"My young friend was too enthusiastic," Doctor Boelke said with a mirthless grin; "he has also soaked my legs."
The savage wrestling bout and the mysterious loss of the sapphire brought a depressing vacuity of speech. The guests were soon waiting in the courtyard for the tonga.
Swinton stepped over to where Finnerty waited in his dogcart while a servant lighted the lamps, saying: "Prince Ananda has arranged that we are to call on the maharajah at ten o'clock to-morrow, and I'd like to ride over to see your elephants later on."
"Come for tiffin," the major invited.
As the tonga carrying Lord Victor and Swinton was starting, Ananda said: "I've told the driver to show you the Maha Bodhi Temple and a pagoda on your way; it is there that Prince Sakya Singha attained to the Buddha. Good night."
Halfway down the tonga stopped, and their eyes picked up, off to the right, a ravishing sight. A gloomed hill, rising like a plinth of black marble, held on its top a fairy-lined structure. Like a gossamer web or a proportioned fern, a wooden temple lay against the moonlit sky; beside it, towering high to a slender spire, was the pagoda, its gold-leafed wall softened to burnished silver by the gentling moon. A breeze stirred a thousand bells that hung in a golden umbrella above the spire, and the soft tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of their many tongues was like the song of falling waters on a pebbled bed till hushed by a giant gong that sent its booming notes reverberating across the hills as some temple priest beat with muffled club its bronzed side.
"Devilish serene sort of thing, don't you think?" Lord Victor managed to put his poetic emotions into that much prose banality.
The driver, not understanding the English words, said in Hindustani: "There will be much war there to-morrow when they fight over their gods."
As if his forecast had wakened evil genii of strife up in the hills, the fierce blare of a conch shell, joined in clamour by clanging temple bells, came across the valley, shattering its holy calm.
"My aunt! What a beastly din!" Lord Victor exclaimed.