Chapter XII The Maharajah’s Choice
A dramatic episode followed the examination of the airship’s bill of lading by the pseudo monarch and his so-called chancellor of the exchequer, Carl, who aided his master in the task.
“Item one. What does that consist of?” asked the brigand.
“Mails. His Britannic Majesty’s mails,” replied the chancellor.
“Where from?”
“From India for Egypt and London,” replied Carl, maintaining a grave and solemn deportment.
“H’m! They may pass when the usual tribute is paid,” remarked the bandit in serious tones, as though he had delivered himself of some weighty pronouncement.
The judge looked at the colonel with raised eyebrows when he heard this strange decision, but the captain, forgetting his position for a moment, blurted out:—
“Tribute indeed? When did the King of England pay tribute for his mails to be carried across the Hamadian desert?”
The air-king eyed the speaker with apparent amazement, mingled with a touch of scorn and pity, then quietly observed:—
“That is the very point, Captain. There has been far too much laxity in this respect in the past. The liberties of the small nations to make their own laws, and possess their own lands in peace, have been greatly endangered of late. It is mere brigandage for a great power to over-ride the native interests of small communities. But from to-day this brigandage must cease, at any rate over the territories where I rule.”
The captain could find no reply to this sally of the desert king’s, and, while a smile played about the corners of his mouth, he looked beyond this robber chief, in his gaudy trappings, to where the Scorpion lay squatting like an ugly toad upon the sands.
At length the monarch resumed his cross-examination with these words: “Come, Captain, will you pay tribute for the transit of mails across my territory, or will you not?”
“I will not!” replied the skipper.
With a flash of fire in his tones the brigand ordered: “Take the first ten sacks of mails out into the desert and burn them at once.”
“It shall be done, O chief,” replied Max, who immediately detailed some of the natives to carry the order into effect, when the captain, urged to it by the judge, asked:—
“What is the amount of the tribute?”
“Ten thousand pounds in English gold,” came the immediate reply.
“I cannot pay it,” returned the captain. “It is mere plunder,” though the judge pointed out to the commander quietly that it would probably be more profitable to pay it and to get away with the mails in a damaged airship, than to leave the mails behind to be lost or destroyed in the desert.
“He will take the gold anyhow, when he comes to it on the bill of lading,” added the colonel, “though devil a penny I’d pay him.”
“It isn’t my money,” argued the captain, “so there’s an end of it.”
“How now, Englishmen! We are wasting time. Will you pay the sum demanded?”
“No, I will not!”
“Very good. Get out the rest of the mails and burn them at once!” ordered the monarch, and a couple of minutes afterwards the first bags of mails, sprayed with some inflammatory liquid, were blazing furiously.
“Item two!” called the desert king.
“Gold. Nineteen boxes of bullion for the Bank of England,” called out the chancellor.
“Gold?” echoed the air-fiend, as though he were utterly unconscious of the presence of such a commodity, in face of the captain’s refusal to pay over a trifling ten thousand pounds to secure right of way for his mails.
“Yes, sir. Nearly one hundred thousand pounds in specie.”
“I thought we had prohibited the importation of gold into these regions, chancellor, because of its evil effects upon the minds of the people.”
“Yes, sir,” returned the chancellor. “We decided to abolish its importation altogether on that account, save only as tribute money for the royal chest.”
“Exactly,” replied the bandit, in a tone of assumed moral injury. Then, turning to the Englishman, he said: “You must know, Captain, that most wars are caused by gold, and by the unbrotherly strife which it foments. You must know also that all wars are sustained by it.”
“Yes, I agree with you for once,” returned the prisoner, boldly, wondering at the ease with which this confirmed brigand could turn moralist.
“Then what must be done with the gold, sir?” asked the chancellor.
“Every ounce of gold on the airship must be confiscated,” exclaimed the king of robbers as he uplifted his hands in pious horror. “Let it be removed at once.”
“Very well, sir,” and this second operation, which was more pleasing still to the waiting Arabs, was immediately put into effect.
“Item three!” called out the chief.
“Ten boxes of valuables, including the personal property and belongings of one of the passengers,” came the reply.
“What, do they belong to one person?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is his name?”
“The Maharajah of Bangapore, sir,” returned the wise man of the exchequer, whose task promised to be an easy one in the future, judging by the vast amount of spoil which had already fallen into his lap.
“The Maharajah of Bangapore?” repeated the monarch, raising his hand to his forehead for an instant, as though he would recall some long forgotten episode. “Is he amongst the company present?”
“I believe so.”
“Ask him to stand forth.”
