In fine, the general result of the report was unsatisfactory. If half the garrison could be dispensed with, provisions might hold out; but the condition of the wall was a peril which could not be remedied, and in regard to it there was not one dissentient voice. Then the Queen produced the draft she had received from Prince Moorad. "If," she said, "our condition for defence had been what I hoped it would be, I would have destroyed this paper, and allowed affairs to go on as they have begun; but as it is, ye, my lords, should know of it, and bear me witness that I have concealed nothing from you. Had my unworthy people of Beejapoor behaved as I expected they would, we should not have been reduced to these straits; but as they are, they are of no use to us, and the few that watch the Manikdown Hills are too weak to advance against thirty thousand Moghuls."
"It is true," said Nihung Khan, with a sigh; "they are too weak to effect more than they are doing now, straitening the supplies of the Moghul army. Yet that cannot be depended upon, since the King of Khandesh, it is well known, is now sending up large convoys from his dominions by the northern passes, which we cannot prevent, and with them come some heavy guns. All these will arrive in the course of a few days at furthest, and the Prince does not exaggerate his resources to prolong the siege. And how could we repair the wall to meet it?"
"They are clever men, these Moghul engineers," said the engineer officer who had before spoken. "We found, this morning, as we examined the counterscarp, that five other places had been mined to be blown in. There was not time apparently to complete or load the mines, else we should have been attacked in several points at once. They depended upon the effect of the five mines, which, but for the humane man who proclaimed them, would have been fired at once, and the side of the fort blown completely open; and they can do the same again."
These ominous words fell with terrible effect on the ears of all that heard them. The question was no longer one of opinion, it was one of necessity. Was the fort tenable at all?
"Let your servant," said Abbas Khan, "go to Soheil Khan, who commands the forces at Shahdroog. If he could be persuaded to march to our aid, all these proud Moghuls might be chased from the field."
"But that would involve a delay of nearly a month, even if he marched at once," said the Queen.
"And in the condition of the wall, I could not guarantee it to stand under fire for two days," said the engineer. "I have no thought of life, as I say this; but I think on the helpless women and children, and the men who must perish before a ruthless assault which the Prince suggests, and which we, were we in the place of the Moghuls, should make. Remember that though the fort is hard of access, yet it is impossible of egress. No one can escape from it."
The Queen then laid before all assembled the question of Berar. For her own part, she desired not to retain it. Ever since the kingdom had possessed it, misfortune and war had come with it, as was known to all. It need never have been taken; and cruel murder had been necessary to its retention.
Thus the subject was debated for some hours with animation. The Bishop was called and asked whether he had been directed to carry any message to the Prince Moorad from the Queen; but his account of the object of his mission and its results, and his assurance that the draft of the treaty must have been prepared beforehand, as the Prince's seal was only affixed in his presence, assured all that the proposal was spontaneous; and after a further brief consultation, it was accepted, with some slight modification, and despatched by the hands of Abbas Khan and Nihung Khan the next day. And no further objections being made, the treaties were mutually exchanged the day following, when a great portion of the Moghul army had already marched.