Having unseated his rider, the country bred, forgetting all about the tiger, stood looking with complacent vacuity at the groom, who now held him by the rein.
"Thought you weren't riding this morning," Swinton remarked, as they went down the hill.
"Changed my mind. You didn't happen to see a young lady on a grey stallion this morning, did you, old chap?"
"I did not. And the earl expects you to ride away from spins, not after them, out here."
"The governor is optimistic. This is only curiosity--to see the girl Ananda is going to make his queen."
"Bad form. It's all idle gossip, too; she's the niece of old Boelke."
"Oh, now I know why you ride up on the hill every morning. Did _your_ bearer tell you? Earl Craig expects _you_ to keep away from skirts while----By Jove! What's the bally shindy--are they planting another brass god in the temple?"
Lord Victor's sudden change in discourse had been caused by sounds of strife that came from a Hindu village that lay between Maha Bodhi Hill and Darpore City.
"The men of the temple and others who are followers of Mahadeo live yonder in Chota Darpore," Rada said.
As eager as a boy at the clang of a fire bell, Lord Victor, his eyes alight with sporting fervour, cried: "Come on, captain; every bally hour in this land of the poppy has its spiffing thrill."
Arrived on the scene, a unique battle lay before their eyes. The centre of the conflict was a silk-skinned, terrified little cow tied to a stake. A fanatical Mussulman priest, ordained to the bloodletting, waited with a sharp knife behind a battling line of Allah men for a chance to slit the cow's throat. With the followers of Mohammed were ranged the adherents of Buddha in a battle line that checked the Hindus, who, with fierce cries of "_Maro, maro!_" fought to rescue the cow and stop this offence against their gods--the slaying of a sacred animal.
Heads cracked beneath the fall of staves, and red blood spurted from a knife thrust or the cut of a tulwar. Swinton smiled grimly as he saw here and there a man in a green-and-gold jacket bring his baton down on the neck of a Mussulman--always a Mussulman, for these men of the green-and-gold jackets were the Hindu police of the maharajah.
Encouraged by their gaunt leader, the Hindus charged fiercely, and, seizing the cow, bore it toward their village, fighting a rear-guard action as the Mussulmans, with cries of "Allah! Allah!" charged over the bodies of men who lay in the silent indifference of death, or writhed in pain. There was a desperate mêlée, a maelstrom of fanatical fiends, out of which the Mussulmans emerged with the sacrificial victim to fight their way backward to the slaughter mound.
