“Slave!” cried the boy, in a frenzy, “dost thou refuse me admittance?
Thou knowest not that I am Azim Bey, the Pasha-Governor’s son?”
To this the sentry, seeing only a small boy in a high state of
excitement, with worn and ragged clothes splashed and mud-bespattered,
replied merely by the Eastern equivalent of “Tell that to the
marines,” coupled with a little good advice as to civility of
language, and continued to bar the passage. Azim Bey turned pale.
“I must get in!” he cried. “The men of the city are murdering Mdlle.
Antaza. Show me the Balio Bey, your officer, the Mother of Teeth--any
one--they will know me and send help.”
But the sentry still smiled in grim incredulity, not unmixed with
anger at the boy’s disrespectful reference to Lady Haigh; and Azim Bey
threw himself on the ground and cast dust upon his head, and wept and
stormed in his despair. The more he cursed, the more the sentry
laughed, until the noise attracted the attention of Captain Rossiter,
an Engineer officer who was making the Residency his headquarters
during a series of surveys which he was carrying out for the Indian
Government within the borders of the pashalik, and who had lately been
present at a _fête_ at the Palace, where Azim Bey had seen him. He
happened to be crossing the courtyard, and hearing the din, came to
see what was the matter. To him Azim Bey rushed, and clinging to his
hand, told his tale of woe, while the tears poured down his grimy
little face. The tale was very incoherent, and, moreover, it was
related in a strange mixture of tongues; but Captain Rossiter
understood enough of it to send him flying madly out into the street
and down the lane, with as many of the Sepoys as he could collect at
his heels, Azim Bey staggering after them, almost too much exhausted
to walk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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