Away went Azim Bey, in a tumult of rage, indignation, and disgust, hard to imagine and impossible to describe. Charlie heard him running off, and calculated mentally how long he would be in reaching the Residency, and how long in returning with help. Almost at the same moment he found that he was deciding, half mechanically, on which of the leaders of the mob he should bestow his last three shots. He had some more cartridges with him, but he could not load with one hand, and Cecil was clinging, half-unconscious, to his left arm. Moreover, if the crowd saw him stop to load, they would be upon him instantly.
Meanwhile Azim Bey, rushing on, had found that the lane led into the street in which the Residency stood. Running up to the gate, he was stopped by the Sepoy sentry, who refused absolutely to allow him to enter. Here was a blow.
“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.