"Then the king can save us!"
"And how?"
"Our lives for his. We'll give him nothing to eat, and if, as you say, they have some way of watching us, they'll be forced to negotiate. You can talk with the quipos, and tell them that unless they give us our freedom and let us go in safety they'll have a dead king. From the way they seem to worship him they'd come through in a minute."
"Oh, they'd promise, all right," I agreed; "but how could we hold them to it?"
"Well, a promise is a promise. And it's our only chance."
"No, Harry; to trust them would be folly. The minute we stepped through that doorway they would be on us—the whole beggarly, smelly lot of them."
"Then there is no chance—none whatever?" put in Desiree.
"None. We may as well admit the worst. And the worst is best for us now. Really, we are in luck; we die in our own way and at our own time. But there is one difficulty."
Then, in answer to their glances of inquiry, I added significantly: "We have no weapons. We cannot allow ourselves to starve—the end must come before that, for as soon as they saw us weakening we would be at their mercy."
There was comprehension and horror in Desiree's eyes, but she looked at me with a brave attempt to smile as she took from her hair something which gleamed and shone in the light from the flaming urns. It was a tiny steel blade with a handle of pearl studded with diamonds.