And the Indian prince, hearing his name called in English, stepped forth and confronted his old enemy of the Mesopotamian campaign. When their eyes met a flash of fire, more eloquent than words, revealed what was in each man’s mind. The prince expected to be tortured to death and was prepared for it, for, like all his people, he was brave as well as fierce. At last the robber spoke.
“Prince Jaipur, you are an enemy of mine,” he said.
“I know it!”
“Do you expect mercy after the way your tribesmen massacred my men at Kerbela?”
The maharajah shrugged his shoulders, but disdained to reply to this upstart robber chief who styled himself a king.
“Do you know that your life is in my hands?” exclaimed the bandit fiercely.
“I am not afraid of anything you can do, brigand!” hissed the prince, and his voice sounded not unlike the angry, venomous snake in the jungle. Another man might have quailed before those glaring eyes and those hissing tones. But the German quavered not.
“I will give you a kingly choice,” he said, “as you are the scion of half a hundred kings in your illustrious line.”
“I ask no favours of a common Bedouin robber,” snarled the other.
“Listen. I will give you the choice of drinking this deadly poison, or of being dropped ten thousand feet from my aeroplane. Which will you take?”
The prince shuddered slightly, and glanced up into the cloudless blue, as though anticipating what such a death might mean, then looked at the small phial which the brigand held forth in his hand.
“Yes, ten thousand feet!” continued the German, as he noted the anxious look which overcast the Hindoo’s face for an instant, as he gazed up into the sky. “Then I will loop the machine, and, with your hands pinioned, you will be thrown out and drop, drop—— Which will you choose?”
“I will drink the poison,” replied the prince, who had now regained his usual composure.
“Very well. Let him be securely tied to that tree to await our pleasure,” and the maharajah was instantly seized by three or four powerful Arabs, and secured to a tree some twenty paces away.
“What about his valuables, sir?” asked Carl.
“Have you examined them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what do they consist of?” asked the king.
“His jewels, his gold and silver plate, studded with rare gems of priceless value. They are worth five times the value of the specie,” whispered Carl.
“And what else? You said there were ten boxes.”
“Part of his regalia and numerous ceremonial robes.”
“They are all confiscated!” announced the monarch. “The sun will set in another two hours, and at sunset the Indian must die.”
“There is nothing else, sir, of much value. All the gold and this personal property has been secured. Here is the list of passengers, for there are scarcely any passports held by the strangers,” and here Carl, who had paid a visit to the aerial, whispered something to his chief.
“Good! Then, in your opinion, chancellor, sufficient tribute has now been obtained from these strangers who have crossed our territory without permission,” said the bandit aloud for all to hear.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then let them board the airship at once. She will be cast adrift in ten minutes.”
At this there was a scramble for the gondolas, and very quickly all, save the captain and the navigating officer, were aboard. The judge and the colonel, however, prevailed upon by the maharajah’s men, descended again to intercede for the life of the Indian.
“You have taken the man’s jewels,” said the colonel. “At least you might spare his life.”
“You may have his body,” remarked the airman, “but he must first drink the phial,” and a stern look appeared once more in the robber-bandit’s eyes. On this point he was unbending, and remained like adamant.
“The airship is ready now, sir,” said the captain, making a final appeal for the life of the maharajah. “I should like to report, at any rate, when I do complete my journey, that all my passengers are safe, though I expect to be two days late with only two engines and this beam wind. Once more, will you release the Indian?”
“Bring him before me!” commanded the monarch at last, with a bored expression, and the Indian, still bound hand and foot, was brought before the pseudo king.
“Unloose his hands,” came the order.
“They ask me to spare your life, Indian dog!” continued the robber, addressing the prince in contemptuous tones. “If you sue for it yourself, you may have it, otherwise...” and, instead of completing his sentence, the speaker shook the little phial in the face of the prisoner.
“I will not ask my life of you, serpent!” hissed the captive. “From you I will accept no favours. Robbed of my family heirlooms, my jewels and my household gods, I prefer to die. Give me the poison, and I will show you how a real prince of the royal line of Indus can die!”
For one awful instant, the desert chief glared at his enemy, who had dared to refuse his generous offer. Then, in angry tones, he cried:—
“Indian dog! I offered you mercy, but you spurn the gift of Allah and ask for death. Then take this and drink it!” and he tossed him the phial.
“Stay!” cried half a dozen voices from amongst the group of passengers.
But their expostulations were in vain, for, with an eagerness to hide his disgrace in death, which only a proud oriental can show, the prisoner caught the phial, withdrew the small cork, and drained the contents before his horrified friends could interfere.
The next moment, the body of the maharajah lay prostrate upon the sands of the Hamadian desert.