“Certainly not. Too valuable a hostage.”
“Let me write, then. I will choose a messenger from the retainers of his uncles, who will inform him of their submission, and urge him to come in and surrender. With him in your hands, there is no leader left about whom the remnants of the Khans’ armies may rally, and you attain at once all the results of a battle without fighting one.”
“Be it so, then. Heaven knows the army is in no state to fight again to-day, and I should be crippled in any movement by this train of wounded.”
CHAPTER XVII.
SUPPORTED ON BAYONETS.
“A grand joke for y’, Evie!” Brian ran up the steps gleefully, forgetful for the moment of the anxious charge which—so his friends alleged—was sapping the bloom from his youthful cheek, and turning his hair prematurely grey. It was three days after the battle at Mahighar, the camp had been pitched in and about the Agency compound, and in the ruined Residency itself the Engineers had patched up two or three rooms and a verandah for Eveleen, that she might not have to face the vicissitudes of the weather in a tent.
“And I have one for you!” responded Eveleen joyously. “Yours first—you’ll appreciate mine all the better for waiting for it. Don’t mind Ambrose; he’s far too busy to notice our nonsense.” She turned slightly towards Brian, and with a wicked glance, laid one forefinger over the other close to her eye. Richard was reading ostentatiously at some little distance—but it was no more novel or interesting work than an old Addiscombe text-book, somehow washed up on this distant beach.
“Listen, then. D’ye know y’are the General’s guardian angel, his talisman of success—that he won’t fight until y’are there, and if he lost you he’d be a gone coon? What d’ye think of that now? It’s proud y’ought to be, indeed.”
“I’d be prouder if I thought he took a proper view of my importance to him,” dolefully. “I’ll impart to y’a horrid secret, Brian. Sometimes I could almost believe the ungrateful old gentleman regarded me as an encumbrance!”
“That’s his artfulness. He don’t want you to realise your value. Why, when Khair Husain Khan, wishing to show suitable respect, desired to send y’a fine present of jewels t’other day, d’ye think the old lad would let you have it? Not he! Gave him a nasty snub, I promise you!”
“Ah, then, that was it!” Eveleen’s eyes danced. “I saw the creature look at me, but how would I know what he was saying? Sure Sir Harry might have had the politeness to offer me the choice whether I’d accept or not.”