The Bronze Bell

by Louis Joseph Vance

"By Malang Shah! but my lord doth fight like a Rajput!"

Amber caught his breath and exploded. "Half a chance, you damned thugs, and I'd show you how an American can fight!"

But he had spoken in English, and his hearers gathered the import of his words only from his tone, apparently. He who had addressed him laughed applausively.

"It was a gallant fight," he commented, "but like all good things hath had its end. My lord is overcome. Is my lord still minded for battle or for peace? Dare I, his servant, give orders for his release, or——"

Here Amber interrupted; stung by the bitter irony, he told the speaker in fluent idiomatic Hindustani precisely what he might expect if his "lord" ever got the shadow of a chance to lay hands upon him.

The grim cackling laugh followed his words, a mocking echo, and was his only answer. But for all his defiance, he presently heard orders issued to take him up and bear him to another chamber. Promptly the man on his chest moved away, and his fellows lifted and carried Amber, gently and with puzzling consideration, some considerable distance through what he surmised to be an underground corridor. He suffered this passively, realising his impotence, and somewhat comforted if perplexed by the tenderness accorded him in return for his savage fight for freedom.

Unexpectedly he was let down upon the floor and released. Bare feet scurried away in the darkness and a door closed with a resounding bang. He was alone, for all he could say to the contrary—alone and unharmed. He was more: he was astonished; he had not been disarmed. He got up and felt of himself, marvelling that his pocket still sagged with the weight of the pistol as much as at the circumstance that, aside from the inevitable damage to his clothing—a coat-sleeve ripped from the arm-hole, several buttons missing, suspenders broken—he had come out of the melee unhurt, not even bruised, save for the hand that had been cut by the emerald. He wrapped a handkerchief about this wound, and took the pistol out, deriving a great deal of comfort from the way it balanced, its roughened grip nestling snugly in his palm.

He fairly itched to use the thing, but lacking an excuse, had time to take more rational counsel of himself. It were certainly unwise to presume upon the patience of his captors; though he had battered some of them pretty brutally and himself escaped reprisals, the part of wisdom would seem to be to save his ammunition.

With this running through his mind, the room was suddenly revealed to his eyes, that had so long strained fruitlessly to see. A flood of lamplight leaped through some opening behind him and showed him his shadow, long and gigantic upon a floor of earth and a wall of stone. He wheeled about, alert as a cat; and the sight of his pistol hung steady between the eyes of one who stood at ease, with folded arms, in an open doorway. Over his shoulder was visible the bare brown poll of an attendant whose lank brown arm held aloft the lamp.

One does not shoot down in cold blood a man who makes no aggressive move, and he who stood in the doorway endured impassively the mute threat of the pistol. Above its sight his eyes met Amber's with a level and unwavering glance, shining out of a dark, set face cast in a mould of insolence and pride. A bushy black beard was parted at his chin and brushed stiffly back. Between his thin hard lips, parted in a shadowy smile, his teeth gleamed white. Standing a head taller than Amber and very gracefully erect in clothing of a semi-military cut and of regal magnificence, every inch of his pose bespoke power, position, and the habit of authority. His head was bound with a turban of spotless white from whose clasp, a single splendid emerald, a jewelled aigret nodded; the bosom of his dark-green tunic blazed with orders and decorations; at his side swung a sabre with richly jewelled hilt. Heavy white gauntlets hid his hands, top-boots of patent leather his legs and feet.