But the crowd were already past that, and the cries 'He is a spy!' 'He hath defiled us!' 'Whom hath he not touched?' 'He hath been here all day!' 'He is sent to make us Christians!' rose on all sides.
Chris, his back to the temple, set his teeth. Beyond the crowd, that was kept at a yard's distance yet by something in his face, he could see two women, scarlet and white robed, sobbing in each other's arms, and the sight made him savage for their pain.
'How can I defile you?' he cried; 'I am Brahmin. Yonder is my mother. My father all know. Who dares to take my birthright from me?'
'Who? thyself!' came viciously from the foremost row of priests. 'Where is thy sacred thread, apostate?'
Chris flinched for the first time. It was true. In a fit of anger when his own received him not, he had removed the badge of the twice-born with his own hands. So he had nothing to which he could appeal. Nothing old or new!
'Listen!' he began again helplessly, and the crowd feeling the helplessness surged closer.
'Kill him!' said one voice, dominating the others by the very simplicity of its advice. 'He is nothing. He is not of us, nor of the Huzoors. Who wants him?'
Another instant and the advice might have been followed had not some one claimed poor Chris--had not a voice from behind said softly--
'Well! I'm dashed if it ain't the guv'nor! Now then! you niggers!'
The next instant, with a plentiful if quite good-natured use of heels and elbows, Chris Davenant's foreman of works was through the crowd into the water, and so, facing round on those threatening faces, was backing towards Chris, and making furious feints with his fists the while.