“Scarcely so impossible as your Highness seems to imagine,” made answer Azimoolah, as his face glowed with the inhuman cruelty that stirred his heart.
“How shall we reach them?” was the angry question of his master.
“By stratagem.”
“Ah, that is good! But how?”
“These people are reduced to extremity. They have many women and children with them; for their sakes they will be glad to accept terms. Let us proclaim a truce, and offer, as a condition of their laying down their arms, to convey them by water to Allahabad.”
The Nana laughed as he observed—
“You are an excellent counsellor, Azi, and I like your scheme; but having got them out, what then?”
He asked this question with a great deal of significance; for although a diabolical thought was shaping itself in his brain, his recreant heart dare not give it words. And so he waited for his tool to make the suggestion.
“Having got them out, I think the rest is easy, your Highness.”