'Yes. They'd find it difficult without guns, unless they could manage it by the river.'

Jân-Ali-shân shook his head. 'Not if we'd a rifle or two aboard, sir, to nick 'em off in the boats.'

'Couldn't they get along the spit,' suggested Chris, absolutely at random.

'Might be done, mayhap,' admitted the other, after a reflective pause. 'Leastways, if you was a "Ram Rammer" an' 'ad a right o' way through the 'ouse o' Rimming--beg pardin, sir, though you 'ave chucked old 'Oneyman an' 'is lot--I mean, if you was a Hindoo an' they'd let you through the temple. But even then we could nick 'em in the water afore they could get ropes slung.'

'There's the ladder, suggested Chris once more. He was not thinking of what he said. He was asking himself what he had not 'chucked' away recklessly? 'It is only about six feet up; they could easily----'

'They could easily do a lot if they was let, sir,' interrupted Jân-Ali-shân, as he turned to go, with a pitying look. 'But we don't let 'em. That's how it is. An we ain't such bally fools as to leave 'em ladders. No, sir? Two men--if they was men-'u'd keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time.'

As the trolly buzzed back stationwards, the group of yellow faces above the faded brocades gave up watching the manœuvres of the drawbridge, and returned to their kite-flying; and on the bathing-steps the men and women returned to the day's work. On the bastion there was a shade more listless doubt and dislike, on the steps a shade more uneasy wonder as to the signs of the times. That was all.

Only Burkut Ali, as he weighted his kite's tail with an extra grain or two of rice, nodded his head, and said with a sinister look--

'Two could play that game, and the first come would be master. "He who sits on the throne is king."'

'And he who sits not is none,' added Jehân's antagonist with a wink. He had quarrelled two days before with the Rightful Heir's pretensions to authority in the matter of a dancing-girl, and so, for the time being, headed the dissentient party which, with ever-shifting numbers and combinations, made the royal house--to the great satisfaction of the authorities--one divided against itself. 'If the Sun of the Universe is ready,' he went on, with mock ceremony, 'his slave waits to begin the match.'