“And I say yes, yes, yes. I haven’t got such a troop of elephants as Rajah Suleiman, but I have got two beauties who would face any tiger in the jungle, and my people could show you more stripes than his could. But perhaps I am so simple at home that you would rather go and stay with His Highness.”
“Look here, Hamet,” whispered Archie quickly; “you said that to me last time, just as if I had slighted you.”
“Beg pardon, old chap. I didn’t mean it; but your people—I don’t know how it is—don’t seem to take to me. I always feel as if they didn’t trust me, and I don’t think that I shall care about coming here any more.”
“What!” cried Archie excitedly, as he found that he had to take his seat at the table beside the young Rajah, whose face was beginning to assume a lowering aspect, as he saw that the Major’s original intentions had been hurriedly set aside and the chair on the latter’s right was occupied by the Rajah Suleiman, that on his left by a keen, sharp-looking gentleman who might have been met in one of the Parisian cafés, so thoroughly out of place did he seem in a military mess-room rather roughly erected in a station on the banks of a Malay jungle river.
“What!” said Archie again, in a low tone; and he noted how his companion was furtively watching the attention paid to his brother Rajah.
“I’ll tell you presently,” said the young Malay. “But who is that gentleman?”
“That? Oh, he’s a traveller. He’s a French count.”
“French count?” said his companion. “A great friend of Suleiman’s, isn’t he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Yes, he is. So one of my people says.”