"Salaam, Azim Ali," he said in response to the officer's greeting. "I have but now returned from the palace. The old king grows more feeble, and his authority less and less. There was much talk among us of the arrears of pay; but it is indeed true that the treasury is all but empty, and it will never be full while Wallidad Khan is collector of the revenue, and such pitiful nassars are brought to the king as were brought to-day. Imagine, Azim Ali, a bent old dodderer who claimed kinship with the Lord of the World, and offered him two rupees!"
"It is indeed pitiful," said the jamadar. "What is to be said to the sowars? They will assuredly plunder the shops if they get no pay, and the general has said that all plunderers shall be hanged."
"What, indeed? Is it not hard that our men, who have been enduring the heat and burden, throwing away their lives in fighting the English, should be worse off than such brigands as the men whom this Asadullah has brought into the city? The general forbids plunder: well, he is a friend of mine, and must be obeyed. But these new-comers, have they not plundered? What have they done but load themselves with the loot of villages, and snapped up ill-defended convoys—enterprises of little difficulty and less danger? There is great talk of this old freebooter as a man of high courage: hai! it is false. Do I not know of him? They call him lion; a more fitting name would be pariah dog. He is not a man to risk his skin. And yet, forsooth, he comes into Delhi at the head of these three hundred, and the king slobbers over him, and without doubt he will squeeze from the treasury what rupees he can, and then, when the word comes to fight, he will shelter himself behind us who know what fighting is, and expect his full share of plunder when the English are beaten. Hai! it is a shame and a scandal."
"True, most noble subahdar; it is enough to make our men rise up and claim that all who enter thus with full hands should share what they have among us."
"And what they could not keep but for us; for are there not princes in the city who, were these men left undefended, would swoop down like hawks upon them and strip them of all they have? Without us, trained soldiers, would not the English assuredly catch them and hang them up? Is this thing to be endured? Here are we, lodged within a shout's distance of them, and we starve while they live on the fat of the land."
Minghal knew the man he was talking to. He was a simple ruffian, who grew more and more indignant as his superior artfully stimulated his discontent.
"It would not be a matter of surprise to me," Minghal continued, "were the men to rise in their wrath and secure for themselves what is their just due. As a servant of our lord the king, and a loyal lieutenant of Bakht Khan, our commander-in-chief, I could not countenance such a transgression of his strict command; but I am a man like them: I know what hunger is: am I not myself often at my wit's end for the wherewithal to buy a meal, with many months' pay due to me? And as a man I could assuredly not blame any action that our sowars might take."
The simple jamadar gulped at the bait. Minghal had no need to say more. That same night, a Pathan trader who had entered the city by the Ajmir gate at sundown, just before all the gates were closed, witnessed a scene not unfamiliar in Delhi at this time of unrest and relaxed authority. In the space before a serai near the Jama Masjid, a great crowd of men was engaged in desperate rioting. He thought at first that it was one of those little affairs in which the princes of the blood, notably Abu Bakr, sometimes disported themselves: a raid upon a banker, or a silversmith, or some merchant who was suspected of having feathered his nest. But inquiring of an onlooker who stood out of harm's way watching the conflict, he learnt that the regiment of Minghal Khan—that bold warrior, and friend of the commander-in-chief—was attacking the quarters of a troop of three hundred Irregulars, men of all castes and no country, who had arrived in the city that day and been granted quarters in this serai by the king.
"And thou art a Pathan, too, by thy speech, O banijara," said the man. "Pathans are ever unruly—I mean no offence to thee, who art a man of peace. The noble subahdar, Minghal Khan, is a Pathan, and the leader of the new-comers is a Pathan also."
"What is his name, O bariya?" asked the trader, judging by his informant's attire that he was a swordsmith.