Going to their rooms, Lord Victor said: "Don't see how the devil you had the patience, captain. Are you really going to do a book and were mugging up?"
"I may get something out of it," the captain answered enigmatically.
Captain Swinton had told his bearer to call him early, his life in India having taught him the full value of the glorious early morning for a ride. Lord Victor had balked at the idea of a grey-dawn pleasure trip on horseback, and Swinton had not pressed the point, for he very much desired to make a little tour of inspection off his own bat, a contemplative ride free from the inane comments of his young charge.
At the first soft drawn-out "Sah-h-i-b!" of his bearer, the captain was up with soldierly precision. His eyes lighted with pleasure when he saw the saddle horse that had been provided for him from the maharajah's stable. He was a fine, upstanding brown Arab, the eyes full and set wide. When Swinton patted the velvet muzzle the Arab gave a little sigh of satisfaction, expressing content; he liked to carry men who loved horses.
The bearer, officiously solicitous, had rubbed his cloth over the saddle and bridle reins, and, examining the result, said: "Huzoor, you have clean leathers; it is well. Also the steed has lucky marks and his name is Shabaz."
Shabaz broke into a free-swinging canter as the captain took the road that stretched, like a red ribbon laid on a carpet of green, toward the hill, whereon, high up, gleamed a flat pearl, the palace of Prince Ananda.
On the hillside was a delicate tracery of waving bamboos, through which peeped cliffs of various hues--rose-coloured, ebon black, pearl grey, vermilion red; and over all was a purple haze where the golden shafts of the rising sun shot through lazy-rising vapours of the moist plain. The cliffs resembled castle walls rising from the buried city, mushrooming themselves into sudden arrogance. To the north a river wound its sinuous way through plains of sand, a silver serpent creeping over a cloth of gold. Back from either side of the river lay patches of wheat and barley, their jade green and golden bronze holding of grain suggesting gigantic plates of metal set out in the morning sun to dry.
To the westward of the river lay Darpore City, looking like a box of scattered toys. Beyond the white palace the sal-covered hills lay heavy, mysterious, sombre, as if in rebuke to the eastern sky palpitating with the radiancy that flooded it from the great golden ball of heat that swept upward in regal majesty.