“Here we reach the end of a long journey, Roger,” said he. “Agra lies within the gate, the Palace stands beyond the bazaar, and this is the rest-house spoken of by Rasul, our native friend at Delhi. The hour is yet early to seek an audience of the Emperor. Let us refresh ourselves here, make some needed change in our garments, and then hire a guide to lead us to the house of Itimad-ud-Daula, for they say that he alone possesseth Akbar’s ear.”
“That is another way of saying that he shall first possess himself of a moiety of our goods. Well, be it so. ’Tis a strange land at the best. Let us cram his maw, and mayhap he will tell us a more homely manner of addressing him. It passeth my understanding how thou dost mouth this lingo, Walter. Ecod, I can carry it off bravely with a Mahomed or a Ram Charan, but when it comes to Iti—what d’ye call him?—my jaws clag and my tongue falters in the path like a blind man’s staff.”
So saying, Roger Sainton swung himself off his steed, and straightway the gapers gathered, for his height was not so apparent on horseback as when he stood square on his feet.
But the servants tending the pack-animals were accustomed to this exhibition of popular interest. They warned off the rabble with the insolence every jack-in-office displays towards his inferiors.
“Away, illegitimate ones! Have ye not work?” cried one.
“Bapré! If ye stand not aside ye shall eat the end of my stick,” shouted another.
“Bring fire and singe their beards,” growled a Mahomedan driver.
“Kick, brother, kick!” suggested a humorist, tickling a mule, whereupon the long-eared one ducked his head and lifted his heels in approved style, readily clearing a space, amidst the laughter and jeers of the onlookers.
By this time, Mowbray and Sainton had entered the caravansary. It was a substantial looking building externally, but its four walls merely supported an interior veranda, split into sections, where merchants could sleep if they chose, or cook their food and rest during the midday hours. In the open square, which occupied nearly all the inner space, was herded a motley collection of elephants, camels, bullocks, horses, and asses,—while every conceivable sort of package of merchandise was guarded by attendants of many Indian races. At first, it seemed that there was no more room for man or beast, but the requisite amount of shouting, and a lavish use of opprobrious epithets, couched in various languages, secured a corner of the square for the friends’ cavalcade and a clear space of the veranda for their own convenience.
Three years of life in the East, not to mention the new experience of a march of over a thousand miles up country, had accustomed them to such surroundings.