“Let us look at it,” the Raja suggested, and turning towards it he saw that his body-guard had broken rank, and all were clustered pell-mell on the path, looking in rather frightened amazement at the mangled plane. He gave a sharp, displeased word of command, and they scampered back into a sort of loose order, but even from the comparative distance they kept their anxious, puzzled eyes swung back to the aeroplane, and some of the boldest or less disciplined craned their bebeaded necks. “Ah, yes,” the Raja said after a near glance, “propeller smashed—planes crumpled up—”
“Under carriage wrecked,” Traherne prompted sadly.
“I’m afraid we can’t offer to repair the damage for you,” the Raja said, shaking his head.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the doctor answered grimly.
“A wonderful machine!” the Raja said enthusiastically, still looking it over. “Yes,” he owned, “Europe has something to boast of. I wonder what the priest here thinks of it?” He turned with a laugh, and beckoned Yazok, and they spoke together in their own tongue, the Raja with a few short words, the priest with long guttural volubility profusely punctuated with deep salaams. It was evident that temporal power exceeded the gods’ in Rukh. The master dismissed the other almost as crisply as he had admonished the gaping body-guard, and turned with a smile of tolerance, if more contempt, again to Traherne. “He says,” he translated, “it is the great roc—the giant bird, you know, of our Eastern stories. And he declared that he plainly saw his Goddess hovering over you as you descended, and guiding you towards her temple.”
“I wish she could have guided us towards the level ground I saw behind your castle,” Traherne said grimly. He felt no compulsion to speak more ceremoniously of her Green Goddesship than the Raja himself had. “I could have made a safe landing there.”
“No doubt,” the Raja nodded; “on my parade ground—almost the only level spot in my domains.”
“These, I suppose,” Mrs. Crespin, tired of her cushions, asked as she joined them, and caught his words, “are your body-guard?”
“My household troops, Madam,” the potentate said with a bow.
“How picturesque they are!” she exclaimed.