“Have you received the two hundred from the Mahomet?”
“They had not arrived when I left the Boodah”.
“So that you left only one hundred men in the Boodah, with instructions to receive two hundred others?”
“That is so, my Lord King”.
There was silence.
“But suppose I tell you that I have given no such instructions: will your heart—leap?”
Hogarth clapped a sudden hand of horror upon Quilter-Beckett's shoulder.
“My God—!” Quilter-Beckett started like a gun's recoil.
“Be calm, Admiral: it may be only some mistake....From whence had you this order?”
“From—from the Mahomet, in the usual course—”