“In that case,” replied the latter, “I invite the Sirdar to withdraw. It is not safe to stay—for him, for as the life of the Sirdar Allah-din Khan must be worth the lives of all his followers put together, it is not good policy to throw away so valuable a life.”
The tone was perfectly even, in itself containing no threat. Mervyn was at his best now, cool, desperate, therefore deadly dangerous. At his words a gasp of amazement escaped from the other side. The first thought was of a trap. Were there soldiers concealed in the tent, with rifles trained upon them through the canvas? And meanwhile Mervyn stood confronting them, calmly; one hand, however, always behind him.
“The life of so important a chief as the Sirdar Allah-din Khan must be of great value,” he went on in the same unconcerned tone. “And—he has but one.”
“And thou hast two, Feringhi,” answered the chief, darkly. “Two, and that means two deaths instead of one, lingering and painful deaths at that. One of thy ‘lives’ is behind in the tent. Good! I may fall or I may not, but I swear on the tomb of the Prophet that if thou so much as drawest the weapon now held behind thee, thou and thy daughter,”—this was a figure of speech—“shall be burnt alive. She first.”
Mervyn felt desperate. He tried not to pale as he gazed at the speaker. But his hand did not move from behind him. In that fierce, hard, set countenance, in the very words of the oath uttered, he knew there would be no going back from that sentence. He might shoot the chief dead, but no power on earth would turn the whirlwind rush of his followers. And they would be as good as their leader’s word, as to that he entertained no doubt whatever. Melian—writhing in a death of fiery torment—the bare idea was as a pictured glimpse into hell itself. A great roll of time swept over his mind in that moment or two, as he stood, confronting the man in whose power he was.
“She first,” this barbarian had said. There was a full refinement of diabolical cruelty in the words. God! the thing was unthinkable!
“I draw no weapon,” he answered. “What does the Sirdar Allah-din Khan require. Money?”
“Thyself.”
The answer was curt, deep toned, uncompromising.
“Myself?”