[65] Dealers. [66] Money-lenders.
In the seat of honour (an extra cushion), sat the blind faquir who, with his clerkly colleague, had set the original match to the magazine by inciting the late Mr. Dearman's coolies. Apparently a relentless, terrible fanatic and bitter hater of the English, for his councils were all of blood and fire, rapine and slaughter, he taunted his hearers with their supine cowardice in that the Military Prison still held out, its handful of defenders still manned its walls, nay, from time to time, made sallies and terrible reprisals upon a careless ill-disciplined enemy.
"Were I but as other men! Had I but mine eyes!" he screamed, "I would overwhelm the place in an hour. Hundreds to one you are—and you are mocked, robbed, slaughtered."
A thin-faced, evil-looking, squint-eyed Hindu whose large, thick, gold-rimmed goggles accorded ill with the sword that lay athwart his crossed legs, addressed him in English.
"Easy to talk, Moulvie. Had you your sight you could perhaps drill and arm the mob into an army, eh? Find them repeating rifles and ammunition, find them officers, find them courage? Is it not? Yes."
"Hundreds to one, Babu," grunted the blind man, and spat.
"I would urge upon this august assemblee," piped a youthful weedy person, "that recreemination is not argument, and that many words butter no parsneeps, so to speak. We are met to decide as to whether the treasure shall be removed to Pirgunge or still we keep it with us here in view of sudden sallies of foes. I hereby beg to propose and my honourable friend Mister——"
"Sit down, crow," said the blind faquir unkindly and there was a snigger. "The treasure will be removed at once—this night, or I will remove myself from Gungapur with all my followers—and go where deeds are being done. I weary of waiting while pi-dogs yelp around the walls they cannot enter. Cowards! Thousands to one—and ye do not kill two of them a day. Conquer and slay them? Nay—rather must our own treasure be removed lest some night the devil, in command there, swoop upon it, driving ye off like sheep and carrying back with him——"
"Flesh and blood cannot face a machine-gun, Moulvie," said the squint-eyed Hindu. "Even your holy sanctity would scarcely protect you from bullets. Come forth and try to-morrow."
"Nor can flesh and blood—such flesh and blood as Gungapur provides—surround the machine-gun and rush upon it from flank and rear of course," replied the blind man. "Do machine guns fire in all directions at once? When they ran the accursed thing down to the market-place and fired it into the armed crowd that listened to my words, could ye not have fled by other streets to surround it? Had all rushed bravely from all directions how long would it have fired? Even thus, could more have died than did die? Scores they slew—and retired but when they could fire no longer…. And ye allowed it to go because a dozen men stood between it and you——," and again the good man spat.