“Heaven knows!” Traherne replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“I don’t half like our host, Traherne,” the Major grumbled from his chair. “There’s too much of the cat about him.”
“Or of the tiger,” the other rejoined grimly. “And how the devil had he got the news?”
They were anxious—Basil Traherne the more so. And Lucilla Crespin’s heart knocked oddly as she rode in her queen-like litter. But she sat at ease with an easy smile on her face—going to, as she perfectly well understood, what might prove either the most interesting experience of her life or a funeral march.
As the two chairs moved after the litters the two ranks of soldiers closed round them. The ramshackle irregulars, and the bizarre retinue, the dancing negro first, the musicians next, the rest pell-mell, brought up the ragged rear, and the gesticulating, still curious populace followed the retinue.
Only Yazok the priest remained, prostrating himself in thanksgiving before the Green Goddess, staying prostrate so, till slow hours had sped and the stark goat heads at her feet grew newly red in the last crimson rays of the fast sinking sun.
The quick Asian twilight came, and as it came was gone. The great stars came out in the crinkling sky, a baby moon laughed down on the temple precincts and the rotting marigolds. And still Yazok the high priest prostrated himself before the six-armed Goddess.
CHAPTER XX
What were they to do? They were all three wondering that. There was nothing for them to do but mark time—and watch with alert eyes, ears open, and placid faces. They all realized it, and realizing it, did it thoroughly, like the Britons they were.
On and up the procession went to the palace gate, but with every rod they made the distance between the palanquins and the chairs was lengthened. It was not far, as that proverbial crow goes, but the way was hard and steep, it twisted, turned, zig-zagged and circled about itself like the railroad to Darjeeling, and like it went down almost as often as it went up, making the actual gain in ascent very gradual. Except for the rocks on either side, and the rose and snow-crested peaks beyond them there was little to see. But here and there a tiny hovel-like home clung desperately to the brown rocks, and twice where the rocks spread apart a little to flatness great lily-tanks had been contrived. They really were water-lily farms, the plants grown and tended for the food they supplied. The first and larger tank was snow-white, for the Nymphæa nelumbo—queen perhaps of all wild water-lilies—was in full blooming now, and, because it was between mid-day and sunset, every wonderful flower-cup was opened wide. When they died away in a few weeks their seed capsules would grow thousands of acorn-shaped, edible kernels, delicious when gathered green and roasted, valuable as winter food-store, to be dried and eaten as nuts, or ground into flour for the lily-cakes upon which the people largely lived. The tank higher up was densely crowded with singara lilies, the water so hidden under the great green leaves that it looked a delicate sward flecked with brilliant snow blossoms. The singara nuts raw were a great delicacy, second—if second—only to the half-ripe beans of the lotus and tender leaf-stalks boiled and seasoned, and singara flour was a staple of peasant life.