“His Highness the Maharajah gives you his word that your lives will be spared.”
“And if we refuse to surrender, what then?”
“Your bodies will be given to the crows and vultures,” said the officer. “For by sundown nothing of you will be left alive.”
“Look here, sir,” said the colonel; “have you ever read the Bible?”
“No; I read the Koran,” said the native officer, whose haughty, overbearing way seemed to be humbled before the stern Englishman who addressed him.
“Read in the Bible, too, and you will find there about how one Rabshakeh came summoning a people to surrender. He boasted, and so do you.”
“Do you surrender?” said the officer, with an attempt to resume his haughty tone of supremacy.
“No. Go and tell your mutinous master that we are ready to meet and punish him and his treacherous following of traitors, who are false to the queen they swore to serve. Tell him that if he will lay down his arms, and surrender to her Majesty’s and the great Company’s troops, he will have justice done, and to send no more messages here. They are insults to honourable gentlemen and their followers.”
“Then you refuse his highness’s mercy?” said the officer, haughtily.
“Back, sir, and deliver your message,” cried the colonel; “and tell his highness that if he dares to send any of his insolent mutinous scoundrels here again, I shall fire upon them. A flag of truce is not to protect traitors.”