As soon as I could drag my eyes from Ny Deen's mocking gaze, I looked
round sharply for Dost, and a chill ran through me as I failed to see
him. For the moment I hesitated to speak, in the hope that he might
have escaped, and inquiries might only lead to his pursuit; but it was
such a forlorn hope that I gave it up at once, and turned to speak to
the rajah.
"Where is my servant?" I said. "Salaman?" he replied. "No, no; my old
servant, Dost."
"The man who was with you just now?"
"Yes," I cried.
"I do not know," replied Ny Deen. "I suppose killed, as the result of
his rashness."
I gave him a glance full of horror, and then looked round at the crowd
of armed men so fiercely, that the rajah spoke.
"Where is the man," he said. There was a dead silence, which I
interpreted to mean that he had been killed.
The rajah took a step or two forward, glaring round so savagely that one
of the men who had seized us prostrated himself.
"You have killed him?" said Ny Deen, in a low guttural voice, which made
me shiver.
"My lord, no. The man was seized, and in the fight he fell, and we
thought him dead, for he was bleeding. Then we held the English lord
here, and when we went to pick up the man, he was gone."
"Then he has escaped?"
The man remained silent, and Ny Deen turned to me with his eyes full of
mockery and a strange light, as they flashed in the glare of the
torches.
"Well," he said, "are you satisfied?"
"Yes," I replied, "if it is true."
"It is true enough," he said carelessly. "Come."
He signed to me to approach his side, and to my surprise, instead of my
being led off as a prisoner, the rajah laid his hand upon my shoulder,
and walked by me as if nothing had happened, right back to my room, when
he threw himself upon the cushions and laughed.
"You foolish boy!" he said good-humouredly; "how could you be so weak as
to commit such a folly. I am angry with you, not for offending me, for
I suppose it was natural, but for lowering yourself so before my people,
forcing me to have you--the man I meant to be my chief officer--hunted
like an escaping prisoner. You might have been killed in your mad
climbing, or by my people by accident in a struggle. That man came and
tempted you to go?"
"I wanted no tempting," I replied.
"It is a pity," he said, after a moment's pause. "You degraded
yourself, and you lowered me before my people."
"I want my liberty," I cried angrily.
"Well, boy, I offer you liberty," he said quietly; "liberty and honour.
I only stand in your way when I see that, in a blind madness, you are
going to rush headlong to destruction. You do not know; I do."