Utirupa rose from his chair, and bowed.
"I am willing to accep," he answered quietly. His face showed no emotion.
"There is one stipulation, though," said Samson. "We are tired of these foolish 'islands'—our territory in yours and yours in ours. There's a contract here. As your first official act—there's no time like the present—we want you to exchange the River Palace, on this side of the river, for out fort on your side."
Utirupa said never a word.
"It's not a question of driving a bargain," Samson went on. "We don't know what the palace may be worth, or what is in it. If there is any valuable furniture you'd like removed, we'll waive that point; but on the terms of the contract we exchange the fort, with the guns and whatever else is there except the actual harness and supplies of the garrison, against the land and palace and whatever it contains except furniture."
Utirupa smiled—perhaps because the guns in that fort were known to date from before the Mutiny.
"Will you agree?"
"I will sign," said Utirupa. And he signed the contract there and then, in presence of all those witnesses. Ten minutes later, as he left the office, the waiting batteries fired him a fourteen-gun salute, that the world might know how a new maharajah occupied the throne of Sialpore.
Meanwhile, up at the house on the hill Tess and Dick found Yasmini already there ahead of them, lying at her ease, dressed as a woman of women, and smoking a cigarette in the window-seat of the bedroom Tess had surrendered to her.
"What was it you said to him after the third chukker?" was the first question Tess asked.