Howrah rose, stepped forward to the dais edge, and held his hand out.
“Nay!” swore Alwa, recoiling. “My word is given. I take no Hindoo's hand!”
Howrah glared for a moment, but thought better of the hot retort that rose to his lips. Instead he struck a silver gong, and when the doors swung open ordered the prisoners to be produced.
“Escape through the palace-grounds,” he advised Alwa. “A man of mine will show the way.”
“Remember!” said Alwa across his shoulder with more than royal insolence, “I swore to help thee against Jaimihr and to support thee on thy throne—but in nothing did I swear to be thy tool—remember!”
CHAPTER XXI
Howrah City bows the knee
(More or less) to masters three,
King, and Prince, and Siva.
Howrah City comes and goes—
Buys and sells—and never knows
Which is friend, and which are foes—
King, or Prince, or Siva.
THAT that followed Alwa's breakaway was all but the tensest hour in Howrah City's history. The inevitable—the foiled rage of the priests and Jaimihr's impudent insistence that the missionaries should be handed over to him—the Maharajah's answer—all combined to set the murmurings afoot. Men said that the threatened rebellion against the rule of Britain had broken loose at last, and a dozen other quite as false and equally probable things.
Jaimihr, finding that his palace was intact, and that only the prisoner and three horses from his stable were missing, placed the whole guard under arrest—stormed futilely, while his hurrying swarm flocked to him through the dinning streets—and then, mad-angry and made reckless by his rage, rode with a hundred at his back to Howrah's palace, scattering the bee-swarm of inquisitive but so far peaceful citizens right and left.