"Idling away your time as usual, of course. Here, take this chit {note} and run ashore. 'Tis for Mr. Diggle, as you can see if you can read."

"But how am I to find him, sir?"

"Hang me, that's your concern. Find him, and give the chit into his own hand, and be back without any tomfoolery, or by thunder I'll lay a rope across your shoulders."

Desmond took the note, left the vessel, and hurried along the jetty.

After what Bulger had said he was not very well pleased at the prospect of meeting Diggle again. At the shore end of the jetty he was accosted by the peon who had brought Diggle's note on board. The man intimated by signs that he would show the way, and Desmond, wondering why the Indian had not himself waited to receive Captain Barker's answer, followed him at a rapid pace on shore, past the docks, through a corner of the town where the appearance of a white stranger attracted the curious attention of the natives, to an open space in front of the entrance to the fort.

Here they arrived at a low wall cut by an open gateway, at each side of which stood a Maratha sentry armed with a matchlock. A few words were exchanged between Desmond's guide and one of the sentries; the two entered, crossed a compound dotted with trees, and passing through the principal gateway came to a large, square building near the center of the fort. The door of this was guarded by a sentry. Again a few words were spoken. Desmond fancied he saw a slight smile curl the lips of the natives; then the sentry called another peon who stood at hand, and sent him into the palace.

Desmond felt a strange sinking at heart. The smile upon these dark faces awakened a vague uneasiness; it was so like Diggle's smile. He supposed that the man had gone in to report that he had arrived with the captain's answer. The note still remained with him; the Marathas apparently knew that it was to be delivered personally; yet he was left at the door, and his guide stood by in an attitude that suggested he was on guard.

How long was he to be kept waiting? he wondered. Captain Barker had ordered him to return at once; the penalty for disobedience he knew only too well; yet the minutes passed, and lengthened into two hours without any sign of the man who had gone in with the message. Desmond spoke to the guide, but the man shook his head, knowing no English. Becoming more and more uneasy, he was at length relieved to see the messenger come back to the door and beckon him to enter. As he passed the sentries they made him a salaam in which his anxious sensitiveness detected a shade of mockery; but before he could define his feelings he reached a third door guarded like the others, and was ushered in.

He found himself in a large chamber, its walls dazzling with barbaric decoration--figures of Ganessa, a favorite idol of the Marathas, of monstrous elephants, and peacocks with enormously expanded tails. The hall was so crowded that his first confusion was redoubled. A path was made through the throng as at a signal, and at the end of the room he saw two men apart from the rest.

One of them, standing a little back from the other, was Diggle; the other, a tall, powerful figure in raiment as gaudy as the painted peacocks around him, his fingers covered with rings, a diamond blazing in his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais. Behind him, against the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes, and blazing with jewels. At one side was his hookah, at the other a two-edged sword and an unsheathed dagger. Below the dais on either hand two fierce-visaged Marathas stood, their heads and shoulders covered with a helmet, their bodies cased in a quilted vest, each holding a straight two-edged sword. Between Angria and the idol two fan bearers lightly swept the air above their lord's head with broad fans of palm leaves.

Desmond walked towards the dais, feeling woefully out of place amid the brilliant costumes of Angria's court. Scarcely two of the Marathas were dressed alike; some were in white, some in lilac, others in purple, but each with ornaments after his own taste. Desmond had not had time before leaving the Good Intent to smarten himself up, and he stood there a tall, thin, sunburnt youth in dirty, tattered garments, doing his best to face the assembly with British courage.

At the foot of the dais he paused and held out the captain's note. Diggle took it in silence, his face wearing the smile that Desmond knew so well and now so fully distrusted. Without reading it, he tore it in fragments and threw them upon the floor, at the same time saying a few words to the resplendent figure at his side.

Tulaji Angria was dark, inclined to be fat, and not unpleasant in feature. But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle.

Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling, scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt his knees tremble under him. What was the Pirate saying? That he was the subject of their conversation was plain from the glances thrown at him; that he was at a crisis in his fate he knew by instinct; but, ignorant of the tongue they spoke, he could but wait in fearful anxiety and mistrust.

He learned afterwards the purport of the talk.

"That is your man?" said Angria. 'You have deceived me. I looked for a man of large stature and robust make, like the Englishmen I already have.

What good will this slim, starved stripling be in my barge?"

"You must not be impatient, huzur {lord}," replied Diggle. "He is a stripling, it is true; slim, certainly; starved--well, the work on board ship does not tend to fatten a man. But give him time; he is but sixteen or seventeen years old, young in my country. In a year or two, under your regimen, he will develop; he comes of a hardy stock, and already he can make himself useful. He was one of the quickest and handiest on board our ship, though this was his first voyage."

"But you yourself admit that he is not yet competent for the oar in my barge. What is to recompense me for the food he will eat while he is growing? No, Diggle sahib, if I take him I must have some allowance off the price. In truth, I will not take him unless you send me from your vessel a dozen good muskets. That is my word."

"Still, huzur--" began Diggle, but Angria cut him short with a gesture of impatience.

"That is my word, I say. Shall I, Tulaji Angria, dispute with you? I will have twenty muskets, or you may keep the boy."

