"Provoked or not provoked, your prisoner disobeyed the orders of his recognised superior—what more is there to say?"
"Only that he acted from a sense of right, and that he was right——"
"What?"
"I say he was right, as subsequent events proved, and if his conscience——"
"Conscience! What has a soldier to do with conscience? My servant Ibrahim, perhaps, any fellah, may have a right to exercise what he is pleased to call his conscience, but the first and only duty of an English soldier is to obey."
"Then God help England! If an English soldier is only a machine, a human gun-waggon, with no right to think about anything but his rations and his pay, and how to use his rifle, he is a butcher and a hireling, not a hero. No, no, some of the greatest soldiers and sailors have resisted authority when authority has been in the wrong. Nelson did it, and General Gordon did it, and if this one——"
But the old man burst out again in a quivering voice—
"Why do you come to tell me this? What has it got to do with me? The case before us is perfectly clear. By some tangle of devilish circumstances the wrong man has been arrested to-night. But your prisoner is wanted by the military authorities for other offences. Very well, let him be handed over to them."
The Sirdar now saw that he had not only to fight the father for his own flesh and blood, but the man for himself. He looked across the room to where the Grand Cadi sat in smug silence, with his claw-like hands clasped before his breast, and then, as if taking a last chance, he said—
"Nuneham, the prisoner is your son."