“Royal blood,” said the doctor, “does not speak as you are speaking. Royal blood does not send royal blood to be a white man’s mistress. And especially, royal blood does not speak of its disgraces. What’s back of this, Buro Sitt?”
There was sheer agony in Buro Sitt’s eyes.
“Tuan,” he said, as if the words were wrenched from him, “if you were a man and a raja, and your honor as a man were against your honor as a king, what could you do?”
It might seem funny to think of a petty princeling—Buro Sitt could not be more—speaking of his honor as a king, but it wasn’t funny then.
“Once,” he said fiercely, “I led a thousand fighting men. I fought against the French. When it was ended, there were fifty left. Now there are six hundred men again who follow me. Their lives are in my hands, and their women, and their children also. And the Tuan Vetter has demanded my daughter.”
He was telling the truth this time.
“You’re going to fight?” demanded the doctor. “It’s folly; suicide!”
Buro Sitt’s hands clenched.
“Suicide?” he echoed bitterly. “If that were all! I am raja of my people. If I die, they fight—and are killed. All of them. And enough men have died for me before, Allah knoweth. Speak to him,”—he pointed to the young chap who was caressing his kris. “My daughter was to have been his wife. There are two hundred swords that follow him. And yet, if we rise⸺”
He was shaking all over.