“The Sahib understands no English language,” says the native, as glib as before. “He be glad to know how you come in a garden.”
“O! the divil fetch him,” says I. “He would be glad to know how I come in a garden, would he? Well, now, my dear man, just have the civility to tell the Sahib, with my kind love, that we are two soldiers here whom he never met and never heard of, but the cipaye is a broth of a boy, and I am a broth of a boy myself; and if we don’t get a full meal of meat, and a turban, and slippers, and the value of a gold mohur in small change as a matter of convenience, bedad, my friend, I could lay my finger on a garden where there is going to be trouble.”
They carried their comedy so far as to converse a while in Hindustanee; and then says the Hindu, with the same smile, but sighing as if he were tired of the repetition, “The Sahib would be glad to know how you come in a garden.”
“Is that the way of it?” says I, and laying my hand on my sword-hilt I bade the cipaye draw.
Ballantrae’s Hindu, still smiling, pulled out a pistol from his bosom, and though Ballantrae himself never moved a muscle I knew him well enough to be sure he was prepared.
“The Sahib thinks you better go away,” says the Hindu.
Well, to be plain, it was what I was thinking myself; for the report of a pistol would have been, under Providence, the means of hanging the pair of us.
“Tell the Sahib I consider him no gentleman,” says I, and turned away with a gesture of contempt.
I was not gone three steps when the voice of the Hindu called me back. “The Sahib would be glad to know if you are a dam low Irishman,” says he; and at the words Ballantrae smiled and bowed very low.
“What is that?” says I.