To spring to his feet and face them did not take long.
"Ill-begotten, treacherous hounds!" he cried, ablaze with anger. "So canst thou dare when Babar sleeps--let us see who will lay hands on him awake!"
The villains fell back; but at that moment the tramp of horsemen was heard beyond the garden wall, and one of the trio laughed.
"Crow away, cockerel!" he cried. "Mayhap, hadst thou trusted us at first we might have let thee escape according to our oath. But now is the work of death taken out of our hands; for yonder comes a troop to seize thee and save our promise unbroken."
He turned as he spoke to welcome the newcomers, then started. For the horsemen hurrying in to the garden were not Babar's foes, but his friends!
"Kutluk! Babâi!" cried the young King, recognising two of his most devoted adherents. They flung themselves from their horses.
"The King! Long live the King!" they shouted, as bending the knee at a respectful distance they rushed forward to fall at the feet of their dear leader.
It had been a wonderful ride for life; yet in a way a needless one, as Babar told his uncles when he rejoined them. Since, had he but known, as he afterwards discovered, that the following party was not a whole detachment, but only a band of twenty troopers, he and his seven would of course, have made a stand and engaged them with every hope of success.
Not that it would have made much difference; for both the elder Khân and the younger one had become weary of their expedition, and on news of the Great Usbek raider Shaibâni's appearance in their country, had retired in hot haste to their dominions.
So Babar once more was at the end of his tether. The Moghuls he told his grandmother, to her great dudgeon, were no good as conquerors. Nature had made them pillagers, and an inch of plunder was worth more than an ell of honour.