"Do you know that your life is in my hands?" exclaimed the bandit fiercely.
"I am not afraid of anything you can do, brigand!" hissed the prince, and his voice sounded not unlike the angry, venomous snake in the jungle. Another man might have quailed before those glaring eyes and those hissing tones. But the German quavered not.
"I will give you a kingly choice," he said, "as you are the scion of half a hundred kings in your illustrious line."
"I ask no favours of a common Bedouin robber," snarled the other.
"Listen. I will give you the choice of drinking this deadly poison, or of being dropped ten thousand feet from my aeroplane. Which will you take?"
The prince shuddered slightly, and glanced up into the cloudless blue, as though anticipating what such a death might mean, then looked at the small phial which the brigand held forth in his hand.
"Yes, ten thousand feet!" continued the German, as he noted the anxious look which overcast the Hindoo's face for an instant, as he gazed up into the sky. "Then I will loop the machine, and, with your hands pinioned, you will be thrown out and drop, drop---- Which will you choose?"
"I will drink the poison," replied the prince, who had now regained his usual composure.
"Very well. Let him be securely tied to that tree to await our pleasure," and the maharajah was instantly seized by three or four powerful Arabs, and secured to a tree some twenty paces away.
"What about his valuables, sir?" asked Carl.