"Yet if you live," said Sanders, "many other great kings will say, 'We may commit these abominations, and because of our greatness we shall live.'"
"And what of me, lord?" said the girl in a low voice.
"You!" Sanders looked at her. "Ho, hi," he said, as though he had just remembered her. "You are the dancing girl? Now we shall do nothing with you, Daihili—because you are nothing."
He saw her shrink as one under a lash.
After the execution, the Colonel of the Houssas and Sanders were talking together.
"What I can't understand," said the Colonel, "is why we suddenly decided upon this expedition. It has been necessary for years—but why this sudden activity?"
Sanders grinned mysteriously.
"A wonderful people, the English," he said airily. "Old Man Limbili steals British subjects, and I report it. 'Very sad,' says England. He wipes out a nation. 'Deplorable!' says England. He makes me dance on the original good-intention stones of Hades. 'Treat it as a joke,' says England; but when I point out that these stones assay one ounce ten penny-weights of refined gold, and that we've happed upon the richest reef in Central Africa, there's an army here in six months!"
I personally think that Sanders may have been a little unjust in his point of view. After all, wars cost money, and wars of vengeance are notoriously unprofitable.