"Sale, the Kaffir Sirdir (i.e. infidel general) has actually cut his way through the Ghilzie tribes, and is now safe in Jellalabad! Well; the unbelievers who remain in Cabul shall be destroyed, root and branch, ere he can return to succour them; that I have sworn on the Kulma, unless the Envoy of their Queen ransoms their accursed heads to-morrow."
"And their women shall be our slaves," said one.
"Or exchanged for horses with the chiefs of Toorkistan," added another.
Then, said Shireen Khan, his eyes, too, blazing like carbuncles, as the hatred of race and religion boiled up within him,
"The Feringhees, those dogs of covetousness, are among us, and for what? What seek they here? To put over us a king whom we loathe—a king who will be subservient to the Lord Bahadur at Calcutta; dethroning Dost Mohammed!"
"Solomon, as we may read, knew three thousand proverbs, and the songs that he sang were a hundred and five; yet what was Solomon when compared with Shah Sujah?" sneered Ackbar, as his white teeth glistened under his coal-black mustache.
"You will ask this Envoy on the morrow, if it was really his intention to send me, Ameen Oollah Khan, Shireen Khan, and others, bound as slaves, to the feet of his Queen, in her Island of the Sea?" said one with sombre fury.
"I shall, without fail."
"And the white-faced dog will deny it!"
"Perhaps; but it shall be the last lie of the unbeliever's tongue," replied Ackbar, with a grim smile as he touched the hilt of his Afghan dagger.