression become suddenly set and determined. I knew the king's complacence irritated her, his unrepented misbehaviour roused her instinct for discipline. Something was going to happen. I looked at the warriors. I wished it might not be something that would cause the introduction into my anxious digestive organism of those shovel-headed spears, unpleasant objects, nay, surely indigestible. I hoped for the best. I was calm but expectant.
“Doctor,” said Mrs. Ulswater, “when kings are invited to tea, don't people have entertainments for them?”
“Invariably! Music and dancing!” I exclaimed, delighted, relieved at the turn Mrs. Ulswater's intentions seemed to be taking. “Daughters of Herodias—hem—I mean to say you are quite right. No barbaric potentate can swallow his victuals without some agreeable distraction.”
“Of course we haven't any of those things,” she said, and looked thoughtfully at Ram Nad, who was squatted near on the flowered carpet, “but if Ram Nad should hypnotise the king's men, don't you think it would amuse him?”
She pointed to the bodyguards. I thought it would. Ram Nad consented.
Venerable and unappalled, he drew near, sat down in front of the guards, and began his monotonous chant and circuitous gesturing before their stolid faces, whose stationary expressions and complexions variegated with tattoo were unmoved by Ram Nad's odd behaviour. Slowly those copper-skinned and impassive spearmen in ornamental outfit keeled over and lay stretched and rigid, mute symbols of barbarism, promiscuously prostrate, frozen ferocities, motionless images of war. A whirl of Ram Nad's hand, and they rolled, tumbled, turning promiscuity into chaos, across the deck, and brought up in the scuppers among the geranium pots. There lay shields and spears, sprawling legs and tattooed faces, grotesque and horrific, among the brown earthenware pots, the round velvety leaves and small red petals of that plant so familiar in the cleanly windows of our native land.
The king was delighted. He thumped his chest, and laughed.