Diggle shrugged and smiled.

"Very well, huzur. You drive a hard bargain; but it shall be as you say.

I will send a chit to the captain, and you shall have the muskets before the ship sails."

Angria made a sign to one of his attendants. The man approached Desmond, took him by the sleeve, and signed for him to come away. Desmond threw a beseeching look at Diggle, and said hurriedly:

"Mr. Diggle, please tell me--"

But Angria rose to his feet in wrath, and shouted to the man who had Desmond by the sleeve. Desmond made no further resistance. His head swam as he passed between the dusky ranks out into the courtyard.

"What does it all mean?" he asked himself.

His guide hurried him along until they came to a barn-like building under the northwest angle of the fort. The Maratha unlocked the door, signed to Desmond to enter, and locked him in. He was alone.

He spent three miserable hours. Bitterly did he now regret having cast in his lot with the smooth-spoken stranger who had been so sympathetic with him in his troubles at home. He tried to guess what was to be done with him. He was in Angria's power, a prisoner, but to what end? Had he run from the tyranny at home merely to fall a victim to a worse tyranny at the hands of an oriental? He knew so little of Angria, and his brain was in such a turmoil, that he could not give definite shape to his fears.

He paced up and down the hot, stuffy shed, awaiting, dreading, he knew not what. Through the hole that served for a window he saw men passing to and fro across the courtyard, but they were all swarthy, all alien; there was no one from whom he could expect a friendly word.

Toward evening, as he looked through the hole, he saw Diggle issue from the door of the palace and cross towards the outer gate.

"Mr. Diggle! Mr. Diggle!" he called. "Please! I am locked up here."

Diggle looked round, smiled, and leisurely approached the shed.

"Why have they shut me up here?" demanded Desmond. "Captain Barker said I was to return at once. Do get the door unlocked."

"You ask the impossible, my young friend," replied Diggle through the hole. "You are here by the orders of Angria, and 'twould be treason in me to pick his locks."

"But why? what right has he to lock me up? and you, why did you let him?

You said you were my friend; you promised--oh, you know what you promised."

"I promised? Truly, I promised that, if you were bent on accompanying me to these shores, I would use my influence to procure you employment with one of my friends among the native princes. Well, I have kept my word; firmavi fidem, as the Latin hath it. Angria is my friend; I have used my influence with him; and you are now in the service of one of the most potent of Indian princes. True, your service is but beginning. It may be arduous at first; it may be long ab ovo usque ad mala; the egg may be hard, and the apples, perchance, somewhat sour; but as you become inured to your duties, you will learn resignation and patience, and--"

"Don't!" burst out Desmond, unable to endure the smooth-flowing periods of the man now self-confessed a villain. "What does it mean? Tell me plainly; am I a slave?"

"Servulus, non servus, my dear boy. What is the odds whether you serve Dick Burke, a booby farmer, or Tulaji Angria, a prince and a man of intelligence? Yet there is a difference, and I would give you a word of counsel. Angria is an oriental, and a despot; it were best to serve him with all diligence, or--"

He finished the sentence with a meaning grimace.

"Mr. Diggle, you can't mean it," said Desmond. "Don't leave me here! I implore you to release me. What have I ever done to you? Don't leave me in this awful place."

Diggle smiled and began to move away. At the sight of his malicious smile the prisoner's despair was swept away before a tempest of rage.

"You scoundrel! You shameless scoundrel!"

The words, low spoken and vibrant with contempt, reached Diggle when he was some distance from the shed. He turned and sauntered back.

"Heia! contumeliosae voces! 'Tis pretty abuse. My young friend, I must withdraw my ears from such shocking language. But stay! if you have any message for Sir Willoughby, your squire, whose affections you have so diligently cultivated to the prejudice of his nearest and dearest, it were well for you to give it. 'Tis your last opportunity; for those who enter Angria's service enjoy a useful but not a long career. And before I return to Gheria from a little journey I am about to make, you may have joined the majority of those who have tempted fate in this insalubrious clime. Horae momento cita mors yen it--you remember the phrase?"

Diggle leaned against the wooden wall, watching with malicious enjoyment the effect of his words. Desmond was very pale; all his strength seemed to have deserted him. Finding that his taunts provoked no reply, Diggle went on:

"Time presses, my young friend. You will be logged a deserter from the Good Intent. 'Tis my fervent hope you never fall into the hands of Captain Barker; as you know, he is a terrible man when roused."

Waving his gloved hand, he moved away. Desmond did not watch his departure. Falling back from the window, he threw himself upon the ground, and gave way to a long fit of black despair.

How long he lay in this agony he knew not. But he was at last roused by the opening of the door. It was almost dark. Rising to his feet, he saw a number of men hustled into the shed. Ranged along one of the walls, they squatted on the floor, and for some minutes afterwards Desmond heard the clank of irons and the harsh grating of a key. Then a big Maratha came to him, searched him thoroughly, clapped iron bands upon his ankles, and locked the chains to staples in the wall. Soon the door was shut, barred, and locked, and Desmond found himself a prisoner with eight others.

For a little they spoke among themselves, in the low tones of men utterly spent and dispirited. Then all was silent, and they slept. But Desmond lay wide awake, waiting for the morning.