“My lord, no. The man was seized, and in the fight he fell, and we thought him dead, for he was bleeding. Then we held the English lord here, and when we went to pick up the man, he was gone.”
“Then he has escaped?”
The man remained silent, and Ny Deen turned to me with his eyes full of mockery and a strange light, as they flashed in the glare of the torches.
“Well,” he said, “are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” I replied, “if it is true.”
“It is true enough,” he said carelessly. “Come.”
He signed to me to approach his side, and to my surprise, instead of my being led off as a prisoner, the rajah laid his hand upon my shoulder, and walked by me as if nothing had happened, right back to my room, when he threw himself upon the cushions and laughed.
“You foolish boy!” he said good-humouredly; “how could you be so weak as to commit such a folly. I am angry with you, not for offending me, for I suppose it was natural, but for lowering yourself so before my people, forcing me to have you—the man I meant to be my chief officer—hunted like an escaping prisoner. You might have been killed in your mad climbing, or by my people by accident in a struggle. That man came and tempted you to go?”
“I wanted no tempting,” I replied.
“It is a pity,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “You degraded yourself, and you lowered me before my people.”