“I--at least, the boys--supposed this campaign to be but nicely on!” Cardinegh’s voice was a husky whisper, and his hand had gripped the sleeve of the other. “Tell me what you know!” “Softly, Jerry!” The voice of Routledge was inaudible two feet from his lips. “It’s all rumor--indefinite, ungrippable, as if the clouds had whispered it--and yet there is something big behind it all. Down in Calcutta, the seats of the mighty are trembling. British India--take it from me--is too agitated by some discovery within, or revelation from without, to bother much further with a little native rebellion like this. And yet even this may have its relation to the big trouble. A native paper has dared to print this sentence--a good sentence, by the way: ‘Mother India is quivering with hatred for her white child, the British foundling!’ Would a Hindu journalist dare to print that without real or fancied backing? ‘Unauthoritative, but important if true,’ as the _Review_ says, is my own idea. It is this: Russian spies have insinuated themselves somewhere into the arcanum of British India; the Bear has lumbered off with information that is already pulling the English forces into defense--from bigger game than the Bhurpalese. If Russia is arming the Border States and has secured information of the fire-brand sort against England--the latter is a good deal like a shorn Samson just now--throwing so much power in little Bhurpal!... Something’s askew. There’s a rival in the north.... It’s all vague, vague, but big--big as Asia!... Listen to an amateur prophet, old Ironsides: if we live three years, we’ll see a collision of fifty-mile battle-fronts!” They were back in the civilian camp. Cardinegh did not speak, but his face was mad with excitement, his hands ungovernable. SECOND CHAPTER THE BAFFLING INDIAN MYSTERY IS DISCUSSED BY FOUR MEN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRST TO SOLVE IT The Powers are held together with links not welded by hands. The strain upon the weaker links sets to quivering the entire cable of civilization. Certain sections of the system grind constantly against each other, and inevitably there comes a period when snapping is imminent. At such a time the two material forces draw apart for defense. Frequently peace is preserved by silent affronts of power; frequently by an easing of tension on either hand, a more comfortable adjustment of boundaries, and thick applications of the lubricant, diplomacy. The time is critical, however, and in either background the engines of war are assembled against the crisis.