Am-ma gave a contented little chuckle.
"He killed that, anyhow," he said nodding again, "and he hath the Dee-puk-râg. Is not that enough for poor folk?" Then his feet, feeling something far out of sight in the still deep waters, came air-wards, and his head went down.
When it came up again, the gang of prisoners were being filed back to gaol, leaving the still glowing embers of what had been a man to send a clear blue smoke into the clear blue sky.
"They have the Dee-puk-râg--that is enough," murmured the fisher to himself as he slid with the stream.
[CHAPTER VII]
THE WORLD'S DESIRE
The Viceroy's camp was no longer a city of dreams.
Its silence had gone, lost in that indefinable sense of sound which seems to come from the heart-beats, even, of unseen humanity; and the whiteness, the purity of it, was stained and smirched by the scarlet-as-sin coatees of the innumerable orderlies, who bustled about from tent to tent, with huge files of references, or lingered at the tent doors extorting shoe-money from the native visitors, who came in shoals to plead for patronage from one or another of the bigwigs belonging to the Hosts of the Lord-sahib. Groups of these petitioners, awaiting their turn for an interview, were to be seen at most tents; but they stood in crowds round one, in which the Commissioner of the Division was making the final arrangements for the coming durbar; in consultation with the Under Secretary to Supreme Government. It was a difficult task, involving as it did the classification of the aristocracy, plutocracy, and democracy of India, in one generally satisfactory Court-guide.
"It cann't be done in this wurrld," remarked the Commissioner, in one of those suave, plastic, Cork brogues which might be made of Cork butter from the softness and lack of friction they bring to the English language. "An' what's more the Archangel Gabriel couldn't do it in heaven, though he'd have a better chance; for the Cherubim wouldn't be wanting seats at all! We are bound to displease somebody, so let's cast lots before the Lord; it's Scriptural, annyhow."
The Under Secretary looked a trifle shocked, being unacquainted with the Commissioner's methods.