The three men sat on the verandah while a servant brought brandy-and-soda, and Nana Sahib, with a restless perversity akin to the torturing proclivity of a Hindu was quizzing the Frenchman about his recruits.
"You'll find them no good," he assured Baptiste—"rebellious cusses, worthless thieves. My Moslem friend, the King of Oudh, tried them out. He got up a regiment of them—Budhuks, Bagrees—all sorts; it was named the Wolf Regiment—that was the only clever thing about it, the name. They stripped the uniforms from the backs of the officers sent to drill them and kicked them out of camp; said the officers put on swank; wouldn't clean their own horses and weapons, same as the other men."
Then he switched the torture—made it more acute; wanted to know what
Sirdar Baptiste had got them for.
The Frenchman fumed inwardly. Nana Sahib was at the bottom of the whole murderous scheme, and here, like holding a match over a keg of powder, he must talk about it in front of the Englishman.
When the brandy was brought Nana Sahib put hand over the top of his glass.
"Not drinking, Prince?" Barlow asked.
"No," Nana Sahib answered, "a Brahmin must diet; holiness is fostered by a shrivelled skin."
"But pardon me, Prince," Barlow said hesitatingly, "didn't going across the black-water to England break your caste anyway—so why cut out the peg?"
"Yes, Captain Sahib,"—the Prince's voice rasped with a peculiar harsh gravity as though it were drawn over the jagged edge of intense feeling,—"my caste was broken, and to get it back I drank the dregs; a cup of liquid from the cow, and not milk either!"
Baptiste coughed uneasily for he saw in the eyes of Nana Sahib smouldering passion.