As he descended to hold audience with his staff, he smiled bitterly, and muttered—
“I am immensely strong in troops, I have powerful artillery, and if these fail to check the advance of these cursed English, I have yet one more card to fall back upon. I can still have revenge upon their women and children; and if the white soldiers should reach Cawnpore, they shall find the city a ruin, and its streets running with English blood. Shiva the Destroyer guides me, and victory shall yet be mine.”
On reaching his counsel-hall he found his officers were excited and alarmed. Fresh spies had come in with the confirmation of the first report: that Havelock was making desperate efforts by means of forced marches to reach Cawnpore. The Nana held hurried conversation with his advisers. His hopes of a few minutes before gave place to despair as he thought of the possibility of his newly-acquired power being wrested from him, and as the remembrance of the dream he had dreamed during the night flashed through his brain, he trembled, and his trepidation was noticed by his staff.
“Your Highness is not well this morning,” observed Azimoolah; “yesterday’s excitement has disturbed you?”
“I am well enough,” the Nana answered sharply; “but it seems as if I was to have no freedom from the annoyance of these English. I was in hopes that we had set our foot firmly down upon them—that they were hopelessly crushed. But it seems now that, Hydra-like, no sooner is one head destroyed than another springs up.”
“Then we must keep on destroying them until they are all exterminated. Even the heads of the fabled monster were limited; and by constantly destroying the English their power must come to an end.”
“You do not counsel well!” cried the Nana irritably. “The power of the English, it appears to me, is like the ocean, which you might go on draining, drop by drop, until the end of time, and then there would be no appreciable diminution.”
Azimoolah smiled scornfully, and in his secret heart he felt some contempt for his master.
“Your notions are exaggerated,” he answered coolly, “and your fears with respect to the unlimited power of these British groundless. They are headstrong—impetuous—rash. They are rushing blindly on to their fate. My spies inform me that they are weak both in guns and men. We can bring an overwhelming force against them, and literally annihilate them. Meanwhile, the revolt spreads well; every city in India is asserting its independence of these foreigners, and so mighty shall we become that if every man in England were sent against us, we could defy them. I tell you the power of England is waning, if not already destroyed. The White Hand stiffens in the coldness of death.”
A thoughtful expression spread itself over the Nana’s face. Azimoolah’s words sank deep. Whenever he faltered and doubted himself this familiar was at hand to give him new hope. Bloodthirsty and revengeful as he was, he was, after all, but a puppet, and would have been powerless to have moved if others had not pulled the strings.