"No, sahib, but the same necessity may arise here as elsewhere. The English hate oppression, and if Ghoolab or his successors grind down the people beyond a certain point, they will interfere. Moreover, Cashmere is necessary to them. Through it runs the best road over the great northern chain of mountains. It is, quite as much as Afghanistan, the door of India, and round the valley at its northern end are troublesome tribes, whom the rulers of Cashmere have never been able to keep in order; the boundaries of China are not far away. A generation or two at the outside and the English will be rulers at Serinagur I think, sahib. What a blessing it would be to the country! In the first place, there would be neither over-taxation nor oppression. All would live and till their lands and work their loom, secure of enjoying their earnings in peace. Money would flow into the country, for the sahibs would come in great numbers from the plains, for health and for sport, and would spend their money freely, and would buy our manufactures from the weavers and silversmiths at first hand, while now they have to be sent down to market at great expense, and in troublous times at great risk. There, you see, sahib, we are taking the northern road; in two hours we shall be at Serinagur."
"All the better, Akram; this is a lovely view, and I should be a long time before I was tired of looking at it; but I am eager to see what kind of a place we are going to be shut up in so as to judge our chance of escape. I wish we could get hold of a couple of long knives and hide them somewhere about us, before we reach the town;" for the clothes they had worn when they were captured had been restored to them before starting.
"One might persuade one of these fellows riding by us to part with his knife, sahib; but our pockets are empty; at least mine are, and I don't suppose they have left you any better provided."
"No, Akram, but I have twenty gold pieces wrapped up in flannel and stowed away in a flap-pocket at the bottom of my holster. My uncle had it made on the day I left him. He said that it might be useful to have a small store of money there in case I ever fell among thieves; and it is so contrived that even if anyone put his hand right down to the bottom of the holster he would not suspect that there was a pocket there, for the flap exactly fits it, and makes a sort of false bottom. The money was stowed away there, and I have never thought of it since."
"It must be well hidden, sahib," Akram Chunder said with a laugh, "for I have put the saddle on and off a hundred times, and put your pistols and sometimes food into the holster, and never for a moment suspected that there was money lying there. Are you sure that it hasn't been taken?"
Percy put his hand down into the holster.
"It is all right, Akram, I can feel the roll of flannel under the flap."
"Well, sahib, if you can get out four pieces it is hard if I don't manage to get a couple of knives from this fellow next to me; as for the rest, if we can but hide them about us they may prove the means of our getting free from prison. Thinking it over, it seemed to me that our greatest difficulty was that we had no means of bribing anyone."
Percy managed to get out four gold pieces, and passed them quietly to his follower.
"Comrade," the latter said in a low voice to the dacoit riding beside him, "you have two knives in your girdle, at what do you value them?"