“Oh, thank God! Thank God!” Lucilla moaned. “I shall see my babies again!” she sobbed. She swayed, almost fainting, but Traherne caught her, and held her leaning on him, as he leaned on the portal.
Was their Goddess performing another great miracle for her favored people? Were her great rocs flinging them more white goats to gore at her feet, the people wondered, “Oo-ae, Oo-ae!” Was it portend of fortune or portend of doom?
“So,” the Raja said to the English woman and man, “the Major lied like a gentleman! Good old Major! I didn’t think he had it in him.”
An excited guard called his attention to something, and the Raja looked out again to where the man motioned. He stood watching, looking down from the balcony, gave an order, at which several of the soldiers hurried away, then turned and went to them who still were his prisoners. “One of the machines has landed,” he told Traherne casually. “An officer is coming this way—he looks a mere boy.”
“The conquerors of the air have all been mere boys,” Dr. Traherne asserted.
The Raja smiled. “I have given orders,” he said, “that he shall be brought here unharmed. Perhaps I had better receive him with some ceremony—”
He went slowly back to his glittering chair of sovereign state, sat himself down on it cross-legged, and settled his wonderful robes carefully about him, commanded his priests to, and they ranged themselves near him. And the Raja wondered if ever again he’d sit on the throne, his almost from birth, the throne his fathers had sat on and ruled from for long years. But the man was game. Give him his due.
“You said just now, Dr. Traherne,” he remarked after a moment, “that you were saved. Are you so certain of that?”
“Certain?” Traherne echoed. His inflection was question, but even more it was retort and proud assertion, and his tired eyes glowed. And the woman whose hand clung in his felt the warmth of his fingers.
“How many men does each of these hummingbirds carry?” Rukh queried skeptically.