“I care little. Have it which way you will.”
CHAPTER XV
“Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gamble from.”
Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 4.
Perchance they had dared the certain death which faced them had not Fateh Mohammed spoken again. Vain as he was, and furious at the thought that a Feringhi should have lorded it over him for days, he was held in leash by the written orders of the Emperor, which, this time, he had really received and read with bulging eyes.
“I am bidden,” he said, “bring you to Agra, alive if possible. Hence, though clemency ill accords with my present mood, I offer you terms. Suffer my men to bind you securely—for none would be such a fool as to trust that Man-Elephant at large—and I will have you carried in litters. Refusal means instant death to both.”
“Hast thou suddenly gone mad, Fateh Mohammed?” demanded Mowbray, thinking, by a display of boldness, to save the situation even at the twelfth hour.
“Aye, mad, indeed, to accept the word of the King of Kings from the mouth of an unbeliever! Oh, thou Feringhi dog, open thy lips again in defiance and I will make thee a sieve for bullets!”