Cardew looked again at his watch, and grinned—significantly: a public-schoolboy grin—and, as if it had known his grin for its cue, a third bomb screamed and hit and burst: England’s anger weltering into the very bowels of the Kingdom of Rukh.
It was very near. It was blastingly loud.
The people shrieked. Save the idols and the three English none there was calm save the man cross-legged on the throne. From courtyard, temples and castle came a sorry chorus of terror and despair. Even the cattle in mat-sheds and byres bleated and cried, and wild jungle things off on mountains scurried and were afraid. The people shrieked, and the priests rushed to their master and flung themselves down at his feet in panic-stricken supplication. He hesitated for a moment, then, with a shrug half-indulgent, half contempt, continued to the English airman, “My priests, however, have a superstitious dread of these eggs of the Great Roc. They fear injury to the Sacred Image. For myself, I am always averse to bloodshed. You may, if you please, signal to your squadron commander my acceptance of your terms.”
“I thought you would come to reason,” Cardew returned, as he shook out the flag he carried, and hurried across the courtyard to where the white beam of a searchlight cut down between the great Green Goddess and her shivering, stark-eyed people.
“This comes of falling behind the times,” the Raja said with a sigh not untinged with blasé amusement. “If I had had anti-aircraft guns—”
“Thank your stars you hadn’t,” Traherne told him.
Cardew came back from the execution-ground. “All clear for the moment, Raja,” he said. “You have no further immediate consequences to fear.”
“What am I to conclude from your emphasis on ‘immediate’” Rukh asked lazily.
“I need scarcely remind you, sir,” the boy said coldly, “that you can only hand over the body of one of your prisoners.”
“Major Crespin,” the Raja retorted, “murdered a faithful servant of mine. His death at my hands was a fair act of war.”