“Oh, no,” said Chumbley; “you are angry and indignant, and you forget that we are, too. How can we be pleased that you have so roughly brought us here?”
“But you ought to be, and very proud,” she cried sharply.
“Well, we will not argue that,” said Chumbley; “but I wish to tell you that you must think this over carefully and well. Insignificant as we two men may be, it touches England’s honour that a Malay ruler should seize us and make us prisoners.”
“I care not,” she retorted. “I have thought it over well.”
“I suppose so, madam,” said Chumbley; “but let me tell you that England will not let us stay here your prisoners; sooner than let you triumph she would send an army to search for and take us back.”
“And I tell you,” cried the Princess, fiercely, “that I have thought well over all this, and have made such plans, that even if your people did not think you dead, they would not find you. I am queen with my people, and I will not be beaten when I undertake a task. If they should learn that you were here, and come to shoot and burn, we would flee into the jungle.”
“Where they would hunt you out, Princess, cost what it might,” said Chumbley.
“Let them,” said the Inche Maida, with her eyes flashing, and looking very queenly as she spoke. “They are big and strong, and they have many men. They would surround us then, and think to take us and drag you away; but they do not know our people yet—they do not know what a Malay Princess would do. Mr Chumbley,” she said, speaking to him, but gazing at Hilton as she spoke, “we Malays are gentle and calm, but we have angry passions. If you rouse the hot blood within us, it becomes fierce and hotter still. Don’t think that I shall not have my way; for I tell you that at the last, sooner than be conquered by those your people sent, I would kill you both, and then—then,” she cried excitedly, “I should kill myself!”