Salaman and the bearer stood humbly close at hand till I had finished, and then took plate and tray with the remains of the melon.
“Will my lord return to the tent?” asked Salaman.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said indifferently.
“But my lord might be sleeping when the holy man comes back to himself. You see, he is not there now. It is only his body.”
“How these old impostors of fakirs do deceive the people,” I thought, as I glanced at Dost; then aloud—
“Well, suppose I were sleeping?”
“The holy man might harm my lord.”
“Not he,” I said, in a voice full of contempt. “Words do no harm whatsoever.”
Salaman bowed and went his way, and I took up a palm-leaf fan, and began to use it, not as a wafter of cool wind, but as a screen to hide my face when I spoke to Dost, and from behind which I could keep an eye on the tents, and see when any one was coming.
As soon as I gave him a signal, Dost began again, but without stirring a muscle; in fact, so rigid did he look that it would have puzzled any one to make out whence the low muffled voice came with such a peculiar whispered hiss, caused by its passing through the thick beard which muffled his lips.