"By killing one of the elephants and eating him. Let's see; eleven of them. How long would they last?"
"Nonsense!"
"'Tisn't. Old Mike would cook them so as to make something good, and so that they wouldn't be tough."
"Don't make fun out of our troubles," said Phra bitterly.
"Why not? they're bad enough, so one needn't try to make them worse."
"What I dread is—" began Phra, but Harry interrupted him.
"I know; that the enemy won't come and be well thrashed."
"No; that the water supply will be stopped. Father wondered that they had not dug up the bamboo pipes and cut that off."
"Pooh! Let them. Father and Doctor Cameron talked that over the other night, and they said that near as we are to the river they would find water before we had dug down ten feet, and there would be abundance. Look here, Phra; I've thought over it all, and now the place is so strong we can laugh at the enemy and starve them out. Give up? Why, if it came to the worst, we should shut ourselves up in that wing, and blow away the big passage which joins it to the rest of the palace. Then we should defend it step by step till we were on the roof, and fight there till the last of us was killed. English people would rather die fighting than give up to be murdered by a set of savages like the enemy."
Phra was silent.